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

[bantha-fodder.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I am capable of not volunteering my identity. I mean, think of all the fandom thingies we've encountered (mostly via fandom_wank), people making up their identities and such. I wonder if I could actually not volunteer all those bits that make me up. Because then I could make a post about the lack of Chinese characters in Firefly, and no one would no about my ulterior motivs, and it would be great.

It's funny, but I only stumbled across deadbrowalking quite recently.