p_zeitgeist (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} p_zeitgeist) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} metafandom,@ 2009-03-13 20:32:00 |
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Friday, March 13, 2009
First, outside our usual ambit but important, a PSA:
First, outside our usual ambit but important, a PSA:
- theljstaff: [in news] Keeping Your Journal Safe - We have added a Manage Email Addresses feature that allows you to delete email addresses that are no longer active. If you have been using your current validated email address for at least six months, you can delete all the other addresses associated with your account. -
- rosemaryedghill: MISS ANN RAISES HER HAND - Back in January, the whole meta-discussion began with Issue Number One: Racism and Cultural Appropriation In The Text[...].
But the discussion moved in a lot of directions since then, and it's not just about that any more. It's about (2) the under-representation of people of color working in publishing. It's about (3) the fact that there are so few people of color publishing. It's about (4) the whiteness of F/SF publishing. It's about (5) the internalized racism of the people working in F/SF publishing.
Those are five different things. And they're all very closely connected, but they're not the same thing. - - t_eyla: Random Poll - What do you expect most from a beta? [POLL] -
- t_eyla: Write what you know? - What do people even mean when they say "write what you know"? -
- doctoreon: About writing what you know - I know a lot of people. I know how they behave (toward me or when I'm around), I know how they talk (to me and around me), etc. I know many, many stories involving them. That's what I can write. I can write stories filled with characters who are Other than I am. If I'm lucky, I might even do it well.
What I don't know - what I can't know - is what it's like to be them. I don't know their stories. That is the thing about which it seems I should remain silent. - - iclysdale: I don't go to meetings meetings are for alcoholics - Like lots of progressives, I periodically try to justify myself by pointing to various strong friendships I've had with people of colour.[...]I can think of a friend I love like a little brother, who ended up living with me several times in various situations, an Algerian son of political dissidents. I can talk about the various neighbours of ours in this wonderfully multi-ethnic area of town where I live, whose driveways I shovel and who bring us Christmas cookies, whose children play in the streets.
But it doesn't change the fact that in my head, I'm always at some level surprised by them. And that I hate that. - - brown_betty: Leverage recs will go in a *seperate* post. - Talking about systemic racism is "impolite" in the way that talking about a rape culture is "impolite." Civilization is a system for perpetuating itself, and so it disallows systemic critique of its fundamental presuppositions. Demanding "politeness" is demanding that the conversation take place under a set of rules that disallow the arguments of one side. -
- violachic: [in startrek] untitled - I am curious if the Race Fail '09 thing has made anybody here look at Star Trek (or any other of your favorite Sci Fi TV shows/movies) a little differently? -
- alias_sqbr: Rambly thoughts on niceness - do not mistake "niceness" for moral superiority. -
- kialio: Fooled Heart - I want to write something deeply personal.
Something full of pain and hurt and humility.
But RaceFail is not the place for that. Not because my words would be welcomed and cherished, but because I am not putting that disease on voyeuristic display simply to prove to others that PoC are human. That we bleed and we bruise, we break and we die. - - elenuial: Finally stepping into the whole RaceFail business - In the world of SFF, gaming, and fandom, I am almost always on my guard, because I am surrounded by a sea of well-meaning white faces, otherwise close friends of mine whose company I wholeheartedly enjoy, who will jump down my throat at the slightest mention that I might be bothered by some of their statements or actions. -
- thedeadparrot: Racefail keeps rolling - I thought about having a character like me in a story, and how if you don't need my cultural background to tell your story, then you make her white (or at least should make her white), because all I can offer that a white person can't is my Asianness.//Because white is normal.//And I am not. -
- havocthecat: Want to know why I'm in (Western media) fandom? - This is our space, where we keep the written (and online) records, and we tell the oral tales (because, come on, con reports are told and retold over the years, both orally and in writing). It's a space for us. Female-dominated fandom is our space, and I love that about fandom.
This is also why I think Racefail 09 is so important. - - kuangning: I thought I was done - Here's
the problemmy problem with "We should totes have these talks face to face because it doesn't mean anything if it's just on the Interwebs!" Are you ready?
I. should. not. have. to fucking. cry. in. front. of. you. before. it. clicks. with. you. that. I. hurt. when. I told. you. I. hurt. - - dolphin__girl: a moment of contemplation - Yelling Class began with one of those circle games, where you write in circles on a page aspects of you that define who you are. Mine were things like "female", "teacher", "writer", "geek", "fat". When everyone began to read theirs out, interesting trends emerged. Almost none of the white students included "white" in their circles. All most all of the black students included "black."
What I can see, looking back on that circle game after graduation, was that most people included in their circles things about themselves for which they had, at some point, been the victims of abuse. - - stoneself: where do you go? - the queer safe spaces are not safe spaces for me as a poc
the poc safe spaces are not safe spaces for me as a queer.
when i go to either kind of safe space i divvy myself up and put me in two little boxes - the poc box and the queer box. in poc spaces i let the poc me out, and in queer spaces i let the queer me out. and i rarely let the queer me out in poc safe spaces, and i rarely let the poc me out in queer safe spaces. - - andrewducker: Racefail - Because, let's face it, we've all encountered people on the internet who delight in causing chaos, eliciting any kind of negative emotional response, and then vanishing into the distance with an evil cackle. After you bump into your 50th you learn to shout "Beware of the troll!" whenever you see one.
What happens when it's not a troll? What happens when it turns out that they're real people, with real hurt, caused by real problems? - - tacky_tramp: SF/F writer puts on some pants? SURELY YOU JEST. - What intrigues me is that Scalzi actually apologized and recanted yesterday, and (much more substantively, since fauxpologies are so common) has invited SF/F notable and generally awesome person Mary Anne Mohanraj to talk about racism on his blog. -
- yeloson: "Why should we care about people of color?" - In less than a week, a startup publishing house focused on people of color, LGBT, and disabled fiction raised over $5000 in donations.
Clearly there is a market. These are people investing in the potential for books- they don't know if the stories will be good or not, they're willing to put down hard money to even get that chance. - - biascut: Racefail 09: Why I Actually Prefer It When People Aren't Civil - in a conversation about race with some who identifies as a person of colour and with whom I don't have an established relationship, I really appreciate articulate anger and a calculated lack of civility. I feel slightly safer in a difficult conversation with someone who makes me demonstrate my good faith before they'll share their time and experience and knowledge with me, because it means they consider it valuable. -