Fandom Blinders
I feel like this needs to be said because it seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding amidst nonblack DA fans as to what happened yesterday.
I see a lot of vagueblogging and posts going around about “don’t give that awful fic more hits” while referencing me–a Black DA fan–who had to deal with seeing that fic in my midst.
So let me tell you what went down so we can set the record straight.
The fic author who wrote that terrible fic only came to my attention because they were leaving glowing reviews on one of mine. Because I tend to like to comment back to the people who do this, I visited their page to check out their fic.
THAT was how I stumbled upon that triggering content. It wasn’t even tagged properly. I didn’t have the luxury of someone uploading a PDF and carefully explaining it to me what it was about so I could avoid it. I went in hoping it wasn’t what I thought it was, and it was exactly what I thought it was and worse.
THAT is why my comment (the very first one on the fic) was necessary. THAT is why I brought it to the fandom’s attention on here. Because every single time I and other Black DA fans have tried to explain racism both implicit and explicit in this space, and how it makes us feel unsafe and unwilling to share our own works with the rest of the so-called community? I have been shouted down, threatened, ignored, silenced. The usual.
And so when I see people posting about “don’t give that fic more notes” it makes me feel as if they’re just trying to quickly sweep it under the rug, defeating the entire purpose of why I shared a link to begin with. I didn’t share it to be an asshole, nor did I even encourage anyone to go and attack the author. I genuinely thought the author was a nice person up until their response to my very civil comment.
Notice I didn’t attack the author with “you’re trash” and “you’re a monster” comments, which a lot of people did. And I see a lot of accusations flying around that I somehow commanded all of these people to attack the author, which I did not. I simply linked the fic which triggered me deeply.
When you write fiction, you bring your views, your knowledge, and your biases into your work whether you want to or not. It’s just human nature. There’s no such thing as writing with a completely neutral and objective view. When you write fics that perpetuate harmful stereotypes and tropes, you are contributing to the problem. Is it possible to write about graphic and troubling content? Yes, of course it is. Ask Toni Morrison how she managed to write The Bluest Eye, which tackles the theme of misogynoir, white supremacist beauty standards, pedophilia, and sexual violence against Black women without framing it as something ‘good’ and ‘normal.’
You too can accomplish writing about these subjects without coming off as gross.
But my original point is this: don’t vagueblog me saying not to give the fic more hits. Don’t recenter the conversation on yourself when you’re not the target demographic this fic aimed to hurt. Don’t speak over Black voices in the fandom when we’re discussing issues that directly affect us. Don’t blanket our issues with terms like “PoC” and try to apply it universally when misogynoir is literally something unique to Black women.
The fic in question was misogynoir, plain and simple. Not “PoC.” Black. Women. That is the group of people who were harmed in this incident, and I’d appreciate it if fandom could stop circle-jerking for one second to realize that.
