On participation and the decision not to.
such_heights wrote an interesting entry on why she participates in fandoms discussions, and it got me thinking a bit. So this is why I don't always participate in fandom discussions.
Thing is, I almost always have something to say on the matter, whether it's casting white actors as characters of colour, writing fail stories about trans characters, or people trying once again to revoke the marriage licenses of queer couples in California who got married before Prop 8 passed. All of these things are recent events, all of them piss me off some extent or another, not all of them directly effect me. I don't believe in keeping my mouth shut just because I am not the injured party. But I also give myself permission to keep my opinion to myself sometimes.
It's not that I'm not in the right headspace to host discussion, even though that is increasingly true for me these days. It's not just that other people have said it better, with more links, even though that is definitely true for most of these things. It's that I have a finite amount of energy to spend on my internet time, and I already spend too much time not writing. It's that all this anger is exhausting, and to write these posts I have to sustain it or I lose steam. It's that I'm really bad at writing about myself, and while I can talk about it easy, putting it down in words is hard. It's that sometimes I feel like it's not my place to talk about these things because my experience is easy compared to others', even though this directly contradicts my beliefs. It's that this is my fandom space and I like to defend my space, but I also like to use it for its original purpose.
So yeah, I've been reading about the J2/Pinto racefail Big Bangs. People living with me have heard my opinions. And you can probably guess at them, because they're quite common. But I'm not going to post about it. I might not post about the next fandom kerfluffle. I might post about something not even tangentially related instead. You are welcome to ask me about my opinions on the matter, and I will do my best to answer you, but I don't guarantee anything.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about in this post, please don't ask me. Read my reading list; you'll find out soon enough that way.