Fourth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

btw feel free to suggest/nominate post titles

Post about fandom! Or whatever! Whether it's a rave about some obscure series, or an essay dissecting every last reason why some internet-famous author should rethink their career, someone will probably read it at some point! We also just chat about life.

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: How's life?

[(Anonymous)]

> I know my own insistence on opposing fandom callout culture and censorship comes directly from watching slash and femslash get reported and censored in early fandom days by Christian fundies.

I think mine comes mostly from watching The Crucible as a teen and learning about HUAC + reading memoirs from people living in various auth regimes ruled by extremists. I was also aware of the history of fandom purges but they didn't hit my corner of fandom directly. So my brain always goes straight to the most stressful examples haha.

> Pity most of fandom doesn't seem to have retained that lesson.

I think they retained an incomplete one, ie: "censoring gay stuff is bad". But that's as far as they go and that's as far as they think the problem goes.

Re: How's life?

[(Anonymous)]

I think mine comes mostly from watching The Crucible as a teen and learning about HUAC + reading memoirs from people living in various auth regimes ruled by extremists. I was also aware of the history of fandom purges but they didn't hit my corner of fandom directly. So my brain always goes straight to the most stressful examples haha.

My country has had a long history of censorship, so I didn't necessarily see the issue with it. (And I only made the connection to The Crucible later, when SJW victim card (I do not know how to describe this, but it's the one where someone makes a long post about being oppressed and victimises, gives you an emotive first person description of how hurt they are, then summons the mob.)) denunciation became a staple.

But my issues started a bit before that because an adjacent fandom to mine experienced purges and the sentiment then was that we were next.

I think they retained an incomplete one, ie: "censoring gay stuff is bad". But that's as far as they go and that's as far as they think the problem goes.

It's a pity really. Because the issue wasn't this - the issue is that we've baked the exception in. It reminds me of the TRA playbook about taking over groups to make decisions favourable to them. A Singaporean friend of mine told me that this is what happened to a feminist group in her country: it was taken over in exactly that way by a Christian group, who felt that anything short of the traditional Christian line was wrong.

The problem is that making general rules that impose on others and that rely on your own righteousness is bad, both because you could be wrong, and because even if you are right, someone less nice taking over will use it to fuck others over.