I really can’t believe this has to be said but reducing Abdul El-Sayed to just his looks* is a form of objectifying him and adding to the fetishization SWANA men already experience and completely overlooks his actual policies and intelligence which actually won the election.
* this does not mean you’re not allowed to think he’s hot. It means you should think inside thoughts before you hit the post button. And preferably ask yourself why the only thing you know or care about El-Sayed or Mamdani is their looks.
Being a white WOMAN does not mean you are immune to the long-standing orientalism that’s been baked into American culture.
If it helps shed light on the clones being hung thing being a thing, from a possibly completely unwelcome non-ace perspective, generally one isn't going to be thrilled by a writer throwing in that they are average or small. When they're constantly depicted as testosterone laden beings who were genetically engineered to be peak humans in every other way, it's sort of incongruous and disappointing to think of them as having anything but. Being muscular/a large being also alters perception of the appendage's size and I think given the way they are depicted in fics, it just seems in proportion.
Big dicks are a fantasy. They're incredibly impractical in real life and everybody has a bad time, but it's kind of like how very sculpted men are fetishized, yet studies show that they aren't the preference in practice. If the writer is sexually inexperienced, they might also depict them swinging a large hammer because they are only familiar with the theoretical side of things.
Perhaps I'm not seeing it as having anything to do with race, because big wangs exist across all races and a nice wang is nice (I am so sorry for this message). Also the clone thing has appeal because they're genetically engineered, deeply skilled in a way that's visually and mentally attractive, have a voice in a low register with a popular accent, and are full of testosterone while being depicted as having steadfast morality and lacking toxic masculinity checks all of the boxes in terms of fantasy.
Kind of like the appeal of somebody like Chris Hemsworth, but there are three million of them, which also ticks a box for a lot of people.
I just...really got the sense that there's a disconnect here due to orientation differences that makes the clone dick thing seem racially nefarious when people are really just horny and go 'oohoo, big penis'.
I'm... apparently getting essays about penis in my inbox. IDK if you're a man so I won't call it mansplaining, so I guess it's allo-splaining? Just. Bro, it's not an ace thing. I really do not need Attraction To Dick Size explained to me. I'm not the best person to ask about Race Things either, being a white Slav in the US, but let me try to explain what I'm peeved by. It gets long mostly because there are a lot of moving parts to what I'm trying to talk about, but hopefully someone Who Knows More can confirm or deny what I'm trying to say here.
It's not just "the clones have big dicks," but "fanon clones are written as having big dicks in a way that is often racially dicey in the way that many fics about them are."
I do read plenty of smut. I would not be aware of the fandom tendencies if I didn't. I know that size kinks are common and that large dicks are, on the average, considered preferable. I've seen the same ratio of "notably large vs unmentioned or average/small" with characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan. This is not an ace thing, and I promise it's not about what I personally find attractive. I recognize that size kinks are popular and are applied pretty much across the board.
But the way it's phrased and approached matters. The way it's framed matters. The clones are all of a Maori man who is visibly of Polynesian descent. He's dark enough that colorism plays a role in his characters' handling, has facial features that are clearly not conforming to eurocentric standards and are then whitewashed in structure in animated series, and has that accent you mentioned, which... listen. Accents can also be fetishized. So. Let's move on.
They are simultaneously hypermasculinized (soldiers, exaggerated 'gruff' animation in the show, etc.) which is very much a racial thing, and also 'defanged' by being, you know, not legally people, etc. This is part of why that "full of testosterone but without toxic masculinity" comment isn't quite as cut-and-dry as it could be. I like that these characters are mostly lacking in toxic masculinity (it's still there in places, but that's not really relevant), but I have to remain aware of how that ties so closely back to the indoctrination and literal slavery.
So there's that whole mess of the clones already being in a dicey place as far as racial politics go, because they are men of color, in a context that where race doesn't matter on the Watsonian front because Space, except it's still relevant Doylistically because Star Wars is mostly written by white people, and the fandom is also mostly white people, so the fanworks are also mostly by white people.
So you have this situation where a lot of white people are writing smut (fine) about fictional characters (fine) where one or more are people of color (gotta be careful) and those people are often literal slaves who are simultaneously hypermasculinized by way of being genetically engineered soldiers with all the muscle and shooting and armor and Boyish Roughhousing that comes with (oh no). Fandom then takes what canon did with Hypermasculine Soldier Clones, and sometimes handles it better (and I really need to emphasize how much of the Better is by fans of color, I really really need everyone to note that most of the really good handling of race in SW fandom is by fans of color), but then sometimes turns up the racial fetishization even more without realizing it.
And that doesn't really mean that we can't give the clones big dicks. Like I said, it's just as common for Obi-Wan, Anakin, etc. to have the same Impressive Size. This isn't uncommon, and it would be just as Weirdly Racially Dicey to say that they all have Small Dicks To Make Them Less Intimidating, because there are plenty of ethnicities that also get hit with Small Dick Makes You Less Of A Man stereotypes, and that's a mess too.
So... I don't know where to take it past here, other than to say that this isn't me being Too Ace To Get It. It's me being hyperaware of how race tends to interact with fiction, and smut in particular, because I've made (non-smut) mistakes with race and ethnicity before as a writer. We all do, because most of us don't have massive PR teams behind us, and 16yo me sure couldn't afford a sensitivity reader for one-shots I was writing in the back of a classroom. I've spent the past ten years growing that awareness and I'm still not done! None of us are!
But part of doing better, being better, is to keep that awareness up when reading, to note what seems to be a questionable trend and what's just a random kink. This post has a lot of reference links for how there's racism built into Star Wars (though less about fanon portrayals, it's mostly about canon and how fans try to justify that canon).
It's just... it's complicated. The ways that racism and smut and fandom interact are complicated, and part of learning to deal with how complicated these things can be is to go into it with the understanding that anything, no matter how innocuous it seems, or how easily you can find an 'excuse' (in this case, using my asexuality to decide that I just don't Get why big dicks are appealing), could have a racial element you just aren't seeing.
(I didn't even get into the sketchiness of an actor from a colonized-by-white-people culture playing an army that is used for imperialism and how THAT relates to the soldiers-are-hypermasculine stuff.)
TL;DR: the clones already undergo plenty of racial bullshit, including hypermasculinity in portrayal that is related their being played by a Maori man, and this hypermasculinity plays into their being racially fetishized, and that occasionally includes the big dicks. The big dicks themselves are not the problem, but rather the manner in which they are noted and talked about, which can often get fetishy in the aforementioned ways.
the western view of geisha is so funny because it’s completely wrong
like
white man sExY oRiEnTaL PrOsTiTuTe (ugh) fantasy:
actual geisha:
real geisha are entertainers and performers, not sex workers. I think the term most people are looking for is oiran, high-ranking japanese courtesans. both are/were (in case of oiran) talented artists and successful businesswomen who deserve respect. but orientalism doesn’t care for cultural accuracy! just hypersexualization of East Asian women!
He was still sexualized considering that 19 is basically an older teenager
You're right and they all were. The whole wolf pack, despite all being under 20 and a bunch of teenagers (read: children), were physically aged up (they shot up to like 6 ft, gained muscle, and I think it was mentioned that Jacob *looked* 25 despite being 16) and then sexualized af.
I honestly think we should discuss the racial fetishization and exoticism that went into the writing of the Quileute kids more, especially in New Moon and Eclipse. Idk where specifically, but Meyer mentioned one time that she's always been ~really interested~ in Native American culture (and yeah, she worded it kind of like that in that generalizing way), which is a huge red flag to me b/c 1. she's white and 2. she's a Mormon and 3. when you put two and two together between how she wrote the pack and her interest in Native Americans, I think it's not too far-fetched.
Idk if there's a specific name for this trope or syndrome or what, but I feel like she's one of those white women who sexually fetishizes men of color (in this case Native men) and the imagery of them dominating a white woman (Ik, gross, but I've seen this discussed in film analyses of certain Westerns, and this makes me think of that, which is why I bring it up), even if in the end the one she would think that one should end up w/ is the ~civilized white male~ (which is all just a steaming shit pile of racism). It's so disgusting how she wrote those kids, the way she twisted pedophilia and exoticism into it is just so 🤮🤮
is fetishizing from white wlw to poc wlw a common issue that we should look out for? My community is fairly homogenous ethnically/racially and I’m moving to college soon so idk what to expect since I know it’s generally an issue from men to poc women (Id prefer if a POC admin answered this question).
At the moment we don’t have any active mods of color. I looked around a little and found some links for you as I as a white woman cannot answer this properly.
Interracial Lesbian Dating: Am I Her Fetish? by Andrea Ngeleka
Stop Fetishizing Queer Women of Color Like Me by Olivia Zayas Ryan
There wasn’t much about specifically wlw, just some about gay men and then some research articles behind a paywall.
I know that Wakanda Forever has been out for quite a while, but I wonder if anyone is annoyed by the social media speculation on whether or not Namor's bulge got edited by Disney and the news sites' weird obsession with reporting about it? Esp cos of the hypersexualization of dark-skinned Black and Brown men, and it was addressed by Tenoch Huerta in this Vice article about how the Mexican acting industry calls upon brown-skinned actors whenever they need someone to play the "whores", on top of playing thieves and kidnappers. So, I dunno, but seeing those articles made me really uncomfortable.
