#inb4: I'm not even a reylo

[intersex-ionality]

Anyway, on lighter fare (and my god, how is this the lighter fare):

The people who are harassing the shit out of John Boyega are not “reylos,” they are racists. Having an interest in Rey and Kylo Ren making out has fuck all to do with being the kind of white supremacist sack of shit who would try to get a black man fired over petty jokes in the wake of his career being toyed with by a major studio. There is, in fact, no correlation.

Trying to re-frame “person who enjoys the idea of two fictional characters making out” as “person who thinks it’s reasonable or justified to try and get a black man fired for making some jokes with sexist implications” is such a weird, ineffective tactic.

For fighting racism.

Unfortunately, fighting racism is not the actual goal of this shitshow.

The goal is to make people, especially queer woman, feel bad for enjoying some movies in a way others don’t like--even if its the way the films themselves ended up promoting.

To make that goal sound less petty, it’s being disguised as a fight against racism.

Fighting racism is being co-opted into a ship war.

I know this comes as a weird shock to everyone involved, but the answer the racism is not sexism, the answer to sexism is not racism, and trying to obfuscate the actions of fucking racists by calling them shippers is some dumb ass bullshit.

People have been trying to get John Boyega fired for non-reasons since the first trailer dropped, and those people run the entire gamut of star wars face, because racism is everywhere. It’s not somehow a unique feature of a particular ship.

Re-framing racism as a shipping issue is a great way to call perfectly pleasant fans of color racist for having emotions, while letting white shitheads who spend all day writing slur laden screeds on twitter, and have been trying to get Boyega fired for most of a decade now, off the hook because at least they don’t read the wrong kind of fanfiction.

It’s not just ineffective, it’s counter productive.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.