I agree with most of this very much, but I think Making the story visible in spaces where one expects members of the oppressed group to be part of the audience, and where reinforcing *isms won't be tolerated. is not always a good idea.
I think it's important to write on the assumption that the people who might most plausibly be hurt or offended by your story are going to read it, certainly you should never assume they won't.
But the thing with, say, chromatic_fanfic is that one reason it's so popular with non-white/POC fans is that it's an escape from the usual racism of regular fandom. To go to a place like that and be confronted with a well meaning but inadvertently racist story would I imagine be much worse than encountering it at random, and "helping white writers be less racist" is I assume something they support in principle but not very high on their list of priorities.
Which is not to say people outside the relevant group should never post to those comms, but I think they should only do so with works they are particularly sure aren't problematic.
I recently participated in the Racebending revenge challenge and being aware of how POC-centered the comm and challenge are did make me hold myself to a higher standard: but that also meant allowing myself the option of not posting my work as part of the challenge if I wasn't sure it wasn't going to hurt people. And if that had happened but it wasn't irredeemably bad I might plausibly have still put the comic online somewhere else with a "this is a bit problematic" disclaimer.
(I should add: this is all based on my experiences on the side of privilege plus some imaginings based on how I'd feel if there was a comm for works about disabled characters (which, alas, there is not). So I could be utterly wrong :))
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Date: 2010-07-05 04:39 am (UTC)I agree with most of this very much, but I think Making the story visible in spaces where one expects members of the oppressed group to be part of the audience, and where reinforcing *isms won't be tolerated. is not always a good idea.
I think it's important to write on the assumption that the people who might most plausibly be hurt or offended by your story are going to read it, certainly you should never assume they won't.
But the thing with, say, chromatic_fanfic is that one reason it's so popular with non-white/POC fans is that it's an escape from the usual racism of regular fandom. To go to a place like that and be confronted with a well meaning but inadvertently racist story would I imagine be much worse than encountering it at random, and "helping white writers be less racist" is I assume something they support in principle but not very high on their list of priorities.
Which is not to say people outside the relevant group should never post to those comms, but I think they should only do so with works they are particularly sure aren't problematic.
I recently participated in the Racebending revenge challenge and being aware of how POC-centered the comm and challenge are did make me hold myself to a higher standard: but that also meant allowing myself the option of not posting my work as part of the challenge if I wasn't sure it wasn't going to hurt people. And if that had happened but it wasn't irredeemably bad I might plausibly have still put the comic online somewhere else with a "this is a bit problematic" disclaimer.
(I should add: this is all based on my experiences on the side of privilege plus some imaginings based on how I'd feel if there was a comm for works about disabled characters (which, alas, there is not). So I could be utterly wrong :))