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

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes yes yes to everything you said. I can't believe no one pointed out the fail, ugh. :(

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

You mean of the betas and stuff, while the story was being written? Yeah, me neither. AUGH. Someone said somewhere that just because Western literature has a long and great tradition of using POC tragedies like this doesn't mean one should continue it.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

just because Western literature has a long and great tradition of using POC tragedies like this doesn't mean one should continue it

It doesn't mean they should, absolutely not; but it does mean that they do and they do so without even noticing.

The 'long and great tradition' makes it sound like something that's perpetuated on purpose; in most cases it's not. It's something that's perpetuated because it's normal, it's part of the landscape, it's something none of the people in certain groups (i.e., lots and lots of groups of white Westerners, at least here in the USA) think anything about.

Which is not to excuse it; just to say, people keep saying 'how could she not have seen what she was doing?' and 'how could her betas / friends / artist / readers not have noticed and said something?' -- the answer is because they literally didn't notice. If you and everyone around you is used to stepping over a crack in the sidewalk every day of your life, you'll all keep doing it until someone comes along and says, "why don't you idiots just FIX that?"

(And if it seems like I'm conflating racism with something as mild as a crack in the sidewalk -- that's because for a lot of people, it is.)

It's just. I don't even. I think things are working toward getting less full of unbelievable fail, but there are certainly no end of examples of how far we have to go.

[jubella.livejournal.com]

There is nothing about Creole that is gibberish. I hated that so much. Just because I don't understand Spanish or Chinese doesn't make it gibberish. That made me so mad. It also makes me want to speak mean things about the author in Creole because I am grudgy.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

The 'long and great tradition' makes it sound like something that's perpetuated on purpose; in most cases it's not.

Right, no, I know that. I know privilege is invisible to those who have it a lot of the time, I also know what it takes to point it out. The very first story I ever sent off to beta came back with a note about a line that was FULL of gender stereotype fail. But she called me on it. Of course they didn't see it, that's how this shit works. The thing is, at this point we kind of have to look, you know?

When I say "long and great tradition" I'm (sarcastically) referring to the tendency to think only the stories of one kind of person matter, and that is a sometimes straight, usually white, usually male. That is, what we think of as "normal." And people don't realize that seeing stories this way also means seeing the people who are not (in this case) white Americans as less than human. But people should realize, and when they miss it, other people should point it out to them. Like people are doing.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

God, yeah. (I think you should, seriously.) If you don't know the language that the people in your story are speaking, do some fucking research, and if you don't think it's a language, then you--AUGH. OF COURSE IT'S A FUCKING LANGUAGE. I'm so sorry people are such idiots, dearheart. *hugs*

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I know that there are other racist and faily things happening in that story not just the language one but that's the one I keep getting stuck on. Pro-Colonialism, pro-Imperialism fiction from the 1950s described non-European languages as gibberish. We should be so far beyond that by now. /o\

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Well, the implications of that one are so icky, I cannot even--it implies "those people" don't really talk. Or not like "civilized people" at any rate. For fuck's sake, two seconds on wikipedia told me eight million people speak this language. Eight million people. Yes, let's reduce their language to gibberish. I just, what?

[x_dark_siren_x]

I gave up after the one referring to the cousin who died in childbirth. Ugh.

People are - People are stupid. And now I feel like I need a shower. My skin is currently trying to crawl off my body.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

In a nutshell, yeah. UGH.

Well, if they did THAT, they'd have to make it a "real" tragedy and have one of the protagonists die in the Towers. See, the only people who died there were white. Obviously.

(And I'm being inappropriately and a little viciously sarcastic, but I figure you caught that.)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Wait, really? Because I'm seeing it everywhere. Huh. How are people talking about it then? I suppose I read metafandom, that's where I'm getting most of the debate. But thank you! ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Gross is a good descriptor, yeah. UGH.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd say that's definitely inappropriate, obviously. I wouldn't call Sarah Palin a bitch either. I haven't seen any of that in this case, actually, but I know the kind of criticism you're referring to (I've seen it in other contexts). However, the majority of the posts I've seen have ranged from anger with a great deal of eloquence to thoughtful parsings of the issues at hand. So I wouldn't dismiss all the criticism concerning this particular fail--the majority of what is being linked around is very, very, very good and not misogynistic at all. tevere's post, for instance.

I don't know, to me it's pretty simple. Attack, comment on, discuss the content of the story, not the gender of the person who wrote it. It's not a particularly complex separation.

[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.