coaltide | C-c-c-c-c-coal bomb!

Speaking of this, can someone tell me what actual racism actually happened on AO3/OTW?

All I'm aware of is that some people wanted racism to become an official warning, one that could be added by readers... and people rightly pointed out that this quickly would turn into tagging fic as racist because it has more kudos than the black BNF's fic, or because someone doesn't like hot noncon about Finn Star Wars.

Besides that I have some vague recollections of black fans acting shitty about mixed race and asian people, but somehow I doubt that their racism is getting called out here.

Surely there must be more than the usual whining that this or that black character isn't popular enough/doesn't get enough shipfic/the right kind of shipfic?

It's more about racism within the org, directed at volunteers and people running for the board etc, unfortunately things got muddied when the stop racism on AO3 people did link to stitch and others who do want work censorship, so some people kneejerk reacted thinking the whole thing was about antis, which then fueled the argument about not enough being done.

They really need to differentiate between wanting reform within the org and wanting to change the orgs policies, instead of conflating the issues

Can you please tell me an actual example of racism within the org, directed at volunteers or people running for the board?

So - aside from the fact that this is pretty transparently a comment designed to make it possible for you to explain why bad things that happened to fans of color weren't really racism - one of AO3's problems here is that it has always been way overprotective about secrecy. Abuse tickets can't be discussed outside the org in any way by the people who know about them from the org side. Conflicts between volunteers that take place in org spaces aren't supposed to be publicly discussed in detail outside org spaces. Pretty much all specific incidents that might make good answers to this question fall under one or the other of those - which means we can only get one side of the story, always, and usually even then a distorted and gossipy one.

It's a serious problem. It's been a serious problem with the org for a long time. The fact that Comms has never apparently been able to actually do comms work well doesn't help.

People are capable of quoting the times black fans were shitting on mixed fans. I distinctly remember several quotes about "mixies" and "swirls". So surely there must be some things you can quote from white fans against black fans, with links or screenshots if deleted?

And I could probably go and find that one sexist thing I saw in the wild (if I can remember the dude's name to unblock him and find the fic). Surely you must have some examples in the wild that you can quote?

Not ALL of it can be hidden in confidentiality, surely. Like, you cannot seriously expect me to just take your word for it that there are all these horrible things... but you cannot tell me even one example because you aren't allowed to.

If white fans are so horribly racist towards black fans all the time, please show me at least one link, screenshot or even quote from an AO3 summary or author's note or fic comments. Just one thing that isn't shipwars bullshit. Please, I'm begging you here.

I actually have no idea about whatever you're referencing in your first paragraph, congrats, you have now presented better specific evidence of people being racist on AO3 than I have!

But weirdly I don't actually have a bunch of detailed receipts at hand to post in an anon comm at 3 AM to someone who is strawmanning at me, so I guess I'll let you have the last word.

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Re: Most likely to cause wank this season

(Anonymous) - 2023-09-25 07:54 (UTC) - Expand

People are absolutely capable of quoting when one fan, in their own social media, shat on another fan. Like, as you say, this, from nutheadgee (note: racial slurs):

https://archive.ph/MUKdu

That is not the same as being able to find and quote internal communications within AO3 that are a) so outrageously racist in a very brief snippet that they don't need further context to show how racist they are and b) safe for the person who saw them to share them.

If white fans are so horribly racist towards black fans all the time

- You made up that statement. No one said it was just white fans, for one thing. No one said white fans as a group are consistently racist to Black fans throughout. Just that it's a thing that Black fans experience as a problem and feel is not appropriately dealt with. If I go for an hour-long walk and pass a hundred people and ninety-nine of them behave in a neutral or friendly manner - they don't bump into me, they don't leer at me, some of them smile - I'm still going to be disturbed by the one person who follows me making lewd comments.

What do you think is the agenda here of people who say "racism is a problem"?

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(Anonymous) - 2023-09-25 08:05 (UTC) - Expand

Funny how this line of argument looks like an excuse for you to repeat ad nauseum how terrible Black fans are, complete with specific slurs, and it's so easy for you to provide the evidence but you'll see if you can bait other people into it.

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Re: Most likely to cause wank this season

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I hope you're not trolling. If you're not, you might like these very informative links: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org
and
https://synonymous.dreamwidth.org

They are trolling. Don't give them names - their response to an earlier link to dhobikikutti was to launch into a spontaneous, baseless fantasy in which dhobikikutti was at fault for spewing invective. They don't want to see examples of racism so they can be convinced, they want to see examples of racism so they can gloat about people experiencing racism.

https://coaltide.dreamwidth.org/7041.html?thread=13521025#cmt13521025

There have been cases of fans of color getting serious racist harassment from other fans on AO3, and AO3 not supporting them well at all. Ditto for volunteer on volunteer racism being handled badly. In terms of stuff that's clearly a racism problem and clearly does need worked on, that's the main specific things I know about, although tbh I have no direct evidence that the way the racist harassment was handled was worse than the ways they've handled other kinds of harassment. (and the block/mute feature was a huge step forward there.)

There's also been really bad stuff against some of the Asian volunteers from within and without the org, which is mixed up in the complicated mess around AO3 suddenly getting a whole a lot of Chinese users a few years ago and really, really not being prepared to deal with that gracefully. (Like, they certainly could have fumbled it a lot worse - but there's stuff involved there that it's fair to call racism, including directly against one of the new board members.) But many of the people mad about AO3 being racist are at best unaware of that - or don't like that talking about Asian fans isn't about them, so actively take part in it.

This is, of course, unfortunately all further complicated by the fact that a lot of the loudest voices about the very real racism problems have also gotten "anti-racism" mixed up with "shipwars" and are also so invested in hating AO3 that literally anything AO3 does can get added to the list of racist offenses.

One of the big early meta posts in the most recent go-round was pointing out that before AO3 can do anything real to fix their racism problems they need to have someone do a study on what their racism problems actually are, beyond a few very high-profile incidents and a lot of shouting, but unfortunately it got mostly buried under other things that came out in the comments of that post. (Also that's not going to happen because the two possible outcomes are that AO3 learns that their racism problem is way worse than they knew, or they are going to be forced to defend a study that points out that the problems the anti-racist fans are complaining about were wildly exaggerated, which is a lose-lose for them.)

What was this serious racist harassment by fans? Can you please quote or link to at least one that lists actual examples. Because yes, I've only seen the "Finn Star Wars bottoms/tops in this fic and that's racist (and the other way around is racist too, and it's even more racist if he's not in the fic)" wank. I want to believe you that racist harassment happened/happens, but absolutely no one has ever linked or even quoted anything that wasn't bullshit.

I did see ONE actual example of sexism in a fic summary, where one male fic writer flat out stated that he hated female slash writers and was doing this fic as a "challenge of war" or some bullshit. I've never seen something like that for racism in the wild, so please, please show me an actual example that actually exists.

How was the influx of chinese fans fumbled? From what I saw, the main problem was that the chinese fans couldn't be bothered to choose the correct language so the english language tags were full of chinese stuff... AO3 changed it so that there was no default language and everyone had to go through the bother of choosing a language every time. Which seems pretty nice and non-racist to me, especially because the chinese fandom has always done everything they could to keep non-chinese fans out of their spaces. Too many non-chinese people on weibo? Lock the downloads and hide the password in such a way that you have to be fluent to understand the riddle. Surely western fandom has been nicer to chinese fans than chinese fandom has ever been to western fans.

The worst of the Chinese fandom stuff I know about - beyond nasty things said in the open as part of the last few Board elections - involves internal decisions about how Weibo moderation will be handled. See above about the secrecy problems that make it hard to talk about this stuff. :/

There is a compilation that gets linked around sometimes of a few of the cases of fan-on-fan harassment but it was compiled by some of the worst bullies in the whole mess so I don't keep it on hand to link to, and also all of the specific cases I know of on there predate the block feature and a few internal reforms to Abuse procedures. Also for obvious reasons people who have been harassed tend to not be super excited about sharing their AO3 names around as examples of people who can be harassed. But if you are friends with any fans of color who use AO3, even the ones who think the anti-AO3-racism people are full of bullshit can usually tell you a story or two.

However if you find it unlikely or unbelievable that people of color have been harassed on AO3 using racism as a tool of the bullying, and that AO3 handled it incompetently, you're probably beyond hope. The first part is standard on every website that allows user comments, and handling things incompetently is standard for AO3.

No, I don't find it unbelievable or unlikely. I just want to see some evidence, any evidence, because I don't like condemning people just because I'm told they're evil.

I have seen evidence of black fans being shitty towards asians.
I have seen evidence of black fans being shitty towards mixed people.
I have seen evidence of black wankers using racism as a shipwar and harassment tool.

SO PLEASE give me some evidence that white fans have harassed black fans on AO3. Like, people are perfectly capable of linking and quoting the other three things. Surely it cannot be this hard to show a handful of examples?

I AM friends with plenty of asian fans who share my asian fandoms, and none of them have seen anything either. Maybe I've just chosen nice, small fandoms or something.

because I don't like condemning people just because I'm told they're evil

Who exactly do you think you're being asked to condemn?

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(Anonymous) - 2023-09-25 11:21 (UTC) - Expand

How was the influx of chinese fans fumbled?

Coalie, that's a perfectly reasonable question, but the entire rest of your paragraph is a litany of resentful complaints about Chinese fans inconveniencing you. It's pretty bad faith.

Wow, that's such a bad faith reading.

How was the influx of chinese fans fumbled? From what I saw, the main problem was that the chinese fans couldn't be bothered to choose the correct language so the english language tags were full of chinese stuff... AO3 changed it so that there was no default language and everyone had to go through the bother of choosing a language every time. Which seems pretty nice and non-racist to me, especially because the chinese fandom has always done everything they could to keep non-chinese fans out of their spaces. Too many non-chinese people on weibo? Lock the downloads and hide the password in such a way that you have to be fluent to understand the riddle. Surely western fandom has been nicer to chinese fans than chinese fandom has ever been to western fans.

Points made above:

-The Chinese fans beginning to use AO3 caused problems for other people and behaved badly
-AO3 made a change and this change was a problem because it inconvenienced other people; this is the Chinese fans' fault
-That was so nice and accommodating of AO3, clearly the Chinese fans should have been grateful
-Chinese fandom, a monolith, is hostile and specifically xenophobic, especially compared to AO3, a welcoming haven
-Claim that one specific action by Weibo prove points that all Chinese fandom spaces are uniformly xenophobic
-Claim that one specific action by AO3 proves that Western fandom spaces are uniformly nicer

You could make this more racist, I truly believe you! But. This is seriously racist.

Re: Most likely to cause wank this season

(Anonymous) - 2023-09-25 08:53 (UTC) - Expand

one male fic writer flat out stated that he hated female slash writers and was doing this fic as a "challenge of war" or some bullshit.

Was this Nickolaus Pacione, by any chance?

And by female slash writers, he means women who would never fuck him in a million years.

That sounds like a mix of topics. I personally am unsure about the value of adding a racism warning tag on AO3, but some of the people arguing for it are more persuasive than others. The people arguing for it to be a warning added by readers are a much smaller subset, and I agree with you about the pitfalls there. Also, right now there's nothing stopping someone bookmarking a work with the tag 'racism'.

Besides that I have some vague recollections of black fans acting shitty about mixed race and asian people, but somehow I doubt that their racism is getting called out here.

I think you're talking about stitch and nuthedgee, but I don't have a good summary on hand.

Some specific incidents:

-A South Asian volunteer, dhobikikutti, grew increasingly frustrated about various aspects of the org's internal processes and how they felt those aspects were permeated by racism. They brought these issues up. They were issued several formal warnings based on a) their tone rather than actionable issues, and b) the non-issue of having mentioned two names together in a space where the person described by the names had already linked those two names themselves. Their account is here: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/135925.html

-A white volunteer, azarias, has described how they saw several instances of racist treatment of Asian volunteers, and how a problem the Asian volunteers had raised several times was only taken seriously once azarias repeated the exact same points.

-Last year's Board election, an Asian candidate called Tiffany G was the subject of a racist scaremongering campaign based on the claims that she was pro-censorship and her inclusion on the board would mean AO3 did things China wanted. This was spun out of her concern about the way AO3 is perceived in China and a desire to improve communications about what AO3 actually stands for. The Elections committee did not visibly stand up for her. She withdrew.
-In this year's Board election, an American candidate called Audrey R turned out to have run for local office as a Republican. This also attracted a passionate backlash. The Elections committee issued an official notice within 24 hours telling people not to harass candidates.

((Personally I think that saying "don't harass candidates" is the least Elections could do; they also didn't warn Audrey R about when her full name would be disclosed, just that it would be. But the difference in timing and message for the Asian candidate and the (I believe) white American candidate was telling.))

- Also this year in Elections, the Chinese candidate for Board Zixin Z was made to answer an extremely hostile question sent in by someone she'd worked with before in AO3, alleging activity that is criminal in her own jurisdiction as well as asking her about an alleged past unprofessional incident. There are a lot of things wrong with this situation.

There's a good post here:
https://fandomantiracism.tumblr.com/post/724325873259528192/a-pattern-of-dismissal-and-retaliation-the

-I don't have immediate links to racism specifically about Black fans and volunteers. However, I think saying in the wake of the George Floyd murder that the archive was going to be better, and then failing to deliver anything concrete, is racist, because it shows a failure to prioritise those aims.

You may have seen posts from https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/ over the last few months. I don't think they were a particularly coherent or constructive action, but they did highlight the above problem, and it's real.

No, those are again just vague allegations. The dhobikikutti dreamwidth post says something racist happened, but not WHAT. She goes on to say that not acting on complaints about racism is racist, but that only applies if the first thing was actually racism. She says the tone argument is racist, but again, we don't know what she said because she didn't post quotes - she could have pulled a winterfox and called her fellow volunteer a racist cunt who should be raped by dogs. We don't know, because there are no quotes, no screencaps, etc.

Yes, these people almost certainly experienced racism... but there is still no proof.

Come on, it can't be that hard to dig up one screencap of an AO3 comment with the n-word, or some link to an author's note that says black people are icky, or ANYTHING that isn't vague allegations.

... You're right, cleaning my room is a much better use of my time than arguing with you.

As is going back to my past nominations and seeing what interesting, complex, fun characters of various backgrounds I can throw into the Yuletide pool, where connecting with other fans over how great they are is probably a lot more worthwhile than this depressing conversation.

Oh my fucking god.

Fine, let's compromise. Since you are apparently unable to find previous evidence, I'll settle for future: the NEXT time you or one of your friends experiences anti-black racism on AO3, you come right here and post the link and/or quote. How's that? You should be able to do that before yuletide is over.

You are owed this why?