#to police anything that deviates from the Popular Headcanons

[bigskydreaming]

Agreeing with Tarzan anon, we know very well who popularized this idea, who lit that bulb in everyone's head. Not just Tarzan, it's also a little bit of Aladin although, for that ship definitely it's Tarzan/Jane. It's very much embedded into everyone's head that Dick was the exotic circus guy whose main trait was acrobatics. I've seen DB fic writers compare him to /monkeys/. Nothing against the animal but. That's racism. The fandom is racist. The canon is racist. It's blatant and everywhere.

And oh god the tone policing in case you dare to call them out! If you ask a content creator to be mindful about their content having racist undertones or harmful for a community that's not theirs be it a different race or sexuality or gender identity, there will be so much excuses and justifications and "You could have said it nicely" "We should be kinder" "I'm making content for my own enjoyment" You know it well. Racism is the biggest problem of this fandom and probably the industry as well.

Yikes, I’ve been fortunate to never see anyone compare Dick to a monkey myself, not that I’m doubting your word or the racist bullshit any fandom is capable of trotting out there, because....YIKES. Wow, people.

And y’know, while we’re on the subject, PSA for other white people who need to hear this: Lose the word exotic from your vocabulary, and any variations of it. THAT I do see a lot, references to Dick and Damian and Cass’ exotic-ness and NOOOOPE. This is racism, guys. It doesn’t matter HOW you mean it, or even if you think you’re being complimentary by doing so, whether you’re referring to features or customs or heritage or whatever.....

Exotic, and other words of that nature, are MEANT to indicate the ‘other.’ The default setting of that form of description is standardizing whiteness, and white experiences and cultures, as empiricial “Normal” and the more you ‘deviate’ from normal white experiences, the more ‘exotic’ you are. 

And that is, flat out, racism. Even if you THINK you’re saying nothing but good things about that character, you are still prioritizing whiteness as the ‘true’ human experience, and all others as innately being outliers or exceptions to the rule of whiteness.

That’s gotta go.

All fandoms have their problems with racism, but one I’ve noticed being pretty distinct to Batfandom is that Batfandom likes to think its not that racist because so much of its racism is unconscious and “nice” racism. As in, nobody’s trying to be mean or saying anything all that mean, surely, its just.....observations about various strangeties about various characters that just so happen to all have not being white in common. 

Racism does not HAVE to be born of the intention to put others down, it literally just needs to be born of untrue bullshit formed at some point by racist ideas or preconceptions elevating one race above others. Meaning.....the fact that you don’t think saying something that others call racist can really BE racist, because you didn’t INTEND to be racist, you don’t have any problem with people of this race or that race, and thus how can you be racist towards this character when actually you LIKE this character.....

That doesn’t mean anything, because none of that means that the people who FIRST coined that particular racist saying or thought or idea that was then perpetuated enough that you’ve since passed it on without considering all the implications.......just because YOU didn’t intend to be racist by saying it, doesn’t mean that THEY didn’t intend to be racist when they said it FIRST.....just that enough time has passed without enough people calling it out as such, that by the time it got to you, you took it for granted that there couldn’t be any harm in it, surely, because otherwise how would it ever have become this normalized, this common a thought or thing to say, without people objecting.

Well....they did object, probably. Just not enough to drown out the people saying “hey this isn’t racist, stop saying it is” OR just as likely....their objections were met with you or others who said it for similar reasons to you just hearing the word racism and immediately kneejerk defending yourself with BUT I CANT BE RACIST IM A GOOD PERSON.....when that isn’t even the ISSUE. Its “this thing you said was racist” and now you’ve got everybody just weighing in on whether or not you’re a good person and thus racist or not, instead of....whether or not this thing you said was racist.

Which is just one of the MANY reasons tone-policing is utter bullshit, and why I (as some may have noticed lololol) consider tone-policing utter bullshit and am not here for it ever, just FYI).

So like I was saying, a big part of the problem with Batfandom and racism in particular, is enough people are fans of Dick Grayson that they think there can’t possibly be any racism regarding Dick Grayson, when....no. That logic doesn’t track, because again, you don’t actually have to hate or even dislike someone to say something racist about them....you just have to....say something that regardless of intent, is actually racist. 

But because its not the OBVIOUS and aggressively offensive form of racism, people are like, we don’t see what the problem is, where the harm is....thus there can’t be any harm. And thus it all loops around and self-feeds this self-assured perception that thus....no racism here exists.

And that’s not how any of that works.

Course, another big facet of it with Dick in particular is how often people retreat into “but Dick Grayson is barely even Romani in canon and all the writing of him as such is racist anyway so how can people be racist towards him when really he’s white” and....I just....don’t really know how to parse that properly, lol, so all I have to say on that subject is y’know, I’m not Romani so its not my place to speak towards how well or not he represents Romani people and thus should he or should he not be considered representation, or whether Romani fans would have been better off if Devin Grayson had never retconned him as being Romani in the first place......its not that I don’t have an opinion on any of that, its that similar to how I could have an opinion on whether or not I think the sky would just be prettier if it were green instead of blue, that doesn’t make that opinion RELEVANT.

So instead, I’ll just say on that front that its just interesting to me how many people jump to protesting that Dick’s basically white anyway because we all know it was just a writer being racist that canonized him as being Romani, so her opinion doesn’t count.......

When many of the people I see trotting out that defense whenever mention of racism in regards to Dick Grayson is brought up.....many of those same people have completely of their own free will....written stories or headcanons or read and recommended and commented on stories where Dick Grayson’s Romani heritage is referenced and made a thing.....completely voluntarily.....

And that’s just....

Hmmm.

Interesting.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Would you mind explaining this specifically? "TERF/REG forces within queer spaces;" How does that align with anti-shippers?

TERFs, SWERFs, and REGs have shaped a lot of the understanding young people on tumblr have about LGBT/queer culture and history, both in what it means to be LG(BT) and how one should judge and behave towards their fellow humans.

Unsurprisingly, anti-shipping - made up primarily of young Tumblrites - adopts and practices their gatekeeping techniques and applies their philosophies. For example:

all kink is bad and abusive (swerfs). many antis are anti-kink and consider fanworks containing kink to be ‘normalizing abuse’. Fics focusing on sex are monitored carefully for clear-cut enthusiastic consent/consent issues may not be touched on in any way.

women cannot be trusted with their own sexual desires (terfs). transformative fandom is a majority women/dfab(/nb/trans) space. nsfw fandom content is heavily policed by antis for purity, safety, and being ‘too fetishistic’/’not realistic enough’, and the popularity of mlm is considered ‘self-loathing’.

corollary: only women have bad turn-ons/sexual interests (consequently anyone who has an unapproved turn-on is classed as a woman, whether they are one or not) (terfs, regs). antis frequently imply or outright say that ships they hate/’yaoi’ are only shipped by nasty women/’fujoshis’ and deny the identities of non-female people who contradict them.

asexuals and sometimes bisexuals ‘don’t count’ as part of the non-straight community (regs). Headcanoning a character as mlm/wlw is fine, but headcanoning a character as bi is only acceptable if you are pairing that character up with someone of the same gender, and headcanoning a character as ace is sometimes even considered homophobic (because not showing interest in the opposite sex in canon means they must be LG, and headcanoning something else is ‘taking away’ potential LG representation.) (pansexuality often doesn’t exist in this model.)

transgender people only count if they medically transition and are on on the gender binary (terfs)*. therefore, depicting trans people in ways that are gender-nonconforming or as not medically transitioning is harmful, and fanworks must be carefully monitored for these harmful depictions.

the behavior of a person determines whether their gender/sexual identity can be acknowledged as ‘real’ (respectability politics, all exclusionists). non-straight/non-cis identities will only be recognized on the contingency that the non-straight/non-cis person is being a ‘good fandom member’ (that is, following the rules of anti-shippers). If they ship bad things or create bad fanworks they are ‘cishet women’.

nobody can interact with anything that doesn’t exactly match their identity/experiences, and other gatekeeping practices (all exclusionists). antis decide who is allowed or not allowed to create fandom content based on the identity and personal experiences of the creator. everybody who deviates from writing about their own identity or experience is just ‘fetishizing’ or ‘erasing’ the identity or experiences of others. relatedly, anyone who does something that’s out of line with anti-shipping is expelled from the community (they are called ‘cishet’) and any content they create depicting LGBT+ experiences are considered appropriation.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope is clearly shows why I think that anti-shipping is highly influenced by exclusionist groups in fandom spaces.

*’truscum’ must also toe the TERF party line or they also become part of the problem. Respectability politics is a nasty thing.

[lonelyslutavatar]

Me: *literally minding my own business, not even interacting with the fandom tag just drawing stuff that I want to see*

Some rando on the internet: "anyway I don't like *name drops me specifically* because they're not drawing what I think the characters should look like and no I don't know what a block button is"