fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3547 ]

[ SECRET POST #3547 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3547 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #507.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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As far as the issue raised here goes, the best a fan can do is try their best to avoid harmful attitudes, support works with racial and gender diversity, combat issues that arise within fan communities, criticize racist, sexist, or otherwise problematic fan behavior, and try to challenge and change harmful attitudes from within to the best of their abilities.

I think working with other fans and authors interested in solving these problems to improve fandom as best we can is the best solution to the problem you addressed. Your view isn't wrong, but it is pessimistic, and I'm probably being naive here but I think things can change for the better.

"criticize racist, sexist, or otherwise problematic fan behavior, and try to challenge and change harmful attitudes from within to the best of their abilities. "

See, here's where I kind of disagree. People like a property because they like it and telling them they need to stop liking things is sort of ridiculous, as is telling them they need to start liking things they dislike. I'm very sorry Reylo is more popular than Rey/Jessika Pava. The original trilogy is all about how love is the most powerful force in the universe and if someone loves you it doesn't matter how evil you are, you can be saved, and also there's some pretty sexist stuff about powerful women loving to be dominated. There's people who get into it way more in depth, but the basic thing is the property has some pretty skeezy relationship morals and it attracts fans who have a kink for that. Yelling at them that they're making fandom a toxic place by liking problematic things just makes you an asshole.

About the best you can do is carve out a space for like-minded fans (Like the She Who Walks in Shadows fans did!) and support people within your subgroup.

But you kind of have to accept that some people are going to love something because of elements you find problematic, and some people are going to love something despite elements you find problematic. There's a whole group of people who find Coffeeshop AUs to be horrible and problematic because it romanticizes the harassment that coffeeshop workers and others in the service industry regularly face! But people who like Coffeeshop AUs aren't awful for finding it romantic in fiction, and people aren't awful for finding it problematic in RL.

That's fair. I'm not the yelling-at-people type myself, which is partly why the whole conundrum sticks with me so much - I'm worried I might go too far in the other direction in trying not to be a "problematic" fan. I guess this is one of those situations with no quick fixes or easy answers.

I'll stick to supporting Walking in Shadows and recommending it to my Mythos fan friends. It looks like a good book, and thanks for letting me know about it. :)

Yeah. There's not really an easy answer.

I've had people come up to me at cons thinking I would agree with them when they spouted some racist crap. I gently but firmly made it clear I was not a receptive audience, but I don't really see what else to do? I don't think I can change their mind. I don't really think thoughtcrime should be a thing. They're welcome to be as racist as they want to be... as long as they don't hurt anyone with it. And people will argue that just by existing they're hurting others and it's not an easy answer!

(It's sort of a sensitive topic right now because I signed up for a fic exchange and one of the pairings I signed up for is a 'problematic' one and I've already had people send me nasty messages over it. I haven't even written it, I might not get assigned to write it, but just being open to it makes me a bad person. And I know it's entirely their choice to not like me because of it, but it still stings. It's hard to reconcile 'Yes, this thing is really awful and most people would agree that it's really really awful' vs. the fact people are excellent at convincing themselves that they're 100% justified.

... it's not unrelated that my good friends/family/WORK knows I do fandom things and know my pairings and are entirely cool with it and don't see it as a problem, so I feel confident that even if someone managed to doxx me and contact my workplace about it, my boss would just laugh in their face.)

What you did seems fair - as a fan, the best I can do is keep my own behavior in check and passively support what I want to see in my fandom without policing others. I'm sorry you have to deal with nasty messages.

As far as my own experiences go, there was a racist speaker at my first con - it was a writer I had respected beforehand, and it was a deeply disappointing experience. The con itself quickly disowned his remarks, many of the other con-goers I spoke to were upset by them, and he isn't being invited back. It didn't poison the experience completely, but I was angry and had to hold back from confronting the speaker after his lecture.

(And thank you for the pleasant conversation about this - I'm always nervous when discussing this subject, so it's good to have a friendly one.)

I understand how much of a disappointment that was, and I too am glad we can have a friendly discussion!

It's such a tricky subject because it really is hard to decide where to draw the line. Like just racism! To steal a phrase, the only thing two people will agree on about the definition of racism is that a third person has it wrong. I encountered someone on facebook posting a meme that was "The best way to prevent tomorrow's police brutality against black people is to kill all of the blacks today." in complete seriousness, along with a rant about if they wanted to protest people should give them 'something to protest about'. That's FREAKIN SCARY AND VERY RACIST. But where do you draw the line? Is watching Captain America racist because the main character is a white dude? What if you ship Steve/Bucky instead of Steve/Sam, is that racist? Well... racism probably influences people's preferences because we don't develop likes and dislikes in a vacuum, but... What if you then say Steve/Sam shippers are ablest for discriminating against an amputee? Uuuh....

And it's just... messy because it's a messy topic and a lot of squinting at shades of purple and trying to sort them into 'mostly blue' or 'mostly red' and some are going to be easy and some are going to take a judgment call.

So basically my conclusion is that it sounds like supporting what you want in your fandom seems the best way to 'first, do no harm' and thank you again for being willing to listen and discuss this with me. I enjoyed getting to work through some ideas that have kinda been bouncing around a while.

Different anon here--why didn't you confront him?

On the other hand, there are degrees - shipping a problematic ship is a different level of "problematic" than, for example, being openly racist at a con, deliberately flaming works with LGBTQ+ characters, or harassing female convention attendees, naming examples I know of.

While of course individual shippers can be racist, sexist, etc., the act of shipping a ship is not an inherently harmful or malicious activity. Sexual harassment, overt racism and homophobia, etc. are directly harmful, malicious, and actively chase away fans, and as such should be addressed.

Yeah, I'm sort of the opinion that when something crosses into trying to police other fans or involves other people, no matter what your justification (it doesn't matter if you're harassing them for being black/gay/a woman/etc. or harassing them for shipping something else), then things get hairy fast.

The biggest problem is I've seen studies on how if something is emotional for you, it's easy to read something passive as active and retaliate in kind. So like... a game site giving a game you love a poor review is likely to inspire heated personal responses because even if the review is entirely passive "I personally found the controls clunky and unintuitive" people will interpret this as "People who liked this are big fat ugly losers and should be pushed in mud" and will leave angry comments "(Yeah, well if I'm a loser and should be pushed in mud...) You're horrible and should die."

Which makes it really hard to draw the line between "They're quietly shipping a ship I hate, but I can ignore them and ship what I like because this doesn't affect me." and "By quietly shipping a racist and homophobic and misogynistic ship they're making fellow fans uncomfortable and making the fandom toxic for all the people like me."

There's a whole group of people who find Coffeeshop AUs to be horrible and problematic because it romanticizes the harassment that coffeeshop workers and others in the service industry regularly face!

Wow, really?

Yeah. I saw someone who said they upset her because she'd been stalked by a customer when she worked as a barista and other people sharing stories of inappropriate and sexually harassing customers (which also included stories of women stalking male workers too) and so how the whole genre romanticizes something that's often a real life problem.

My feeling is that the kind of people who read fanfiction Coffeeshop AUs and the kind of people who harass service workers is unlikely to have a huge overlap so I personally don't consider it high on the list of harmful tropes, but I can see why it would bother people and how it could be considered problematic.

I'd never thought of it that way before but I can understand why it would make people uncomfortable to see that genre everywhere.

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[ SECRET POST #3547 ]

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