Cancel Culture

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 01:22:53 GMT

I know, I know, "cancel culture isn't real, it's just what white men call consequences so they don't ave to suffer them."

But listen.

The woman who makes Hazbin Hotel is currently being subjected to a mass campaign of harassment because 5 years ago she saw a youtube clip of some women, thought they were hot, and drew fanart of them. Then found out a few weeks later that they were racist shitheads who had done blackface. Viv apologized for making art of them, never did so again, and moved on with her life.

What, I ask you, is demanding HH be taken off the internet because of Viv having done a fanart 5 years ago and then apologized for it and moved on, if not fucking cancel culture?

Which brings me to tonight's talking point.

Cancel culture definitely does, in fact, exist. But, it is not equipped to punish people in power. No rich white man has ever truly suffered because of being "cancelled by the left." Louis CK is getting bookings again, Jerry Seinfeld is doing whatever the fuck he does, James Gunn is back in charge of Guardians of the Galaxy's films...

Cancel culture cannot and does not harm people in power, because the peopel doing the "cancelling" do not have equivalent or greater power with which to bring consequences to bear.

But it does encourage mob justice, unrealistic standards, and inappropriate use of long past mistakes that have not continued into the present. And all of that is then turn against marginalized people. Small time queer artists, essayists, activists, etc are held to standards far above what even the biggest industry names are held to. Because the big industry names have the power, reputation, and backing necessary to shake right past that kind of mob.

And independent creators don't. Furthermore, independent creators are much more likely to actually be concerned about the peopel their creating for, and thus willing to actually internalize criticism. So not only can they not avoid it, but they're hit harder by it.

Cancel culture is actively detrimental to its own causes: it doesn't punish harmful people, only well meaning people doing their best.

So, I guess, this is a warning as much as it is a post: if you think cancel culture is not real, or that it's a good thing, etc, then you'll probably not want to associate with my content too long.

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The Allowances of Art

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 00:31:20 GMT

There's a topic of conversation that has been rolling around my social media feeds, and which is extremely frustrating to me in ways that I have trouble articulating.

There's this persistent notion that you "shouldn't" write about characters with identities you don't share, because you "can't" understand the nuances of their lives. Sometimes, people will say you should only write about such characters if you've done extremely detailed amounts of research, and others will say it is utterly forbidden.

This is endlessly frustrating to me.

From the perspective of almost any of my myriad marginalizations, it puts people like me in a situation where no one will write for or about us except for ourselves. From the perspective of the marginalizations I don't share it, it leaves me without the ability to use my art as a way of expressing alliance and furthering equality. From the perspective of a writer, it just rings of the same censorship people are always trying to put on fiction, this time with a slightly different set of vocabulary.

I want to be able to read about, say, mixed race intersex people, without having to be the one who writes those stories for myself.

Basically, white/cis/hetero/men/whatever get the opportunity to be the audience. The rest of us are expected to be the creators. And we are expected to create only in extremely restrictive, and even separatist fashions.

I have a hard time expressing why, exactly, this line of argument is so frustrating to me. It seems more like a conflux of little things than any one major flaw.

But it's gettign more prominent again, and it's making me absolutely livid.

Basically, let straight white men write about queer poc so that queer poc like myself can take a goddamn break.

That's not mutually exclusive to "celebrate the art of marginalized people" either. But this expectation that marginalized people do all the hard parts...

Well.

It smacks of, "if you don't like white men being the protagonists of games, go make your own game," in progressive paint.

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Xeno Queer

Cancel Culture

The Allowances of Art