The conversation around racism in fanworks in the old guard fandom continues to be relevant, especially as there still continues to be fics in the tag, the descriptions of which could be straight out of turn of the century colonialist propaganda. It has been said before, but it bears repeating, that it is deeply sad that a nuanced and well-written character like Joe, one of the first-ever mainstream portrayals of gay Muslim men, as well as one of the only portrayals of gay Maghrebi men in general, continues to get written in ways that would make right-wing propagandists proud. And no, I am not referring to sex positions right now, nor am I talking about honest mistakes or even fics that fall under the category âseems like you didnât think through the implications of thisâ (though all of those have a place in the discussion as well). I am talking about fics that straight up depict him as the most cliched, sexually violent, hypermasculine Islamophobic, orientalist stereotype, of which there are, and continue to be, multiple. These kinds of fics, as well as the spaces that facilitate their creation, need to be addressed in a meaningful way somehow. What do we gain from fanworks that repeat the kind of violent Islamophobic rhetoric, and depictions of Muslim men specifically, that Muslim men around the world suffer because of? We gain more content that perpetuates the ideas that lead to that suffering. There should not be a space for that type of content in fandom, or anywhere else for that matter.
I have one like that on my Read Later list. It sounded hot, sexy, a lot of powerful erotic charge there tied up in the transgression.
When I was a teenager, I got my hands on a bodice ripper and I recall clearly the phrase, âhe moved like a cannon inside meâ about a lily-white daughter of a plantation owner who had tempted one of the well-hung black slaves to fuck her behind some outbuilding, knowing if they were caught, the slave would likely be killed. (But apparently sex with her was just so good he couldnât resist/was willing to run the risk.)
I didnât read the rest of the book as I didnât have much of a sex drive at that time, but I know what the author was getting at. The author was trying to get the audience off. They were trying to hit as many erotic buttons as possible, which includes crossing social boundaries and doing stuff thatâs objectively wrong.
Iâve written A LOT of porn, almost none of it in The Old Guard fandom (although my next chapter of Integration includes Joe/Nicky sex), but still, a LOT. Iâve participated in a handful of kink memes. Iâve written to anonymous or not-anon sex prompts. One of the things thatâs reliably hot (and requested) are things that are â cliched, sexually violent, hypermasculine [race/culture-inspired] stereotypeâ. The Old Guard is the first fandom Iâve been in where Islam/orientalist was represented, but Iâm not surprised to see it treated the same way as race/culture in the other fandoms. Iâve seen characters in other fandoms deliberately race or gender bent just so they could make the scenario transgressive. Same for mpreg, animal stuff, making characters related just so you can write incest, and trans.
Itâs fetishy as hell.
And for decades, Iâve seen people saying this is wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!
I happen to disagree.
I think the meaningful way to address this is to tag oneâs racy, racist porn appropriately (the one on my Read Later list is very clear on what Iâd be getting into, should I read it, which is why I put it on my Read Later list). And then people who donât want to read that can easily avoid it.
Just because fic is written where murder happens doesnât mean the author is pro-murder. Same for the drug trade. Same for blasphemy. Same for domestic violence. Same for animal cruelty. Same for racism. Same for sexual violence.
There SHOULD BE a space for this type of content in fandom. All of fandom is make-believe, by definition. Iâm no more going to wade into a sandbox and tell a kid they canât have red dinosaur mistreat green dinosaur because of dinosaur racism than Iâm going to prevent some author from writing Old Guard racism where Joe mistreats Nicky or Nicky mistreats Joe.
there is nothing transgressive about what youâre describing. nothing at allâ and in fact the fact you felt comfortable enough to type out this response with such condescension and self-assurance only consolidates that point: you are voicing thoughts aligned with the dominant ideology where you live, which is racial capitalism and white supremacy. these are thoughts that most often go unchallenged, and that is why the punctual criticism elicits such strong reactions.
there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding in these conversations: the idea that critics of racist fic donât understand that the people writing and consuming that content find it hot. but we do know you find it sexy! thatâs unsurprising; once again, your entire worldview is powered by the preconceptions underlying those works, and these concepts are reinforced in the collective consciousness of everyone regardless of race, gender, or class by popular media, classic literature, pornography in all its forms, and explicit political discourse (everything is political, but i am referring here specifically to the speech of politicians and theorists). the internalization of racialist ideology in turn powers the material processes of exploitation and subjugation necessary for global capitalism, which in order to maintain itself requires that ideology. itâs a vicious cycle and it permeates everything, at every level of society, including your fanfic and your sexual preferences, for that matter. iâm not going to rehash body politics 101, i think tumblr and the internet at large is familiar enough with questions of sexual fetishization and the notorious problem of racial exclusion in the gay dating scene, for exampleâ the grindr bio âno femmes no blacks no asiansâ has reached meme status at this point. people are aware. desire does not exist in a vacuum. if anything, sexuality is particularly interlinked with dynamics of power. this is something you recognize yourself in between the lines of the above reply, you just refuse to take it to its logical conclusions.
âExamining sexual fields theory through the lens of sexual racism demonstrates that larger social structural factors such as race directly influence personal interactions at the micro level. More importantly, these structural factors often cancel out the other sexual norms and values that may be found within any given sexual field. In fact, as our research demonstrates, much of what is considered to be unique preferences within sexual fields such as styles of dress, body sizes, etc. are also raced. Thus, what is considered desirable within sexual fields can also be said to have a racial basis in that certain types of clothes, certain body shapes, etc. are not race-neutral. Rather, larger societal beliefs about race directly influence what is found to be attractive within sexual fields.â
Very Few People Say âNo Whitesâ: Gay Men of Color and The Racial Politics of Desire, Chong-suk Han and Kyung-Hee Choi
in the specific case of racially charged bodice ripper novels, it is irresponsible and frankly callous to mention them as a positive comparison without also mentioning that the brute caricature, the trope on which stories like these are based, is one of the most pervasive antiblack myths. it is not a thing of the past: it emerged during slavery, endured as a central cultural feature of the jim crow south, and is today perpetuated in the insidious âthugâ trope. it got black boys like emmet till killed then, and it gets black boys like mike brown killed now. those stories might feel transgressive to white girls (and make no mistake, those are stories for white people) because they are âdoing something theyâre not supposed to doâ, but nothing about the actual narrative, which is one of hypermasculine and violent blackness, challenges the norms of white supremacy.
racialist narratives (and i do mean racialist specifically here, narratives that are not âsimplyâ racist but evoke ideas of inherent racial characteristics) are never radical, and it is about time fandom stopped clouding its defense of âwriting what we wantâ in the language of transgression and queerness and defiance, co-opting genuine politics of liberatory weirdness (including sexual norm-breaking!) and making it increasingly harder for people to understand gay revolutionary politics, which are intimately intertwined with racial justice. i will ardently fight to deconstruct puritanical visions of sex and gender in popular culture as a lesbian of color, and our right to be âfreakyâ and to have âabnormalâ desires. i believe art is inherently political and i reserve the right to write about everything, even and especially disturbing subjects. it is actually within this framework that it becomes essential to combat conceptions and tropes that promote and reinforce deeply ingrained biases which, i repeat, at their most extreme end up getting people killed. it is frankly concerning to see you refer to fics that perpetuate what you yourself admit are âcliched, sexually violent, hypermasculine [race/culture-inspired] stereotypesâ as âcrossing social boundariesâ. are we to understand here that it is quite literally the racism that is hot? if yes, are we to accept that, just so you can get your knocks off?
you close your argument by asserting that âJust because fic is written where murder happens doesnât mean the author is pro-murderâ, and i agree! in fact, i have written about murder! i have also written about sexual abuse, and homophobia, and racism! the word about is the keyword here: there is a fundamental difference between a bigoted fic and a fic about bigotry, or that happens to feature instances of bigotry. the murder example is not comparable to racist fic, because the stories that feature murder do not perpetuate a widely held belief that murder is okay. when i write about my characters experiencing racism, thatâs not in itself racist, because i am depicting an experience that unfortunately occurs in real life, and thatâs obviously something that fiction can and should do. those are not the stories weâre talking about here, and if youâre honest with yourself, you know that. all the examples youâve given are not stories where âracism happensâ, they are narratives that implicitly validate racialism and/or well-established propaganda tropes that are used on purpose by fascists to justify their ideology. the racism is the skeleton of the story, and it goes unchallenged at best, is actively portrayed as positive at worst. and the issue, thus, is not only and not even primarily that racialized people will see that content and be upset by it. it is upsetting, donât get me wrong, and i personally try to avoid it. but when i encounter those tropes, i recognize them. thatâs why theyâre upsetting! on some level, i still run the risk of internalizing them, and itâs psychologically heavy, but again, they are not going to make me see the men in my community as inherently dangerous. outsiders, however (white people in majority, but not only), are much more easily influenced by these tropes, because they are less trained to spot them and deconstruct them. this is ironically why itâs necessary to have the conversations we are having.Â
denying that repeatedly consuming content that portrays specific demographics in specific ways influences peopleâs perception of them is basically denying the existence of a major facet of structural racism. if thatâs what you are doing here, then you need to be upfront about it. then we will be having a very different exchange.Â
in case that wasnât clear, i am not really replying to you, specifically, here. the casualness with which you use violent antiblack language tells me most of what i need to know. but these are tedious recycled arguments that need to be countered. no, there should not âbe a space for this type of content in fandomâ. there shouldnât be a space for people who produce it either, for that matter. especially when, as is the case in tog fandom, they have demonstrated that while aware of everything i have mentioned above, they are actually purposefully creating that content now as some spiteful little act they are dressing up in the language of anti-censorship. as if we have any power to âcensorâ them. as if we are some nebulous oppressive force they are bravely fighting against, and not a handful of racialized people and allies rightfully demanding respect from a pack of miserable assholes with a victim complex and the reassuring weight of centuries of structural oppression behind them.
