#this is not the discourse football in question but i'm also thinking again abt the yennefer discourse in witcher fandom

[aeide-thea]

seeing multiple ends of a discourse football on my dash, reblogged by good well-intentioned people who i respect and think highly of and whose values i'm pretty sure have a great deal of overlap, and just thinking abt a post i saw recently that i'm p sure is still wending its way thru my queue, abt tumblr/socmed discussions as border skirmishes intended to underscore division, rather than as consensus-building...

#this is not the discourse football in question but i'm also thinking again abt the yennefer discourse in witcher fandom #where like. there ended up being this really binary hardcore divide #between yennefer stans and ppl who had any reservations abt her #and if you belonged to the latter group you often got told it was Definitely You Being Racist #which just. then and now struck me as a much less helpful line of discussion #than saying something like 'it's rough to be someone who cares about/identifies with women of color in this (read: every) fandom... #...bc they get written off for being less than perfectly pleasant and compliant much more quickly than white male characters do' #'and while no one has to love yennefer‚ and there are reasons to find fault with her other than racism... #...it sucks that it's impossible to be a fan of hers and seek out content related to her without seeing people bashing her over and over' #'and maybe we as a fandom could brainstorm about how to create an environment that rubs a little less salt in people's wounds' #'because you don't have to be irredeemably racist to be perpetuating patterns that people have understandably been sensitized to' #'and presumably we'd all like to avoid wounding our fellow fans in those ways‚ rather than writing them off as oversensitive?' #like. that's a long-winded set of tags & i don't mean to‚ like‚ retroactively tone-police people who got too upset to frame things carefully #but i just do think like. things don't have to be Inarguably Inherently Bad to wound people who've seen similar patterns before #and ultimately it's worth saying‚ look‚ this feels different to me but i value you and your presence in my community and i want to listen #rather than being like 'i know i don't mean this the way you're saying i mean it‚ so i'm going to write you off as absurd & over-aggressive' #if you're serious abt building relationships and coalitions you have to actually hear people out about their perspective #and not just say 'your stance sounds ridiculous to me from my perspective‚ which i refuse to step outside of' #anyway these tags make this sound as though this is just abt Fandom which i don't actually think it is at all #just that that was an issue i could raise without getting into the specifics of the current football #but like. ultimately this is about valuing and respecting other people and being willing to hear them out and enter into their perspective #which is frankly fucking hard and i've failed at it plenty of times myself! #theory #interpersonal #also i guess #Fannish Ethical Concerns #given the tag spiral