11 years ago, deepad posted her essay "I Didn’t Dream of Dragons". 11 years ago, we BIPOC fans held discussions about cultural appropriation, racism and Anglocentrism that was collectively called RaceFail 2009.

For me, RaceFail 2009 happened on the heels of conversations that we BIPOC held about the whitewashed casting of the live action film for Avatar: the Last Airbender in 2008. Both these events greatly changed my understanding of how I interacted with fandom and of how fandom saw BIPOC characters and fans like me (i.e. invisible and preferably quiet if not silenced).

A decade may seem like a long time has passed, but at the same time, not quickly enough to achieve the progress that we may hope. I think fandom in general continues to fail in acknowledging the power we hold as fans, community builders, community moderators, fannish creatives and voices, and how fandom in general has wielded that power to consciously, unconsciously, actively and passively silence, erase and dehumanize BIPOC, especially Black characters and fans.

I don't want another conversation about race and I'm just as tired as the next fandom oldie, but I also don't want to wake up to another news item that Scarlett Johansson has been cast as another Asian character (and no, the joke will only be old when white people are no longer cast as BIPOC characters) or to another 16,000 words meta on how we BIPOC fans are the problem in fandom and not actual racism.

Table of Contents

1. On RaceFail 2009
2. The conversation about race in 2016 or responses to Franzeska's "Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint"
3. On some continuing conversations about race before and since then
4. On OTW/AO3 & racism
5. End OTW Racism: First Call to Action and Second Call to Action
6. On OTW Election 2020
7. On OTW's inactions in addressing racism and anti-Blackness
8. On the fandom culture and paradigm shifts that we've been witnessing
9. On addressing racism
10. On further mapping the conversations on anti-Blackness, race/racism, antisemitism, fandom and OTW/AO3
11. On the greater convergence of conversations about race/racism, antisemitism, fandom and OTW/AO3 😳
12. On the greater convergence of conversations about RaceFail 2009
13. On the greater convergence of conversations about antisemitism, racism and OTW/AO3
14. Postscript: OTW Volunteer & Fiscal Management
15. On Navigating This Post and Comments and Beyond
16. Revisions

On RaceFail 2009

• 2020-06-15: rukminipande's just published essay, How (not) to talk about race: A critique of methodological practices in fan studies has a nice condensed summary of the event:

  Racefail '09 refers to a series of events in SF/F fandom triggered by a blog entry by popular author, Elizabeth Bear, on the subject of "writing the other"—she was lauded by her fans and peers for tackling the issue in a sensitive manner (Matociquala 2009). However, one fan, Avalon's Willow, responded slightly differently, discussing Bear's own novel Blood and Iron (2006). Her "Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear" was a brutal juxtaposition of what Bear advocated in her post and how she had actually chosen to "write the other" in her work (Willow 2009). Bear initially accepted Willow's critique, but soon, some of her other fans and fellow authors jumped into the debate, implying that it was merely a failure to read correctly on the part of Willow and other critics, a familiar rhetorical tactic used to suppress such critique. The subsequent heated exchanges went on to prompt hundreds of posts by both fans of color and allies, as well as those who were resistant to the ideas put forth by them. The latter group unfortunately also included a discouragingly large number of professional SF/F writers and publishers (Somerville 2009). Racefail '09 is seen as a significant event because it lead to broader discussion of the issues of race/racism in SF/F fandom spaces, which also spilled over into media fandom at large.

More retrospective on RaceFail 2009:

• 2019-06-29: stitchmediamix: Post PCA Roundtable Wrap-Up: 10 Years After Racefail ’09: Where’s The Growth?

• 2020-08-24: jhameia: Trials by Whiteness: Definitions of Whiteness and Eurocentrism, and Their Relevance Post-RaceFail

  Over the course of several months, fans of science fiction and fantasy across multiple blogging platforms organised as communities of fans of different texts, writing personal essays on the emotional effects of not seeing themselves reflected in the texts they consumed. They addressed not only representation within the texts themselves, but representation within the processes by which these texts were created and processed through the industries that produced them for mass consumption, most notably the publishing or film industries.

On a sadder note: Willow, an inspiring and influential voice and fan who wrote an Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear and A Timeline of RaceFail 2009 and who organized POC in SF Carnival, passed away on September 7, 2021. Her journals and writings can be found at Seeking Avalon, willow_dot_com, the_willow and willow. Rest in Peace.

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And here I will link to that referenced conversation about race happening in 2016 where a white female fan had posted a 16,000 words meta about racism not existing in fandom while conveniently ignoring racist events occurring in various fandom spaces throughout fandom history. It's an updated but abbreviated link collection I posted on Pinboard around that time.

Responses to Franzeska's "Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint"

Or apparently we're still mythical wild unicorns to white people

The original post requires AO3 login, but really, I didn't read the post and you don't need to read the post either. The title, Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint, and the author's summary provide all the contexts that you need to know (also, note that the author has made edits to the post since posting and also, goes by olderthannetfic in cases you're wondering as I have been about the various recent anti-fans and celebratory AO3 meta being reblogged on Tumblr):

Bullying and the Co-opting of Social Justice Activism in Fandom: A discussion of bias in fannish meta, m/m vs. other pairings, shipping of POC, vidding characters of color, what it means to ship, and problems in Stormpilot fandom.

The meta in responses to the original post is more important, particularly the ones by Black and other fans of color.

• 2016-04-30: stitchmediamix: Dear fandom:

  Dear fandom,

  It is ALWAYS about race.

  No matter how you twist it, fandom’s collective and constant dislike of characters of color (especially if they’re in relationships/shippes with white male characters) for some reason you "just can’t put your finger on" is directly related to race.

• 2016-05-01: snarlfurillofrom: This Meta Is Awful and This Meta Is Awful Thread (note the OP is not BIPOC, but the thread includes BIPOC commenters):

  But in 16,000 words over 13 chapters, there is not one mention of Racefail ‘09. Not a single reference to the time a popular Harry Potter LJ community used a racial slur as a prompt in 2007. Nothing about the Supernatural RPF Big Bang story that used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a backdrop for a J2 love story (THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED). Nothing about the time in 2006 that comics BNF Te (Te! Te of the roses, Te of my heart. Te is amazing. I don’t know her personally, but she was a fucking LIGHT ON A HILL in Smallville and DCU fandom) pointed out the marginalization black characters faced on two then-juggernauts of white m/m slash fandom, Angel and Smallville.

  ALL of those things were happening roughly concurrently with the founding of AO3.* Going into extensive detail about the history of slash fandom without ONE SINGLE MENTION of the history of fandom racism, including in slash fandom, is an effort to erase that history for the comfort of white fans.

• 2016-05-01: wondersmith-and-sons: white fans talking about fandom discourse (tumblr login required):

  white fans talking about fandom discourse: sureeee slash fandom has a decades-long history of ignoring, marginalising, erasing, and straight-up ignoring characters of colour, not to mention treating them worse and holding them to higher standards in comparison to white characters, ignoring the poc in fandom who speak up against it, a long reputation of anti-black racism like dehumanising and desexualising black characters, along with a myriad of problems like orientalism, fetishisation, infatilisation and then using self-justifying arguments to pat themselves on the back about this kind of behaviour……..but what if………….this time…..there is MORE to this….than just racism???

• 2016-05-02: allerasphinx: my favourite thing is when a person of colour makes a post about racism in fandom:

  my favourite thing is when a person of colour makes a post about racism in fandom i.e. "it’s depressing how white dudes always take precedence in fandoms even when there are main characters of colour."

  and then white people barge in and do the absolute most as though poc just discovered fandom yesterday i.e. "i don’t think this is about racism, people just love villains and that’s why" "people don’t find good characters as interesting and that’s why."

• 2016-05-02: rukminipande: Fans Of Colour Are Not To Blame For Fandom's Erasures: A response to That Meta (with images, tweets):

  TIL that Hux is in more fics than Finn and I am just so tired of this shit...shoutout to tumblr for spelling it out

  And it isn't about "people like villains and horrible people" because lbr half those fics are HS and bakery au's #starwars #racism

  it is fucked up y'all...it isn't about tropes or types or writing or whatever

  Fandom is rapidly proving that there is nothing...no configuration of well written, nuanced, wonderful POC characters that they can't ignore

• 2016-05-02: saathi1013 (OP is not BIPOC): Remember, friends, if you ship a popular white m/m pairing (tumblr login required):

  • anon hate towards your fellow shippers is bullying.
  • anon hate towards other/rarepair shippers is probably being fabricated.
  • someone expressing offhand disinterest in the popular white m/m ship is hate.
  • fellow shippers actively rejecting and belittling rarepairs w/characters of color &/or canonical female love interests is thoughtful meta.
  • the tags for the popular white m/m ship and the show should not be sullied with criticism of the show, the ship, or your fellow shippers, no matter how carefully it’s worded.
  • your fellow shippers can post whatever they want in whatever tags they want, no matter how triggery the content.

• 2016-05-03: solacekames: I noticed the phrase "your vagina is a bigot"...:

  I noticed the phrase your vagina is a bigot or "your vagina is racist" being claimed as a sort of ironic motto by Franzeska and the numerous White Guard who agree with her [....] They lack the self-awareness to understand that the same "you’re not allowed to judge what I get turned by" is an argument used constantly by men harassing women [....] Exact same strategy to deflect responsibility for both fetishization and desexualization of people of color.

• 2016-05-05: diversehighfantasy: Fear of a Black Fandom:

  The wildest thing about Star Wars Racegate 2k16 (or whatever. Someone else can probably come up with a better name), is the complete shock and disbelief of the typically-white-priority fandom that’s migrated to TFA that there is a notably-sized Black fanbase with a voice. Considering TFA has a Black lead (whether they like it or not), that really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

• 2016-05-05: stitchmediamix: I’m both tired of and angry with fandom:

  It’s not about ship wars or weird kinks or jealousy on any level.

  It’s about how when we talk about how we (fans of color) feel about racism we experience (actively and passively) in fandom spaces, someone always needs to "debunk" and dismiss our actual experiences.

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On Some Continuing Conversations about Race Before and Since Then

From rukminipande:

• 2019-06-17: Squee from the Margins: Interview with Rukmini Pande: Part I, Part II & Part III

• 2019-06-19: Twitter Thread on Ship And Let Ship (thread unrolled)

  As a neutral axiom, [Ship And Let Ship] holds the promise that if you don't find what you're looking for in one fandom, you'll find it another. And if people don't love what you love you should move on. // And that's fine and makes sense right? // Except that in situations where there is erasure and sidelining of character of color in texts where they SHOULD be the the focus, SALS encourages fandom to look the other way. // A structural whiteness is soothed away into individual actions

• And of interests, rukminipande's Decolonising Fan Studies: A Bibliography-In-Progress

From stitchmediamix:

• 2015-11-05: The Techniques of Erasure
• 2019-04-15: What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Woke Points For What?
• 2019-06-29: Black Women, Hated: Layers of Misogynoir in Fandom Spaces
• 2019-08-09: Fleeting Frustrations #8: Revisionist Fandom History Strikes Again

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On OTW/AO3 & Racism

Summary

As early as 2014, but probably earlier, Black and other fans of color had raised concerns about incidents wherein, for example, fans were posting fanworks involving characters of color on Archive of Our Own (AO3) with the intent to harass and harm Black and other fan of color and then directing racist slurs and other hate speech at commenters when these concerns were raised. These incidents were not isolated, but are a continuing pattern of anti-Blackness and racism that Black and other fans of color have generally experienced on AO3. As far as I'm aware, Organization for Transformative Works (OTW, the non-profit fan-run organization behind AO3) and AO3 in response had not substantially addressed these incidents at the time or since then. OTW/AO3 have firmly stood behind "maximum inclusivity of content" and allowed harassment and harm of Black and other fans of color to stand and continue.

It is worth noting that fans (including internal OTW/AO3 volunteers and BIPOC fans thereof) who spoke up and held OTW/AO3 accountable are one of the driving forces that have made OTW/AO3 more transparent today, for example: the creation of strategic plans, annual detailed and public budgets, and public audited financial statements. Those weren't available prior to 2015. To discredit valid criticism of OTW/AO3 and calls for change is I think to take for granted OTW/AO3 as they exist today and what they could be in the future.

In 2020 following a global rallying call for Black Lives Matter, Black and other fans of color renewed calls for OTW to address anti-Blackness and racism on AO3. They inspired the creation of an Open Letter to the OTW on Racism in Fandom. OTW then published a Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, & Leads, acknowledged that their inactions led to an unwelcome environment for Black and other fans of color, and committed to a series of actions to allow fans to better curate their experience and combat harassment.

A year and some later, however, OTW has still not substantially addressed anti-Blackness and racism on AO3; their actions and inactions still allow harassment and harm of Black and other fans of color to stand and continue.

On Navigating Conversations on Anti-Blackness and Racism

Here I feel it is again more necessary for me to repeat and remind that sometimes conversations that we BIPOC fans have with other BIPOC fans about anti-Blackness and racism are intended for ourselves, and sometimes these conversations are not kind, but they don't need to be. Even when conversations occur outsides of these spaces, sometimes they also don't need to be kind either because anti-Blackness and racism are not kind.

Education & healing have their places and many places do dedicate their spaces for education and healing (and are in some of the links), but sometimes they don't belong and are not necessarily the end or only goals, especially when there have been no reparations and Black Lives Matter remains a global rallying call.

Links to Conversations

• 2016-10-28: stopthatimp (note that OP is not BIPOC, but her post sparked the Great Warning Debate of 2009 that saw greater widespread adoption of content notes in fandom and the thread includes BIPOC commenters) & pageleaf: ao3 & censorship

  Ultimately, there are a lot of ways to think about forming a content policy. AO3 could implement blocking to allow users to more easily tailor their experiences. They could revise their content policies to allow for work removal when a work is judged to be especially homophobic, racist, or misogynist. They could revise their content policies to allow for work removal only when the work’s content can be demonstrated to have an intent to harass*. But ultimately, my problem is and remains that hostility to any kind of reconsideration of AO3’s current policy is not values neutral. AO3 is not currently a comprehensive archive, and it never can be: it is only as comprehensive as its userbase. The current message I’m seeing from some corners of fandom is that the status quo is fine, and marginalized fans who can’t tolerate sharing an archive with people virulently hostile to them are a disposable part of AO3’s userbase. I really, really hope that’s not true.

  The conversation thread linked to "We’re the reason we can’t have nice things on the internet" which is a relevant piece on online harassment.

• 2016-10-30: themardia: AO3 and Abuse: A Story About the AO3 Abuse Team

  Also: this post contains discussion of racism, including the replication/quoting of racist slurs and abuse [....]

  What I wanted to do was discuss in depth an incident she’d touched on, about the racist troll in Hockey RPF fandom that, in 2014, posted a deliberately racist fic to the tags involving Sidney Crosby and PK Subban. PK Subban, if you’re not aware, is a black Canadian player, and Sidney Crosby is a white Canadian player. The fic was tagged with “interracial kink”, posted anonymously, and sets out to deliberately fetishize PK Subban as a black man. When other AO3 members protested in the comments, the author responded with outright racist trolling, using racial slurs in response to critical comments. I want to say this again, because I don’t want this to be overlooked–this isn’t just a case of an author posting something in good faith that other people found offensive. This is a troll deliberately choosing to post something offensive, then responding to critical feedback with comments such as “this fandom will never ship a mulatto and a wetback”.

  At this point, many people went to the AO3 Abuse Team to report the author, believing (and reasonably so) that such behavior was harassment, and should not be allowed on the AO3 [...] During that exchange, the member of the Abuse Team stated that:

  “unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that content to be.” This is an accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness, which is one of the main goals of the Archive.” [emphasis theirs]

• 2016-11-03: rukminipande: Twitter thread on "the censorship that whiteness enforces covertly" (Thread unrolled)

  Speaking of structural whiteness in fandom I've been catching the whole AO3 ~censorship debate so bear with me here...

  There are different kinds of censorship. There's the overt one that fandom gets especially mad about because as a queer/femme community

  we've experienced policing of our desires/fic on many platforms and are rightfully wary of it...

  HOWEVER just because we're a queer/femme community doesn't make us free from racism AND the censorship that whiteness enforces covertly.

• 2016-11-03: wondersmith-and-sons: that’s what i mean by the Old Guard white fandom basically saying that the racist abuse that fans of colour face are just something we should have to bear (tumblr login required)

  And of interests: but we really need to recognise the older women of colour (especially Black women, holy shit, especially Black women they were holding the line long before the rest us of and have been doing so much good work) who have been in fandom for 10-20+ years and have guided these discussions surrounding race in fan spaces

• 2017-10-23: rukminipande: Twitter thread on "fandom's paranoia about censorship" to the detriment of fans of color (thread unrolled)

  And as a platform it has exactly ZERO POLICY on racist content... And it will continue to not have a policy because the discussion is always overwhelmed by cries of BUT CENSORSHIP

  Fans of color support the archive.. with money, with labour, with fic and fanart and podfic and kudoses etc... And they are consistently told that they are not worth care or consideration

  We are collateral damage to fandom's paranoia about censorship... ACKNOWLEDGE THIS FACT

• 2018-05-07: stitchmediamix: I’ve largely been approaching the various "don’t censor fandom/the ao3″ conversations through a lens of race

• 2018-05-08: diversehighfantasy: If there is no intention to cut racist fanwork on AO3, there should be a "racism" content warning, and it should be something readers can flag

• 2018-05-13: stopthatimp: The Myth of Strikethrough and ‘Knowing Our History’

  It’s that time of the year again: discussions of racism on AO3 are in the air, and the response from some of my contemporaries is - as it frequently has been - to bring up Strikethrough and to remind fandom that our elders built AO3 and we must respect that, and not ever discuss censorship of AO3, lest we disrespect our own history [....]

  A few suggestions:

  • Enhance bookmarks so that they can serve as full-featured recs lists, to empower marginalized fans to create easily navigable, richly commented/tagged/etc recommendation spaces
  • Let people block each other; have "you don’t see me, I don’t see you" style blocking
  • Integrate search blacklisting into AO3 proper, so that people can natively curate lists of creators, tags, and terms that they don’t want to see
  • Ask fans of color what changes they’d like to see, take them seriously, ask for elaboration when specific features are discussed, and prioritize these changes. Take the difficulty and pain fans have articulated seriously, and respect them

• 2018-11-08: stopthatimp: On 'The online free speech debate is raging in fan fiction, too'

  It spends almost no time on the fact that a significant portion of criticism of AO3, whether the author agrees with it or not, is based in criticism of AO3′s "maximally inclusive" policy failing to deal with racist harassment.

• 2019-12-08: rukminipande: Twitter thread on "you can't filter out racism" (thread unrolled)

  Got some responses to thread about false nostalgia and racism in fandom arguing that "Fandom spaces WERE unsafe and that's why we evolved tools (tags, blocks, filters) that let ppl curate their experience but ppl choose to ignore/misuse them."

  Guys, you can't filter out racism.

  (To be clear I'm talking about the "opt-in" tags where the creator tags their work, not tags applied by hosting platforms in line with moderation guidelines)

• 2020-05-14: theshmaylor (OP is not BIPOC, but thread contains BIPOC commenters) & lierdumoa: What do we want? Blocking and blacklisting functions! When do we want them? NOW!

• 2020-06-12: rukminipande: I've seen the AO3/OTW statement on racism in fandom and quite frankly it is the equivalent of this [generic brand statement]

• 2020-06-12: SamiraNadkarni: Twitter thread on TWC/AO3 statement (thread unrolled)

  Welp, I read the TWC/ AO3 statement [....] Let's talk about how fans of colour, especially stichomancery and RukminiPande, who are both cited in that post, have FOR YEARS been not only talking about racism in fandom, but talking about the AO3/ TWC's longstanding unwillingness to address this under 'censorship.'

• 2020-06-12: diversehighfantasy: On OTW's This Week in Fandom, Volume 149

  AO3 has posted a long, performative post about fandom and the Black Lives Matter protests, including everything from hailing a ridiculous Endgame fanvideo that parallels Captain America as the protesters as a contribution to the cause to name-dropping fandom racism scholars Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, without mentioning that both have been highly critical of AO3 for fostering racism.

• 2020-06-12: diversehighfantasy: How a racism on AO3 convo went down in 2018

• 2020-06-13: wondersmith-and-sons: fans of colour have been fighting racism since the 90's (tumblr login required)

• 2020-06-13: stopthatimp: Twitter thread on AO3 required warnings (thread unrolled)

  lrt this is a good thread overall but imo misses that required warnings are the way they are in part because wanky ppl (hi) demanded warnings be included in ao3

  it's important bc at the time, conversations re consent in fanfic were considerably muddier than they are now, conversations about the usefulness of warnings were extremely fraught and terms were not at all well defined - ao3 added what they did, yes, bc of a white feminist bias

  but site policy clarifies organizational priority; making eg "canon-atypical racism" a required warning places a specific importance and framing around racism in fandom spaces that is currently viciously, spitefully lacking

• 2020-06-14: stitchmediamix: Thread Collection: Antiblackness in the Archive

• 2020-06-16: rukminipande: Twitter Thread on Letter to OTW (thread unrolled)

  I was waiting to see if OTW_News would address the issue but as their response has been that there will be no public statement, stichomancery and I have sent a formal request to remove references to our work from that post. Putting text here to make our reasons for this clear. Letter to OTW

• 2020-06-17: SamiraNadkarni: Twitter thread on AO3 external and internal communications on BLM (thread unrolled)

  So the internal communication at the AO3 did go out on June 8, before the OTW News post went up. In it, there is a discussion of things being difficult, that people should care for themselves and look out for Black and POC volunteers, and resources will be offered.

  Notably though, there's still the same framing of the AO3 and its spaces as a refuge from the racism that BLM is protesting. Multiple people have confirmed that they raised issues within re: AO3 volunteer system about racism & communication problems, but these weren't addressed.

  Volunteers have pushed for both internal and external communication about these issues, and this is largely being seen as divisive, with no response from the Board as yet. This is true until at least today, 19 June.

• There is also a crowd-sourced list of suggested anti-racist changes to the AO3 Platform (but most of the changes would also address various harassment cases that occur on AO3...and wasn't there a list of suggested AO3 features floating sometime back? Update after three years: AO3 did have a Trello Feature Requests Board but it's made private and no longer available lol)

• And now a fandom-wide Open Letter to the OTW on Racism in Fandom which circulated starting June 19, 2020. The letter is translated in multiple languages and was sent to OTW on June 30, 2020.

  I emailed the Open Letter to the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW_News), urging them to address racism in fandom, to the OTW Board today. At final count, 1663 fans signed the letter during the week and a half that it circulated. — ButNoCigar, Jun 30, 2020

• 2020-06-24: otw_news: Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, & Leads (I've only read the first one or two comments from this post, but apparently, there are quite a bit of anti-Blackness in the comments now? As well as the usual derailing and defending of racism? So especially beware.)

• 2020-06-24: diversehighfantasy: Twitter thread on OTW statement and Tumblr crosspost (which contains insightful comments from BIPOC fans)

  OTW/AO3 basically All Lives Mattered us. They committed to features that can benefit everyone (+ prevent criticism of racist fanwork 👀). The ones that actually focus on racism are wishy washy noncommital "maybe but it's complicated and will take a looooong time." 🙄

  I'm for blocking commenters IF there is a mechanisms in place to warn fans of racist content. ATM, commenting is the only recourse fans have when they see racist content. I agree, that's not ideal. But if you remove that without a warning system for racism, it silences Black fans [...]

  Finally, this is not about flagging entire ships. It's about fics that actively abuse Black characters for fun etc. Those things happen in ships with COC too. We can choose not to see ships in search results, but that's not a guarantee we won't be subjected to racist content.

• 2020-06-24: rukminipande: Twitter thread on OTW/AO3 statement

  Glad the OTW/AO3 statement on further action lays down certain actionable commitments. This is a BEGINNING and I hope that people will keep asking them for a timeline, as well as for accountability regarding who they're consulting about TOS, Abuse, and Warning policy changes.

  Because frankly, without committing to policy changes, and examining how the "maximum inclusivity" clause applies to anti-Black content, the technical tweaks will end up actually PROTECTING racist content.

  Please keep thinking about these issues https://twitter.com/dhifantasy/status/1275980143916462081

  Critical fans are going to be tagged as ungrateful or w/e but as the AO3 has acknowledged, their past (in)actions have driven a lot of Black fans away from their platform.

  Even now, it took 2 weeks of form letters to get here. So, not handing out cookies just yet [...]

  oh wait, my bad! A friend pointed out it's taken ELEVEN YEARS to get to this point.

  Critical Black fans have been doing the work for years and dating this to two weeks is erasure. It'll also be a great disservice to that work to stop asking q's, so I'm def not shutting up.

• 2020-06-24: rukminipande: Twitter thread on Anti-Blackness & AO3 (thread unrolled)

  Noticing trend of characterizing the convo around anti-Blackness and #AO3 as “US/Western-centric” convo, and in danger of reinforcing "US/western" norms of racialization.

  I'd just like to point out that:

  • Anti-Blackness is transnational
  • Centering this will NOT harm nb-POC

• More links of the conversation are at naye's fandom & racism roundups, including What's up with the AO3 and racism?, and another summary by sixth-light at Can you explain what AO3 has done that's racist aside from the recent lack of BLM statement and the "This Week in Fandom" post? (Both OPs are not BIPOC.)

• 2020-06-28: ardentlinguist (OP is not BIPOC, but thread contains BIPOC commenters), striving-artist (commenter is not BIPOC) and diversehighfantasy: Black fans are already being exposed to racist...

  striving-artist: I’ve spent a while trying to sort out a method to make this as effective as possible, and I want to throw these things out there because the above is correct. Racist themes 100% need to be tagged, and authors will not always recognize what they’ve included. Even if they do recognize it, they may not care. So, we need Reader Added Content Warnings [...]

  diversehighfantasy: Honestly, concern for fans of color being exposed to racist fics because of AO3 warning measures is using Black trauma to uphold the status quo. We’re already being exposed! It also uses the Black desire to be the ones who decide what is antiblack against us, because we’re talking about all Black/FOC panels making the decisions because we’re the ones it affects. (And yes, I would volunteer to be part of such panel, but only if Black fans/FOC have agency, which we currently do not on AO3).

• 2020-07-02: aka_spacedog: late to the party as always but as the AO3's refusal to implement a substantive antiracism policy shows us that "i can make whatever i want as a fan creator & fuck your feelings if you're tRiGgErEd by it" is an attiude inherently rooted in white supremacy" (thread unrolled)

• 2021-01-14: stitchmediamix: Let’s talk about racism in The Archive – again. (Twitter Thread)

• 2021-09-08: stitchmediamix: Over A Year After the OTW/AO3’s Statement of Solidarity: Where Are We With That Anti Racism?

  As I said to a friend a few months ago in my portion of private correspondence, what I want (but do not actually expect the Archive of Our Own and OTW to be able or willing to provide) is:

  • A regularly updated harassment policy that accounts for different types of on-site harassment but also off-site evidence of harassment (i.e., not just rules against people harassing others in the comments of a story (for whatever reason), but an author creating a racist story and tagging it in a way to harass someone else (like if someone tagged a story with a creator’s government name or wrote racist RPF of them) OR people off-site aiming harassment at someone on the site like if they literally say “I’m doing X to harass people” or “Go harass Y for writing [PROBLEMATIC SHIP]” over on Twitter/Tumblr)
  • An offensive content policy that accounts for things like purposefully written bigoted content like it’s hateful and hurtful because that is the author’s kink. (Things where marginalized characters are brutalized/subject to extreme violence because the author hates them – like what happens to a lot of Black characters across fandoms.) This I get can be hard, but often it can be connected to the harassment policy because a lot of people do publicly say they are trolling on their main accounts.
  • An overhaul of the abuse team’s protocols because the responses I’ve seen directly in response to things like Black fans reporting racist slurs used at them, fans of color being targeted in harassment campaigns via tagging or storynotes, and a few other things… Those are not good responses. The responses I’ve seen are often… very bad. (Condescending, dismissive, speaking to a person publicly off/on-site harassing someone and taking their side rather than acknowledging that that was happening, ghosting people who’ve reported actual awful racist things – not controversial or complex issues like what I’m working through with stuff like certain kinds of darkfic or just plain bad writing.)

• On that note: runpunkrun chronicled her effort to "get a public update from the OTW on their development of anti-racist policies for AO3" (note OP is not BIPOC):

  My latest request for an update garnered a link to, and quote from, the minutes from the last public Board meeting, held on July 11, 2021 https://www.transformativeworks.org/board_minutes/

  The minutes say the Board "has been brainstorming" the possibility of instating a Diversity Consultant Research Officer. This would be a volunteer who would research possibilities for paid diversity consultants and present their findings to the Board

  I replied: [...] I'm asking for a new public post that covers the archive's progress in developing anti-racist policies and reaffirms the archive's commitment to this work

  See section on OTW's inactions in addressing racism and anti-Blackness to track OTW's progress.

• 2021-09-19: buttonthemdown: Twitter thread in response to the renewed argument that enforcing any additional warning on AO3 for racism is trauma work (thread unrolled)

  The fundamental flaw with the argument that enforcing TOS compliance is trauma work (which is true, I'm not denying that) is that if you don't make any changes, the trauma ends up on those most vulnerable--the people who are the intended targets.

• 2021-09-21: SamiraNadkarni: Twitter thread on "trauma work"

  I am decidedly not keen on the use of "trauma work" to impede the process of addressing how that trauma is ongoing. It implies that those calling for action have not considered this, despite repeatedly DOING the trauma work of explaining how the AO3 is racist. Over. And over.

• 2021-10-19: fiercynonym: the frustration about OTW’s budget surplus is not simply because there’s money & there’s something else that they could be using it for. it's because there’s a narrative around AO3 & OTW arguing that the precarity of the fannish experience is why we can’t act on racism (thread unrolled)

• 2021-10-20: fiercynonym: Twitter thread on racial justice consultants (thread unrolled)

  I’m realizing that a lot of folks might not know what I mean when I say “OTW/AO3 needs to hire racial justice consultants to begin a comprehensive reckoning on racism in the org, & that process will help come up with some of the solutions”, so let’s talk about it

  firstly, there are 2 separate pieces that I see here:

  1. the "internal" work to create an anti-racist organizational culture that would protect all the volunteers who do labor for OTW
  2. the “external” work that would protect AO3 & OTW site users from racism

• 2021-10-22: fiercynonym: okay folks, gonna talk again about what hiring racial justice consultants might help OTW/AO3 address racism. last time, I talked about internal org culture; this time, I’ll focus on how this process might help with OTW’s “external” work, to address the concerns of AO3 users (thread unrolled)

  The thread linked to an academic article on An archive of whose own? White feminism and racial justice in fan fiction’s digital infrastructure (both scholars are not BIPOC).

  See also 🧵 of 🧵s on racism and anti-racism in fandom (particularly around, but not limited to, racism in AO3/OTW).

• 2021-10-22: SamiraNadkarni: Twitter thread on "outside agitators" (thread unrolled)

  Not for nothing, but the assumption that antiracist work is erasure/ censorship/ is coming from "outsiders" & not those in fannish communities is absolutely white supremacy. Literally look at dog whistle discussions of CRT or any attempt to decenter whiteness; it's right here.

  The claim that all these "outsiders" are seeking to destroy the ~greatness of the AO3 by asking for policy to deal with racism sits in parallel to entire histories of global anti-immigrant/ antiblack rhetoric. Zero recognition that POC have long asked for this/ helped build this.

• 2023-01-16: fiercynonym: for folks who are planning to give otw feedback on their inaction on racism, here are some questions that you might consider posing to them... 🧵 (which is compiled in this post, Questions for the OTW)

• 2023-05-02: fiercynonym: Twitter thread on AO3 structural racism

  i appreciate all the attention this thread has gotten! i do want to emphasize, though, something i may not have made clear enough in the last thread: this is not just about one person, however racist she is (which is very). it's about a culture of whiteness & racism in fandom.

  [...] when one of your organization's founding values is "maximum inclusiveness of content", while you have no explicitly anti-racist structures in place, is inevitably going to prioritize inclusiveness of content over inclusiveness of people of color.

• 2023-05-05: biheretic: i've seen more than a few people surprised that the type of content we're speaking about when wanting antiracist policies is like,, removing troll fics parodying george floyds death, or racist rpf against real life black people where the author, when criticized, called ppl slurs"

• 2023-05-07: fiercynonym: Twitter thread on AO3 racism conversations

  okay i'm still not over the fact that people are going "wait i didn't know [stitch/other fans of color] was talking about REAL racism on ao3" because they weren't engaged in the conversation. i'm sorry but that is a lie. you were in the conversation. how you know how i know?

  if you hadn’t been in the conversation, where would you have even gotten your idea that tackling racism on ao3 automatically means censorship?

  because that is not actually a normal or organic response when you hear that there’s racism in a community space.

• 2023-06-13: dhobikikutti: Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works (from a current volunteer)

  On the 19th of June, 2020, three years ago almost to the day, I emailed the OTW Board a letter which I also posted in the Slack public board channel. I will quote the full letter below this one, for context and archival purposes. That letter had several suggestions to the 2020 OTW Board, made from a spirit of hope.

  This is a shorter letter with just one demand.

  I am formally accusing the leadership of this organisation, both past and present, of fostering a culture of structural racism and discrimination that negatively impacts the well-being of its volunteers, and has driven many more away.

  [...] I demand an external culture audit of the entire organisation to investigate, analyse, document and report on the ways that structural racism permeates its toxic work culture. I also demand that the current 2023 Board publicly respond to this before the June 16th deadline for candidates for upcoming Board election to declare themselves, so that ownership of the action rests with the current Board.

🔝 Back to Table of Contents

End OTW Racism

In 2020 following a global rallying call for Black Lives Matter, Black and other fans of color renewed calls for OTW to address anti-Blackness and racism on AO3. They inspired the creation of an Open Letter to the OTW on Racism in Fandom which asked OTW to hire a subject matter expert to advise OTW on how to become actively anti-racist, update AO3 features and policies to address racist content and publicly apologize to scholars specializing on the topic of fandom racism for unsought citation exposing them to harassment and denigration. 1663 fans signed the letters in the week and a half that it circulated.

1. Immediately begin the process of hiring a paid external expert on racism, participatory culture, technology, and non-profit policy-making who can advise the OTW on how to become actively anti-racist. The OTW’s historical inaction on racism within fandom has alienated many Black, Indigenous, and other ethnically marginalized fans. The OTW must make a clear institutional commitment to antiracism, backed by organizational resources of money and time, before asking fans to volunteer in this endeavor.

2. Support the AO3 team in making changes to the Archive’s technological structure and abuse policies that address racist content with the same seriousness they currently accord to violence, sexual assault, and underage content.

3. Publicly apologize to scholars of racism within fandom, most prominently Stitch and Dr. Rukmini Pande, for highlighting their work as a resource without making any effort to implement their suggestions for the OTW in that work. This unsought citation exposed them both to harassment and denigration during a time when, as the original OTW News post noted, racist violence is already high.

In response, OTW published a Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, & Leads, acknowledging that their inactions led to an unwelcome environment for Black and other fans of color and committing to a series of actions to allow fans to better curate their experience and combat harassment. Actions include:

• Administrative tools and review of Terms of Service to "allow [...] Policy & Abuse team to address different types of harassment not covered under the current Terms of Service"
• Development of a long-term strategy from internal discussions and with potential external contractor and advocacy group partnerships

After nearly three years, OTW has released a framework for strategic planning to diversify spaces and incremental user muting and blocking features which were in development before 2020 and started a plan for hiring a diversity consultant, but many fans are frustrated by the lack of substantiative actions and clear communications.

A group of fans of color and allies then organized End OTW Racism: A Call To Action to "protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization".

First Call to Action

The first call to action ran from May 17 to 31, 2023 and saw 5,602 works with "End OTW Racism" in the title. It asked OTW for actions and transparency on their commitments to review their ToS to address "different types of harassment not covered under the current Terms of Service" and the hiring of a diversity consultant.

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

• Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims
• A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch’s article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

• Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months
• Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

The call to action is also mirrored on Dreamwidth and expanded in:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) (on DW):

  What kind of work do you mean when you say “extremely racist and extremely abusive”?

  [...] Our concern is with racist fan works written for the purpose of making the fan site unwelcoming to fans of color [...] we do hope that the OTW/AO3 takes a long hard look at their Terms of Service (TOS) and brings it in line with current/progressive antiracist content. Currently, AO3 only considers something harassment if it targets a specific individual - and even then, they have often refused to take action on harassment like authors using racial slurs in replies to comments, or tagging a scholar of color’s full name in a fic to incite harassment of them for speaking out about racism.

  We believe that harassment against a racial/ethnic group should be considered harassment under AO3’s TOS and Abuse policies. How AO3 handles offending works until these proposed changes would be up to AO3 to decide. Avenues for progress may involve discouraging such works, de-listing such works from search results, or prohibiting them all together, depending on severity. We are also in favor of the organization establishing reasonable guardrails or guidelines so that the new TOS/policies are less likely to be abused or otherwise used maliciously.

  Who gets to decide what content is “extremely racist and extremely abusive”?

  Ideally, the OTW will update their TOS and Abuse policies and procedures to define these terms, and they will ultimately determine how to implement these changes. We’re not asking for them to hire a bunch of prudish strangers to comb through every work AO3 in order to mass-delete anything remotely objectionable, but for the OTW to implement common-sense measures to make the AO3 and the organization more inclusive. They’ve already committed to similar measures, so we’re just asking for concrete action to back up their vague promises.

  This approach to racist harassment is in line with their existing policies that prohibit certain kinds of content, such as their policy on plagiarism that takes a case-by-case approach to determining what is and isn’t plagiarism. We’re just asking that they expand those policies and practices to include extreme forms of racism & harassment.

• On needing a comprehensive harassment policy

  We’ve been getting some confusion about the part of our demands that talks about OTW needing to consider “off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users” - which is fair [...] What we meant is: if AO3 users are getting harassed on AO3, and they provide proof in their abuse claim of off-site harassment, that off-site harassment should also be considered as context for making a decision in the abuse claim.

• Timeline of OTW Hiring of a Diversity Consultant

• Response to the question of "wouldn’t it make sense to channel some of this energy into volunteering with the OTW and implementing the changes being called for?"

  We currently, with this action and platform we are building, see ourselves as very much part of the change we want to see. Enacting structural change requires a multi-faceted approach. It needs voices outside an organization who are willing to speak up in identifying issues they see with the organization’s work, like Stitch and Dr. Pande. It needs the willingness of those within the organization to facilitate and enact change. But it also needs accountability. We feel our role as users impacted by the OTW’s actions (or inactions) but outside the organization itself, allows us to act as voices of accountability, to hold the OTW to its promises and demand it live up to its ideals and responsibilities. Our role cannot be fulfilled within the organizational structure itself.

  Volunteering is an act of labor that we feel we are currently engaging in within a space we feel safe doing so. Asking fans of color to volunteer to make changes within an organization with known toxicity and abuse towards its volunteers, that we know does not do enough to protect even its users from racial abuse, to join up to ‘fix’ things, to expect that we are the ones that should do the hard work of restructuring the organization, is to ask us to do something for which we have repeatedly explained we are not qualified to do and to ask us to fix something we did not break.

  [...] In order for any of us to feel safe in actually participating within the organization, the OTW has to make the first step to improving itself by addressing their internal structural issues. It can be painful to bring these issues into the light, but it’s the only way for the OTW to move forward in a positive direction.

• Social Media Toolkit for #EndOTWRacism (on DW and see also merelydovely's End OTW Racism logo with a left transparent layer)

• And a few code of conduct clarifications

end-otw-racism also has rounded up various discussions about the call to action:

• End OTW Racism Link Round-Up: Week 1! (on DW)
• End OTW Racism Link Round-up: Week 2!

See also End Racism in the OTW AO3 Collection, End OTW Racism AO3 Tag and Works Matching 'End OTW Racism' on AO3. The campaign accounts are at end-otw-racism, endotwracism, endotwracism and endotwracism@federatedfandom.net.

And here's Teen Vogue coverage by stitchmediamix: As #EndOTWRacism Fights for AO3 Policy Changes, Fandom Racism Bubbles to the Surface.

OTW did not publicly responded to the call to action by the time the campaign ended:

“Now what?” you may ask. We have not yet received any official response from OTW. This is disappointing but not surprising. Calling for institutional change is a marathon, not a sprint, and this was just our opening act.

We count as a success that we have been able to bring awareness to issues with the OTW in a respectful but insistent manner. It is also a win that we have been able to connect with one another and begin the first of many deeper fandom discussions on how to move forward. Additionally we are heartened that many who work within the OTW have come forward to detail their experiences within the institution.

— end-otw-racism, What's Next, June 1, 2023 (on DW)

But on June 12, 2023, OTW published An Update from the OTW Board and Chairs (also on AO3), acknowledging that "this work hasn’t been nearly as prompt as we had hoped, and that the main victims of our delayed progress are the people of color who continue to suffer due to harassment and slow action" and updating what they have done so far and what they are working on to make OTW "more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms". Here's end-otw-racism's response to OTW's update.

(See postscript at the end of this post for contexts on the comments in both OTW/AO3 posts related to CSAM/CSEM (child sexual abuse/exploitation material) and volunteer abuse.)

On June 13, 2023, a current OTW volunteer of color came forward publicly with a Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works asking OTW to address structural racism within the organization and to better support BIPOC volunteers and specifically calling for an external audit of OTW. The same volunteer had sent another letter to OTW Board in 2020 when we were all pushing for OTW to address anti-Blackness and racism in OTW/AO3. Based on OTW's public communications, I don't believe OTW considered any or most of the suggestions put forth.

On the 19th of June, 2020, three years ago almost to the day, I emailed the OTW Board a letter which I also posted in the Slack public board channel. I will quote the full letter below this one, for context and archival purposes. That letter had several suggestions to the 2020 OTW Board, made from a spirit of hope.

This is a shorter letter with just one demand.

I am formally accusing the leadership of this organisation, both past and present, of fostering a culture of structural racism and discrimination that negatively impacts the well-being of its volunteers, and has driven many more away.

[...] I demand an external culture audit of the entire organisation to investigate, analyse, document and report on the ways that structural racism permeates its toxic work culture. I also demand that the current 2023 Board publicly respond to this before the June 16th deadline for candidates for upcoming Board election to declare themselves, so that ownership of the action rests with the current Board.

Of interests:

• 2023-05-19: fiercynonym: a recount from a fan posting about End OTW Racism to a fanfic subreddit with permissions from the mods but then faced unchecked derailment in the comments, tone policing for calling out said derailment and then off-thread retaliatory harassment for discussing racism.

• 2023-05-20: chestnut_pod (OP is Jewish but not BIPOC, I believe?): Be more democratic, be more autocratic, OTW and these threads on OTW Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC): on the ratio of tickets/reports and triaging and on triaging awful things on the internet.

  Regarding the linked PAC threads, contents notes for referencing to how Trust & Safety handles CSAM/CSEM reports, AO3 May 2022 CSAM Spam Attack, and linking to further discussions about them. Comments quoted below do not mention CSAM/CSEM but the first two quoted comments not from the original poster are part of the linked PAC threads. See postscript at the end of this post for more contexts.

  From the original poster:

  If I were to break this down, I would posit that there are in fact three big problems that get talked about most often:

  1) Volunteers experience racism in the course of their volunteer work for the OTW.

  2) There is user-to-user racist harassment that takes place via AO3's tools, including fanfic metadata/paratext, bookmarks, user profiles, comments, etc.

  3) There are fanworks with racist content on the AO3 that users find unpleasant to encounter.

  Some quotes from synecdochic (OP is not BIPOC) on best practices for Trust & Safety in handling racist harassment reports:

  [...] in order for a site to deal effectively with racist harassment (or any harassment at all), the people who are handling Trust and Safety need to be empowered to make decisions based on the individual case before them and the totality of the circumstances involved. Organizational failures on this level (and again, let me reiterate that this is a stunning organizational failure) lead to a T&S team that is demoralized, disempowered, and unable to handle the blatant instances of abuse that they see going on right in front of them because their hands are completely tied.

  [...] a service has to empower their T&S team to make decisions based on the totality of the circumstances, because people engaging in organized harassment -- racially motivated or not! -- and people who are trying to radicalize people into extremism are creative, adaptable, and looking to constantly push the boundaries of content and conduct policy. They will find the things that are not explicitly prohibited by the existing policy, and they will stay just one tiny bit back from the line, and they will do everything they can to harass their victims while remaining within the boundaries of technicalities. In order to effectively deal with them, you need to be able to say "your deliberate, systemic efforts to push the boundaries of acceptable conduct is, itself, a violation of the Terms of Service" and get rid of them. You don't need to empower every single one of your T&S agents to make that call, but your team needs to have someone -- and it needs to be someone who is an active member of the team who takes reports regularly and can see the patterns at play -- who can look at that pattern of behavior and is empowered to say "you know what, I was not fucking born yesterday, this systemic boundaries testing is itself a hostile act" and remove the account.

  From what I have seen PAC volunteers, current and former, discussing, there is no person on PAC who is empowered to make that decision, and I've seen unverified reports that Legal's position is that they cannot allow anyone on PAC to make that decision because it would require a change to the ToS to change enforcement policies. That is absolutely the fundamental reason AO3 is having a problem with racist harassment: because PAC is not given the authority to handle the racist harassment and because the working conditions and environment are so miserable that they don't have the time and energy to effectively advocate for the ability to say "come the fuck on, I was not fucking born yesterday" to someone with a userpic of a swastika and a username of I-Love-Hitler leaving racist comments and then dirty deleting them.

  — synecdochic, 2023-05-23

  And:

  To be clear, because I wasn't explicit enough in the original comment: the overwhelming majority of what I have seen showcased as racist harassment that is not removed from AO3 would not require a Terms of Service change for a Trust and Safety team to remove because it is already covered by the existing Terms of Service, and I am becoming increasingly more convinced that the internal belief "any changes to T&S enforcement policy require a corresponding change to the ToS" is a false belief that has been deliberately encouraged by the Legal committee to maintain their stranglehold over OTW processes and policies.

  — synecdochic, 2023-05-30

  And in their update, OTW reported that the "Policy & Abuse team continues to improve and calibrate their internal policies about harassment and hate speech in icons, user names, and other non-story elements". The specific of the policies are unclear.

  Note that synecdochic in subsequent conversations about Trust & Safety undermined BIPOC fans' work to hold OTW accountable and alleged a Black fan of harassment without naming specifics or providing any proofs.

  From azarias (OP is not BIPOC) about the communications and improvements of PAC:

  I agree, we took the ideal of confidentiality too far. By making it impossible to contact us outside of an abuse report, being as miserly as possible with the info we released while handling a report, keeping our boilers intentionally vague and at too high a reading level, and generally not having any way for the non-volunteer membership or site users to see us, we made ourselves scary and unaccountable to the community. We prevented any possibility of community review or influence over us.

  [...] I've long said that it is impossible to read the TOS and be able to identify a non-fanwork, or to know what the commercial promotion policy actually is. I'm not sure I know, anymore, because I've been gone a year and there have probably been more rulings made since. Users also don't know what we can do about harassment, or how to report it to us, or that we actually do care very much about preventing harassment.

  Users also don't know when our policies have gotten better. Take one of the examples given by EndOTWRacism organizers: in 2014, a comment section devolved into one side directing racist abuse at the other. PAC ruled that all users were equally at fault and refused to act against any of them. PAC would not make the same ruling today. PAC wouldn't have ruled the same even in 2018. It's a different committee, one that takes harassment very seriously, even if there are still serious gaps in our approach.

  But users don't know that. The users who were called slurs in 2014 have no reason to believe PAC's changed for the better and will stand up for them. Because we don't tell them.

  — azarias, 2023-05-25

  (And not directed at the commenter but general frustrations: like, I'm super glad that policies have gotten better and AO3 is handling incidents with users using racial slurs differently, and I agree that more communications and transparency will be super helpful! But like, that tag used to incite harassment against a scholar of color is still there.

  After pleas for AO3 to re-review their policies from yours truly and highlighting of the incident from endotwracism, the tag is still freaking there.)

  In a different thread from stopthatimp on addressing behaviors that violated ToS:

  I think the context of the Untamed fandom example is worth digging into beyond "the TOS doesn't allow for removal". Terms of Service can and should be updated, and AO3's specifically is very messy and doesn't contain the sort of safeguards you often see to allow moderators the ability to address anti-social behavior that violates the spirit of the TOS.

  In this case, the author of the spitefic:

  • Publicly identified it as spitefic
  • Doubled down on their racist spitefic when called out

  So they were targeting a group of people on purpose, and proudly stated it. To me, that is indicative of harassment. And what followed demonstrates how harassment is currently handled when AO3 won't deal with it:

  • Dogpiling
  • Doubling down
  • Eventual deletion, after long and painful wank that alienates fans of color and negatively impacts their fandom experience

  That's not a healthy system for anyone: not admins/mods/PAC, not users, and definitely not fans of color.

  — stopthatimp [Tumblr], 2023-05-24

  Also, for background, past discussions which partially informed the original post: chestnut_pod's Further AO3 and Racism Suggestions which linked to GriseldaGimpel's Steps AO3 Can Take to Minimize Racism in the Archive (which I have not fully read) (OP is not BIPOC).

Second Call to Action

end-otw-racism's second call to action, #Vote to End OTW Racism, focused on OTW's upcoming 2023 Board of Directors Election running from August 11 to 14 and turning out more OTW members to vote and more fans to participate in both the election and board meeting processes as avenues to push for changes.

OTW 2023 Election

For the 2023 term, OTW has 4 open seats for the board of directors, and there were initially 7 candidates running (and on AO3) but now only 6 candidates are running after a candidate dropped out. We had until June 30, 2023 to donate $10 USD and elect to be a voting member for the 2023 Election.

OTW Elections's website has more information about how the election works, but here's Voting in an OTW Election: A Smallish Guide by apollonie (OP is not BIPOC?) made in 2015.

Questions for candidates were accepted until June 25, 2023 and answers are being posted in batches starting in July. OTW posted a 2023 Candidate Chats and Q&A Roundup, elf compiled a spreadsheet of the candidate biographies, platforms and Q&As (OP is not BIPOC) and synonymous also compiled information at OTW Elections 2023 (account is obviously a pseudonym).

Candidate chats are scheduled in 4 sessions with the 1st one on Saturday, July 29, 2023, 01:00 UTC and the 4th one on Sunday, July 30, 2023, 01:00 UTC.

• 2023-06-20: buttonthemdown: Following analysis is a quick rundown of my initial impressions based on the limited questions being asked at this time. All opinions my own (and on DW)
• 2023-07-06: end-otw-racism: 2023 Board Candidates (and on DW with clarifications)
• 2023-07-08: sl-walker (OP is not BIPOC): On conversations with OTW Candidate Anh P. and how to support independent archives
• 2023-07-10: pumpkinpaix: Regarding #EndOTWRacism’s summaries of 2023 OTW Board election candidate positions

My personal thoughts and observations are collected at OTW Election 2023.

For some additional contexts, three of the candidates, Anh P., Qiao C. and Zixin Z., are pushing to make OTW more accessible to non-Anglosphere users. OTW has been working to address international fans and fans of color's requests to make the organization more diverse and inclusive since OTW founded. Some planned features such translating the AO3 interface into multiple languages, which the candidates renewed calls for, have obviously not materialized yet and most likely stalled.

See OTW Election 2020 for past conversations of OTW elections and addressing racism in OTW/AO3 and also note that a candidate faced Sinophobia and racism in the 2022 election which most probably affects how the Chinese and Asian candidates approach this election.

OTW Board Meetings

OTW's quarterly public board of directors meeting was held July 2, 2023 at 20:00 UTC:

• OTW Board Meeting Explainer (and on DW) (see also runpunkrun's How to Find and Attend OTW Board Meetings)
• Questions for the OTW Board of Directors (and on DW)

See Some Rough Notes & Observations of OTW July Board Meeting.

On Navigating Conversations on Racism Redux

Conversations on racism are complex and can often be very fraught. We all as BIPOC fans have different lived experiences and viewpoints and so are the ways we tackle racism as I noted in my first note on navigating conversations on racism. Sometimes, we — and here I mean mostly me personally — are not currently equipped to deal with them because we currently don't have the capacity, the fortitude, the tools, the skills, or the awareness to navigate them. Sometimes, we stumble across situations where we're unaware of the undercurrents or interpersonal dynamics or where we'd only barely scratched the surface.

I say this to remind myself to be mindful that these conversations can be very fraught and painful for all involved and to try to not be dismissive but also aware of the ways in which these conversations can be derailed and suppressed.

I say this because:

Content notes for discussions of derogatory names, bullying, harassments, racism, online abuse and replication of. Please do not engage any of the persons named or unnamed here on this matter or harass them or weaponize this post against them or other fellow fans. These conversations have real consequences on our lives and well-being.

stitchmediamix, who I have extensively linked in this post, has been a target of years-long online abuse which include attempts to get them fired at work and threats of reporting them to the police for speaking about racism in fandom. In fact, OTW had linked to Stitch's writings in a roundup about fandom and Black Lives Matter in June 2020. This sparked renewed conversations about racism in OTW/AO3 which OTW had at the time failed to acknowledge publicly. But this also exposed Stitch to more harassment and denigration as the Open Letter to the OTW on Racism in Fandom noted. What Stitch continues to face is an example of anti-Blackness in fandom spaces.

Stitch also often described patterns where fans of color used their identity to suppress and derail discussions of systemic racism, patterns which many BIPOC fans have previously identified from past conversations of racism. Sometimes, in their personal writings and spaces, Stitch extended the analogy and called these fans "Pick Me POCs" (October 2019), "Minions of Color" (January 2020), and "Social Justice Pokemon of Color" (October 2020) to illustrate these patterns.

Here are where I find the conversations fraught: Seeing these terms being defended stressed me out lol I'm truly ambivalent about them, but I also don't necessarily see these terms as value-neutral. I mean, there is an ugly and long history of derogatory names and racial slurs being leveled at us to police our identity and lived experience, to shame and silence us. Calling out behaviors that derail and suppress conversations about racism or people for being racist and white supremacist is speaking truth, I agree, but I also believe calling derogatory names just similarly shut down conversations because of said history.

Here are where I find the conversations more fraught:

1. Some BIPOC fans considered these terms as personal attacks/derogatory name calling and their usages as contributing to an environment of online abuse for BIPOC fans.
2. These terms have been leveled to launch harassment campaigns at Stitch who again has been experiencing years-long life-threatening online abuse for speaking about racism in fandom.
3. Stitch themselves as one individual is often used to derail and suppress collective conversations of systematic racism.
4. I don't know how much the groups overlapped, if any. As far as I'm aware, Stitch has not used these terms beyond the contexts or links described above and has largely stopped using them.
5. There is an ugly and long history of accusing BIPOC fans of bullying and harassment for calling out racist and white supremacist behaviors and people and launching harassment campaigns against them from it.
6. There is an ugly and long history of derogatory names and racial slurs being leveled at BIPOC fans to police their identity and lived experience, to shame and silence them.

There are circularity to these conversations, I find, borne and mapped out from past conversations. The online abuse that Stitch faced is horrifying, wrong and arguably unjust.

I actually started this post three years ago because I'm aware of just how Stitch, yes, but how all Black fans, how all BIPOC fans are unjustly and unfairly treated in these conversations for speaking about racism in fandom. Just as I'm also equally conscious of my own failings and missteps in these conversations, instances where, in hindsight, I have positioned myself with whiteness, repeated racist arguments and microaggressions, and derailed and suppressed conversations, or where I did not treat fellow BIPOC fans with the grace I wished I had.

But I also push against conflating, defending, dismissing and minimizing "Pick Me POC", "Minions of Color" and "Social Justice Pokemon of Color" as value-neutral or speaking truths. How do we measure the emotional, mental and social tolls they have in our conversations and our communities? We can't because they are often hidden but I believe the pains are just as real.

And into these fraught and charged contexts:

synecdochic, who is a white woman and who I also have linked in this post on discussions related to abuse reports in a thread on how OTW mishandled Trust & Safety, sidetracked into an unrelated tangent undermining end-otw-racism's work to hold OTW accountable and alleging that Stitch who continues to experience years-long online abuse in fandom of "racialized harassment of fans of color" without naming specifics or providing any proofs, even anonymized ones. Stitch does not hold any positions in OTW and is not an organizer of end-otw-racism. I don't believe how Rahaeli handled the situation was necessarily best practices for responding to alleged online abuse as an ally and bystander (not that I'm an expert and am only just reading in-dept about the topic) and made worse an already fraught and charged situation.

For contexts:

• 2023-06-17: pearwaldorf: we need to talk about Rahaeli
• 2023-06-18: 221loislane (account is a pseudonym): An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations and Additional Events
• 2023-06-19: stopthatimp: Discussing the Rahaeli/Denise + Stitch stuff, because Rahaeli has made it impossible not to despite it being tangential at best to anything that actually matters around the OTW right now (and on Tumblr)

For more contexts on the interconnected conversations, see postscript at the end of this post. Again, please do not engage Stitch, Rahaeli and end-otw-racism on this matter or harass them.

On end-otw-racism and addressing racism in OTW/AO3, I don't want to re-litigate what already been extensively discussed but I do want to quote themardia's Twitter thread on the situation:

I have absolutely no idea why a thread about the OTW’s failings (which are NUMEROUS) needed to be derailed by swiping at the very campaign that made it possible to find out what was happening at the OTW. // Fans of color have been banging the drum about the OTW’s failings for YEARS. We are the goddamn canaries in the coal mine. And yet, at every turn, the utter contempt that white fans feel for us always shows itself, without fail.

And courtneymilan's Twitter thread on End OTW Racism:

The movement to End Racism in the OTW did valuable work by exposing that the OTW had not honored the promises that it made, thereby giving information about who we are dealing with.

That movement asked who we were dealing with, and because of them, we got an answer.

Thank you to everyone who helped with that.

And lastly, it's alluded in one of the linked posts that Stitch is friends with winterfox (also known as Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Requires Hate) though I don't know if the friends here referred to being mutuals on Twitter or more. Being friends with winterfox is often used to further harass and denigrate Stitch, and we circled back to the above. I think being friends with winterfox may be objectionable but it's not the same as enabling winterfox's behaviors which, as far as I'm aware, Stitch has not done. Again, please do not engage Stitch or winterfox on this matter or harass them.

For contexts, winterfox had among others harassed and verbally abused fellow community members in review posts made in a community forum dedicated to books by authors of color. She used her identity as a Chinese person with Thai citizenship to suppress conversations and bully other fans of color. For contexts, see Being an itemised list of disagreements and Benjanun Sriduangkaew's Online activity.

On the subject of the initial Mixon report on winterfox, I found courtneymilan's Twitter thread on the matter helpful and humbling: "...the issues I had with the [Mixon] report should have remained issues with the report alone, not with the people who contributed to it. I let my issues with the report bleed through into dismissiveness of people."

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On OTW Election 2020

For the 2020 term, OTW had 3 open seats for the board of directors, and they ran an election for those seats from August 14-17, 2020.

Q&As were held as part of the election, and some of the questions submitted and collated focused on "Racism in the OTW and Its Projects" and "AO3 Content Policy and Warnings", for example.

• 2020-07-16: buttonthemdown: Analysis thread of OTW board candidates' responses to OTW Election Q&As on Category "Racism in the OTW and Its Projects" (thread unrolled)

• 2020-07-21: rukminipande: I'm going to remind everyone that the #AO3 has repeatedly self-identified as a platform built on the principles of Feminist HCI, in the words of one of its founders [...] "Feminist HCI is a subset of Human Computer Interaction focused on building interactions that focus on equality, pluralism, participation and advocacy." (thread unrolled)

• 2020-07-22: buttonthemdown: Analysis thread of OTW board candidates' responses to OTW Election Q&A Category "AO3 Content Policy and Warnings" (thread unrolled)

More links of the conversation are at naye's continuing fandom & racism roundups.

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On OTW's Inactions in Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness

To re-summarize and track progress:

In June 2020 following a global rallying call for Black Lives Matter, Black and other fans of color renewed calls for OTW to address anti-Blackness and racism on AO3. They inspired the creation of an Open Letter to the OTW on Racism in Fandom. OTW then published a Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, & Leads (also on AO3), acknowledged that their inactions led to an unwelcome environment for Black and other fans of color, and committed to a series of actions to allow fans to better curate their experience and combat harassment.

A year later on July 2021 during an open board meeting and in a OTW July 2021 Newsletter, the OTW Board discussed the possibility of hiring a Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO) to "research and explore possibilities for diversity consultants and present their findings to the Board, who would then evaluate them and make a decision on how to move forward". There were no updates on any other efforts to directly address current anti-Blackness and racism on AO3. A diversity consultant does not preclude OTW from enforcing current policies against on-going harassment to Black and other fans of color on AO3 nor from them reviewing those polices from anti-racism lens, creating an action plan and implementing it nor from them exploring a multitude of first steps toward creating an anti-racism space.

On October 2021, OTW rebuffed requests for an update on their development of anti-racist policies.

From November 2021 to July 2022, OTW posted brief updates that they're preparing to open a DCRO role, internally recruiting, interviewing, and assessing candidates for the role, and that then they've finally appointed a DCRO but the appointed officer has not been fully inducted yet and they're still recruiting a second officer. More details are in runpunkrun's meeting notes. There were no updates on any other efforts to directly address current anti-Blackness and racism on AO3.

At the end of July 2022, OTW published a OTW Vision Statement 2022-2025 outlining their framework for strategic planning to diversify spaces (the beginning of a final strategic plan).

On August 2022, The Verge published an article on AO3’s 15-year journey from blog post to fanfiction powerhouse that included discussions of AO3's handling of racism — though I thought it rather overstates OTW's slowness as a reason for inactions when it's a symptom of systemic racism and AO3's active decisions to allow harassment of fans of color to stand and continue.

Two and a half year later on January 2023 during an open board meeting, OTW Board noted that the DCRO is in the early stage of researching for diversity consultants and "coming up with a roadmap for the project" which "is expected to require less than 5 years, if no meaningful difficulties arise" for the hiring of a diversity consultant to complete. No second DCRO appointed yet. See runpunkrun's meeting notes and other discussions of the meeting.

Shortly following this meeting, fans again requested for "regular progress reports on the organization's work making its platforms a more welcoming space for BIPOC fans" but OTW hasn't provided any specific updates on any structural changes in development "specifically meant to combat racism in the organization and on its platforms".

On March 2023 during an open board meeting, OTW Board announced and started an Update on the OTW’s diversity work section as a permanent meeting agenda item. The DCRO has organized a plan to contact "OTW leadership and [key] volunteers expect from a consultant, what concerns they have, and what they see as priorities for this work" and done "some preliminary research into potential hires" for a diversity consultant. I believe the DCRO's updates are a continuation of work previously reported in the last board meeting. See also Timeline of OTW Hiring of a Diversity Consultant (no diversity consultant has been hired yet).

Following this meeting, fans again requested for "a regular section to future newsletters for updates on their diversity, equity, and inclusion work". And end-otw-racism organized a call to action from May 17 to 31, 2023 to "protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization".

On June 12, 2023, OTW published An Update from the OTW Board and Chairs (also on AO3), acknowledging that "this work hasn’t been nearly as prompt as we had hoped, and that the main victims of our delayed progress are the people of color who continue to suffer due to harassment and slow action" and updating what they have done so far and what they are working on to make OTW "more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms". In the update, they also committed to include updates in their monthly newsletter. Here's end-otw-racism's response to OTW's update.

(See postscript at the end of this post for contexts on the comments in OTW's posts related to CSAM/CSEM and volunteer abuse.)

From a comment in OTW's update: OTW had sent an internal recruitment for DCRO in February 2022, two volunteers applied and were appointed by default, and the project kicked off on April 24, 2022, but shortly after, one of the volunteer had to resign and OTW wasn't able to internally recruit another second volunteer. In other words, one and half years for OTW to decide and open recruitment for two DCRO positions, and possibly one and a half more years for the DCRO to complete the research on the diversity consultants (expected around September 2023).

On June 13, 2023, a current OTW volunteer of color came forward publicly with a Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works asking OTW to address structural racism within the organization and to better support BIPOC volunteers and specifically calling for an external audit of OTW. The same volunteer had sent another letter to OTW Board (and also posted in OTW public internal Slack channel) in 2020 when we were all pushing for OTW to address anti-Blackness and racism in OTW/AO3. Based on OTW's public communications, I don't believe OTW considered any or most of the suggestions put forth.

Fans are also continuing to push OTW for more transparency, this time requesting for better publicity of OTW board meetings as part of end-otw-racism's second call to action for more turnout and participation in OTW's upcoming election and board meetings.

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On the Fandom Culture and Paradigm Shifts that We've Been Witnessing

I've seen posts and fanworks warning for racist content before, but to see some of community moderation policies being articulated and put into practice recently to create safer anti-racist fannish spaces is inspiring. Even as someone who've been a witness and sometimes participant of all these discussions, my thinking and worldview have also been radically shifted on what's possible and what type of actions we can take.

And for reference, diversehighfantasy linked to this Introduction to Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings in several of the conversations and which I found helpful.

• pod_together, "a multifandom, multimedia challenge where writers and podficcers create together—the writer creating text specifically intended for audio, and the podficcer creating the audio":

  • 2020-06-04: pod_together solicited community input on developing "some rules to reduce racist content in pod-together" on Tumblr and Twitter

  • 2020-06-14: pod_together added the following content rules to their challenge based on community input:

    \1. No using the real-life tragedies of BIPOC as a backdrop for stories that center characters who are white. This includes centering white characters in an AU of an oppressive situation that happened to BIPOC, such as a slavery AU.

    \1a. Similarly, no using real-life tragedies of other marginalized groups to center characters that are not members of those groups. This includes centering members outside that group in an AU of an oppressive situation that happened to that group, such as a Holocaust AU.

    \2. Don’t use negative stereotypes as a way to demonize or discard BIPOC characters in favor of white characters. (example: for Kirk/Spock fic, making Uhura an angry black woman to justify Spock's relationship with Kirk). This post may be helpful.

    \3. If anyone flags an untagged racist trope or racist language in a story, the mod team will check for accuracy (with outside consultation as needed). If a racist trope or language is confirmed, the creators will be required to tag for that content unless they revise the fanwork to no longer include that content.

    \3a. Other oppressive tropes or language (sexist, ableist, homophobic, etc) can also be flagged to mods and will have the same follow-up steps as above.

  • 2020-08-21: pod_together introduced a Pod_Together Characters of Color Love Collection (Previously Pod_Together BIPOC Character Love):

    This subcollection comes from continued discussions within the Pod_Together Discord, including podficcers of color, and among the mods about how to boost and celebrate works about characters of color and encourage more of them within the bounds of our challenge. We know that the larger context of fandom is that stories about characters of color often get overlooked in favor of stories about white characters. Our hope is that the existence of this subcollection gives participants support in thinking intentionally about POC representation within their stories, gives readers of color and listeners of color greater access to stories with characters that look like them, and allows these stories to have an extra spotlight and receive extra love and attention!

  And speaking of podfic, of interests: lunatique's Thoughts about Podficcing in Cdrama fandoms (but also some food for thoughts for other non-English/Anglo source fandoms as well)

• festivids, an annual small vidding fandom gift exchange:

  • 2020-08-22: festivids solicited community input on additional content warnings, subtitles and what work the challenge can do so "Festivids is welcoming and accessible to all fans, but particularly fans from racial/ethnic backgrounds marginalised in Western media fandom".

  • 2020-08-30: festivids presented a rules update to "clarify the standards and behaviour expected from participants and the criteria under which participants may be banned in order to make the exchange a safer and more welcoming space for anyone who wants to take part" (emphasis mine):

    Code of Conduct and Participation Policy

    We want Festivids to be as safe and welcoming a space as possible for anyone who wants to take part in the exchange. Everyone taking part is expected to behave respectfully towards their fellow participants.

    Festivids has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying and harassment of or by its participants, in any form, whether in Festivids-related spaces or elsewhere on the internet/social media. If you become aware of any such behaviour, please report it to the mods by email. The mods will take all reports seriously and will review them as quickly as possible.

    Festivids will not tolerate behaviour which is derogatory or harmful to others, or which may cause fellow fans to feel unsafe or uncomfortable participating in the same exchange as the perpetrator, such as repeated instances of racist, misogynistic, queerphobic, ableist or other offensive behaviour, even where the behaviour has not been directed specifically at a Festivids participant.

    Participants to whom any of the above applies may be issued a warning, may be immediately dropped from the current Festivids exchange, or may be issued a permanent ban on participation, depending on the severity of the situation, the number of occurrences, and other factors, including the impact on others of their continued participation in the exchange.

    (Note that Franzeska (olderthannetfic) was banned from festivids on the same day per this updated policy due to their conduct in fannish spaces making participants and potential participants feel unsafe.)

  • And festivids's content warnings policy included (not sure if this was updated):

    Blackface/Brownface/Redface [use in all contexts]:
    Depictions of Police;
    Holocaust and/or Nazi Imagery;
    Queerphobia [depictions of queerphobia/homophobia or queerphobic violence];
    Racism [depictions of racism and/or racist violence];
    Transphobia [depictions of transphobia and/or transphobic violence]

• And mentioned by festivids in their initial post: con_txt, a bi-annual slash convention, has a convention-wide content advisory policy for their Vid Show which included:

  Holocaust and/or Nazi Imagery: Holocaust or Nazi imagery or symbolism and/or imagery intended to be suggestive of such.

  Racism: Depictions of racism and/or racist violence.

  Not sure when this was updated but I think this policy exists in some form prior to recent discussions.

  (Note that Franzeska has also been banned from con_txt for similar reasons as their ban from festivids.)

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On Addressing Racism:

Not to make a long post even longer, but I found f3discord's work to hold white creators, who previously claimed to be allies, accountable for platforming a racist work on their podcast great, and the incident shows an insightful example of how white fragility prevents us from doing necessary anti-racist work and what that necessary anti-racist work looks like.

• 2021-01-30: f3discord: We are sad that we find it necessary to warn you that fantasy authors _alexrowland [X], freyamarske [X] & englishmace [X], hosts of serpentcast [X] (Be The Serpent) are not safe allies for POC. We are members of the former official fan discord for the podcast, and this is our story. 🧵

  Explanation of BtS Racism

  In summary, the hosts of BtS platformed a racist book on their podcast and failed to publicly apologize for doing so or take appropriate actions to fix this mistake. These failures mean that they continue to platform this racist book and actively harm their listeners of color. They dismissed feedback from and condescended to their fan community regarding the issue, going against their own suggestion to “listen to and to respect the voices of people of color.” Then they severed their affiliation with their fan Discord server as we were attempting to restart a dialogue, making it more difficult to address their continuing racist actions in a private, constructive way. Additionally, they did not respond to multiple emails where we tried to address their actions privately. At this point, the Serpents’ behavior has moved beyond an accidental mistake and shows a willful refusal to engage with criticism, apologize to those they have hurt, or make their podcast safe for fans of color.

• 2021-01-31: f3discord: Update: we have been blocked by serpentcast [X], although not by any of the hosts' personal accounts. We are not surprised. This is part of a repeated pattern of refusing to discuss their racism or to engage with any criticism of their behavior.

• 2021-01-31: _alexrowland's second apology, freyamarske's apology & englishmace's apology (and note that I'm linking to f3discord's QRTs):

  I didn't listen. The longer the discussions and requests for public action went on, the more defensive and frustrated I felt about it. I wanted it to go away. This has been correctly identified as white fragility and not wanting to put in the hard work.

  I apologise sincerely to the fans of colour who were trying to make themselves heard, and who I ignored to the point where they had to do this in public: I should have had the guts to actually engage. My cowardice in this regard was a racist act. I'm sorry that my wilful silence made the podcast into an unsafe and hurtful space for you.

  You're right: intent isn't magic. What I thought was shutting up and listening was in fact NOT listening to a request for active anti-racist action. What I thought was uncentering my white experience was in fact uncentering the voices of people who wanted me to do better.

  freyamarske, Be the Serpent: an apology, 2021-01-31

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On Further Mapping the Conversations on Anti-Blackness, Race/Racism, Antisemitism, Fandom and OTW/AO3:

When I made this post, I noted that a "decade may seem like a long time has passed, but at the same time, not quickly enough to achieve the progress that we may hope."

It's a year later, and it's now 12 years since RaceFail. To put some of the conversations and events in contexts, I've created a rough timeline visualization of selected events, not all significant or relevant events, not even all the ones that I've witnessed and/or participated, but I hope can still provide some contexts and push against some of the whitewashing of white fandom ignorance and inactions.

I've decided to link to the visualization instead of embedding but the table format is still below: A Rough Timeline Visualization of Selected Events.

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On a Greater Convergence of Conversations about Race/Racism, Antisemitism, Fandom and OTW/AO3 😳

Or how a culture of whiteness can uphold white supremacy, prevent or delay much needed changes and perpetuate harm in our fannish spaces:

• 2020-06-25: pearwaldorf: If I never see another post from Franzeska aka olderthannetfic here it will be too soon. How dare she answer questions about racism and AO3 like she wasn’t one of the people who helped build it into the very structure of the site?

  Which brings me to now. I was literally today years old when I learned that Franzeska was head of the Abuse team for A While. (Bess says 2008-2012.) So suddenly a lot of things make sense, especially the lackluster (to put it politely) response about racist nonsense I’ve heard over the years, like in male hockey RPF. [edit: additional context in this post, ty Rukmini] [...]

  Certainly Franzeska is not responsible for everything racist about AO3, but she has definitely had a hand in shaping a culture that sacrifices the well-being and comfort of black users (among others) on the altar of “maximum inclusivity of content”. To turn the phrase back on them, who is “our own”? Why is it important to preserve an environment where a racially fetishistic fic that objectifies a black hockey player can stay up but a black fan basically has to go in like Viago checking for sunlight?

• 2020-06-26: rukminipande: Twitter thread on "overt racism" in AO3 (thread unrolled)

  [...] I've also seen fellow fandom academics say that AO3 doesn't have instances of "overt racism" like #nazi content that the MLP fandom is debating rn. Also, that fandom's "shared values" make us better equipped to handle conversations about racism.

  I...don't share that opinion.

  IMO these claims show a disturbing gap in knowledge about Anti-Black content that's currently hosted on the AO3 and also how "shared values" have meant nothing for YEARS.

  The link above is only ONE example.

  I have other receipts, including of #nazi content, but I'm tired of having to trot out trauma evidence for ppl who should know better.

• 2020-06-26: rukminipande: Twitter thread on "how whiteness in fandom/fan studies undermines critical voices" (thread unrolled)

  This was in 2016. I was yet to get my first official academic publication [...] I didn't mince words abt Francezka not being "just a fan" but rather someone who'd been a key part of the AO3/OTW and had broad support from many (white) BNF's. This is all public info.

  Quite soon after that, I got an email from an est white scholar, with considerable influence over who gets published etc.

  The scholar (politely and with many caveats) told me, essentially, that I might be reading the meta wrong!? F was their friend! They were just brash! etc! [...]

  However, thinking back, I'm frankly horrified that they thought that this was an appropriate email to write!

  It's VERY NOT OK for a senior (white) scholar to try and intervene in this way! Particularly, as I'd only spoken abt it on my own twitter.

• For clarity, according to Fanlore and her Fanlore page which she has contributed, Franzeska Dickson was previously on OTW Content, Abuse, Webmasters, and Tag Wrangling Committees, OTW Chair of Policy & Abuse Committee from 2011-2012 and OTW Board of Directors from 2013-2014.

• And as a record, the referenced Nazi content in My Little Pony fandom refers to this article, 'My Little Pony' Fans Confront Their Nazi Problem (which includes descriptions/replication of antisemitic & racist fanart).

• 2020-08-05: threepatch Roundtable with rukminipande, stitchmediamix, a_wild_acafan and ButNoCigar (host & latter panelist are not BIPOC?): Episode 107A: Challenging Fandom Racism–Extended cut (Transcript):

  In this extended cut of the Challenging Fandom Racism roundtable, fan studies scholars Dr. Rukmini Pande, Stitch, joan miller, and Dr. Samantha Close join finnagain to discuss transformative fandom’s cyclical struggle to recognise racism, the skepticism and harassment faced by fans and acafans who speaking out against racism, why the AO3 and the OTW need to change, and ways fans can practice anti-racism in our fannish lives and online communities.

  Note that Henry Jenkins is mentioned in the roundtable as an example of an ally and since then, he has been involved in a project that initially sidelined Black scholars and has issued an apology: A Personal Statement: How Good Intentions Can Produce Harmful Effects.

  For contexts: reactions to a call for papers for a Black Comics Collection being spearheaded by two white scholars, one of whom previously denied institutional and structural racism and never apologized, project pivoted to "Multicultural Lives Matter" comics, responses to the rebrand, update #1, update #2 and update #3.

  For more contexts: “A discipline overrun with whiteness”: #FSN2019 and Making a Statement.

  Further note to self, the quote for which you've been looking is in the above post (emphasis mine):

  At the same time, I should also be clear that many of the points that follow are points that fans of colour (hereafter FOC) and acafans of colour (as well as acafans working on critical race theory in fandom) have already noted. In a multiplicity of ways, I am echoing their work, restating it, forcibly reinscribing it as best as I can, and ascribing it as best as I can (and Rukmini is part of this, though again she is not the first). — SamiraNadkarni, May 13, 2019

• 2023-05-02: fiercynonym: this particular tweet has gotten a lot of attention, and since a lot of folks (understandably!) don’t have the context for this piece of racist fandom history, i thought i'd share more about the person in question: franzeska and i appreciate all the attention this thread has gotten! i do want to emphasize, though, something i may not have made clear enough in the last thread: this is not just about one person, however racist she is (which is very). it's about a culture of whiteness & racism in fandom.

  The Tweet in question is: cw racism “yeah so we found out that the person who wrote a 16,000 word racist screed on ao3 in 2016, who had been banned from cons & gift exchanges because she makes poc feel unsafe, was the head of ao3’s abuse team for years & wrote their protocols on racism”.

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On the Greater Convergence of Conversations about RaceFail 2009:

• 2020-06-25: sf_boswell (OP is not BIPOC?): For years, I have asked why the SFF community has embraced Elizabeth Bear post-RaceFail. And now here we are. (thread unrolled) (thread links to discussions of abuse & grooming)

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On the Greater Convergence of Conversations about Antisemitism, Racism and OTW/AO3:

A Summary of Events

An author posted an original fanwork on AO3 involving original Nazi characters in an omegaverse WWII Holocaust setting with the intent to troll, harass and harm Jewish fans. There were, rightly so, critical pushbacks against the fanwork for centering the narrative on the redemption of Nazi characters and the romanticization thereof.

The author retaliated against a BIPOC critiquer (for a subtweet that does not name the author or directly identify the fanwork) by adding a tag to the fanwork directly naming the critiquer as having lied about said fanwork: "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" (where "Person Legal Name" is the redacted critiquer's legal name).

The author later changed the tag from "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" to "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic".

AO3 ruled that the tag usage of "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" "did not constitute the creation of a hostile atmosphere" and later also found that the tag usage of "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" "does not mention any one person in particular. As such, [AO3 is] unable to rule the tag as [harassment]."

I tried to appeal the decision but AO3 stood by their decisions, going so far as conflating the original poster's harassment as their rights to respond to criticism, ironically, and praising the original poster for "de-escalating" the situation by changing the tag instead of them trying to evade AO3 policies. AO3 continues to chose to not protect fans from harmful harassment and continues to maintain policies which systemically fail fans of color.

The Write-Up and Some Responses to the Incident

Be extra careful of the comments and do not engage the author or their fans.

• 2020-09-10: RukminiPande: The fact that there's sexy and redemptive A/B/O fic abt actual #nazis being posted on AO3 and ppl are defending it with "don't like don't read" certainly says a lot about the state of fandom in 2020. I'm not linking here coz the ppl calling it out might be further targetted. (thread unrolled)

• 2020-09-11: pitchercries (OP is Jewish but not BIPOC): It’s 2020, so of course there’s sexy Holocaust fic on AO3

  The replies contains more receipts of the author's intent to troll, harass and harm Jewish fans (including screenshots and transcriptions of antisemitic and racist comments): Context - for those thinking that the author of this fic was acting in any way other than as a troll to trigger people & I also left a review on this fic.

• 2020-09-11: buttonthemdown: If AO3 is the archive of our own, we need to have a serious discussion about whether we want fic that reinforces white supremacy on there. There's a difference between censorship and deciding that nazis need to get the hell out of your party, and we need to have that talk. (thread unrolled)

• 2020-09-14: RukminiPande: I'd like ppl to sit with the fact that we're at a point in queer fandom where larger ~discourse around culture wars etc has created a space where sympathetic content abt #nazis is actively/proudly defended. That may not be what you, personally, intended to happen but here we are (thread unrolled)

• 2020-09-15: RukminiPande: Reading for a project and Alice Marwick on the adoption of "ironic" antisemitism and racism"+"triggering tactics" by the alt-right in the US is interesting context for recent trends in fandom..esp as there's evidence of things being written to deliberately hurt/provoke. #cw slurs (thread unrolled)

• 2020-09-15: SamiraNadkarni: All right, I'm going to engage with this because it's important to break down why I do not agree with this, why I have taken the stance I have, and the fact that I did not act without an understanding of both fannish history and its spaces of exclusion. (thread unrolled)

• 2021-09-09: RukminiPande: Twitter thread on her experience with harassment on AO3

  I have an official email from the A*3 abuse team stating that the my full name being tagged to extremely disturbing content on their site (in a manner designed to expose me to continued abuse) did not constitute the creation of a hostile atmosphere towards me

  There was no explanation as to why I deserved this kind of continued exposure to harassment or why it was within the scope of a fanwork archival site to host personal attacks against an individual. But it was pretty clearly implied that I deserved the harassment.

• 2022-08-16: RukminiPande: Twitter thread on her experience with harassment on AO3

  I was interviewed for this article on the A*3 and I'm glad some critical perspectives were included in the discussion.. However I do want to clarify one thing wrt to the harassment I've faced which (as far as I know) is still hosted by the site directly https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23200176/history-of-ao3-archive-of-our-own-fanfiction

  The framing may be read as nothing was done coz the site doesn't have automated systems to detect bullying or because it's run by volunteers.

  I just want to say that the A*3 was given direct proof of my harassment and wrote back saying that it was allowed under their policy.

• 2023-05-12: end-otw-racism: On needing a comprehensive harassment policy

Additional Documented History

Note that I chose to redact the specific person name in this post when using "[Person Legal Name]", but when sending the reports to AO3, I did not redact the specific name.

I became aware on Sept. 14, 2020 via Twitter that the author added a tag "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" to the Nazi fanwork and I submitted an abuse report to AO3:

Brief summary of Terms of Service Violation: JD_Riley Targeted Harassment Against a Specific Person

Hi AO3 Abuse Team,

I like to report an individual who is targeting harassment against another specific individual and respectfully ask that AO3 suspends said individual, JD_Riley, for targeted harassment against a specific individual.

As of Sept. 14, 2020 12:25 PST, JD_Riley used a tag "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic". I believe this constitutes a harassment against a specific person and it is considered unacceptable behavior under normal community standards per Terms of Service Violation.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
jane

The tag was still up when I checked on Sept. 15, 9:00 AM PDT. Later that day, I became aware that the author changed the tag to "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic" and I submitted another abuse report to AO3:

Hi AO3 Abuse Team,

I'm following up on an earlier abuse report: As of Sept. 15, 2020, 11:15 PST, JD_Riley changed and used a tag "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic" on The Liberator [....]

I believe this still constitutes a harassment against a specific person and it is considered unacceptable behavior under normal community standards per Terms of Service Violation.

I respectfully ask that AO3 suspends said individual, JD_Riley.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
jane

Note that when I tried to submit the second abuse report, I got an error message:

Sorry! We couldn't save this abuse report because: URL has already been reported. To make sure the Abuse Team can handle reports quickly and efficiently, we limit the number of times a URL can be reported.

Which I understand the intent, but when the abuse changes or continues, this process makes it difficult to follow-up. I changed the reported URL to the author's page to successfully submit.

For reference, the relevant AO3 Terms of Service I cited (emphasis mine):

Harassment is not allowed. Users engaging in this behavior may be warned, suspended, or permanently suspended as described in the general abuse procedure.

When judging whether a specific incident constitutes harassment, the team will consider factors such as whether the behavior was repeated, whether it was repeated after the offender was asked to stop, whether the behavior was targeted at a specific person, whether that target could have easily avoided encountering the behavior, whether the behavior would be considered unacceptable according to normal community standards, etc. Additionally, making complaints that are both (a) repeated and (b) baseless, particularly those targeting a specific user, can be considered harassing behavior and may be deemed a violation of the ToS.

Here is a AO3 response that I received on Sept. 16, 2020, 8:21 PDT related to the 1st abuse report sent on Sept. 14:

Hi,

The AO3 Policy & Abuse committee has received your complaint regarding material located at [...]. After investigating, we have determined that the content is not in violation of the Terms of Service.

Section IV.G. of our Terms of Service states that: "Harassment is any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target. This includes activities such as bullying and hazing by groups of people as well as personal attacks by individuals."

In this instance, the tag does not mention any one person in particular. As such, we are unable to rule the tag as harrassment.

Since the content does not otherwise violate the Terms of Service, it will not be removed from the Archive. However, if you find content that you believe contains harassing or threatening material, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additionally, please remember to not begin, engage in, or help in any way, the mass reporting of works or users. Mass reporting slows our team down and often leads to works being deleted before we can investigate them. Further attempts to mass report may be considered harassment of the Policy & Abuse team and treated accordingly.

This matter is now closed. If you have any questions, please feel free to respond directly to this email.

[...] AO3 Policy & Abuse

The response I sent back to AO3 on Sept. 16, 2020, 8:48 PDT:

Hi [AO3 Policy & Abuse],

I would like to appeal this decision. As far as I'm aware:

Sept. 14, 2020 12:25 PST: JD_Riley used a tag "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic"
Sept. 15, 2020, 11:15 PST: JD_Riley changed and used a tag "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic"

I see both tags as directed against a specific individual, created a hostile environment and constituted harassment. I hope the team [reconsider], remove the tag and suspend the user, JD_Riley.

Please see attached for screenshots of the two tags.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
- jane

How I feel: 😫😫😫 *helpless*

A follow-up response that I sent to AO3 on Sept. 17, 2020:

Hi AO3 Policy & Abuse,

I realized that I've been brief in my abuse reports which may have caused confusion so please allow me to clarify.

The specific abuse incident that I reported is:

A user, JD_Riley, retaliated against critical pushbacks of their fanwork (for centering the narrative on the redemption of Nazi characters and the romanticization thereof) by targeting harassment against a specific individual.

The user, JD_Riley, added a tag to their fanwork, "The Liberator" at [...], with the specific individual's legal name and slandered the specific individual as having "lied" about the fanwork.

The tag was "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic", and the user, JD_Riley, later changed the tag from "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" to "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic".

Both tag usages targeted harassment against a specific individual: they created a hostile and unsafe environment for the specific individual in which to participate; and they invited further targeted harassment to the specific individual.

The tags also act as a secondary targeted harassment against the community who have been rightly critical of works romanticizing Nazis: they created a hostile and unsafe environment for the community from which to participate; and they invited further targeted harassment of those individuals who have been rightly critical of such works.

I respectfully ask that AO3 Policy & Abuse:

1. Repeal their previous decision that the tag is not harassment and does not violate AO3 Terms of Service
2. Remove the tag, "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic", which is still in use as of Sept. 17, 2020
3. Suspend user JD_Riley

I also respectfully ask AO3 Policy & Abuse to review and update their harassment policies and processes to:

1. Address why the abuse investigation and decision made found such tag usages do not constitute harassment nor a violation of AO3 Terms of Service
2. Address why tags which are used to harmfully target a specific individual or community or which harmfully named a specific individual or community are not removed immediately
3. Create a better process for which to escalate abuse reports to address such abuse incidents where a user named a specific individual or community in their targeted harassment or when immediate action to reduce harm is required (for example, adding a question to the abuse report page to ask if this incident involves such and such)
4. Create a better process for which a reporter can follow-up on an abuse report when a situation escalates or meaningfully changes and AO3 Policy & Abuse has not responded to the abuse report yet

Thank you again for your time and consideration.
- jane

How I still feel: 😣😫😩 😕😕😕

On Sept. 28, 2020, I sent another follow-up on AO3:

Hi AO3 Policy & Abuse,

I just want to follow-up and check if AO3 [has] received my appeal and requests? Is there any updates or decisions?

Thank you,
- jane

There were no responses to my repeal requests and the tag, "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic", was still up when I sent this follow-up email on Sept. 28, 2020.

On Oct. 5, 2020, I received a response for my 2nd abuse report sent on Sept. 15 regarding the author changing the tag. The response is the same form email that I received for my 1st abuse report.

Hi,

The AO3 Policy & Abuse committee has received your complaint regarding material located at [....] After investigating, we have determined that the content is not in violation of the Terms of Service.

Section IV.G. of our Terms of Service states that: "Harassment is any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target. This includes activities such as bullying and hazing by groups of people as well as personal attacks by individuals."

In this instance, the tag does not mention any one person in particular. As such, we are unable to rule the tag as harrassment.

Since the content does not otherwise violate the Terms of Service, it will not be removed from the Archive. However, if you find content that you believe contains harassing or threatening material, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additionally, please remember to not begin, engage in, or help in any way, the mass reporting of works or users. Mass reporting slows our team down and often leads to works being deleted before we can investigate them. Further attempts to mass report may be considered harassment of the Policy & Abuse team and treated accordingly.

This matter is now closed. If you have any questions, please feel free to respond directly to this email.

[...] AO3 Policy & Abuse

No responses to my follow-ups for a repeal sent on Sept. 16th & 17th as of this update on Oct. 5th.

This recent incident is another example of how hate is platformed and unmoderated on AO3, and I'm reminded of the circularity of this conversation.

Of the concerns raised in 2014 in response to a Hockey RPF fanwork posted with the intent troll, harass and harm Black and other fans of color.

Of the ensuing conversation in 2016 which linked to Whitney Phillips's We’re the reason we can’t have nice things on the internet made in 2015 on online harassment:

[...] steps we need to tackle our hate-filled online culture [...]

1. Rethink the "trolling" umbrella
2. Stop incentivising problematic online behavior
3. Embrace a robust, inclusive approach to free speech
4. Demand that platforms take a side
5. Remember that you don't get to dictate the feelings of others [re: telling online harassment victims to "don't feed the trolls"]

Of this article by Film Crit Hulk in 2018, The conventional wisdom about not feeding trolls makes online abuse worse:

[Trolling] is inherently an act of satire, something that comes with real targets and real responsibility. But the core intent of trolling is the opposite: it’s not just to provoke, but to run away from the responsibility of the joke itself.

[...]

“Don’t feed the trolls” also ignores an obvious method for addressing online abuse: skilled moderation and the willingness to kick people off platforms for violating rules about abuse.

I feel like if AO3 continues without a game plan to quickly deplatform hate, then AO3 will continue to risk becoming more of a growing and unmanageable platform for white supremacy as have been witnessed on other media and fandom platforms (see again 'My Little Pony' Fans Confront Their Nazi Problem).

I feel like the problem will become more difficult and costly to solve.

As of the latest update of this post on Feb. 6, 2021, more than five months have passed, and there hasn't even been an acknowledgement of my request or follow-ups for AO3 to reassess and repeal their judgement that "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic" tag isn't a harassment or a violation of their ToS. The tag is still in use. I think AO3 has failed their community and allowed a targeted racist and harmful harassment campaign to continue. Even after all these months, the targeted racist and harmful harassment campaign continues to be scary.

On March 14, 2021, 1:38 PM PDT, I finally received a response from AO3 about my appeal which, in short, stood by their decision. AO3 goes so far as to conflate the original poster's harassment as their rights to respond to criticism, ironically, and to praise the original poster for "de-escalating" the situation by changing the tag instead of them trying to evade AO3 policies 🙃

AO3 continues to chose to not protect fans from harmful harassment and continues to maintain policies which systemically fail fans of color.

Note emphasis mine:

Hi,

We have investigated the origin of the tag "[Person Legal Name] Lied About This Fic" and have found that the tag does not qualify as harassment. A mention of a name does not threaten or imply harm to you and we do not believe that it creates a hostile environment for you on the Archive. In addition, the behavior you allege to be harassment has not been persistent. It also should be noted that it is not harassment for an author to criticize the opinions of someone who has publically commented on their work. Furthermore, we also believe the changing of the tag to "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic" represents an attempt at de-escalation and an attempt to defuse tensions surrounding the work.

Changing the Terms of Service is under the purview of the AO3 board. The process of changing the Terms of Service are detailed in the following paragraph,

"We may update the ToS as necessary. If the ToS change at any time after May 25, 2018, this is how the process will work: Changes in the ToS may be proposed at any time by or to the OTW Board. Proposed changes will be prominently disclosed on the Service, and we will offer at least a two-week comment period for proposed changes. At the end of the comment period, proposed changes will be voted on by the Board. If the Board votes in favor, the changes will become effective at that time. You can learn about changes in the ToS by visiting the Service."

Therefore, it is up to the board to decide whether or not to update the Terms of Service.

We hope this has addressed your concerns and if you have any more, please respond directly to this email.

[...]
AO3 Policy & Abuse

🔝 Back to Table of Contents

Postscript

As a postscript to this first call to action, end-otw-racism led to a lot of discussions on OTW organizational issues like in chestnut_pod's Be more democratic, be more autocratic, OTW post.

These included long-standing and institutional issues related to organizational sustainability and transparency, fiscal mismanagement, diversity and internationalization, volunteer morale & burnout, and a culture of forced positivity, retaliation and other toxic workplace practices that OTW has been grappling and trying to address for the past decade and a half with varying degrees of success and progress. See 2011 OTW Board Election & List of OTW 2011 Board Election links, unofficialotwnews's Links of 2012 OTW Discussions, 2015 OTW Board Election, otwelections-unofficial's 2015 OTW Election Links, 2016–2019 OTW Strategic Plan, 2017-2020 OTW Strategic Plan and OTW Vision Statement 2022-2025.

Many of the discussions are now a decade old, and I no longer recollected many of the details (nor did I follow every discussions), but for me, some of the most visible outcomes were the creation of strategic plans, annual detailed and public budgets, and public audited financial statements. Those weren't available prior to 2015 as I mentioned before and were possible because fans spoke up and held OTW/AO3 accountable internally and externally so that OTW/AO3 can be more transparent.

Like many have said before, if OTW expects us to trust them and for us to use and contribute to AO3, TWC, Fanlore, and other projects, then as an organization, I believe they need to show us that they are trustworthy, to establish fair and transparent processes and to follow those processes to ensure that among others (1) they can manage (and treat) fairly and properly their staff and volunteers and also their donations and (2) no volunteer is removed without fair treatment or due process.

To note, OTW has 1,010 volunteers, net assets of $2.5 millions and at least 15,810 paying members in 2021.

OTW Volunteer Management

Unfortunately, for the latter point, OTW in 2015 removed a board and staff of color without fair treatment or due process (which I've never reconciled for said reasons, but also because sanders was part of the push for strategic planning and fiscal transparency). And now, it has been revealed that OTW suspended another white volunteer without fair treatment or due process in 2022.

Here are the accounts involving workplace abuse and retaliation against a volunteer, an organization that failed to enact safety measures to protect their volunteers and staff from dealing with CSAM/CSEM reports and escalating harassment, and a committee with an outsized influence who abused their authority.

Content notes for discussions of CSAM/CSEM and brief descriptions of CSEM examples.

• 2023-05-20: chestnut_pod's Be more democratic, be more autocratic, OTW and these threads on OTW Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC): on the ratio of tickets/reports and triaging and on triaging awful things on the internet.
• 2023-05-28: stopthatimp: So, a volunteer who was the “go-to CSEM person” (something no one should ever become and which an organization should prevent you from becoming) was being increasingly traumatized while volunteering.
• 2023-05-28: synonymous: Roundup of the many exposes on the issues with AO3/OTW from discussions on key forums
• 2023-05-30: stopthatimp: ITT: the OTW doubles down on its cruelty and bullying of AO3 volunteers
• 2023-05-30: synecdochic: I have had multiple people ask me to weigh in on this week's multiple revelations about OTW and the absolute shitshow they are making of Trust & Safety on AO3 (and I have now verified with a double-digit number of volunteers that this is a true and correct copy of a statement sent to the OTW volunteer base at large)
• 2023-05-31: pearwaldorf: About the dysfunction happening in the OTW and the CSEM incident, what... should we do about this?! and On the verifiability of the volunteer whistleblowing account.
• 2023-05-31: stopthatimp: A few ideas about what can be done about the AO3 CSEM situation and You cannot structure your rules or bylaws to ensure malicious actors never gain a foothold in the organization. You’ve already been breached. But you can: Detect the rot [...] Mitigation [...] Repair...
• 2023-06-02: stopthatimp: Explainer on recent revelations regarding OTW abuse of AO3 volunteers and Conversations about said revelations
• 2023-06-17: dhobikikutti: public comment made to Legal's New Post
• 2023-06-18: 221loislane: An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations and Additional Events

OTW Fiscal Management

• For the former point, fiercynonym & manogirl had dug into OTW finance statements and discovered that OTW may have something like $2.5 millions in their budget surplus as of 2023 which is enough for five years of operating expenses and that the cost of new and upgraded servers are budgeted and much of legal services are donated (like much of OTW labor).

  To add, in their annual report for 2021, OTW reported:

  • Operating Cash: $1,388,083.98
  • Operating Reserves: $904,552.47
  • Net Assets: $2,525,177.13

  
  Looking at their budget for 2023, they transferred an additional $400,000.00 to their reserves and had an adjusted net income of $93,564.94 in 2022.

  So assuming I'm understanding correctly, OTW started 2023 with $1,481,648.92 in Operating Cash and $1,304,552.47 in Operating Reserves:

  • Operating Cash: $1,388,083.98 + $93,564.94 = $1,481,648.92
  • Operating Reserves: $904,552.47 + $400,000.00 = $1,304,552.47

  
  OTW budgeted $496,579.67 in expenses for 2023. Even with 25% budgeted for emergency expenses ($246,267.31), that still leaves them with $738,801.94 in cash.

  The OTW has talked about investing the budget surplus for paid staff and 25% of the reserves into safe investments for years, but those haven't materialized yet. The kicker is that I and many believe their cash and reserves are in a checking account because they only reported $90.42 in interests income which I'm assuming is from their certificate of deposit account with a reported $10,180.79.

  ($738,801.94 in a 12-months CD with 1% interest would earn them $7,388.02, I believe, and currently, many banks are offering 4% to 5% interest terms. And that's not touching their reserves of $1.3 millions.)

  In the meantime, OTW continues to run fundraisers and accept donations which just add additional surplus that OTW does not have concrete plans to manage. This is concerning for OTW's ability to manage their donations.

• On a follow-up thread, fiercynonym discussed an OTW transaction where OTW received a restricted donation and used the donation as a grant to contribute to Francesca Coppa's book on the history of vidding. Francesca Coppa is one of the founders of OTW.

  On this point, I highlighted this transaction not because I don't think a book on the history of vidding is not a worthy endeavor or that OTW shouldn't invest in fan history publications, but rather as one data point in the overall discussions about OTW's ability to manage donations.

  I raised questions about this transaction independently in 2020 and 2022.

  From what I understand: a non-profit organization, who had ceased operation, approached OTW with a donation wanting the money to be used for literacy and restricting it from using on fanworks. OTW then decided to use the money as a "Grant for F. Coppa book on the History of Fanvidding". The money was specifically used for "copy editing and graphic design for the book", "final proofreading and creating a table of contents for the book" and to "pay for the University of Michigan to host the fanvids referenced in the book, as well as assist in making the book free for everyone to read and use".

  My concerns related to why OTW accepted this donation at all given its restrictions, how they decided to use the donation as a grant specifically for Francesca Coppa's book and why the grant was not opened to applications. But the OTW brushed off my concerns, and I'm not sure if OTW ever internally put in place processes to ensure that grants are provided in a fair and transparent manner to avoid the appearance of the OTW being seen as the sole grant-funding organization of the OTW founders. Probably not, because they don't see the situation as a concern which is concerning.

  For reference, here are copies of the exchanges:

  jane commented: Hi [OTW Representative], Could OTW clarify on the details of the restricted donation from HP Education Fanon, Inc. and decision-making on how the donation is used?

  "We also received our first restricted donation: US$5,161.62 from HP Education Fanon, Inc., a fellow 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to promoting the benefits of reading that sadly ceased operations in 2018. The donation will go toward supporting Francesca Coppa’s book on the history of fan vidding for the University of Michigan Press, which is currently in production. The money will be used to pay for the University of Michigan to host the fanvids referenced in the book, as well as assist in making the book free for everyone to read and use."

  I have concerns based on what is stated here about why OTW accepted this donation and if the donation allocation might be a conflict of interests? Thank you for your help.

  [OTW Representative] commented: Hi Jane, Thanks for your interest. HP Education Fanon offered to make a donation to the OTW with the requirement to use the money for a specific purpose, should the OTW choose to accept. The Board of Directors agreed to accept the donation and conditions. HP Education Fanon and the OTW agreed that the money should be used to support Francesca Coppa's book on the history of fanvidding. There are no conflicts of interest involved here. The support of the fanvidding book complies with the OTW's mission to support fanworks by fans, including preserving the history of fanworks, and also HPEF's desire to use the money to support literacy. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact the Finance Committee using the form on the website (about > contact us).

  jane commented: Hi [OTW Representative], I'm following-up on reply related the Grant for F. Coppa book on the History of Fanvidding. Can you clarify why HP Education Fanon made this donation specifically to OTW and why OTW specifically chose to accept it? Why not through another avenue instead of OTW? A published book by a professional academic separate from OTW is not exactly a fanwork by a fan nor is it an article published by an acefan on TWC. While I support the endeavor, can we have more disclosure about this donation and the decision-making? This donation will contribute to the earnings the book and the professional career of F. Coppa who is a founding member of OTW. Is there no appearance of a conflict of interest? Thank you for your help. [Link to https://www.transformativeworks.org/2020-budget-update-post/]

  [OTW Representative] commented: Hello Jane Here is what Francesca Coppa passed along: "My understanding is that the HPEF (which was the Harry Potter Education Project) had to close down and in doing that, were required to donate their remaining money but did NOT want it going to fan works, ironically. They wanted it to go to something educational and I was told that they’d rejected all of the [OTW]’s other suggestions. Then the OTW pitched me and my project to HPEF—OTW knew that I was looking for funding because I wanted my book to a) host the vids that I talked about so that people could appreciate them and they wouldn’t disappear and b) be free to read to all since it was about fandom--and HPEF liked the idea. Believe me, as a founder I asked Finance like 12,000 times if there was any way that we could use this money elsewhere, and the answer was no, the donor had very specific wants. The money does support the (expensive, and non-profit funded) open source version of the book and the vid hosting therein, and the HPEF was not really the bulk of that funding either: I also got contributions from the Mellon Foundation, my college Muhlenberg, and another nonprofit fund. You can read the book and watch the vids here: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/hq37vq792 I’m a tenured full professor—like, I’ve already been promoted to the highest level and so the book isn’t for promotion nor will it earn money since it’s free to read? Though I am proud of having written it!! :D :D"

  jane commented: Hi [OTW Representative], Thank you for the reply! As a follow-up, because it's not clear here but did OTW approach HPEF for donations or...? If so, why did OTW approach HPEF for the donation? And why did they continue to approach HPEF when it's clear that HPEF did not want the money going to fan works? And why did they specifically pitch F. Coppa's project? What was the decision-making process? Why not open the grant to applications? And re: earnings & career promotion: the printed version costs $29.95? And a career includes outside & other aspects of tenures and professorship, including reputation, publishing, research, etc. Thank you for your help again.

Ending Comments

I'm not the first person to make the comparison, but on the topic of volunteer burnout, I think of Romancelandia where romance author Courtney Milan ran and became a member of the board of directors for a trade association (Romance Writers of America Board) to advocate for more diversity and inclusion in the association and industry, burned out and then later, after her tenure on the board but still a volunteer, was banned from the association for calling out a romance book for its "harmful stereotypes about Chinese women".

For contexts: Courtney Milan's Diversity & Inclusion Advocacy, Everything you need to know about the RWA’s ongoing racism controversy, The Implosion of the RWA, WTAF, RWA: Courtney Milan Banned, Suspended From RWA, A romance novelist spoke out about racism. An uproar ensued and A romance novelist accused another writer of racism. The scandal is tearing the billion-dollar industry apart for some of the coverage.

Courtney Milan spoke a lot of her experience being on a board, trying to push for more diversity and inclusion in a organization that was resistant or doesn't believe in the need for diversity and inclusion, and of the institutional white culture that retaliated against her for speaking out and led to her banning.

Everyone else's perception of the RWA matter is that it started in December. From my perspective, it started much, much earlier. I had been dealing with people from RWA complaining about me saying things for years. And it didn't really matter how nicely I tried to say it, someone would complain about the fact that I was saying it. It always turned into something. One of the reasons I stopped caring about how I said things is that I spent so long caring and I realized it makes zero difference. Somebody's gonna email and say, "Courtney should not be saying this. Please make her stop." The thing that was most damaging about this, for me, is that it felt like I had to give other people permanent residence in my head. Every time I spoke or wrote something on Twitter, I had to think, "But is this gonna make racist people mad at me?" It turns out that it's very difficult emotionally to compartmentalize.

— Courtney Milan, Romance author Courtney Milan reveals new cover, reflects on RWA implosion, 2020-08-24

My experience has been that it is not possible to write rules that prevent racism when the people charged with enforcing those rules are themselves racist [...] As long as the people running the org are not aligned with the values of anti-racism, you will not get an anti-racist organization [...] I think it’s extremely important to keep up pressure on organizations—particularly community organizations—no matter what their leadership looks like, and I am not going to call anyone involved in that fight counterproductive. All I want is for people to learn some of the lessons that I had to learn: that you can be suckered into thinking that because you set rules, that they will be followed. You can be suckered into thinking that because you set rules, that they won’t be used against you in racist ways. Mainly, if someone has already shown you who they are, believe them. // And understand that sometimes, what they have shown you is so incompatible with your values that the only solution is the door. I don’t actually know what does work because gestures it didn’t work but I do know what doesn’t, and that’s leaving racist people in charge of your anti-racism work.

— Courtney Milan, regarding end-otw-racism [Tumblr] and on her experience with RWA, 2023-06-16

The discussions stand out for me as a helpful example of when to decide (individually and/or collectively) an organization or effort is a lost cause and when investing more in said organization or effort is doing more harm than good (personally and/or collectively).

end-otw-racism has also made a timely and apt post that shares some of the above same sentiments but from the point of view that changes are still possible albeit by putting pressure from the outside:

Why would the only avenue for change that is acceptable be to put ourselves in harm’s way to do labor to fix something we did not cause in a space where we would be only 5 new voices within an existing entrenched organizational culture of nearly 1000 people? Where is the responsibility of the people who actually do have the power to fix things right now?

And for us to do this all for an organization that has demonstrated a repeated unwillingness to change?

[..] When the OTW has demonstrated actual concrete actions towards change, hired the people they have promised to hire, communicated transparently with their user base about the scale and content of the proposed changes, provided evidence of protections for volunteers from known past toxicity and clearly identified what kind of volunteers they need, in what capacity, and with specific skillsets, then sure, maybe some of us involved out here may feel motivated to jump in and work for that change. We don’t object to laboring to improve a space we love, we object to doing it fruitlessly.

However, all of the problems we have listed are characteristic of white supremacy culture in orgs: power hoarding, lack of transparency, defensiveness, believing there’s only one right way, a culture of overwork, the idea that you as an individual could be responsible for the failure of the org because it is under constant threat.

In order for any of us to feel safe in actually participating within the organization, the OTW has to make the first step to improving itself by addressing their internal structural issues. It can be painful to bring these issues into the light, but it’s the only way for the OTW to move forward in a positive direction.

But for those who are looking for a backup to AO3:

• melannen: How To Make Your Own Fanfiction Archive, In Just 10 Easy Steps
• satsuma: posting, sharing, and saving fic outside of Ao3
• thedeadparrot: AO3 Backup-to-Website (see thread)

(And for Fanfiction.net: FicHub & WebToEpub)

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On Navigating This Post and Comments and Beyond

In my first note on navigating conversations on anti-Blackness and racism, I noted how sometimes conversations about anti-Blackness and racism are intended for ourselves, how sometimes these conversations are not kind and how we may have different approaches and goals. In my second note, I noted how these conversations are complex and can often be very fraught. In this third note, well, I just mainly want to note that this post and comments have become more complicated and fraught as more conversations are documented so thread carefully and take care.

The two comments I recently received from one commenter critiquing this post are fair. The comments helped and pushed me to move past my discomfort and to reflect, clarify, articulate and own my thoughts. I froze the comment thread in question because the commenter indicated wanting to disengage from the conversation (also fair!), and I don't want to add any potential responses from those uninvolved to the thread. (I always find these aspects of social media conversations so awkward lol)

On that note, please do not weaponize this post, what I've said, contextualized or editorialized, against other BIPOC fans or contribute to an environment of online abuse that we all faced as BIPOC fans. These conversations have real consequences on our lives and well-being.

I think as fans and as users of social media, we are all savvy to a certain degree on how to moderate and curate our personal spaces, but if you haven't already, check out Online Safety Guide and Online Harassment Field Manual, both are written for gamers and for writers, journalists, artists, and activists who identify as women, BIPOC, and/or LGBTQIA+ in mind, but I think are also helpful for us in fandom as well. I read pieces of them before, but explored more given the relevancy and found these sections particularly helpful: Defining “Online Abuse”: A Glossary of Terms, Best Practices for Allies and Bystanders, Guidelines for Safely Practicing Counterspeech and Fight Back/Write Back.

Beyond This Post

The other thing I want to note is that one of the other reasons I started this post was because I wanted to document the conversations happening around me (from my perspective) in this period in time and in my tiny corner of fandom. But, of course, it's just one tiny corner of fandom, and the post doesn't even capture all the conversations and the multiple ways we BIPOC fans in this one tiny corner of fandom have worked to make fandom and our communities more diverse and anti-racist. I also haven't add anything particular new, and really, this post type and format are also not new either. Rather as SamiraNadkarni said, I am only echoing other BIPOC fans and their work, restating them, forcibly reinscribing them as best as I can, and ascribing them as best as I can.

Here I'll share some of those works beyond this post that particularly influenced me personally (not exhaustive or comprehensive):

I have linked at the start of this post a Racism 101 list I made in 2009 rounding up some of the resources and meta that I found helpful at that time for navigating racism in fandom and conversations of. One of the links is zvi's Pro-Character of Color/Anti-Racism Guide made circa LiveJournal 2007 to newbieguide. Most of the communities and links are inactive now or migrated to Dreamwidth or other platforms, but the guide captured the breadth, scope and multitude of anti-racist work shaping our corner of fandom at the time and continuing to shape us.

There was also actually another Great Cultural Appropriation Debate in 2006 and continued in 2007 that preluded and shaped RaceFail 2009: Cultural appropriation link roundup, Wiscon - Cultural Appropriation panel, Cultural appropriation, pt. 2, Wiscon 31: Cultural Appropriation Revisited Part One and Wiscon 31: Cultural Appropriation Revisited Part Two.

And following these discussions were:

• ibarw and International Blog Against Racism Week started in 2006 by a group of BIPOC fans and allies and continued by oyceter to 2009 where we were encouraged to "post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc." The carnival was followed by POC in SF Carnival started by willow in 2007 and Asian Women's Blog Carnival by ciderpress in 2009 among others.

• racebending established in March 2009 in response to the Avatar: the Last Airbender's whitedwashed casting in 2008. They hosted a series of "Super Asian America" and other panels dedicated to Asian American representation in the media at various conventions from 2011 to 2020. Some recordings that are still online from SDCC 2017, NYCC 2019 and SDCC at Home 2020, and some Web Archive versions of racebending's blog posts of the panels (the first two posts don't have transcripts but I believe most others do): SDCC 2011, SDCC 2012, SDCC 2013, SDCC 2015, WonderCon 2016 and SDCC 2017.

• dark_agenda established by dhobikikutti in October 2009 with the Diversity in Yuletide 2009 Challenge and continued to 2011 as "a place to offer resources in order to increase the representation of international, non-English and non-Western fandoms in multi-fandom fanwork exchanges and festivals, as well as promote the responsible portrayal of characters of colo(u)r". The community posted in 2011 a small list of communities dedicated to promoting racial and cultural diversity, representation and discussion in fandom (among others). (Note that I was one of the moderators and also why the community is now inactive lol 🫣)

• wocinsolidarity established by Aiesha, Attanya and Jennifer in 2013 and continued to 2018 as a safe space and living archive for anyone who identifies as a Woman of Color. Not strictly a fandom Tumblr, but the community linked and reblogged discussions about BIPOC representation in the media as well as promote BIPOC works. The community posted a list of PoC Tumblr Recs! in 2013 which included a few fandom Tumblrs.

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Revisions

Last Updated:

• 7/17/23, 8/1/23: Updated links for 221loislane's An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations and Additional Events and end-otw-racism's 2023 Board Candidates with clarifications; linked to OTW 2023 Candidate Chats and Q&A Roundup, elf's spreadsheet of the candidate biographies, platforms and Q&As, synonymous's OTW Elections 2023, and my personal thoughts and observations on OTW Election 2023; and minor edits for clarity and contextualization.

• 7/10/23 to 7/11/23: Linked to sl-walker's Conversations with OTW Candidate Anh P. and how to support independent archives and pumpkinpaix's Regarding #EndOTWRacism’s summaries of 2023 OTW Board election candidate positions.

• 7/4/23 to 7/9/23: Linked to endotwracism@federatedfandom.net; rewritten and added to some part of Navigating Conversations on Racism Redux for more clarity and contextualization; added and updated a section on navigating this post and comments and beyond; updated End OTW Racism's Second Call to Action; added willow_dot_com as another blog for Willow and credited POC in SF Carnival to her as organizer; and updated both the rough timeline visualization and table of selected events.

• 6/29/23 to 7/1/23: Linked to Tema Okun's White Supremacy Culture, victimhood's How to be antiracist in fandom, and other spaces: identifying white supremacy culture and stepping away from it re: the previous article, Brainstorming for a more inclusive OTW, Sinophobia and racism in OTW 2022 Election, OTW Board Meeting Minutes for 1-3 November, 2013, 2016 Budget and other information from the OTW Board, On strategic planning and web archive of sanders's account of being removed from OTW for more contexts of discussions on fandom racism, OTW volunteer/fiscal management and election; added teland's meta on the Marginalization of Black characters in 2006, zvi's on Harry Potter Community Using a Racist Term for a Monthly Theme in 2007 and bossymarmalade's on The Supernatural J2 Haiti Fic in 2010 (which were referenced in snarlfurillo's This Meta Is Awful Thread) to rough timeline visualization/table; also linked to Voting in an OTW Election: A Smallish Guide, fans' push for better publicity of OTW board meetings, runpunkrun's How to Find and Attend OTW Board Meetings, end-otw-racism's OTW Board Meeting Explainer & Questions for the OTW Board of Directors; changed embedded screenshots to links for my abuse reports for the Omegaverse Antisemitism & Racist Harassment; and reworded and added to some parts of OTW/AO3 & racism, End OTW Racism, the greater convergence of conversations about race/racism, antisemitism, fandom and OTW/AO3 😳, Omegaverse Antisemitism & Racist Harassment and Postscript sections for clarity and contextualization.

• 6/22/23: Added sections for #Vote to End OTW Racism and on navigating conversations on racism redux; updated both the rough timeline visualization and table of selected events; updated Postscript to link to Romance author Courtney Milan reveals new cover, reflects on RWA implosion, The Implosion of the RWA and courtneymilan's Twitter thread regarding end-otw-racism [Tumblr] and on her experience with RWA, dhobikikutti's public comment made to Legal's New Post & 221loislane's An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations.

• 6/13/23: Linked to a current volunteer of color's Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works and comment in OTW's update about the appointments of Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO). See On OTW/AO3 & racism, End OTW Racism and On OTW's inactions in addressing racism and anti-Blackness.

• 6/12/23: Reworded "...as community builders, community moderators, content creators and content consumers" to "...as fans, community builders, community moderators, fannish creatives and voices" for the lack of better words and given recent conversations; directly attributed A Timeline of RaceFail 2009 to Willow in her memorial; linked to OTW's An Update from the OTW Board and Chairs; and added that OTW has at least 15,810 paying members.

• 06/09/23: Linked to stopthatimp's brief summary of 2015 OTW Election, events leading up to it and after.

• 06/06/23: Linked to end-otw-racism's response to the question of "wouldn’t it make sense to channel some of this energy into volunteering with the OTW and implementing the changes being called for?"; pulled quotes from end-otw-racism's posts; noted that OTW has 1,010 volunteers and net assets of $2.5 millions in 2021; reworded and added to some parts of End OTW Racism and Postscript sections for clarity and contextualization.

• 06/05/23: Added some calculations on OTW finances from their Annual Report for 2021 and Budget for 2023 to the Postscript.

• 06/04/23: Added and expanded a section on End OTW Racism and a Postscript section on OTW volunteer & financial managements.

• 05/11/23 to 5/14/23: Linked to fiercynonym's Twitter thread on AO3 structural racism and on AO3 racism discussions, biheretic's Twitter thread on antiracist policies, and end-otw-racism's A Call To Action, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Social Media Toolkit for #EndOTWRacism, On needing a comprehensive harassment policy and Timeline of OTW Hiring of a Diversity Consultant (no diversity consultant has been hired yet); updated OTW's Inactions in Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness and a rough timeline visualization of selected events; and updated link and description to Pod_Together Characters of Color Love.

• 02/12/23: Linked to fiercynonym's for folks who are planning to give otw feedback on their inaction on racism, here are some questions that you might consider posing to them... 🧵 which is compiled in this post, Questions for the OTW; and added to OTW's Inactions in Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness:

  Two and a half year later on January 2023 during an open board meeting, OTW Board noted that the Diversity Consultant Research Officer is in the early stage of researching for diversity consultants and "coming up with a roadmap for the project" which "is expected to require less than 5 years, if no meaningful difficulties arise" for the hiring of a diversity consultant to complete. No second Diversity Consultant Research Officer appointed yet. See runpunkrun's meeting notes and other discussions of the meeting.

  Shortly following this meeting, fans again requested for "regular progress reports on the organization's work making its platforms a more welcoming space for BIPOC fans" but OTW haven't provided any specific updates on any structural changes in development "specifically meant to combat racism in the organization and on its platforms"

• 11/5/22: Updated table for the a rough timeline visualization of selected events; the visualization is not updated.

• 10/16/22: Very minor additions to OTW's Inactions in Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness.

• 10/14/22: Added a section re-summarizing and tracking OTW's Inactions in Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness; re-arranged the order of some sections and slightly re-formatted some of those sections as well.

• 11/07/21: On a sadder note, added news of Willow's passing on September 7, 2021 to the RaceFail 2009 section. Willow wrote an Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear. Her journals and writings can be found at Seeking Avalon, the_willow and willow. Rest in Peace.

  Linked to OTW's response stating that they will not posted any anti-racism development updates until things are finalized; edited intros for the OTW/AO3 & racism to include brief summary of 2020 section and for the Omegaverse Antisemitism & Racist Harassment section to include the latest revelation that AO3 allowed the tagging of real names as a harassment tool; reformatted the section on 2016 conversation about race a little bit, etc.

• 10/24/21: Added a rough timeline visualization of selected events to put some of the conversations and events in contexts.

• 10/23/21: Linked to rukminipande's Twitter thread on the characterization that AO3 anti-Blackness conversations are “US/Western-centric” instead of acknowledging anti-Blackness is transnational; SamiraNadkarni's Twitter thread on the OTW Board's Q&A that AO3 anti-racism conversations are from "outside groups" instead of from the community and fellow fans; fiercynonym's Twitter thread on the claim of "the precarity of the fannish experience is why we can’t act on racism"

• 10/22/21: Linked to stitchmediamix's Over A Year After the OTW/AO3’s Statement of Solidarity: Where Are We With That Anti Racism?; runpunkrun's chronicle of her effort to "get a public update from the OTW on their development of anti-racist policies for AO3"; RukminiPande's Twitter Thread on AO3's failure to protect her from harassment; buttonthemdown's Twitter thread & SamiraNadkarni's Twitter thread responding to the renewed argument that enforcing any additional warning on AO3 for racism is trauma work; fiercynonym's Twitter threads on how hiring racial justice consultants can help OTW's internal culture and OTW’s “external” work and on racism and anti-racism in fandom; An archive of whose own? White feminism and racial justice in fan fiction’s digital infrastructure.

• 03/16/21: Linked to An Introduction to Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings which diversehighfantasy referenced in several conversations; and added the response from AO3 about my appeal re: Nazi fic 5-6 months ago. In short, AO3 stood by their decision, going so far as conflating the original poster's harassment as their rights to respond to criticism, ironically, and praising the original poster for "de-escalating" the situation by changing the tag instead of them trying to evade AO3 policies 🙃

• 02/6/21: Linked to stitchmediamix's Let’s talk about racism in The Archive – again; added a section on On addressing racism and linked to f3discord's work to hold white creators, who previously claimed to be allies, accountable for platforming a racist work on their podcast; and added a note to the Nazi fic section:

  As of the latest update of this post on Feb. 6, 2021, more than five months have passed, and there hasn't even been an acknowledgement of my request or follow-ups for AO3 to reassess and repeal their judgement that "That “Fandom Scholar” Lied About This Fic" tag isn't a harassment or a violation of their ToS. The tag is still in use. I think AO3 has failed their community and allowed a targeted racist and harmful harassment campaign to continue. Even after all these months, the targeted racist and harmful harassment campaign continues to be scary.

• 10/5/20: Added AO3 form response to my 2nd abuse report re: Nazi fanwork (no responses yet to my repeal requests); minor formatting edits such making the title "race/racism, antisemitism, fandom and OTW/AO3" consistent in table of content, cut text and section title instead of not, oops)

• 9/28/20: Linked to "We’re the reason we can’t have nice things on the internet" directly (an article on online harassment that was originally linked in ao3 & censorship); updated and added to the greater convergence of conversations about antisemitism, racism and OTW/AO3; and added a table of contents

• 9/17-9/18/20: Added a section on the greater convergence of conversations about antisemitism, racism and OTW/AO3; moved around some sections and fixed some broken Tumblr links which are now locked to Tumblr users

• 9/2/20: Re-embedded links from pod_together's quote that was removed from cut and paste and added links to specific section of this post where referenced.

• 9/1/20: linked to Challenging Fandom Racism Roundtable, Trials by Whiteness: Definitions of Whiteness and Eurocentrism, and Their Relevance Post-RaceFail and stopthatimp's 6/13 Twitter thread; and added a section on the fandom culture and paradigm shifts that we've been witnessing.

• 7/22/20: added a section on OTW Election 2020 & linked to aka_spacedog's 7/2 twitter thread

• 6/30/20: linked to confirmation that the Open Letter has been emailed to OTW

• 6/29/20: linked to (a) pod_together's 2020 Pod-Together Content Moderation Rules as an example of a policy to moderate racist fanworks, (b) Tumblr thread "Black fans are already being exposed to racist..." and (c) 'My Little Pony' Fans Confront Their Nazi Problem as a record of references

• 6/28/20: linked to (a) lierdumoa's 5/14 What do we want? Blocking and blacklisting functions! When do we want them? NOW!, (b) sf_boswell's 6/25 Twitter thread, and (c) content notes for the comments of OTW's 6/24 statement.

• 6/26/20: linked to (a) a 2015 post re: OTW finance for receipts/contexts, (b) DHF's 6/24 Tumblr crosspost, and (c) new section on a greater convergence of conversations about race/racism, fandom and OTW/AO3

• 6/25/20: added OTW's 6/24 statement and the responses thereof; added a brief intro re: 2016 conversation about race and a not-so-brief intro re: OTW/AO3 & racism

• 6/19/20: linked to (a) SamiraNadkarni's 6/17 Twitter thread, (b) a fandom-wide Open Letter and (c) rukminipande's RaceFail 2009 summary

• 6/16/20: linked to (a) rukminipande & stitchmediamix's follow-up 6/16 tweet, (b) anti-racist changes to the AO3 Platform, and (c) three AO3-related Twitter threads from rukminipande from 2016, 2017 & 2019; and added relevant quotes to some of the links

• 6/15/20: added additional links on AO3 & racism from 2016 and combined the two AO3 sections together

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