#poc’s lol. speaking from a place of privilege but won’t listen

[cancerian-woman]

I understood what OP meant. I just said we aren’t the ones who underestimated anything Imo lol. But in season 8 Bonnie does have a scene where she actually says she had a plan to live the life Caroline was living at the time. Whether that happened or not at that time because yes she was in her late teens/early 20s it could’ve been an option for her. I’m just saying they could’ve at least allowed room for her wants/desires to be expressed more vs. caring for her friends/town needs etc. I wasn’t implying that the lack of love or family for Bonnie is her only tragedy just to be clear. But just because we should be happy she survived after all of that doesn’t mean we should lessen our complaints about how her character was handled either. We don’t know what major she registered as in college but we know Caroline & Elena’s careers? Hobbies? Etc this could go on but there’s many things lol. Bonnie leaving Mystic Falls wasn’t an issue, it wasn’t but sending her to africa is still lazy. She could’ve went back to Paris even? Or Salem where her family was descended from. If Africa was the choice they could’ve at the very least specified where. However, JP did make it known multiple times that she didn’t want Bonnie to survive. Kat has said several times herself that she didnt expect Bonnie to live. I don’t think we owe those writers any gracious comments. The way OP had framed it.

Now I agree with you. Yes, a character or female doesn’t need to be defined by love or dating and that’s fine. It really is. My comment was just directed to those fans and plec’s repetitive comments about how morally right Bonnie is to date insert male here while having multiple Caroline/Elena ships/scenes with someone that do not and never had existed with a rule of violence & sex. Ex: all of delena/klaro/ etc but suddenly having a moral complex towards Bonnie & her ships is something else. People in this fandom will place the other two girls with any male/woman etc in the franchise but suddenly needs to uphold a rule when it comes to Bonnie. It just sounds like Plec’s Kennet Twitter meltdown of 2012..or her most recent stunt where she insulted Elena just to make a negative comment about Bamon.

However Bonnie’s lack thereof with her sexuality/romance is a direct call to the mammy-trope. As I said before there’s no rule with violence and sex in that franchise which allowed that DE marriage to occur. It allowed KC to hookup even after everything Klaus did to Tyler with Care’s knowledge. I get the disdain in both situations, I do because it should be acknowledged. But if Caroline & Elena are allowed to make mistakes (or not) and have sex and fall in/out in love with people then Bonnie is allowed that right. She wasn’t even allowed to enjoy losing her virginity and we barely get a sex scene with Enzo (even if that ship was…a mess)

ngl, I think people really underestimate what a miracle is that Bonnie got the ending she did.

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

POC need to listen to us. Period. Any excuses or outrage at us for calling them out is unacceptable and TELLING.

If this many Asian people were attacking other communities’ ELDERS and WOMEN to the point that hate crimes increased by 150% and in some places, 1000%,,,,,, if pregnant woc were spit on by Asian men, little boys and girls stabbed, elders KILLED and brain dead at the hands of Asian men......... Imagine the hate. We’ve been and are hated for less, RIGHT the fuck NOW.

Americans would not HESITATE to call this an Asian problem, and most of us would not hesitate to listen and call the shit out. The worst is happening and Asians are not “allowed” to outright call for everyone else to fix and check themselves, like we WOULD and HAVE and ARE for them. Who are we to them but the model minority? That’s the fucking difference. We listen to everyone when they need to be heard and we call our own communities the fuck out and have difficult conversations head on. We’ve accepted our role as the scapegoat so much that we (as in privileged Asians) even scapegoat our own hate crimes.

It’s the cold hard truth that Asian-Americans are way more aware of every other community in this country than Americans as a whole are of us — we are constantly having to prove our Americaness while they sit on generations of anti-Asian hate to unlearn and unpack.

But when we try to get other communities to address their anti-Asian issues, which EVERY SINGLE COMMUNITY is guilty of, we’re being “divisive.” They really “not all...” guilt trip the Asian-American community into silence. Ok, becky.

This passive tone of “hate crimes keep HAPPENING to Asians?!?” completely removes responsibility from Americans who are actively hunting us down, places the burden of responsibility on us while we go in circles and wall on eggshells around Americans. This is an abusive relationship in any other context. This ensures that communities will still harbor hate for us into the next generation. This is the thanks we get for being born here, for immigrating here. For existing. Put this in any other context and you see how outdated and backwards progress for our communities is, and it can’t be because we don’t “speak up” enough. We are speaking up right the fuck now and not enough are willing to listen. And you’ll still see Asian-Americans blaming themselves and taking on more than they need because we are used to it. People made it taboo for us to speak.

Lol whenever hate crimes “happen” to Asian people, I always imagine what if it were the other way around if it were Asian people doing the hate crimes instead. ALL Asian people would have to take the blame or be at fault for even ONE hate crime let alone the thousands that have already been inflicted on our communities.

There have been over 3000 reported racist hate attacks against Asian people across the US and the lack of media coverage is just telling. Not to mention that hate crimes don’t just happen as you said, violent racists are the ones doing them and writers/journalists that do report on the attacks often hide who the attackers are and/or their identities.

In the end, it’s Asian people that get blamed or are at fault for the racist attacks that happen to us. Non-Asians blame us/say we deserve to get attacked and all the brainwashed Asians will side with them and take the blame for the attacks as well, even though it’s happening to their own friends and families. Then the liberal Asians will say “we need to hold hands and sing kumbya” to end racism while the conservative Asians will say we should “shoot first and ask questions later.” But for the rest of us that just want all this shit to stop don’t get heard or are dismissed.

It’s like you said, it’s not that Asian folks don’t speak up enough, it’s that people made it taboo for us to speak up because they don’t wanna hear us. And because nobody wants to hear us, I don’t ever wanna hear any non-Asians trying to call out “racist Asians” when they won’t even call out their own racism against Asian people.

Angry Asian Guy

[sophygurl]

WisCon43 - re: programming

I’ve been thinking about conversations (both online and off) held this year about WisCon’s programming - lack of certain kinds of diversity, reasons why that might be, and what to do about it. As someone who writes up a lot of panels, goes to a lot of panels, sits on a lot of panels, and although I didn’t mod this year - has moderated her fair share of panels, I’ve been thinking about it from all of those perspectives.

My perspective is also of someone who has a balance of ways in which I am and am not marginalized. I won’t list every single thing as that would be tedious and non-productive, but to share some of the biggies: I’m disabled, queer, and genderqueer; I am also white, cis, and neither an immigrant or the child of immigrants. If I get stuff wrong in any of the areas I’m privileged in, I very much welcome correction and feedback. Also, none of us these communities are monoliths - so conversation from all angles is always helpful. 

To those who may have missed some of these conversations, my impression is that it flowed from a few starting points: 1) people new/new-ish to WisCon who therefore weren’t as aware of how programming works differently at this 100% volunteer-run con, 2) people unaware that certain demographics of the con (specifically mentioned were poc - particularly blpoc, and trans/non-binary folk) have grown tired of being The Diversity People on panels, 3) some incidents at last year’s con - while handled by safety and anti-abuse teams well - did contribute to folks from certain marginalizations either not wanting to come or at least not wanting to actively participate in programming this year.

I don’t have a lot of thoughts on those points. I have never been on the concom, don’t know a lot of about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on, and while there are certainly things we can do (”we” meaning both the folks officially doing stuff bts and all of us as a community who care about the con) to make the con feel and be safer for everyone and to encourage more people to participate - we certainly can’t make people continue to do frustrating 101-level work educating people about their own identities year after year.

What I DO have thoughts on are the other starting points some of these conversations flowed from, which I perceived to be: 1) this panel description touches on specific marginalizations but the issues affecting those marginalizations were not brought up by panelists, 2) when someone from the audience asked questions relating to those marginalizations, the panelists didn’t know what to say, 3) when there were people with and without certain privileges on a panel - sometimes the people with privilege talked over the people without them.

These are all very fixable issues, and indeed I have seen these issues dealt with in very positive and productive ways in the past, so I wanted to share a little bit about my experiences when I’ve thought it has gone well.

Panel Writing.

The first stage of programming at WisCon is submitting panel ideas to the programming department. I write a lot of panels up (ask the programming department lol), and I write up panels on a broad variety of topics from Important Issue panels to fun squee panels. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing up panels with a nod to intersectional feminism and diversity inclusion:

When writing a panel about a Serious Issue, make sure there is some language about the ways in which other intersections are impacted by the Issue. For example, if I’m writing up a panel about queerness, I might slip in a phrase also asking the panelists to think about ways in which race or class affect the Queer Issue at hand. That way it’s baked in. Hopefully (and you can’t control this if you’re not on the panel yourself - but hopefully), the moderator and panelists will take those intersectional issues into consideration in their discussion. 

When writing up a more fun fannish panel, STILL make sure to include a statement or two asking the panelists to consider ways in which Fan Thing touches on issues of race, gender, what have you. For example, “yaddayadda fun thing! Also, how do we feel about the show’s treatment of race?” Again, the idea is to bake it right in there so that the panelists are already (hopefully) thinking about those things and won’t be caught off guard when the audience is wanting or expecting them to discuss it a little bit.

When suggesting a panel, you can suggest potential panelists. You can either do this specifically as in “Person A would be a great addition to this panel!” or more generally with a note asking “please make sure at least one panelist is X identity”. None of these things are guarantees, of course, but it helps programming see what you’re going for. Another idea for when it’s essential that a panel is comprised of specific folk is to hand-staff the panel. That means it’s not open for volunteers and only the people who have been pre-selected can sit on the panel. (I believe this is how panels at many other cons are naturally run?? It’s just not the default for WisCon where we like lots of volunteers and self-selection.)

Another thing to keep in mind is thinking about who your potential audience is going to be. You can delineate in the panel description whether this is meant to be a 101 or higher level discussion. You can bake in the idea that this panel is jumping off from a panel held in a previous year and the panelists won’t be doing much in the way of backgrounding that. You can say “this is NOT a panel about ...” to make it clear this panel is about Issue Y and only about Issue Y. There are lots of ways to make it clear what the panel should and shouldn’t be about, which again, is not a guarantee, but certainly helps move the panel in the right direction.

Panel formation.

When asking to be on a panel, you can make a note about why you want to be on it, or why you want to moderate it. This is a handy place to speak about your identity pieces (IF you want - nobody is forced to do this). For example, on a panel about disability, I might type in a little note talking about my specific disabilities and possibly how my queerness informs my disability. That way, if there are ten people with similar disabilities as mine asking to be on the panel - programming can decide that maybe I don’t need to be there. Or if no one else has mentioned queerness as part of their identity, they might put me on to make sure that’s a voice being included. 

When you get assigned to a panel, you see the names and emails of the other folks on the panel with you. If you’ve been coming to the con for awhile, you might be able to see right then where a problem area might be - like, holy cow this panel about TV show with black main character is skewing very white! Or perhaps that panel about the intersection of X and Y has mostly folks with experience X and not Y! What do? Well, there’s a few things that I’ve seen done/have done.

One thing is to reach out and see if people from the underrepresented group want to join you on the panel! You can do this quietly by asking folks you know personally, put out calls on social media, ask programming to help you locate some folks, or even put up notes in the green room once at the con asking for folks with identity Y to volunteer. 

I’ve also been on panels where none of the above happened, but I’ve looked out into the audience and seen friends with Identity Y who I know are usually up for talking at a moment’s notice and asked if they’d join us. (This can backfire if your friend with Identity Y is just sick to death of talking about their identity, but if you ask it in a nice enough way, hopefully they’ll feel comfortable saying nah, I’m here to listen this time) 

This can also happen as the email conversations begin and everyone starts sort of awkwardly saying things like “well, I think we should talk about asexuality but I’m not ace...” and suddenly you realize you’ve left out an important part of the conversation. As in the above scenario, sometimes you can reach out and include that perspective. But sometimes you can’t. What do then?

One thing I’ve seen done/have done is to have the moderator acknowledge the issue at the start of the panel. “We all understand that an ace perspective, or perspective X, is an important one for this topic, but none of us are ace, so we’re just gonna do our best on that part and if we mess it up, we hope someone with that perspective will correct us!” This accomplished a few things: 1) it lets the audience know that you know there is a flaw there so they’re not sitting there wondering why tf you’re not talking about Thing X as much as they’d expected, 2) allows folks in the audience with perspective X the opportunity to speak up if they’re feeling like they want their perspective shared (example: “you mentioned that none of you are ace, I’m asexual and wanted to share that...”). It might be important for the mod to even seek out “comment not a question” in those specific instances. 

Sometimes, as happened my very first time moderating, it turns out that someone in the audience has a very unique and important perspective and the rest of the panelists just kinda do chinhands listening to them for a bit and THAT IS OKAY. 

You might even get all the way to the panel and not realize until someone in the audience speaks up that you are lacking an important perspective. What do??

This weekend, I witnessed a panel where this happened and the panelists all just asked the audience member if they’d come up and be on the panel with them! Now, like the example above of asking a friend in the audience at the start of the panel, this won’t Always work. Perhaps the audience member does not Want to share their perspective - they only want to make sure that perspective is being covered. That is 100% fair! No one should feel forced or pressured to insta-join a panel! But giving someone the option can be a great way around accidental gaps in inclusion. 

Doing the panel. 

Now, it’s not always possible to flesh your panel out with diverse perspectives. Despite trying all of the other things, perhaps no one with Identity X wants to sit on your panel. Or perhaps there are too many intersections for a panel of 6 to even cover all of them. Or maybe no one even realized how important Issue Y was to Panel Z until Panel Z got underway. But STILL there are things you, the panelists and moderator, can do!

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you’re prepared for the stuff baked into the panel. Even if you believe the make-up of the panel is sufficient to cover a specific issue, what if the 2 poc panelists end up unable to make it to the con or the 1 Deaf panelist got sick or the person you thought you remembered was Jewish - ooops turns out you had mistaken them for someone else? Listen, this stuff happens. So Be Prepared. 

No, as a white person, I absolutely cannot and should not speak on the experiences of people of color. That would be wildly inappropriate. But what I can do, and try to do, is educate myself ahead of time on how the topic at hand affects or is affected by issues of race. If there are poc on the panel willing and able to touch on those things - perfect! Worst thing that happens is that I got a little more educated, which is the opposite of a problem anyway. But if it turns out that it’s only me and another white panelist and the audience is asking questions about race, I can at least say something like “from what I’ve read in this article/heard my poc friends saying/saw online from poc fans.... it seems like XYZ might be true but also could be a problem because of ABC”. Heavy disclaimers should abound, but, yes, it is possible to at least address an issue even if that issue doesn’t directly affect you. In fact, Tired Queer in the Corner might be really happy that you Straight Ally on the Panel did your homework. 

If you can’t prepare - if an issue sneaks up on you - just be honest about that and still try to do your best! “Oh, wow, I just realized we never discussed in our pre-panel discussion how the issue of religion impacts this topic, but now that this audience member has brought it up - can any of us speak on that?” If it turns out that, no, none of us can speak on that - toss it to the audience. “Can anyone else address this?” Again, this is a potential backfire situation, but worse case scenario no one wants to address it, you can apologize, pledge to do better next time, and move on. The toss-it-to-the-audience approach also only generally works in smaller panels where audience participation is easily done. If you’re on a dais with a large crowd and no wireless mics - you might have to forgo that particular work-around.

Other options include post-panel discussions. Moderator: “We only have ten minutes left and we never did hit topic X. If anyone - panelists and audience alike - would like to discuss this, we can move into the overflow room to dig in deeper.” That’s one approach. Another is to take it to twitter, or other online discussion. “Sorry we didn’t get to any audience questions about Y - but please add your comments to the # and we’ll do our best to reply in the coming days!” Last year I moderated a panel with a lot of very intelligent and wordy panelists and we literally ran out of time right before I would have gone to audience questions. But that hashtag was busy and lots of us went to it after the panel and had some lovely conversations with some of our audience members that way. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s another way to try and get to the stuff that might otherwise be missed.

Also - be aware of your privileges and make sure you are privileging the voices of those you have privilege over. This weekend, I caught myself interrupting a fellow panelist of color and stopped mid-interruption, doing the sort of “no, continue” motion and set the mic down to make sure I didn’t do it again until they were finished. It happens to all of us, and most of us at WisCon are in positions where we have some and don’t have other privileges. As a panelist - try and remember where yours are and be mindful of when to stop talking. 

As a moderator - you have to do this and Also keep in mind your fellow panelists intersections and possibly step in when you notice the white lady keeps monopolizing the conversation or the cishet dude to keeps talking over the queer woman. It’s part of the mod’s job to make sure everyone is heard, so if you don’t believe you’re capable of doing that part you need to either 1) ask someone to help you or 2) not moderate in the first place. [And BTW, asking for help is okay! We don’t all have the same skill sets, so asking one of your panelist buds to help you in an area you lack is not a bad thing to do!]  

So those are some of my ideas on how to make sure more voices and types of voices are being heard in panels. I’d love if people added their own! Thanks to everyone who made it a priority for us to keep having these conversations.