What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Weaponized White Womanhood

Meta
Title:	What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Weaponized White Womanhood
Creator:	Stitch
Date(s):	January 22, 2020
Medium:	Posted to Stitch's Media Mix
Fandom:	Pan-Fandom
Topic:	Racism in Fandom
External Links:	https://stitchmediamix.com/2020/01/22/weaponized-white-womanhood/
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What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Weaponized White Womanhood is a 2020 essay posted to Stitch's Media Mix by Stitch, part of the What Fandom Racism Looks Like series of meta essays on racism in fandom.

Some Key Quotes

A content note preceding the essay:

Content notes: As with a majority of my pieces, this one focuses closely on antiblackness including the antiblackness inherent in weaponizing white womanhood to excuse dogpiling and slandering John Boyega as a misogynist, as a potential sexual predator, as a bunch of other gross and untrue things. I talk briefly about some examples of Rey/Kylo fics from the fandom’s past including non-graphic (I believe) mentions of sexual assault and include links to a recap of one and an image of the other.

From the introduction to the essay:

White women are the image of the typical “fan” in Western transformative fandom spaces.

They are frequently the most popular Big Named Fans (BNFs) in online spaces, the people who dominate discussions about and displays of Being A Fan. If you’re in transformative fandom and you see a particular set of headcanons or a white dude slash suddenly get supremely popular out of nowhere, chances are that a group of white lady BNFs are behind it.

White women in fandom often get to “graduate” from fandom, dominating what we and outsiders think about transformative with staff writer, researcher, and professor jobs that they can tie directly into their experiences and time in fandom.

On Star Wars fandom and John Boyega:

Or how about one of the most outright upsetting ways I’ve seen it used so far: in Kylo/Rey fans weaponizing white womanhood – theirs, Daisy’s, Rey’s, their friends’ – in order to purposefully paint John Boyega as a misogynist, a potential sex pest, etc. –

All primarily because he dunked on their ship.

Oh, and because these women have never liked him or the character he played.

On the desire of white fans to "return to the past":

#NotAllWhiteWomen, but it is an unfortunate fact of fandom that many white women in transformative fandom aren’t comfortable with the fact that they can no longer effectively silence dissent the way it worked in the good ole days of Livejournal.

When fans of color talk about the racism in transformative fandom that they experience and witness, an overwhelming majority of the people who see it and take offense – subtweeting or even engaging negatively rather than addressing the issue and learning – are white women.

Mention of Jenny Nicholson

The essay contains a brief mention of Jenny Nicholson in relation to her comments about Rey being an "incel":

Not repeated insistence that Rey is an incel from Jenny Nicholson – in her video, a comment she replied to about it, and then on twitter.

(If John making a single sex joke is so wrong because The Rise of Skywalker is a children’s movie an children’s properties shouldn’t ever be sullied – which is why Jenny claims is why she’s so upset about John’s “lay the pipes” comment despite her hand in the kid (un)friendly My Little Pony Abridged series Friendship Is Witchcraft… what’s that, then?)

In March 2021, Stitch added a note to the top of the post, which appears to respond to fans linking the essay in discussions about Jenny Nicholson and racism:

Note 3/31/21: Are you here because you googled “Jenny Nicholson racist”? Did a Twitter user link this to you to explain why ~people~ don’t like Jenny in the replies to a tweet calling out a breadtube user? Let me clarify a thing for you:

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT JENNY AND IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT SHE MAY OR MAY NOT SHIP. She’s mentioned in one segment in the article and over like 4-7 tweets (out of over 100) in the supplemental PDF/thread. It is literally not about her or about my beef with what other people ship in the Star Wars fandom but about white women and BIPOC who ship Rey/Kylo who tried to say John Boyega was a danger to Daisy Ridley over an IG comment about REY. Please learn to read and think critically and then GO AWAY. Thanks!

Responses

Interesting read. I feel like it all makes sense now. It is their anti blackness and subtle acts of racism that lead to this. White women lead the fandom packs and send their followers in a flurry at their calls. It’s present in many many fandoms. I’m not involved with Star Wars or Reylo, but everything matches up in my fandom. This article will stick with me. John didn’t deserve to be dragged over what he posted. They already had a problem with him.

“Now how about the white women who flailed and wailed their way through Racefail 09? Where are they? Are they still in fandom? Are they published yet? Are they thriving?”

They helped to made Ao3, wrote dissertations about how caring about fans of color ruins their fun time, and harassed black actors and fans from 2009 through 2019. They just traded “orcs” for “antis” and kept it moving. They learned how to circle the wagons and present themselves as victims while asserting their control over fandom spaces. They made it a mission to make these spaces intolerable for black fans. They thought appealing to white supremacists was better than dealing with black folks who didn’t like their ships.

Anyways, stellar bit of writing here. I followed you for years and was there for all of it, including Racefail09. You hit the nail on the head.

[Strawberry]

I sympathize with your writing in general. But
1. I don’t think that joke should be taken as ‘light’. A ‘female character’ is not just a character. They are discriminated against and insulted like real women. And the views of ‘men in patriarchy’ dealing with the female character affect everyone. ‘it’s light, it’s okay’ It is not okay. end up tolerating even more.
2. I am asian, I am a woman, and I liked finrose and reylo. And in the process, I’ve seen fans who love reyfin, and some of fans’ claims are amazing: ‘Rose sexual harassment Finn.’ ‘Anyone who doesn’t shipped reyfin is racist.’ (Very often they seemed to forget Rose’s presence. She even kissed Finn!) I don’t know the race of accounts. I don’t even want to know. Every time I read that comment, I felt like I was being cut off.
I like Rey the most but I become more sensitive to Rose/KMT issues (plus I don’t like Adam Driver). It felt like my place in this series was gone when she was insulted by fans. All the fans I know were women and Asian (most of them left Star Wars after TROS). They all value Rose and KMT very much. Her presence was especially valuable at a time when pop culture, especially the cinema, was “westernized” in asia. Besides, her place is the very famous series in world! anyway, That is not to say that anything is more wrong. People all see cases in their own places. You wrote from your point of view. That’s why I’m writing comments too. and
I want you and all the other women to be safe.

[Stitch]

So I do appreciate your comment and I will respond to you as graciously as you did to me. 1 – the thing is that I think that people are ignoring how while the joke isn’t great (Because it’s not a good joke, it’s just mild) the response to it was to immediately frame John as a sex pest and potential abuser. It should be treated similarly to how we talk about other actors who make uncomfortable jokes BUT it was very disturbing to me how people were going above and beyond to make John into a potential abuser including sharing faked receipts of harm he supposedly did.

We’ve talked about jokes like this from white dudes (Sebastian Stan made an uncomfortable joke about Shuri a few years back and got torn to shreds for it and so did Chris Evans and then dudes playing Clint when they trashed Natasha. It just became complicated because the valid criticism was bound up with antiblackness.)

2 – you know what, you’re absolutely right. Aboit all of this. There are people who said outright that not shipping rey/Finn was racist and they said really bad things about Rose (when they remembered her). And that’s not right. Like it’s actively and actually wrong and it is something that shouldn’t have happened. Expressing our discomforts shouldn’t happen without demonizing others and it’s hard for people to remember that.

I no longer share the Rose post because I recognize that it is my discomfort… with the fandom that was harassing me in her name, with the way Finn was treated. It is deeply clearly personal to me, but that doesn’t mean that it should be taken as the singular point of view on Rose (or even close to it).

In the years since, I rethought my rigid position. I thought about what Finn means to me and reminded myself that I do know what Rose means to Asian women like you. Especially in the face of how tros absolutely did not treat Kelly well and minimized Rose to this point where she didn’t get to be onscreen and a hero on a larger scale like she deserved.

That’s why I was able to speak from the heart and honestly engage with KMT in our interview: because I have taken the time to rethink and evolve.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me and trusting me with them. I am always trying to be better and to support people as best as I can and reminders when I’m not quite doing that or could be better, are always very welcome.

fandom is a safe space for queer women = fandom is a safe space for queer WHITE women
Loaded statement. Women are constantly policed about the queer fan works that they create and enjoy, both within transformative fandom and from outsiders. I’m only bringing this up because adding queerness to a discussion about race and gender means even more care and evidence needs to be evaluated and presented.

To boil it down, I’m not sure I agree transformative fan spaces are safe for queer women. Making a note of that fact is important to building trust in an argument about hierarchical dynamics in social spaces. Building trust is an important tool in both informative and persuasive arguments. I’m not sure what she’s going for on that front just yet. But I’m mostly nitpicking right now - fandom meta doesn’t always have a strong thesis, but it can still be valuable writing all the same.

She then talks about a viral tweet about how shipping not shipping Reylo means one is anti woman:

She’s not talking to queer women with no interest in dudes and therefore limited interest in Kylo Ren. She’s not talking to women of color frustrated with the racism in the fandom. She’s not seeing us as women – except to tell us that we’re bad at womanhood and sisterhood because we might not like Kylo Ren/Rey together
I’d maybe reword this some since there are many queer and people of color who like Reylo and Kylo, but I don’t disagree with her overall point here.

Whiteness is seen as a neutral state rather than a heavily politicized racial identity in and of itself and, as a result, so is white womanhood in transformative fandom spaces.

This is both obvious and needs to be said over and over again because of this blanket denial of racism. It’s extremely frustrating that this basic point needs to be made over and over and I do want to state I appreciate how maddening it can be. I honestly wish she went harder here - some more pathos about the impact of needing to keep saying this over and over would strengthen the argument here. But it’s also asking a lot, so it’s less of a ‘do more’ and more ‘don’t undersell your feelings, although I understand why it might not be worth it to expose yourself in that way.’

I’m POC and I’m so fucking tired of being told what to ship. And yes, I ship Reylo. Neutral on Boyega and Finn. Love Rose. Meh on Poe.