#(and yeah to anon1 that lestat obviously had more power in s1 on many fronts but that doesn't mean louis had none himself)

[pynkhues]

I'm so confused as to what could be construed as antiblack in your original post? Surely not just your feeling that Louis is not femme on the show? You're not saying he's hypermasculine, just a guy with complex characteristics, which seems like a perfectly reasonable take? If it's calling him a pimp...I mean, he owned/ran a brothel, is brothel owner/prostitute purveyor different from pimp? Pimp is a more modern term, that's all. Is it saying that he has some level of patriarchal power? Because I think he does, he's not completely without agency, but you never say that he has as much power as Lestat in their relationship/time period or that this in any way mitigates Lestat's violence....so that hardly seems like it could be interpreted as antiblack. Is it saying that Louis coerced Lestat into making Claudia? Because...he was coercive there? That doesn't absolve Lestat of all responsibility either, he had more knowledge than Louis of why this would be bad and he should have refused--he made the choice to give in. But it's possible to have great sympathy for the terrible, out-of-control mental place Louis was in in that racist society, and to understand that he wasn't acting with malice, and still say that he bears some responsibility for Claudia's turning: I think if some people weren't so determined to ONLY see Louis as a victim 100% of the time, rather than as someone who is often a victim but also engages in wrongs of his own at times, they'd see that telling your partner you're leaving them and then returning to demand that they give you a child if they want you to stay is not a *great* thing to do, however upset you are.

So, yeah, I don't get what could be considered antiblack in what you posted...so are there really people who think that saying that Louis isn't femme (not saying that he's super masc, which he isn't, just that he's not femme), or that he has even tiny bits of agency/moral complexity, is bad?

The argument - as I understand it - stems from the (very real!) concept of the overtly Masculinised Black Man, and that intersection of race and gender as social constructs that sees him in both reality and fiction having to perform a hypermasculinity that denies him his full personhood.

(I'm sure a number of the people who follow me have lived experience of this, so I really hope this doesn't come off as patronising, I'm just trying to articulate the argument as I understand it.)

In many contexts, Black men aren't given chances for softness, vulnerability, gentleness, playfulness, flamboyance or joy because of the long tail of colonialism, slavery, and systemic and socialised racism which infects everything, including concepts around gender, because those softer traits have historically in Western societies (but many others also) been perceived as feminine.

I actually get the foundation of the argument. Those are real issues in both reality and in fiction, I think where our misalignment comes in is that they do view those traits as feminine, and I just don't. I think they're just human, and so to me the argument is less about Louis being denied his femininity than it is about Louis being denied his full humanity, which I personally think I see from pretty much his first scene on the show. I talked about it a bit in my Byronic hero post, but he falls so neatly into that archetype in his sensitivity, his melancholy, his arrogance, his intelligence, his capacity for love and affection, his capacity for vengeance, and yes, even his sexuality (again, Lord Byron, of whom the trope is based on, was queer himself), but as a Black man in 1910, he's allowed very little of that, and that's where my reading of him in the show sits.

I think though it's that different interepretation of those traits as inherently feminine that's, y'know, the gristle in the mouthful, so to speak. The idea of Louis not really being femme as a result gets seen as something that's reinforcing the idea of Louis as that overtly Masculinsed Black Man, which - again - I've never said and would never argue, because I don't think he is that at all, and the fact that I don't does seem to be what creates the strawman arguments that I don't see him as femme, ergo I must see him as a 'brute', because then it's easier to argue and can be positioned as a moral issue (i.e. I'm racist) rather than actually engaging with any of my points/arguments.

Is that the most vile antiblack language someone's heard? I don't know. I'm not going to speak for others' experiences. I obviously wouldn't want it to be (although I also wouldn't want anyone to experience any of it), and I've said it before and I'll say it again, all I can do is listen, but also do my own research, engage in good faith, and clarify where I can.