#given louis is never depicted as anything but cis and gay

[pynkhues]

"I honestly think both in terms of fic for the show itself and for RPF, it's about race"

Ah, I wasn't expecting this, which as a brown woman is incredibly naive of me.

There's currently discourse on X about Louis being the most "boring" character which is also, undoubtedly, driven by racism.

(x)

Oh, I'm really sorry, anon, and you shouldn't feel naive. I mean, for starters, I could be wrong, and I'm being pretty speculative, but even if I'm right, the onerous of that isn't, or at least shouldn't be, on you. I think there's a lot of really great progressive things that happen in fandom, but at the same time fandom is created by People Living in Societies, and unfortunately biases and discrimination, at least in my experience, can and do seep through in ways that are both toxic and just flat out negligent.

The idea of Louis being boring is absolutely an insane and racist rhetoric too. He is so wildly interesting as a character, with so many layers of storytelling and nuance and contradiction, which I adore in him, and it makes me wonder if the people who find him boring are the same ones who want to make him the audience insert (insane given Daniel is literally right there) or to project all this 'battered housewife' narrative onto him, which - - look.

I've tried to shrug this off, but I literally just spent the entire day at a symposium on how the Australian government child support system is weaponised by abusive men against women post-divorce, so I'm a bit of a raw nerve about this topic, but it's made me even more pissed off at the Louis-Housewife arguments than normal.

Not only is it diminishing and completely at odds with his character, but what a way to show you've never, ever engaged with real survivors of, or conversations with, patriarchal oppression.