Being Heard

[moondancerdrake]

One of the interesting things about being part of fandom online is that you are who you identify with, not who folks assume you to be based on a first visual impression. Your words paint others’ perceptions of you, for good or bad, which also means you have to choose them carefully. That said, the difference between my experiences at fannish/

Comments

[kita0610]

Thank you for this post.

I'm sorry you're having to struggle to be heard, I know how much that sucks.

For whatever it's worth, the depiction of native culture(s) in media appalls the hell out of me too, and I'm a jewgirl from NYC. So maybe there's hope.

Keep talking. People are listening.

[moondancerdrake]

Thank you for your response, for many reasons. :) It means a lot to me.

[khym_chanur]

I don't have anything to add to the conversation, but I do have a few links that might interest you:

The PoC character is always the one I expect to be killed off first (sigh), and I am generally proven right about it.

Black Dude Dies First

The natives in the story? Subservient to the great white god that is Jack Sparrow one moment...

Mighty Whitey

[moondancerdrake]

Thank you for those link, in fact they added a lot. :) Black Dude Dies First had me rolling. Several of the quotes mentioned in it were very familiar. Mighty Whitey was dead on to. Ya'll if you haven't read these two articles, you got to go do so. Great stuff!

[anonymous]

How hard is it for some white writers to understand that to call a character “the brown skinned man” or the “Asian woman” in a story rather than using the character’s name dehumanizes that character?

Why can’t the fae queen have skin the color of warmed maple syrup and dark curls?

Am I wrong in noticing the contradiction between these two sentences?

[moondancerdrake]

One is a label in a piece of writing instead of using the known name of a character.

The other is a description of a yet unknown and unnamed character from an image of art.

Not seeing where there’s a contradiction personally.

curly haired maple-syrup fae queens

[scifiwritir]

No, no contradiction at all. Those are two different topics. One topic is about namelessness and making a person of color a generic character...as if the very mention of skin color "implies" a certain kind of behavioral trait or behavioral expectation. It also reeks of tokenism...and the fact that the author puts in "asian woman" or "brown-skinned man" shows that he has no intention of keeping the character around for very long because the character is merely a tool

[kaitlyn142]

Here via metafandom.

You hit rather strongly on why I actually avoid most racial debates, the whites vs PoC. It is very, very rare to see anything inter-racial. My boyfriend is Caucasian/Asian bi-racial who is rather muddled in his self-identification. The whites think he is Asian, and the Asians think he is white- except when he starts dating a white girl. Then he's all Asian and a traitor dating outside Asian culture. We get flak from both sides.

I can only think of one show that has depicted an interracial couple as cannon (Heroes). It's practically a sin to write any character inter-racially, unless the cannon absolutely doesn't allow for it.

This probably makes little sense due to my splitting migraine, but I just wanted to comment on my incredible annoyance with the lack of allowance for inter-racialness in fic and these debates.

[moondancerdrake]

Poor dear, migranes are the worst.

I've seen interracial couple is movies, but yeah not so much on series shows as regular characters. Maybe that's one reason I write them :) I think my kids see a varity of races together as sort of the norm considering the make up of our extended family, so to them monocromticy would be odd.

If you have a chance to read my post Being Seen (a few days back) I can see how fluctuating labels placed on us by others in our lives can be maddening. Often times self-indetification is your only sheild against suck things. I hope one day your honey finds peace within his own internal reflection. :)

[moondancerdrake]

I'd like to learn more about indie films. Often the information around them is very muddled and confusing. Right now (except for a few excepts) hollywood pisses me off. Having a few god alternatives would be great. I don't need high price effects and actors to enjoy a well made movie.

[moondancerdrake]

Sigh, that sould be good alternatives, I always do that when I type and think too fast at the same time. :)