three things

[harborshore]

Regarding the recent SPN Big Bang racist fail:

1. People who speak a language you don't understand do not gibber or jabber, they talk. You just don't understand them. ETA: This post is more detailed concerning this point.


2. If your story has a major tragedy whose victims are portrayed as somehow less than your protagonists, if said victims have no agency (as in, they don't do anything, they get things done to them), and if they (and their deaths) are there only to provide angst for your heroes, then you are doing it WRONG.


3. If you're considering writing a fic about a tragedy that is still going on, then tread carefully. Very carefully.

Note: the link above goes to an extensive collection of the offending quotes from the story; there's a full roundup at Unfunny Business.

Comments

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Okay bb, you know I love you, but I have to say this: I think it's really important to simultaneously be able to talk about the ways in which misogynist trolls are wrong AND discuss the ways that this story is problematically racist. Because anything else feels like a derailing of the conversation, a little? You know what I mean? I'm not telling you not to be angry about people using gender-based insults and faily language, I would never ever tell you that, but I think it's really fucking important to simultaneously acknowledge that the post you linked has a shit-ton of links to intelligent debate, funny debate, smart dismissals of "It's not racist because.." arguments, and yeah, some commenters do fail. We can call them on that like this: "Could you please avoid gender-based insults--I agree that the author of this fic definitely produced a racist work, but we don't have to engage in sexist fail when calling her on it, right?" Followed by discussing the fail of the story.

In sum, it's just really important to not forget to talk about the issue at hand, too. So by all means call people on shitty language, but, just. There are Haitians in fandom (I have at least one on my flist). Imagine, for a second, that someone had written a fic about two white dude cops investigating the femicide in Guatemala (the widespread brutal killings of women that is going on there), or about any other disaster primarily affecting women, and writing the women in the degrading way that the Haitian characters in this story are written. OW. For that matter, this story is faily on that front as well--lots of women and children dying, especially. Just, we have to be able to both talk about sexist fail of commenters and racist fail in the story. I think that's really really key to working towards equality.

PS. I disagree that there is never evidence of fandom working for equality. The rape debate some months back was AWESOME. There were trolls, yeah, but there was a LOT of awesome as well. sheafrotherdon did a body acceptance post just yesterday. Etc. etc.