The Door Is Open Wide

I've made my own feelings on Denise's total derail of incredibly important conversations to attack Stitch clear already.

The feelings have not gotten less full of despair since Denise doubled down, in a thread that Tanndell masterfully refutes here.

amara1783 shared their feelings in a super informative post with lots of good sources.

no_detective just wrote brilliant post with anger and poetry.

And here, clevermanka says it like it is. (If you're not speaking up about racism in all your communities, including fandom, your silence supports racists.)

And as for what Denise is doing... I don't get it. She is poisoning the entire well of fandom antiracism with unfounded accusations against one single person with no institutional power. All while having done nothing (that I have heard of, or seen linked) herself to make fandom safer for fans of color. (In fact, DW has a maximum inclusivity policy, same as AO3, so.)

#EndOTWRacism started a month ago. It's what led to all of the incredibly important public revelations about volunteer abuse and internal mismanagement. You don't have to agree with the specific campaigns (original or current) to realize that this is work fandom needs to do. Everything is not okay with the OTW, and finally, finally people are talking about that.

Denise was talking about that!

Until she started talking about disagreeing with the blog posts the campaign cited as examples of what racism in fandom looks like. From someone who does know what racism in fandom looks like! What does Denise even want to achieve with this derail? We were talking about important things?! How are we shifting the same focus that was on the OTW Board and Legal Committee on one single person?? Stitch hasn't had unlocked social media in years! Which means Stitch hasn't interacted with anyone who didn't want to be interacting with them for years. Nobody is forcing people to read their blog or Teen Vogue articles!

So if the goal wasn't to get Stitch to immediately cease and desist this abuse and harassment Denise won't share evidence of, and I haven't seen in years of following them... why?

I legitimately can't get over how all of this energy (both angry and defensive) is now being targeted at one single person with absolutely no institutional power in fandom. (Someone who most people can't even have a direct conversation with because they've had to lock down so tight because of ongoing, well-documented racist harassment.)

Meanwhile: has Azarias gotten an apology from Legal for implying she had done something horribly unethical and also illegal? Why did OTW shut down the AO3 Weibo account? Did they seriously not inform the Chinese volunteers about it before it happened? Did they really risk connecting Mainland Chinese volunteers with pro-Taiwanese independent sentiments?? What do we think of the OTW's response to #EndOTWRacism? What should the next step of that campaign be? Or should more people organize similar efforts focusing on different aspects of fandom racism? (I know I'd be up for 30 Days Of Posting About Antiracism or something like that!)

Oh, and OTW Elections are coming up! I...got pretty burned out on OTW elections in 2020. It was just after their statement on how the OTW had failed fans of color and needed to do better, yet the candidates didn't prioritize that issue at all. (And the ones that got elected continued to not prioritize it (see the OTW's own recent statement re: not doing enough until now), so hey. In hindsight their lukewarm answers are even more telling.) And I have told the OTW Board I wasn't going to donate unless they fixed their hearts on racism.

But. I'm going to put that behind me and pay attention this year. I'm going to look at the candidates, and ask questions. And I haven't been able to bring myself to fork over the $10 membership fee yet (I have until June 30th), because I hate that they have a good $2.5 million around that they are doing absolutely nothing useful with at all.

I mean. I don't even know if the OTW as an organization can be fixed.

But I loved what chestnut_pod originally wrote in the post I think everyone's read by now: It will never be perfect, but it will be better. So. I'll try to make it better. At least one more time before I give up.

And in that spirit: some more anti-racist resources to read and reflect on (no_detective lists several from a great Twitter thread).

wistfuljane's magnificent Timeline of Racism in Fandom. (You need to know what it looks like before you can fight it.)
How to be antiracist in fandom, and other spaces: identifying white supremacy culture and stepping away from it
A To Do List for White Fandom
An Eye-Opening Prespective (Original here on Instagram)
Robot Hugs Comic on Tone Policing
Some Advice from XiranJayZhao on Twitter.
A list of things you can do to be antiracist

Finally - a very simple primer on fucking up as a white person in fandom by Buttonthemdown on Twitter.

Apr 18, 2022:
And if you ever fuck up, because we all do, apologize. Learn. Fix it. Try to be better. Don't do it again. Don't make excuses, don't tell us you did it by accident, we know. Being anti-racist is not about your feelings or intentions. We just want you to STOP doing the thing!

I see so many white folks get super defensive when asked to stop doing a thing/do a different thing. So imma say this again:

1️⃣ Apologize.
2️⃣ Stop doing the wrong thing.
3️⃣ Start doing the right thing.

It's literally that fucking simple.

Under no circumstances should you ever say, "I'm just being targeted bc I'm white" or "I'm not a racist, you're the real racist for pointing this out."

These two responses show you care more about your own tender feefees than being anti-racist and doing anti-racist work.