don't forget to watch the movie

[bantha_fodder]

So I've been reading these posts by hederahelix, parts one and two, and she's thoughtful and she's made me think about all sorts of things. She talks about privilege, and listening, and in a post inspired by race it really made me think about my own heterosexual privilege (which I'll talk about another time), but the first thing I want to talk about is this:

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my fen friends of color, it’s that I’m more likely to get listened to when I say something about race than they are.

You can't look at my lj, or at my style of typing, and tell that I am fen of colour over the internets. So I wear my colour on my sleeve: I post stories about little Chinese girls, encourage people to learn about Chinese New Year and the things that I find important, talk about racism in my life. And I'm clearly not hiding my ethnicity at all, and in fact I'm actively encouraging people to look at my ethnicity, because if I didn't, then you couldn't see it.

So now I'm wondering how much hederahelix's point applies in an internets only context. Ignoring whatever Fan A's argument is, and whatever Fan B's argument is, is either one more likely to be heard because of the colour of their skin? I want to say no, because how can you tell? But I don't want to say yes, either, because who am I to make these sweeping judgement calls? I'm just some chick on the internet.

Comments

[monimala.livejournal.com]

I'm actually glad you boiled down her posts because, seriously, that was a lot of tl;dr. I couldn't get through all that *meat* to figure out what points she was making... and I don't know if I'm just not as intellectual as some people in fandom or what.

But, basically, I'm the same boat with Pen. My ethnicity is just part of me and present in my LJ and my discussions, but never some kind of "card" I play when the subject of race comes up.

However, I absolutely experienced the "it's an obsession with her and she's clearly not objective" factor in a discussion about race and a particular fannish text just recently with a WASP-y person and I was horrified. I had never been implictly accused of being some kind of paranoid race-baiting alarmist before and I was floored. Had my white friend jumped into the discussion and backed me up, I probably would have had more validity added to my argument.

Just in fandom alone, I find that minorities don't talk about race nearly as much as everybody else does... because how do you talk about something that's just part of your way of life? We live it. Analyzing it on top of that...? A little exhausting. Especially for fannish purposes. Dude, I'm just here for the porn!

[bantha-fodder.livejournal.com]

Do try, if you couldnt' get through all of her posts. Like I said, she made some really thoughtful points, not just about the race wank but about other things, about heteronormativity and privilege and it was a really great post.

I think maybe we don't always want to talk about our ethnicity because a little bit of what Tris was saying - talking about it too much reduces our credibility when we talk about the big stuff, and I know I want people to really think about my words when I'm talking about the really big stuff.

[monimala.livejournal.com]

I tried to read the first one and wound up feeling really, really stupid about halfway through. Great post, but way over my head. I'm not prone to using words like "heteronormativity" and pretty much felt like I needed a smart person to sit next to me and tell me what was being said. (Dude! Whoa! OMG!)

I think the problem that I faced this week was that maybe I don't talk about my ethnicity enough offline, so people think that I'm homogenized, Oreo-ed, and NOT the kind of person who gives weight to race issues. I have no accent, I'm easygoing, well-adjusted, a good little soldier. This was, obviously, a real-life situation and not an online one, so that probably brings a different weight to it. I think that online, I'm more prone to at least letting people into my cultural interests.

I wonder how much that vartes for people: Are they more or less culturally outspoken online?