Race and ethnicity in fandom, and actually, real life as well

[raven]

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.

Comments

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

Damn, people beat me to Heroes's Mohinder and Weeds's Sanjay. Clearly, I do not spend enough time on LJ obsessively refreshing my flist.

Only fandom could have miscegenation wank. SERIOUSLY, guys?

I found this post really interesting, because it's not something I would have guessed--this, mostly:

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.

Because actually all of the Indian girls/women I knew growing up* were all of those things. And also at least mildly fannishly inclined. Although, given that most of the girls that I knew growing up--of any cultural background--could be described that way, I suppose it wasn't a representative sample anyway. But you're right: at least in online fandom, I have encountered very few Indian people.

*I say this in the past tense because once I left for college, I was dropped in whiter-than-white-bread rural Ohio, at a school that, like most small private liberal-arts schools, really struggles with diversity. It still kind of freaks me out, because I grew up in groups where, as someone of WASP/Irish Catholic background, I was usually in the minority. I am not okay with this sudden influx of cultural guilt!

(PS: AHHHH, more S&A fic? You are a machine.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Miscegenation wank. I KNOW.

What worries me is that all right, I didn't know many Indian people at all when I was growing up - Liverpool isn't known for its multiculturalism, it's true - but when I went to Oxford, I was still looking. There are a half-dozen student societies for Indians and Hindus, and I went along a few times, but it was so... oh, I don't know. They were like miniature versions of their parents. Some of them were even going bald in the same places. It was all about maintaining "traditional values", all about parroting lines about old-school Bollywood and old gender roles. No one questioned anything, no one even wanted to.

And then I got pinned in a corner by a bespectacled Indian CompSci who then spent ten minutes telling me my litany of Western sins - my clothes, my hair, my language - and then I gave up. It doesn't make sense to me.

(I LOSE AT LIFE. *g*)

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

Some of them were even going bald in the same places.

*laughing* Okay, I should not find this funny, but I DO. Faintly horrifying, but funny.

There are a half-dozen student societies for Indians and Hindus, and I went along a few times, but it was so... oh, I don't know.

That must be a really awkward position to be in. I mean, I haven't had any experiences like it because I don't feel an impulse to interrogate my cultural identity very much. (As someone who, for complicated reasons, identifies most strongly as "Irish Catholic-derived" while being a queer liberal atheist, I don't particularly want to go there, you know?) But I can imagine that it's difficult, to have on one hand this strong, almost visceral bond with a group of people who share a special cultural experience with you--of being non-white, or NRI, or whatever the case may be--and then on the other hand to find that they won't accept you as an individual.

...I apologize if this string of comments comes off as totally unenlightened and dull. It's frustrating to feel as though I'm just spouting useless bromides on the subject, because I don't have enough personal experience with these kinds of divides. It's kind of a foreign concept for me. Uh, dear HP fandom, when I said "foreign" there I was not talking about the erotic thrill of the exotic, TAKE NOTE.

(No, you 100% win at life. If you ever need a beta, you know where to find me. You also know that you can tell me to back off and calm down if I seem to be demanding to see your fic too much. :D)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

But I can imagine that it's difficult, to have on one hand this strong, almost visceral bond with a group of people who share a special cultural experience with you--of being non-white, or NRI, or whatever the case may be--and then on the other hand to find that they won't accept you as an individual.

That's it. Put very neatly, that's it. The people who do accept me as an individual are as far removed as they can possibly be from my ethnicity-based culture, which I find... disconcerting.

Uh, dear HP fandom, when I said "foreign" there I was not talking about the erotic thrill of the exotic, TAKE NOTE.

Ahahahaha. Oh, god, the whole thing is so STUPID. It's so stupid it's hilarious.

(I'll send it right along! Here was me thinking I might be driving you a wee bit mental with my need for betas every five seconds...)

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

(I'll send it right along! Here was me thinking I might be driving you a wee bit mental with my need for betas every five seconds...)

God, no! And here I was thinking I was being too pushy and you were sitting over there going, "...seriously? She wants to get her grubby hands all over my fic again?" :) I am always thrilled to beta for you, whenever you want it.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of my experiences with the .ox LGB crowd. I didn't meet all my wonderful queer friends through LGBT-centric events. I just met them. Took me til third year, more or less, too....