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Race and ethnicity in fandom, and actually, real life as well
This is a neat wrap-up of the miscegenation wank.
I... don't know what to say about this. Because yes, it is wanky, wanky in the extreme, and offensive as all hell that white people having sex with people who aren't white is being equated with bestiality. But more and more, lately, I wonder where I exist in fandom. I'm a woman, and there are lots of fannish women and lots of women in the canonical media - yes, we can have the perennial debate about the lack of strong women as role models, but they do exist: Buffy Summers, Kara Thrace, Sam Carter, Hermione Granger, Martha Jones.
I'm queer, too. I'm less and less certain of what that means in my case, but there are also many, many queer fannish people, and lots of those are queer women, and even in the canonical media, there are (some) queer characters: Willow Rosenberg, Jack Harkness, Oliver Welles.
And, of course, there are non-white people. Martha, again, and Mickey Smith, and Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Zoe Washburne, and this time there actually are lots. But... you know. I'm not black, or "of African descent". Technically I'm a "person of colour", but that's not terminology I've ever used to identify myself. I'm Asian. I'm Indian. In all my time in fandom, I've only ever met two other fannish Indian people, and one of them I knew for many years before I ever found out she was fannish. And where are Indian people in fannish media? There, er, aren't any. I always used to think it was because I was in the wrong fandoms, or moved in the wrong circles, but now I'm beginning to think no, there just aren't any. (Actually, no, I'm wrong: Parvati and Padma Patil, of course, are probably Indian, and Hindus. But they're hardly main characters, and what, just one example?)
And why is this? I honestly don't have any idea. It's not like there aren't many Indians in the world - one in six people is Indian, which is a statistic I use a lot, but is nevertheless still true - and it's not like there aren't Indians(/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis) in Britain and America. There are millions of them. So I kind of, you know, don't get it. And that's without even starting on the huge and enormous levels of ignorance about my ethnicity, race and culture that just persist.
(Briefly: yes, I'm Indian. No, that doesn't mean I have to be a Muslim. I'm a Hindu. A Hindu is a person. Hinduism is a religion. Hindi is a language. Yes, I speak it. No, not because I'm a Hindu. No, I don't worship cows. Or even elephant-headed gods. At least, not all the time. I don't and will not eat beef. And "Om" is pronounced "Ohhhhhhhhm". Like the O in "open". Thank you for listening.)
And maybe that ignorance persists because of the lack of portrayal in the media? It's just a thought. And the other thing I worry about, quite a lot nowadays, is that I can't find anyone else like me. There are Indian women who are not like me, like my various female cousins, who are all about the Bollywood movies and hang out with other Indians and speak their own polyglot. I never did that - I never really look at people's skin colour, and maybe I should, sometimes - and I've never found another Indian person who makes friends in the haphazard, shared-geeky-interest way that I do, and it's horrible to say, but I've never met another Indian woman who's at all politically aware, nor one who's a feminist, nor who's self-consciously trying to find her cultural identity. I don't know where women like that hang out; I thought, once, that if I tried the Oxford Indian and Hindu societies I might find them, but I went there and never did. I wish I knew where they hang out, because I blindly refuse to believe they don't exist.
Sigh. All right. So much babble for this brief point I was trying to make. I should go to bed - I have to take my driving theory test again in the morning, and it's been a long day of customers thinking I'm stupid. Apparently, by looking at me, people assume I don't know the difference between an author and an editor, and neither do I understand that a hardback Bible is, um... a Bible in hard covers. And they assume I'm an "assistant" (at the moment only two people are running the shop, and yes, my work-mate technically outranks me, but... urgh. People assume.) Whether this is because my work-mate is male, or because he's white, I don't know, and sometimes you get tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt and just want to call them on their despicable, ignorant shit.
Today is one of those days where I'm tired of ticking all the "minority" boxes. Yuck.
In other, happier news, I seem to have written another Slings & Arrows fic, quite unrelated to the ficathon. Er, yay? I wanted to edit it tonight, but I'm too tired and pissed off. Bedtime.
I... don't know what to say about this. Because yes, it is wanky, wanky in the extreme, and offensive as all hell that white people having sex with people who aren't white is being equated with bestiality. But more and more, lately, I wonder where I exist in fandom. I'm a woman, and there are lots of fannish women and lots of women in the canonical media - yes, we can have the perennial debate about the lack of strong women as role models, but they do exist: Buffy Summers, Kara Thrace, Sam Carter, Hermione Granger, Martha Jones.
I'm queer, too. I'm less and less certain of what that means in my case, but there are also many, many queer fannish people, and lots of those are queer women, and even in the canonical media, there are (some) queer characters: Willow Rosenberg, Jack Harkness, Oliver Welles.
And, of course, there are non-white people. Martha, again, and Mickey Smith, and Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Zoe Washburne, and this time there actually are lots. But... you know. I'm not black, or "of African descent". Technically I'm a "person of colour", but that's not terminology I've ever used to identify myself. I'm Asian. I'm Indian. In all my time in fandom, I've only ever met two other fannish Indian people, and one of them I knew for many years before I ever found out she was fannish. And where are Indian people in fannish media? There, er, aren't any. I always used to think it was because I was in the wrong fandoms, or moved in the wrong circles, but now I'm beginning to think no, there just aren't any. (Actually, no, I'm wrong: Parvati and Padma Patil, of course, are probably Indian, and Hindus. But they're hardly main characters, and what, just one example?)
And why is this? I honestly don't have any idea. It's not like there aren't many Indians in the world - one in six people is Indian, which is a statistic I use a lot, but is nevertheless still true - and it's not like there aren't Indians(/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis) in Britain and America. There are millions of them. So I kind of, you know, don't get it. And that's without even starting on the huge and enormous levels of ignorance about my ethnicity, race and culture that just persist.
(Briefly: yes, I'm Indian. No, that doesn't mean I have to be a Muslim. I'm a Hindu. A Hindu is a person. Hinduism is a religion. Hindi is a language. Yes, I speak it. No, not because I'm a Hindu. No, I don't worship cows. Or even elephant-headed gods. At least, not all the time. I don't and will not eat beef. And "Om" is pronounced "Ohhhhhhhhm". Like the O in "open". Thank you for listening.)
And maybe that ignorance persists because of the lack of portrayal in the media? It's just a thought. And the other thing I worry about, quite a lot nowadays, is that I can't find anyone else like me. There are Indian women who are not like me, like my various female cousins, who are all about the Bollywood movies and hang out with other Indians and speak their own polyglot. I never did that - I never really look at people's skin colour, and maybe I should, sometimes - and I've never found another Indian person who makes friends in the haphazard, shared-geeky-interest way that I do, and it's horrible to say, but I've never met another Indian woman who's at all politically aware, nor one who's a feminist, nor who's self-consciously trying to find her cultural identity. I don't know where women like that hang out; I thought, once, that if I tried the Oxford Indian and Hindu societies I might find them, but I went there and never did. I wish I knew where they hang out, because I blindly refuse to believe they don't exist.
Sigh. All right. So much babble for this brief point I was trying to make. I should go to bed - I have to take my driving theory test again in the morning, and it's been a long day of customers thinking I'm stupid. Apparently, by looking at me, people assume I don't know the difference between an author and an editor, and neither do I understand that a hardback Bible is, um... a Bible in hard covers. And they assume I'm an "assistant" (at the moment only two people are running the shop, and yes, my work-mate technically outranks me, but... urgh. People assume.) Whether this is because my work-mate is male, or because he's white, I don't know, and sometimes you get tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt and just want to call them on their despicable, ignorant shit.
Today is one of those days where I'm tired of ticking all the "minority" boxes. Yuck.
In other, happier news, I seem to have written another Slings & Arrows fic, quite unrelated to the ficathon. Er, yay? I wanted to edit it tonight, but I'm too tired and pissed off. Bedtime.
no subject
My dad's side of the family French Canadians that came here during WWI and Cherokee, but I don't have stories further back than my grandparents, because my grandad died before I was born, and my grandmother was clinically crazy. But we did go up to the reservation quite a few summers, and camp and talk about the history of our tribe in general, including the aweful parts, and why poverty is such a huge problem still.
And I did have conversations with my dad, usually out my mother's earshot that the dominant social constructs aren't always right, but sometimes they have to tolerated silently or negotiated with in order live in the world you are born into, and then sometimes prejudice just can't be tolerated. You have to decide where the line is. I guess my dad has spent his life "passing", and negotiating with American culture, but I'm pretty integrated, just aware that part of my heritage is. But I don't think of myself of Cherokee. Just mixed. Very very mixed.