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ao3commentoftheday · 5 months

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As a volunteer, do you have anything to say about what the OTW did to bjorn?

To begin with, I’m going to speak in generalities instead of specifics. This is for a couple of reasons. 1) I’ve been on hiatus from the OTW since August because my life got extremely complicated and volunteering wasn’t something I could continue doing right now. 2) As a result of my hiatus, I was not present for any of the events that transpired. This is simply my own opinion based on the available information, so you can feel free to disagree.

Now, as to your phrasing. You say “what the OTW did to bjorn” and I ask, “What did the OTW do to them?” From the meager information I’ve seen, all of which has been provided by bjorn themselves, they left the OTW of their own accord because they were unhappy with being talked to about their behaviour. This behaviour occurred in the OTW’s chat space which, for those of you who don’t know, is the OTW’s workspace. As a fully online organization, that platform is the equivalent of their office.

bjorn was in that shared workspace, and they set their name to include the phrase “Palestine will be free.” Later, they changed it to “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They were told that the first phrase made some people uncomfortable but that they were allowed to continue using it. They were told the second was unacceptable and that they should stop using it. bjorn chose to continue using the second phrasing.

Why is the second phrase seen as unacceptable? A quick google took me to the Anti Defamation League’s explanation of its antisemitism. That same google also provided me with Al Jazeera’s explanation of its complicated history. As a person who is neither Israeli nor Palestinian and as someone who hasn’t spent years studying the history of the region or the complexities of the conflict there, I’m comfortable with the idea that it’s a nuanced issue that different people will see in different ways, and I have personally decided that I should probably avoid using an expression whose interpretation varies so wildly.

Here, I will digress to remind everyone that the OTW is an international volunteer organization. That means there are volunteers there from all over the world - including Israel and Palestine. As far as I’m aware, bjorn is not from that region of the world.

So we have someone using a controversial phrase in a workplace setting where there are people who are immediately affected by the current conflict. My assumption is that they were not doing this to be intentionally aggressive. While I do recognize their name, there are nearly 1000 volunteers at the OTW so I’m afraid I don’t remember this one individual. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here, however, and assume that they were not calling for the eradication of all Jews.

I can also, however, understand why anyone who has seen this same phrase used as a justification for terrorist attacks would have difficulty doing the same.

From what I saw in the original post, bjorn was given a warning about their behaviour and then a more formal letter when it continued. CCAP (Constructive Corrective Action Procedure) has a pretty dystopian sound to it, but it’s basically just a conversation between a manager (Chair) and an employee (volunteer) when the employee has kinda messed up a little bit and the manager wants to get them back on track. If the CCAP goes well, then the volunteer is back in good standing and the situation can be put behind them. It’s only if the volunteer and their Chair are unable to get things back on track that the volunteer will be asked to leave the Org. As far as I know, that��s only happened a handful of times (but I’m no expert, and I’m still on hiatus so I can’t go and try to look things up)

bjorn apparently chose option #3, which is to leave the OTW rather than go through that process. That’s a perfectly fine decision to make, and I’m sure they’re not the first volunteer to do so. It was their choice, though. The OTW didn’t kick them out. The OTW didn’t force them out. The OTW told them “this is inappropriate behaviour in an international workplace setting,” and bjorn decided to leave rather than change that behaviour.

I have nothing against bjorn, and I hope their post-OTW life is a good one. However, I've seen posts that have been using bjorn's situation as a way to claim the OTW is a “Zionist organization.” I would like to remind everyone that the OTW is an organization dedicated to the preservation of fanworks. What role do people expect the OTW to take in an international negotiation between Israel and Palestine? How many international policy volunteers do people think they have, and which committee do people think they belong to? Technical Support? Communications?

I’m trending towards sarcasm here but it’s only because I can’t quite believe that there really are people who seem to believe that the OTW - again a fanwork preservation organization - is attempting to do anything at all with regards to an international conflict.

If anyone out there hates the OTW, I encourage them to avoid OTW’s various projects and to decline the biannual opportunities to donate, but please don't generate or share conspiracy theories. There are more than enough of them going around already.

#long post

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pretty-weird-ideas · 5 months

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Using AO3 after their Anti-Palestinian treatment of volunteers

MilkshakeDucking on OP(the volunteer) Aside... We were cooked the moment people started saying "We can still use AO3 YIPPEE" before anyone even got a single step into "focused pressure on AO3". Y'all do not actively understand the gravity of this situation, a lot of people using AO3 went "Oh that sucks lol" and didn't understand the actual words being said and how corrupt an organization must get for it to get to that point.

If you use AO3, constantly yap about AO3 and how much you love it, and know about the fact that it threatened to CCAP a pro-Palestinian volunteer over a slogan (again regardless of stuff coming to light) um... you can't just log into AO3 again and go stoney about it.

CONTACT THE OTW if you are going to use AO3

GO TO MEETINGS if you are going to use AO3

SPEAK OUT ABOUT THIS if you are going to use AO3

(And to those who have been disillusioned about AO3, power to you soldier. If you thought AO3 crossed lines before this and stopped using it, you don't have institutional power at the OTW, so this isn't targeting you. You aren't obligated to make another account or anything. In fact, it's important that white yes-men users get the fuck off of their asses because again, the OTW doesn't listen to users who are critical of them previously or people who are darker than a paper bag. POC who don't use AO3 or have been vocal about racism, you're fine. It's fine bbygirl.)

#ao3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #palestine #ao3 palestine

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shivasdarknight · 9 months

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OTW reprimands & punishes volunteer of color for speaking out against racist practices

If you at all care about the working conditions of OTW volunteers, then you must be made aware of what OTW just did to one of their volunteers of color.

You can view the entire piece here - which I highly encourage you to - as it's the letter sent to volunteer, Dhobi Ki Kutti, as apart of the first steps of Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP). In effect, it is OTW punishing Kutti for speaking out against the racist practices of OTW towards their own volunteers.

Please read the full letter if you can for the full context. I'll post a few excerpts from the letter + Kutti's response. It should go without saying, but what OTW has sent to Kutti is deeply inappropriate given that Kutti has been speaking out against the racist treatment of their volunteers of color. To reprimand and punish Kutti for speaking out against this is extremely telling of where OTW stands in regards to anti-racist practices, and have shown that they are willing to maintain a space that is hostile towards their volunteers of color for the sake of their white volunteers' and board members' comfort.

For the letter itself, key highlights include:

-Accusing Kutti of publishing confidential internal documents:

Several volunteers have also reached out to us with concerns that you have shared the contents of internal communications publicly in violation of the Wrangling Communication Policy. As you agreed when joining the Tag Wrangling team, [Link to How_to_talk_about_wrangling_in_public redacted] specifically prohibits the posting of internal communications externally which have not been made available to the public. "Broad topic discussion is acceptable, but giving specific details or copy/pasting quotes from mailing list e-mails or Slack rooms to public spaces is not. Doing so may be subject to CCAP or immediate dismissal.” This includes quoting internal conversations or emails directly. It seems that you've been in violation of this policy a number of times over the last month or so in posts where you have made a point of referencing and posting internal communications or quoting conversations externally. The specific incident cited to us in several reports is in regards to the comment you made on this post: https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-commitment-to-safety-responding-to-recent-concerns-about-ao3/ The concerns that have been relayed to us include the way that particular violation of policy has impacted the volunteers' well-being. Your willingness to share internal details publicly has made them feel disconcerted and unsafe. Some have also said that they feel their privacy has been invaded.

-Made volunteers "uncomfortable" for discussing "tense topics" (it's clear that they mean racism)

Additionally, while this is not a policy violation, a number of volunteers have informed us they feel that the way you have repeatedly brought up tense discussions in public rooms has made the work environment unpleasant. While we agree that the issues you’ve highlighted are important, many are things that can’t be addressed quickly, and will require a lot of time and effort from the org. We don’t want you to feel that conversations about change are unwelcome, but we would ask that you be more understanding of the fact that not everyone wants to participate in them. We also want you to understand that the changes you’re asking for require an immense amount of work from volunteers who already have an existing workload. All in all, these aspects of your behavior of late have generally made other volunteers feel unsafe, stressed, and uncomfortable. It has also made Slack a considerably less pleasant environment for those who have reached out to us, making it more difficult for your fellow volunteers to communicate on the platform, and impacting both their mental well-being and their desire to actively volunteer with the OTW while it continues.

-Actions against Kutti:

Actions:

- Due to an abundance of caution, cease linking to social media posts which may, however unintentionally, link the fannish and real identities of volunteers within the OTW together. - Do not quote or cut and paste sections of documents, email communications, or internal conversations into external conversations or public forums. - Do not summarize internal communications for external spaces. Internal communications are not, and should not be, considered material that can be shared elsewhere (even in summary form) if they have not been released publicly by the OTW. The fact that this is something you have been doing consistently over the past month or so is a large part of what is contributing to some of your fellow volunteers feeling unsafe. - If you wish to ask a question about a particular social media post or comment on a post, and feel it is necessary to link the post or comment for reference, email committee chairs rather than posting in the Slack public rooms. - Be more cautious about how you link things, and consider whether links to other posts are really necessary when asking your questions. You will not be welcome to continue to volunteer with the tag wrangling committee if you cannot be considerate and respectful of the needs of your fellow volunteers. We hope you will take the concerns of your fellow volunteers seriously and adjust your approach going forward to take those concerns and their well-being into account. We also hope you will strive to be respectful of your fellow volunteers’ time and boundaries.

Kutti's response:

-Permission to repost and quote:

I am waiving my right to confidentiality and posting the entirety of the CCAP text below this, so that other volunteers can decide for themselves whether your actions are warranted or not. I also give permission for anyone to share this text and my response to it here, along with my org handle, in any public internet location they wish to disseminate it to.

-Response to the actions taken against them:

For my part, I had not expected the organisation would provide me such a blatant example of racist retaliation, but clearly, I had not set the bar low enough. I reject the authority of white people in positions of structural power in this organisation to punish me—a volunteer of colour trying to hold you accountable for your structural racism—by intimidating me and placing restrictions regarding my participation in OTW communication channels.

-Regarding the accusations of breaking the confidentiality policy:

I reject a cultist confidentiality policy that denies volunteers any opportunity to provide citations to back up claims of abusive organisational practises. The only quotes I have publicly posted are from official statements made by the Board and Chairs to all volunteers, and I shared them in response to a post where the official organisation statement was denying an accusation of insufficiently protecting its volunteer base. As a member of said volunteer base, I have the right to provide proof of my own experience. You have accused me of violating the confidentiality policy a number of times, without providing any other citations. Because I have been entirely focussed on demanding accountability within the organisation, it is very easy for me to enumerate any public comments I have made (copies of which I have recorded here: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/). If you consider me citing my own words, voiced in internal channels, to be violating my own confidentiality then... you have overstepped, because I gave myself permission to ‘violate’ my own privacy.

-Regarding OTW referring to Kutti's discussions of racism as a "threat" to volunteers:

I reject your framing of my actions as a threat to individual volunteers. Anyone who will look at the history of my comments will understand immediately where the false accusation of me ‘outing’ a volunteer comes from, and can also find the evidence of the volunteer themselves linking the identity in question. I can say much more about the racialised double standards that this accusation is a part of, but it is obvious that you don’t actually think I outed anyone. Because, as the CCAP makes a point to reiterate, this is cumulative action being taken for everything I have said over the past month. That my comments have made the atmosphere ‘tense’ and ‘unpleasant’. That I have made multiple volunteers feel ‘stressed,’‘disconcerted and unsafe’, to the extent that I have affected their mental well-being. I am not ‘considerate and respectful’ enough to be welcome as a volunteer.

-Regarding Kutti's actions going forward:

I will make no statement of victim impact regarding what my experience as a hypervisible person of colour speaking out against racism in this organisation has been, because I know that you do not care. For the record, I have filed no complaint against any individual volunteer because my focus has always been calling out the institutional patterns of racialised inequity and hostility. I will continue to document this organisation’s racism till you suspend me, and afterwards. I will always be open to hearing from current and former volunteers of colour, and I will continue to maintain the confidences of people who trusted me.

-Important final words:

The Organisation for Transformative Works has been weaponising its incompetence since its inception to argue that it is not racist, merely hapless. This CCAP is evidence that despite all the issues that plague the official machinery— when it feels a sense of urgency and desperation to lash out at someone, it is, in fact, right up there with the best of liberal white institutions at performing racism masked in policing.

Again: please see the full letter & response.

This is deeply inappropriate behavior on the part of OTW. To the people insisting that if fans of color should volunteer if they want to see/make any substantial change: this is what happens when volunteers of color try to make substantial change to the organization. Their volunteers are already at risk because they don't do a good job of ensuring their safety in a general sense, but their VOCs are at an increased risk of racist harassment within the organization from white volunteers, attacks from people outside of the organization, and apparently from the organization itself!

OTW has made its stance known that it will not support its more vulnerable volunteers, and will side with white volunteers who report VOCs because they feel "threatened" by discussions of racism. Telling FOCs to just volunteer is asking them to be subjected to the same reprimanding and punishment that Kutti has just experienced.

#otw #our transformative works #ao3 #end otw racism #eotwr #racism #original #important

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end-otw-racism · 9 months

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Update & Signal Boost: Dhobi ki Kutti

Two weeks ago we uplifted two posts from Dhobi ki Kutti, a fan of color and OTW volunteer, that recount the retaliation she's experienced at the hands of OTW leadership for speaking out against racism within the organization. One post shared a Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP) letter from OTW Chairs that reads as a blatant attempt to silence her. The other demanded the suspension of OTW Board Member Alex Tischer for their repeated racist remarks. Tischer has since resigned from the Board, along with Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber.

Kutti's latest post Racism within the OTW goes into further detail about her experiences as a volunteer, and the racism she's witnessed and been subjected to:

In 2020, when I asked the OTW Board to document the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter, and racism, and they put it off, I started gathering evidence. I had an idea of writing a report, a thorough, researched, documented argument that could prove to anyone without a vested interest in denying it, that the Organisation for Transformative Works was infected, from top to bottom, with structural racism. This post is not that report. I had not intended to become active in the org because I had already learned that it was futile, but in May 2023 I saw fellow and ex volunteers being abused by a hostile management, and there was no way I could keep quiet about it. I focussed on victim advocacy, and on uncovering facts by asking questions in public, so that there was a documentation that other volunteers could look towards. In the process, I became a target of the kind of relentless racialised microaggressions that wear you down, no matter how prepared you are. And then of course the org decided to escalate with the macro aggression of sending me a CCAP, the kind of blatantly racist written proof that, to anyone outside the org, was a piece of evidence beyond any doubt.

We here at End OTW Racism offer Dhobi ki Kutti our full support and will continue to push the OTW to address the racism within its organization. You can read dhobikikutti's full post at Dreamwidth.

#signal boost #fandom racism #end otw racism #otw #organization for transformative works

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fiercynn · 9 months

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former otw board candidate's attempted take-down of a volunteer of color is cruel. and racist!

so if you’ve been following along with the discussions about racism in the organization for transformative works (otw) and everything that’s gone on just this week, you may have seen that @yishaqeni (he/they) - a former otw board candidate who withdrew from the election in late june (not audrey r, the republican) - wrote a post two days ago saying that the actions of dhobikikutti (not sure of pronouns), a volunteer of color who has been calling out racism in the otw, are a large part of what led yishaqeni to withdraw from the election and the organization. you can read yishaqeni’s full post here.

i'm going to go ahead and try to address yishaqeni’s accusations towards kutti here as i understand them. (i'm choosing not to respond to yishaqeni’s follow-up post on this topic because kutti has said that yishaqeni has confused kutti with another volunteer of color in at least one of his accusations in that second post, and i do not know which accusation that is, so i am not engaging with that post for now.)

firstly, some context on my perspective: i am not an otw volunteer, nor do i have any other inside perspective on otw as an organization. i do not personally know dhobikikutti, yishaqeni, alex tischer, azarias, nor any of the other board members or committee chairs who have been in leadership between 2020 and now. all of my understanding of these situations comes from what has been shared publicly by people who do have inside knowledge.

as an outsider, i have read and reread all of the public posts that kutti has made multiple times. i’ve also read all of the discussions documented by synonymous, including stuff that happened on fail_fandomanon (ffa). i obviously may be missing stuff that happened internally, but going off of what i’ve seen all of these folks say, including yishaqeni, here are my reactions to yishaqeni’s accusations.

yishaqeni's accusation #1: “dhobi ki kutti herself had began posting internal information to her personal dreamwidth and sending this information to other DW users without considering if the people she was posting about were identifiable” and “dhobi ki kutti has made it clear that she does not care about the privacy of other volunteers so long as she can use statements to discuss structural racism in the org”

firstly, let’s be clear: until kutti received their first warning for constructive corrective action procedure (ccap) from the otw tag wrangling chairs and board, what kutti posted publicly were the emails and comments that kutti themselves sent to otw leadership. kutti also notes that the only quotes kutti includes are from official statements made by the board and chairs to all volunteers, nothing from private conversations:

i'll go even further and say that except for one circumstance that i'll talk about below, kutti’s comments do not include information specific enough to people or events that could identify them or violate people’s privacy. perhaps if you are an otw volunteer who saw these conversations go on internally, they seem like they give identifiable information, but as someone from the outside, they do not.

the one exception is the question that kutti asked in the july 3 board meeting about documented racism by board member alex tischer (pronouns listed as "IDGAF"). i attended that board meeting, and at the time i had already seen discussion of alex on fail_fandomanon, where alex’s racist actions have been documented. this matters because alex has held multiple leadership positions at otw: alex was a board member from 2016-2018 and again from 2020-2023 until their resignation three days ago on july 27, 2023; and as far as we know, alex is still the chair of the webs committee [here's an archived link on july 30, 2023 in case that changes soon].

i'll emphasize kutti’s point here about volunteers needing to be able to provide citations of abusive organizational practices. when people like alex with this level of power have been allowed to get away with blatant racism and anti-blackness over years within the organization, there is often no other recourse than the name them publicly to decry their actions – especially when other information about those people has already been leaked on ffa! targeting kutti for this is ridiculous and racist, especially when yishaqeni themselves admits that volunteers of color who were asking for answers were being stonewalled by the board and leadership.

after kutti received the ccap email, kutti did also post that publicly, because the ccap email itself is such a blatantly racist threat on otw leadership’s part that it, in my opinion, absolutely needed to be shared, for the same reasons as above.

yishaqeni's accusation #2: “dhobi ki kutti began posting her questions a few weeks before i left. these were questions we were already asking - progress on the 2020 pledge, the treatment of azarias, PAC, POCvols and cvols, etc. however, this also included posts that were deliberately inflammatory, where she would refer to actions she disagreed with with provocative descriptors such as 'disgusting'…”

i, personally, think it’s perfectly legitimate to talk about any of otw’s horrible actions listed here as “disgusting”, including to talk about racism, but kutti has revealed that that’s not actually where kutti even used this term. kutti used it to talk about the way former otw volunteer azarias was treated in the CSEM work azarias had to do:

And @ board? On a personal level - finding out what you took the responsibility to ask azarias to do, that the board and the Legal advisors of the board told her it was her job to not delete the content that a CSEM distributing user had created, but that she was supposed to comb through it all to only remove the bits that were illegal - that disgusts me. The fact that you all think this is an acceptable thing to ask of anyone disgusts me. What is it going to take to shake you out of your inaction here? [x]

still think it’s provocative to use the word “disgusts” in that context? yishaqeni, you should be ashamed of how you’ve characterized this.

yishaqeni's accusation #3: “[kutti] was deliberately antagonizing and intimidating to others in the internal chat, particularly when she felt other vols weren't engaging with what she was posting”

having been in many, many situations where calling out racism is met by silence, i can’t tell you how frustrating and demoralizing it is to see people continue to engage with “easier” topics in other channels but deliberately choose not to respond about racism, especially when you know that having more allies in the room could potentially help demand answers from leadership. it’s horrible to feel like you’re shouting in to the void about a topic as important as racism and harassment.

so if you’re going to give the volunteers who didn’t respond grace and understanding for not knowing what to say, you should also give that grace and understanding to kutti for being frustrated at having to tackle these topics alone. racism and mistreatment of volunteers are the things that should cause discomfort, not the person calling them out.

yishaqeni's accusation #4: “dhobi ki kutti mocked those who were stressed and uncomfortable by how she was posting in her ccap responsa”

let's take a look at what kutti actually said in that ccap response:

Because, as the CCAP makes a point to reiterate, this is cumulative action being taken for everything I have said over the past month. That my comments have made the atmosphere ‘tense’ and ‘unpleasant’. That I have made multiple volunteers feel ‘stressed,’‘disconcerted and unsafe’, to the extent that I have affected their mental well-being. I am not ‘considerate and respectful’ enough to be welcome as a volunteer. I do not plan to invest the energy in theorising this for you, because abusers who file complaints to silence criticism know fully well what patterns of hierarchy and power they are wielding. And here, I will make it clear that I hold the chairs and Board responsible for this CCAP, not any individual volunteers who chose to complain against me. A healthy organisation would have resources to support volunteers feeling threatened by my challenges of the structural whiteness in this organisation without using their discomfort to browbeat me. [x, emphasis mine]

i've bolded the last part of kutti’s statement because kutti makes it clear that this is an organizational failure. kutti explicitly says that kutti does not blame the individuals who felt threatened or uncomfortable, even those who reported kutti for this, which is far more generous than i would be in that circumstance. so how exactly is that “mocking” people who were stressed and uncomfortable? ridiculous.

now i'm going to make some accusations of my own, based on what i've seen here:

deepa’s accusation #1: yishaqeni choosing to focus on kutti in this post is both targeted and racist.

yishaqeni names that there are many reasons he decided to leave the otw and withdraw as a board candidate, including “the constant leaking of internal discussions and comments to FFA and DW, the lack of response from board on the ongoing trashfire, the inability of the board to address structural racism”, as well as kutti’s alleged behavior. yishaqeni then adds that they choose to focus on kutti’s behavior because they think racism in the org has been “analysed to death” already.

that's kind of a wild statement to make, because even if these issues have been analyzed and discussed, those critiques of otw’s dysfunction have clearly not gained enough traction or power for change to have been made within the organization yet. if that is truly a concern of yishaqeni’s, and one so powerful that it led them to leave the org, surely they can still do work to talk about that? since ultimately that is much more impactful than the actions of a single volunteer?

then there’s the ffa leaks. from what i've seen, those are more likely to have been “privacy violations” than anything that kutti has posted, because they often quote directly from otw chats, and they cover topic even more wide-ranging than the racism that kutti has posted about. but kutti is still the person targeted in this post.

i get that with everything going on right now, it can feel unsafe to be an otw volunteer, and to feel like you can’t speak freely in otw channels. but to ascribe that lack of safety to kutti is ridiculous. and given that the main thing kutti’s been talking about publicly is racism, it is racist to target kutti this way.

yishaqeni could have written a post about how organizational culture at otw – including a lack of transparency and action from otw leadership – have contributed to an atmosphere so toxic that it has both led people to feel like they need to leak stuff (and again, not just stuff related to racism), and that volunteers have been made to feel unsafe because of some of those leaks. that’s a valid critique that covers both sides of why this is all really fucked up.

but yishaqeni chose instead to focus disproportionately on the actions of a single volunteer of color calling out racism, whose “leaks” did not include identifiable information about individuals except for what had been shared with all board and volunteers. wild.

deepa’s accusation #2: yishaqeni is engaging in tone policing, which is also – surprise! – racist.

firstly, let’s look at the language yishaqeni uses to describe how kutti talks about racism: “intentionally inflammatory”, “provocative”, “antagonizing”, “intimidating”, “aggressive[e]”, “incendiary”, and “outside the bounds of normal discourse”.

i think i just got bingo on a tone policing bingo card. “aggressive” and “intimidating”, in particular, are words that are frequently used to demonize people of color for their justifiable anger about racism, and to make them out to be threats. (i'll be clear too here that this kind of language is not only racist but anti-black, and that black people face disproportionate levels of tone policing, but non-black people of color can still be targeted with this rhetoric.)

this is all especially ridiculous because yishaqeni acknowledges that no one who was making these critiques was gaining any traction from otw leadership! and yet, yishaqeni also claims that “this could've been campaigned on without the leaking of internal discussions and making vols feel unsafe and stressed”. how, exactly? kutti has been talking about racism within the otw, including going through the “proper channels”, since 2020. people outside of the organization have been talking about this publicly for even longer. how long do those efforts have to fail for people to understand that those “proper channels” are not getting us there?

people of color are allowed to be angry about racism. in fact, everyone should be angry about racism! and the fact is that there is simply no way to talk about racism that will be “acceptable”, because white supremacist culture puts forward that racism itself is what’s acceptable. so saying “kutti should have talked about this differently” is super fucked up. and racist.

deepa’s accusation #3: in their second post, yishaqeni accuses kutti of actions that were done by another volunteer of color. which is racist.

pretty self-explanatory tbh.

deepa's accusation #4: yishaqeni implies that kutti does not understand the risks for volunteers of being subjected to violence for their work in the otw, while not acknowledging that kutti is at high risk for that kind of violence.

for context, kutti is a volunteer from india, which kutti has said publicly.

to quote yishaqeni in full about this topic:

“the privacy policy is in place to protect vols and she was being incredibly cavalier with what and how she was posting. it’s to protect vols like me who live in countries with a living memory of sectarian and homophobic violence, it’s to protect cvols who live in a country where they can be prosecuted for accessing certain OTW projects, it’s to protect people who could be at risk of harm for engaging with what is widely perceived as queer explicit content.” [x]

as a queer indian-american, i find this extremely condescending and belittling. india has more than a memory of sectarian and homophobic violence; it is a daily reality for many, many marginalized communities there. india's central government, and many of its states, are run by hindu supremacist political parties that actively promote violence towards minorities, including lgbtqia+ folks, women, muslims, dalits and other caste-oppressed communities, adivasis and indigenous communities, disabled people, black people, kashmiris, bengalis, sikhs, other ethnic and religious minorities, and more. india only de-criminalized homosexuality five years ago.

then there’s also the fact that simply talking about racism in fandom online as a person of color opens you up to harassment, threats, and potentially more, regardless of where you live!

since i do not know kutti personally, i do not know what kutti specifically has had to face, and i very much hope kutti has been spared from all of what i've talked about above. but there’s absolutely no guarantee of that. and lecturing kutti – who, again, has not violated anyone’s privacy! – of this while not understanding kutti’s own risk as an otw volunteer is also ridiculous.

deepa’s accusation #5: yishaqeni does not himself seem to do much work publicly to speak up about racism in the otw.

as i mentioned above, yishaqeni's post barely pays lip service to the larger issues of racism in the organization. so i looked to see if yishaqeni has been speaking out more broadly to advance anti-racism on his public platforms.

first, i looked at yishaqeni's otw candidate bio and platform from before they withdrew from the race. it does not include any mention of race or racism. so then i scrolled through yishaqeni’s tumblr posts in the past week, and also went ahead and searched his blog for as many relevant terms relevant to fandom racism as i could think of, including "racism", "race", “antiracism" and "anti racism”, “anti-blackness” and “antiblackness”, “sinophobia”, “otw” and "organization for transformative works", “ao3”, “cvols”, and “weibo”.

apart from the posts about kutti, the only posts related to fandom racism are a few different posts where yishaqeni names the sinophobia that 2022 otw board candidate tiffany g faced. which i absolutely agree with, but is not at all related to the issues of otw’s internal racism and org culture that has been raised in the past few months, which yishaqeni blithely says has already been “analysed to death” - despite yishaqeni not having used the public platform where he's accusing kutti to uplift any of that analysis or critique.

how can you say that you “i stand 100% in solidarity with OTW volunteers, particularly the PAC team, cvols and POC vols who have quite frankly been done dirty by the board” when kutti is one of those people, and when you don’t actually do the hard work (at least publicly) to uplift them and stand by them on the shit that has come out this year? why is one of your few posts on the topic of racism at all your screed against a poc who is combating racism?

to be clear, yishaqeni’s targeting of kutti would be unconscionable even if they had uplifted other people talking about racism, for all the reasons i named in my first four points. but in this context it is even worse.

deepa's accusation #6: by targeting kutti in this post, yishaqeni is harming not only kutti, but also the larger movement to hold otw accountable for racism.

anyone who has actually taken the time to understand issues of racism in fandom should be aware that this kind of unfounded, targeted attack on a fan of color calling out racism won't only impact that fan, but also the larger fight against racism. in fact, targeting individuals like this is a very successful tactic to stymie anti-racism.

i don't know if yishaqeni's attack of kutti is intended to shut kutti up on racism. but even if unintentional, it is clear that yishaqeni either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about how his words will in fact be used to support the existing culture of whiteness, racism, and organizational abuse at the otw.

i just can’t get over how irresponsible and cruel it is to target kutti this way, to tone police them, to take the their statements out of context, and to undermine their work fighting racism within the organization. kutti was already under threat before yishaqeni’s post, both from the ccap itself and from their position calling out racism in a hostile organization, but yishaqeni has undoubtedly made it worse.

and this was a choice. a racist choice. yishaqeni did not have to say anything at all. or they could have made the kind of post that i mentioned earlier, once that spent most of its time decrying the culture at otw that led to things being this way rather than singling out a person of color trying to whisteblow.

even though yishaqeni has quit the otw, others will undoubtedly use his accusations to undercut those who are fighting racism in the organization, whether inside or out. this is just one of myriad ways that racism is allowed to thrive in the otw. and, to use one of the words that yishaqeni finds so disagreeable, i think it’s absolutely disgusting.

#otw racism #otw #fandom racism #organization for transformative works #otw board #otw elections #ao3 #archive of our own #otw leadership being racist

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