Tokenism, Racism, and Unfunny Jokes: How ‘Doctor Who’ Failed Its First Female Doctor by Merryana Salem

there are some things i disagree with in this article (most of which can be summarized: i think thirteen being an awful person -multiple times- was an actual part of her characterisation, not a mistake and also i think that JW always seemed like the doctor),

but reccing this article because i think the white feminism aspect vs pretty much all the characters of colour is important.

like for example: okay, so you cast Grace, but the actor is super busy and can only do one episode. okay, so don't fucking fridge her?! make her stay home for some good reason, like, she's the doctor-parallel, right, make the character stay home to do her indispensable medical job (would've aged unexpectedly better with covid happening) and let her husband and grandson catch up to her in adventuresomeness by going off on adventures without her. it still works!! and we don't have to kill a Black woman character in the first episode.

similar can be said for the mother of the villain played by Lenny Henry, like... why the fuck would he kill his own mum first, there must have been extremely a lot of family baggage going on there (which, yes, i get it, was probably meant to mirror the doctor's family baggage that we find out about later) BUT since there was not time to show us enough of his baggage, or for whatever reason, it just came across as this show likes to kill off some Black lady character every season opener, huh?!

and gd, don't even get me started on all the times Ruth!Dr's character was there as helper for thirteen's character arc or spiral or whatever. like. she deserved SO MUCH BETTER but if i start i will write pages.

like i do think chinball had a ton of ideas and contributed massively to dw canon, and i don't think he was being actively racist, but it doesn't matter. if you get ideas like this and don't have a multiracial writer's room (not just one person for sensitivity reader) to tell you which ideas are terrible (or which become terrible once you do your colourblind casting) ... these things are going to happen.

semi-relatedly, leaving aside the historical details about how ambiguously the nazis apparently considered indian people ... nobody at BBC is allowed to write stories w nazis in anymore unless they are jewish or romani.

anyway... read the article!

and please disagree respectfully if so; apparently ppl are being awful to the OP about differences of opinion and for bigoted reasons. don't add to that!!

So me and @witches-ofcolor were discussing the lack of people of color (specifically dark poc) in high fantasy (whether it be elves, wizards, witches, etc…), and we wanted to do something about it. So that said, we have decided to host an event to promote diversity in high fantasy!

Basically, in order to partake in this event all you have to do is post any sort of media (digital or traditional art, paints, drawings, gifs, edits, etc…etc.). of diverse high fantasy creatures—poc high fantasy creatures. You can even cosplay as a high fantasy creature and post that. Anything is acceptable, just as long as it is poc/diverse high fantasy material.

We have decided to use the tag #pocfantasy to keep track of all the things people post, and reblog them. In addition to posting in the tag, you will also be able to submit to this blog or @witches-ofcolor —we will reblog your things on both blogs.

This takes place on October 24th- and will run all the way to the 31st, so you have a whole week to get your stuff in!

And again, any poc/diverse high fantasy material is acceptable. This means poc elves, witches, wizards anything you can think of (doesn’t have to be specically creatures either, cultures, traditions, etc…that you come up with) , anything (characters, etc..) you would like to see diverse in your favorite high fantasy or just your own high fantasy!

Any media is acceptable as well—cosplays, digital/traditional art/paintings/drawings, gifs, edts, etc..etc…

If you have any questions about anything feel free to ask me or @witches-ofcolor

Also please reblog so we can get the word out there! 

This article on AO3 and their failure of moderation is brilliant. It acknowledges the irony that AO3 has completely ignored calls for blocking and moderation when it comes to violent racism, but is suddenly responding now that the "community" is complaining about a 1 million words fix interfering with their "sexy times."

From the article:

Lori Morimoto I don't know who you are but I respect you tremendously.

On White Fear & Creating Diverse Transformative Works

So whenever fandom tries to address the question “Why aren’t there more works featuring characters of color?” there are a myriad of (predictable) responses.  One of which is appearing with increasing frequency: “Because we (usually: white creators of transformative works) are afraid of getting it wrong.”

And like.  I’ve already addressed how ‘thinking you’ll get it wrong’ is a failure of both imagination and of craft/skill (and a symptom of the racial empathy gap, which I forgot had a proper name when I wrote that post).  Meanwhile, @stitchmediamix absolutely accurately pointed out that the ‘fear’ being discussed is fear of being called racist, not necessarily fear of failure.

Now, we could go into the whole absurdity of white fragility here, but google is a thing and “white fragility” is discussed all over the place and I trust ya’ll to do the work if you actually give a shit about this subject… which I assume you do, if you’re reading this – but if you’re just here to find a way to dismiss the issue at hand, I’m gonna save you some time and recommend you scroll past.

Writers can also be fragile, especially in transformative works communities, where “if you don’t have anything nice to say, hit the back button and keep your mouth shut” is the primary expectation wrt feedback, and anything that deviates from that is considered a mortal insult (do you vageublog about my fic, sir?).  But if we’re willing to deploy an array of tools to make our writing not-My-Immortal-bad, from spellcheck to wikipedia to in-depth historical research to betas and britpickers and so on, then we should be willing to employ equivalent tools to avoid writing racist stories.

Incidentally, writing stories that erase/ignore extant characters of color, especially if they’re prominent in the source text? is racist.  So avoiding writing characters of color altogether is not the solution to making your writing not-racist.

And, okay.  I feel it’s important to acknowledge here, as I have before, that the Fear of Fucking Up is a very real fear that genuinely does affect people’s enthusiasm for / likelihood to write, regardless of the validity or fairness of that Fear’s origins, and I’m going to be generous enough to assume that there are some people who are acting in good faith when they say “I want to, but I’m scared.”

So. This is for those who are acting in good faith, from the perspective of a white fan who has written fic about characters of color in several fandoms and never gotten pilloried for it, even when I know for a fact (in retrospect) that I’ve fucked up details.

(oh, side note: I know this is mostly tackling things from a writing perspective, but a lot of this can apply to creating transformative works overall with a few tweaks.)

First: realize that the likelihood of getting called out is actually pretty low.  And fans of color aren’t as Mean and Angry and Unfairly Sensitive as some people want us to believe.  (Do you vagueblog about That Dumpster Fire Meta, sir?  /  No, sir, I do not vagueblog about That Meta sir; but I do vagueblog, sir.)

This is not to say that there aren’t people out there who’re more than willing to make a (justified) stink about egregiously racist writing.  But it’s actually very rare to get targeted, especially publicly by a large number of unhappy fans.  Because you know what? most fans, including fans of color, want to just have fun in fandom as much as anyone else.

It’s just, y’know, a little harder for fans of color to ‘just have fun’ when us white fans are showing our asses with stories involving “Dragon Lady” Elektra or “Angry Black Woman” Sally Donovan or “Spicy Latin Lover” Poe Dameron.  And sometimes us white fans only listen to what fans of color are saying when they make a Big Deal out of it. 

That’s not a failure of their ability to stay calm.  That’s our failure to listen before they get loud and organized.  Because I’m willing to bet that people who get called out publicly? got a few polite, private messages about their screwup first, and they doubled down instead of listening. 

Also: there is a thing where, no matter how politely they word their critique, fans of color, especially black fans, are more likely to be unjustly perceived as ‘mean’ and ‘angry’ by white fans.  Again, that’s our failure, not theirs.  Plus, even if they are angry, that doesn’t automatically mean they’re wrong (see: Tone Argument).

Step Two is: pay attention to discussions about racist tropes in fiction.  Yes, even when it’s crit of our favorite shows/movies/characters/etc.  If you understand the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and why it’s harmful, or you understand the Bechdel-Wallace test, or you can have a meaningful discussion about Mary Sues, or you can (justifiably) rail about how Bury Your Gays sucks, then you can develop a similar appreciation for racial biases and stereotypes.  And then you can find ways to avoid them.  

No, no one’s expecting you to memorize bell hooks so you can write a drabble about Iris West, or demanding you write a dissertation on media stereotypes wrt the simultaneous fetishization and desexualization of Asian women (who aren’t a monolith, either, but Hollywood doesn’t seem to know that) before you’re ‘allowed’ to write Melinda May in a story, but like.  Pay attention when people, especially fans of color, are talking about common tropes so that you don’t unthinkingly replicate or perpetuate them in your fic.

Yes, racist writing can involve more than just thoughtless parroting of harmful tropes, but my best guess is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, fanwork getting ‘called out’ in fandom involves those tropes.  So avoiding them takes your chances of getting criticized from ‘low’ to ‘almost nonexistent.’  Less to fear, see?

Step Three is: more research – basically, at least as much as you’d be willing to invest in any equivalent white character.  @writingwithcolor is a great blog, and has links to additional resources; .  If you’re the type to get a beta or a britpicker, find a sensitivity reader or a beta of the appropriate background.  Not all fans of color are willing to do this kind of unpaid labor, just as not all fans are willing to britpick/beta, but they’re out there.  Approach them respectfully, and listen to them if they say that something in your story looks off.

It’s worth noting here that writing about characters of color doesn’t need to involve - and in fact, some advice recommends avoiding - telling Special Stories About Racism.  Stories about characters of color don’t need to be about slavery or civil rights or the constant parade of microaggressions they have to deal with daily in order to be realistic or compelling (or angsty, for those who love writing angst, as I do).  Research can turn up useful information that can inform our choices as writers, but if we don’t share the oppression our characters face, it’s not our job to tell stories specifically about that oppression.

Step Four is: before posting, anticipate the worst.  What will you do if someone says you fucked up?  If your answer is “argue with them and talk over their concerns,” stop.  Remember that you’re not a victim of a ‘mean fan of color,’ but that you’ve probably written something that they consider harmful.  Being told that you wrote something racist isn’t an attack on your moral fiber.  You’re not an irredeemable monster if you fuck up, but your response to being told you fucked up is far more telling.  Acknowledge their concerns, fix the issue if you can, learn from your mistake, and fail better next time.

You cannot improve if you don’t try in the first place.  Failure to try is failure, so try your best, and improve incrementally – just as you already do as a writer with any story.

In conclusion: The 4 Steps to Getting Over Yourself as a White Fanfic Writer: (1) recognize that the likelihood of getting called out is pretty low; (2) educate yourself about the most common racist writing issues, so that likelihood will be even lower; (3) do your due diligence when writing; (4) in case of the worst: apologize, fix the issue, learn from the experience, fail better in the future.

(And again, google is your friend – there are a lot of people who’ve written about this subject, like Kayla Ancrum, Morgan Jenkins, the mods at Writing with Color, Thao Le, and Monica Zepeda, among many, many, others.  I’m merely sharing my own perspective from what I’ve learned from listening to a lot of smart people, in case it might help some of you – if it doesn’t, keep looking, a ton of great resources are out there.)

Bringing this back because it seems to be an evergreen post (if my notifications are any indication) and people seem to be waking up to the fact that all of us talking about fandom racism/antiblackness? Had a point!

So if your next step is “now I want to create not-racist fanworks / fanworks with characters of color BUT I’M SCARED” - here ya go.

Reasons Why Fans of Color Leave/Don’t Interact with Fandom

Feel free to add

- fetishization and depersonalization of characters of color (to serve the white character’s narrative)

- (re)writing characters of color as abusive and/or violent to infantilize white characters

- being asked to explain why ___ is racist when it’s been spoken about at length or could be googled

-characters being white washed in canon and it being played off as “just an art style” (winx club)

• Measuring characters of colour by impossible standards that are almost never applied to white characters. If they’re “nice” they’re boring and bland, if they’re “mean” their faults and mistakes will be brought up every single time they show up. It’s almost like they can never win.

• Writing them out in fandom content while other white characters get major roles. And this happens to characters of colour who are major characters in the original material!

• On the flip side, villainizing them to the point where the characters written cannot even be recognized from what they were in canon.

ao3 & censorship

while I’m dipping my toes in the wank water, it’s interesting to me to see people defend AO3′s current content policy as something that is simple or, say, guaranteed sustainable long-term. Fandom history types have elided the influence of libertarian ideology on internet advocacy and fandom’s own historic attitudes towards content rules and censorship for…basically forever, as far as I know (feel free to contradict me), but that influence is very real. See, for example, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, or Phil Zimmerman’s own account of why he wrote PGP, citing “civil libertarians” defending the rights of citizens to encrypt their communication and keep it totally private. These are the sorts of ethical conundrums and ideological activities that gave us Tor, a private browser that is literally used both for vital civil liberation…and to find, distribute, and perpetuate child porn. AO3 isn’t Tor, or PGP, or the Silk Road, or anything like that, but a lot of the ideology around fandom in general and fanfic in particular uses, mirrors, and grew from early cyperpunk libertarian writing and policymaking.

Personally, I don’t think AO3 should delete, say, fic centering around a m/f couple where one member is gay in canon. Is it homophobic? Yep it sure is. But my kneejerk response is “I’ve been there”, because I have! I have had some trash ass offensive/weird pairings. I have absolutely been like “I know he/she’s gay, buuut”, despite being gay myself!!! And maybe that’s the heteropatriarchy brainwashing me or whatever, but sometimes a girl just wants to read her problematic garbage in peace.

AO3 also hosts “extreme underage”, which is a personal HELLLL NO for me, since I am a victim of molestation. Should it be deleted? Honestly, I have no idea. On one hand, it is gross to me, and I do not want to see it, and I think it is mostly morally reprehensible. On the other hand, just for starters, some people really do write that stuff because they were themselves molested. Some people write it but would never rape a kid IRL or even look at actual child porn. Some people are porn-damaged and don’t want to inspect why it gets them off. It goes on. Plus, there are logical enforcement problems: how young is too young? Tumblr likes to say 18, but then, the legal age of consent is lower than 18 in many places, including the US. Should the cutoff age be whatever the absolute lowest age of consent in the world is? What if they’re 15 but the author is clearly writing them as younger in body/maturity? What about diaper play type stuff that screws with the POV so they SEEM super young but are actually of the age of consent? What about high school AUs? The list goes on.

But, then, what about grossly racist fic? The corner of fandom that originated AO3 is pretty white; I have no idea if AO3′s demographics skew majority white these days, but it wouldn’t surprise me. If we leave aside stuff like extreme underage and non-con, under the assumption that a significant portion of the userbase experiences the threat of sexual assault at a bare minimum, doesn’t racist fic then fall under a different kind of category? If you’re white and writing, say, a plantation AU, or openly, gleefully white supremacist fic, then I personally feel that’s reprehensible and should be taken down. But who decides? What’s the line? I don’t mean that flippantly, I mean it seriously: is it enough for multiple people to complain, regardless of content? Or would it only be works that openly advocate for systems of white supremacy in some way? Would all the buddy cop fic with really shitty attitudes towards police brutality make the cut, or not?

And then, if that’s our rubric, what happens if a fandom’s mostly men, and the fic is wall to wall rapefic? I don’t want to be around men who write gross dudeporn about raping women, and again, I think there is definitely something reprehensible about that porn’s popularity. But AO3 is a fannish archive for everyone, and so, that fic would be left up.

So, it’s complicated to think about enforcing any kind of moral community standards when it comes to what kind of fic is posted. The above thoughts - of exceptions, logical and logistical complications, moral grey areas, variations, all of those are things that many websites have dealt with by saying anything goes, always. But I do not think that anyone making policy, whether large and world-affecting or relatively trivial, should be dismissing moderation or rules-making based on perceived complexity. Here is why.

Twitter is probably the most famous example right now of a site that allows almost anything in the name of free speech…and it’s biting them in the ass, big time. It’s become known among many white supremacist communities as the place they can go and say whatever and it will almost certainly not be taken down. And that dynamic - where a space is flooded with people who hold certain repugnant views, and thus ruins the space for everyone else - is one that should not be regarded as impossible for AO3 to facilitate.

Because, of course, AO3 isn’t a read-only space. It is an archive, but not in the sense of the Internet Archive, where it’s scraping websites. It’s a social space. They’ve already seen the need for more stringent abuse policies due to trolling, and the site is getting more popular by the day. What happens if some fandom springs up that’s fertile ground for white supremacists, and a bunch of them start posting to AO3? Or the dudeporn scenario? It is very true that in the event of AO3 being flooded with horrifically misogynistic, racist, or homophobic fic, that I could just go on posting my fic and blacklist stuff I find offensive - but it is possible that AO3, by dint of hosting this material unexamined and welcomed, will drive other people away. It is possible that AO3 will become the kind of place known for being permissive towards white supremacists or other hateful groups. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, and it’s important to consider because AO3 is only as good as its userbase. It’s only as comprehensive, in terms of hosting and preserving fanworks, as the people who choose to post there. And while it’s certainly not their responsibility to remove a high school AU because some 20-year-old complained about it being child porn (or whatever), it is their responsibility to look after the interests of their userbase. I very much disagree with the thinking that rejecting the idea of any content moderation wholesale, under the name of “free speech”, is the only or best way to do that.

tl;dr a lot of people pitching hissy fits about AO3′s content policy are being immature and short-sighted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that AO3′s content policy is perfect, nor that having ANY kind of content policy is simple/free of flaws.

a few follow up comments, since this post got…more traffic than I had planned for.

I am honestly not sure where the idea that I was calling for AO3 to be curated came from, since I don’t think my post communicates that desire, but since the concept is out there: no, I do not think AO3 should be curated. I do think, however, that given AO3’s social nature, and given the existence of Abuse policies already, that a clearer, more transparent, and potentially more restrictive, abuse policy should be considered.

Now, when I say “potentially more restrictive”, I don’t mean “pull down everything that anyone finds offensive”. That assumption has been made several times in reblogs, so I want to be very clear: I do not think AO3 having an abuse-related content deletion policy necessitates removal of any and all fics that anyone on the internet considers offensive. Any kind of abuse policy that allows for content removal will be written with both specific limits and some room for qualitative judgments. AO3’s own policy, in fact, already does this with plagiarism:

So, if AO3 changed its rules to allow for content removal in the case of egregiously bigoted works, or harassment in comments, I would assume it might work somewhat similarly: on a case-by-case basis, incorporating qualitative judgments by Abuse, with clear guidelines in both the TOS and the reporting form regarding what would constitute a violation of the TOS. I would personally prefer to draw the lines pretty parsimoniously: meaning, however you wound up defining “egregiously bigoted”, it would not include things like “wrote Sheith”.

On that note: I am aware of Tumblr’s antis and the harassment that they encourage. My post didn’t talk about them much for the simple reason that as far as I know, no one involved or formerly involved with AO3’s policymaking has said, “hey, maybe a 19-year-old having sex actually is pedophilia, if you think about it.” I have, however, seen several people involved with AO3/AO3’s founding behaving dismissively towards the entire concept of ever removing works for violating any kind of bigotry-related ethical standards. This dismissiveness disturbs me because it helps contribute to a hostility towards marginalized fans that I think is misplaced.

I know that AO3’s purpose is to house as many fanworks as possible, and to prevent older works from being lost to downed websites and deletions. However, I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the OTW to define “as many fanworks as possible” to mean “as many fanworks as people post on an unmoderated, value-neutral site”. It would be great if we could rely on AO3 staying home to the fandom that matters to the OTW’s founders - meaning, genuinely fannish people, whose primary concern is creating fanworks that are generally in line with a leftist Western point of view. But AO3 is semi-public and is, again, a social website. It’s not statically scraping fic from various corners of the internet. The only works that end up on the AO3 are works that creators deliberately put there (and works brought in via Open Doors). What this means is that AO3 is already an imperfect portrait of fandom; it is already a limited set of all the fanworks on the internet. Having a no-removal policy with regards to bigotry has the potential to make that set even more limited.

Hockey fandom had a troll who posted a deliberately racist fic and engaged in the comments by saying things like (apologies for spelling out slurs) “this fandom will never ship a mulatto and a wetback”. The most egregious comments were deleted, but the fic is still up. Such behavior is obviously a perversion of AO3’s intent, but it’s also pretty classic trolling. AO3’s current policies simply do not account for malicious actors to the degree that hockey fandom saw. To me, this lack of preparation presents the very real danger that AO3 will lose parts of its userbase when people decide the trolling and bigotry isn’t something they want to deal with. I am aware that some people plan to continue posting regardless of what kind of people they share the fandom’s AO3 tag with. I am also aware that, personally, if I ever found myself in a fandom that liked to write violently homophobic fic, I’d probably leave. I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t mean it as a threat; it’s just a description of one action that people might take.

I’m not saying that any kind of values-related content policy is easy to write. I am aware that AO3’s current policy was written by people who take the OTW’s stated mission very seriously. But ultimately, the OTW exists in its current form - as a nonprofit, which solicits funding and has a wide-reaching organizational structure - because it is supposed to serve fandom. A content policy that is entirely neutral on marginalization is not serving fandom neutrally. It has the potential to permit perpetuation of marginalization.

AO3 vs Twitter

I compared AO3 to Twitter not because they are comparable, currently, in scale or userbase (demographics, interests, whatever), but because they share a key component of being socially oriented sites whose primary form of interaction is users posting and responding to content. That description is generous enough to account for many other sites as well: Facebook, /b/, HackForums, and Tumblr, for starters. Twitter is a standout because they underestimated the power of online abuse and the threat it presented to their site for years. AO3 has experienced exponential growth (users and engagement), and has only recently begun providing users with tools to control their interactions with other users (Abuse and Support improvements, refusing gifts. I think it would be wise for AO3 to look to the future because it’s a website with the stated purpose of being a permanent archive. In addition to the userbase issue I discussed above, permanency requires funding; funding requires ongoing user engagement. Twitter has struggled with userbase attrition, which they themselves have attributed to their harassment problems. Again, AO3 isn’t the same as Twitter, but I am a believer in learning from others’ examples. In this specific case, the lessons I’d glean from Twitter are:

1) It is best for abuse-related user experience controls and policies to grow with the site’s complexity 2) It is best to consider what those controls and policies might be before the abuse actually becomes a huge problem.

page_leaf sent me some links about what that planning might look like: Designing Good Policy, Comment Moderation, We’re The Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things Online

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.

-

*AO3’s TOS can be read to do this already, but again, that hockey fic wasn’t removed. There is some obvious ambiguity here; I’m not proposing this as a fully formed policy.

AO3 and Abuse: A Story About the AO3 Abuse Team

First, I’m just going to say that I didn’t particularly WANT to write this post, but given that some people deliberately seem to be missing the point when it comes to this discussion of the AO3’s current policies regarding abuse and how they don’t protect marginalized members of fandom, I’ve elected to do something. Also: this post contains discussion of racism, including the replication/quoting of racist slurs and abuse.

A disclaimer: I’ve been in fandom for over a decade at this point. I’ve been a user of the AO3 since 2009, and I was writing fic for years before that. I was around for Racefail, for the J2 Help Haiti Big Bang Debacle, and I was around for the giant debate in fandom whether warnings for common triggers such as rape, sexual assault, and explicit depictions of violence should even be used. Because of that long history in fandom, I’m not surprised to see that many people are regurgitating the same exact arguments as before, but I am disappointed, deeply so, that we seem to have taken so little from those arguments and developments in fandom over the years.

As before, I really encourage everyone to read stopthatimp’s posts on this topic, both the original and the follow-up posts she’s made, which can be found here: http://stopthatimp.tumblr.com/post/152352331803/ao3-censorship

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.

I’m reposting some of the Abuse Team’s responses, with permission of duckgirlie, who was one of the AO3 users that contacted them originally. 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]

They later went on to state that the author’s behavior was NOT harassment by the definition of the Terms of Service, and that they felt “that both parties (the commenters and the author) are equally responsible for the conduct reported to us.” [emphasis mine]

As far as I’m aware, the author was the only person using racial slurs in the comments. To me, the notion that you could go into the comments to discuss a fic with the author, be met with racial slurs, and then be somehow be held “equally responsible” for what happened in those comments is beyond baffling, it’s inexcusable.

When duckgirlie politely pressed the Abuse Team for clarification as to how racial slurs would not be deemed harassment under the AO3’s TOS, she was told that unless slurs were directed at any “specific users”, the AO3 would not delete comments because they were simply “offensive”.

The email ended with this: “We understand that not everyone agrees with these policies. The OTW has decided that our goal is maximum inclusiveness of content. By necessity, that content will includes things that many different people find offensive.” [emphasis mine]

Inclusiveness of content. Not people. Not, say, the people of color who were talking and arguing with the author in the comments, who already had to deal with a fic that fetishized and dehumanized a popular character in a fandom they all were in, but now had to face the casual use of racial slurs in those comment threads, slurs that deliberately thrown in their faces–and then had to discover that by the AO3’s standards, none of this counted as harassment. On the contrary, they were “equally” at fault for what had occurred.

The most insulting of the comments on that fic have since been deleted, either by the Abuse Team or by the author themselves, I’m not sure. The fic, however, is still up.

It’s been two years since this happened. For all that I know, the AO3 Abuse Team might handle this differently now than they did then (although personally I doubt it). The reason I bring this story up is because to me, this was the moment when it became brutally clear that I, and other fans of color, are afterthoughts as far as the AO3 is concerned. We are told, over and over again, in ways both small and large, that we are not valued, that our jobs as fans are to shut up and assimilate and not cause waves, because that’s just not NICE, you guys.

This is peak White Feminism at work here. The idea that one abuse policy will fit all, the idea that it’s more important to preserve the “free speech” of racist trolls rather than making a good faith effort to support the fans of color who are being attacked by said trolls is, frankly, privileged bullshit, and is a MAJOR reason I do not support the OTW/AO3 financially. Because I do not trust the AO3 to support me if needed, not when their stance on plagiarism is stronger and more nuanced than their stance on racist/bigoted abuse.

The idea that the AO3 doesn’t need to create a policy that will address bigotry and racist abuse because “it’s not really an issue yet” is not only disingenous, it’s blatantly false. Racist and bigoted abuse on the AO3 has already happened, is happening now, and will happen again in the future. And until the AO3 acknowledges this and takes real steps to prevent it, fans of color, as well as other marginalized groups, will continue to be pushed to the fringes of fandom.

If you’ve been concerned about the OTW’s responses - both past and present - to concerns raised about racism and, in particular (although not limited to) AO3, please have a look at this letter and consider signing.

Star Wars cast members who have openly expressed their dislike for Reylo

Star Wars cast members that Reylo's started a hate campaign against

White Entitlement and Doctor Who: AKA Why I Like The Timeless Child

TW: Discussion of real life racially motivated medical abuse, general racism. This may hurt sensitive white feelings.

At the end of series 12 of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor discovers that she has a secret past she was unaware of. Erased from her mind by her own people, the Gallifreyans. In a series of flashbacks we see a young Doctor. She’s a little Black girl, standing alone below a portal that presumably leads to whatever Universe she called home. She’s lost and alone. We don’t know if she was abandoned by her family or simply separated from them by an unfortunate accident. She’s then found by Tecteun, an adult white woman who was one of the earliest inhabitants of Gallifrey, the very planet the Doctor believed to be their own. She adopts the child Doctor and becomes a sort of mother to her. This seems, at first, like the act of a selfless person. She’s taking in a child she doesn’t know, who would most likely die without her. A happy ending.

But that’s not where the story ends. As the Doctor plays outside with another child on Gallifrey she falls from a cliff. Instead of this being fatal she regenerates, just as the Doctor and other Timelords have been known to do throughout the history of the show. Her body is remade into a young Asian boy. Tecteun sees this and her first thought is to solve this mystery. We see The Doctor, now a little boy, sitting in a chair in a lab as his mother does tests on him. We’re shown a montage of various regenerations of the Doctor, many of them children of color. It wasn’t until after the episode ended that I thought back and wondered “how did this child end up in so many lethal situations while Tecteun remains alive and well?” which suggests that this might not be a series of accidents but purposeful results of the experiments being done on the Doctor by their own mother figure. What seemed to be a miracle before has turned into a nightmare that evoked in me the memories of similar events in real world history. 

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White people continue to astound me. Someone said "The Doctor is one of the people who participated in the society they're rejecting, involuntarily of course" with the suggestion that this somehow makes the Doctor less justified in fighting against said society.

Not to talk about Dr Whomst again but… I find it very outrageous that white fans will literally see the story of “black girl is abused by her adoptive white mother, who pretends her abuse comes from a place of love” (google abuse of transracial adoptees) and “black girl is used by her society of mostly white people for medical experiments without her consent and then never given anything in return” (google Henrietta Lacks) and say “Nope! Absolutely nobody would ever be able to relate to this. I know this because it never happened to me personally”. It just reeks of white entitlement. If I had to sit through 50 years of The Doctor being a quirky white man, you can sit through this. 

Hell, there are Viking accounts of raiding in North Africa as well as accounts of Viking traders in the Mediterranean, which borders North Africa. 

They also came to Spain, which was under the control of Arab and North African Muslims for a good chunk of the time period.

Like, it only takes one hook up (or, in the case of raids, rape and abduction).

Exactly. Were most Vikings grimey blondes? Yeah. Does that mean there can’t be a perfectly logical, historically accurate reason for a Viking of Colour (GREAT TERM) to exist? Nope!

Like, I do get a little annoyed when some historical narratives don’t go that extra mile to contextualise things with minority characters, because it can make it seem like European society was way more open-minded than it was and sort of airbrush out bigotry, but it is 1000% possible to have historical narratives that are diverse in their casting without whitewashing that stuff, so… yeah I’m not buying any of the sender’s excuses.

I think part of the problem is that the idea of an all-white medieval Europe (or at least, a Europe where the only PoC were servants or slaves) is entrenched culturally, and as such most media reflects that and that feeds the idea more. It’s a vicious feedback loop.

That Europe’s never existed. There have always been traders, merchants, scholars, armies, explorers, missionaries, emissaries, even entertainers who travelled and some of them have kids. It’s really not rocket science. 

You can’t even escape this in fantasy worlds. ‘It’s based on medieval Europe’ is given as a reason to have all white casts all the time. A) Your ideas of medieval Europe are bullshit and B) It was a fantasy world. You could’ve chosen to make it more diverse than whatever medieval Europe you imagined. Since it’s only BASED on Europe and not actually Europe, you’ve almost certainly changed some things anyway.

“It’s based on medieval Europe!” they cry, with their characters who bathe regularly and have gleaming, perfectly straight white teeth.

“But medieval Europe!” they say, with their feasts laden with foods that require refined sugar and species of vegetable and fruit that come from continents away.

“Uh, medieval Europe?” they ask, as though the Silk Road didn’t exist, as though the Mediterranean were not the ancient world’s superhighway, as though human beings teleported out of Africa to settle in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

I find I have to mention this to people a lot: the way to check your own fandom racism or anti-blackness isn’t how you react to the flawless POC characters, but how you react when POC characters have flaws. 

Like, I’ve known people who tear down Simone from The Good Place, and when I pointed out that none of her flaws are even close to those of Eleanor, from season one or even currently, and suggested that they should consider whether biases are influencing their hatred for the character, they cited their love for Shuri from Black Panther, and characters like her. Shuri is not a hard character to love; she never challenges the audience to see her in a complex way. She is funny, smart, and never burdensome to anyone.

Myself, I hated Katara from Avatar when I was younger. Now, I am able to identify the internalized misogyny and racism in my dislike for her; I hated her because she was inconvenient at times and wasn’t always nice to the characters I liked. Similar deal with Frank Zhang from Heroes of Olympus. But both of those characters (and all characters) were significant for what they represented.

Fandom racism isn’t just hating POC characters for no reason or ignoring POC ships; it also manifests in the double-standard where we’re willing to forgive white characters for more things than POC characters.

Writing With Color – General Topics

A collection of WWC posts that deal with more general writing advice, character creation and diversity topics applicable to most marginalized people, particularly People of Color and some ethnic and religious groups.

Writing Characters of Color: The Generals

Useful Non-WWC Posts

Diversity/Representation Topics

Character Creation

Characters of Color & Culture

Fantasy & Coding

Writing Sensitive and Controversial Topics

Racism and Micro-Aggressions 

–WWC

Valkyrie isn’t ‘Male-Coded’ And You’re Kinda Racist

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