Dude, srsly?

Did you know that the first battle cry in a long line of protests was We’re here, we’re Queer, get used to it ? Or how hard people worked to give you what rights you have today? OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS.

People were beaten to death, hung, dragged, shot, stabbed, died in prison protesting and fighting for the rights that you enjoy to this day. People who found and created power in the word Queer so that you wouldn’t have to be ashamed to be one. 

And here you lot are, screaming at the older generations that we don’t know what it’s like to be called Queer in the hallways of your high school? Are you kidding? How many of my generation, and the generations before me do you think participated in the sit ins, the protests, the marches, the public displays of noncompliance? How many do you think were beaten by police, by angry bigots, chased away, threatened with violence? How many were tased, water gunned, pepper sprayed, unfairly arrested, unfairly charged, abused, mocked, and denied?

Do you even know who ACT UP are? Do you know who Queer Nation are? Do you know who Dykes on Bikes are? Who the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are? PFLAG, Oasis Centers, PRISM? How drag queens have been such a backbone to our community, those of you who say ignorant shit like “Don’t support drag queens!”? I encourage you, beg you, please do not continue to parrot transphobic bullshit by calling it the Q-slur – because that message originated with a group of transphobic people who didn’t like that Queer was all inclusive. Gay as a term originated as being used for homosexual men only.

 Here is one of the texts from a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990.

How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead. Don’t be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you’re smart, lucky, or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and f— without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers. Straight people will not do this voluntarily and so they must be forced into it. Straights must be frightened into it. Terrorized into it. Fear is the most powerful motivator. No one will give us what we deserve. Rights are not given they are taken, by force if necessary. It is easier to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight people are you enemy. They are your enemy when they don’t acknowledge your invisibility and continue to live in and contribute to a culture that kills you. Every day one of us is taken by the enemy. Whether it is an AIDS death due to homophobic government inaction or a lesbian bashing in an all-night diner (in a supposedly lesbian neighborhood), we are being systematically picked off and we will continue to be wiped out unless we realize that if they take one of us they must take all of us.

Another text (1990):

Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.) And now of course it means fighting a virus as well, and all those homo-haters who are using AIDS to wipe us off the face of the earth. Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-f— and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night. Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every body, every c—, every heart and a– and d— is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite possibility. We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we f—, we win. We must fight for ourselves (no else is going to do it) and if in that process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great. (We’ve given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few of the gifts from our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.) Let’s make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of our sexual geography. A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look at our lives and see what’s best in them, see what is queer and what is straight and let that straight chaff fall away! Remember there is so, so little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you. Next year, we march naked.

Another (1990):

If You’re Queer, Shout It! Queers are under siege. Queers are being attacked on all fronts and I’m afraid it’s ok with us. In 1969, Queers, were attacked. It wasn’t ok. Queers fought back, took the streets. Shouted. In 1990, there were 50 “Queer Bashings” in the month of May alone. Violent attacks. 3,720 men, women and children died of AIDS in the same month, caused by a more violent attack - government inaction, rooted in society’s growing homophobia. This is institutionalized homophobia, perhaps more dangerous to the existence of queers because the attackers are faceless. We allow these attacks by our own continued lack of action against them. AIDS has affected the straight world and now they’re blaming us for AIDS and using it as a way to justify their violence against us. They don’t want us anymore. They will beat us, rape us and kill us before they will continue to live with us. What will it take for This not to be ok? Feel some rage. If rage doesn’t empower you, try fear. If that doesn’t work try panic. Shout It! Be proud. Do whatever you need to do to tear yourself away from your customary state of acceptance. Be free. Shout. In 1969, Queers fought back. In 1990, Queers say ok. Next year, will we be here?

One last one:

Why Queer? – (1990) Queer! Ah, do we really have to use that word? It’s trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious. That’s okay; we like that. But some gay girls and boys don’t. They think they’re more normal than strange. And for others “queer” conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering. Queer. It’s forcibly bittersweet and quaint at best - weakening and painful at worst. Couldn’t we just use “gay” instead? It’s a much brighter word. And isn’t it synonymous with “happy”? When will you militants grow up and get over the novelty of being different? Why Queer … Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who keep our lives discreet and marginalized in the straight world. We use queer as gay men loving lesbians and lesbians loving being queer. Queer, unlike gay, doesn’t mean male. And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it’s a way of suggesting we close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, queer can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe’s hands and use against him.

They did it for you. They did it for me. They did it for all of us. So you wouldn’t have to go through it. So you could be freer than they ever could, than we could at your age, than our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents ever could. Not for you to invalidate the indentities of others, and your own community. You silencing Queer people and calling it a slur dishonours their legacy.

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

Buck Colbert Franklin is known as the lawyer who won the court victory for black residents after the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots.

Franklin was born in 1879 and was named after his grandfather, who had been an enslaved African of a Chickasaw family in Oklahoma. After completing his studies, he opened up his law practice in the predominately white town of Ardmore, Oklahoma. However, the racial tension at the time was so strong, he decided to relocate to Tulsa and focus his practice on helping people in the black communities.

The Greenwood District of Tulsa was one of the wealthiest enclaves of blacks in the south, known as Black Wall Street. After the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots that destroyed the region, he led the legal fight against the City Council of Tulsa, who passed an ordinance keeping Tulsa’s blacks from rebuilding the neighborhoods that had been affected. Instead, the city had plans to rezone the area and make it into a commercial area.

So I'm Christmas shopping for my niece at my favorite little boutique, Office Depot, and I ask the sales guy "Hey, you got any printer scan/fax combos?" He says "Printer scan/fax combos? Pal, every child in America wants one of those. You're too late." I say "You don't even have one left?" He says "But we've got one, but it has a problem." I say "What's the problem?" He says "This particular Hewlett Packard... prints off thirst trap photos of Ted Cruz." I say "Prints off thirst trap photos of Ted Cruz?! ...well I don't want that." He says "Yeah, nobody does, that's why it's the last one left." I say "Can you turn that feature off?" He says "Not only can we not turn it off, we unplugged the damn thing and it still prints 'em out." I say "You got yourself a cursed printer scan/fax combo, pal." He says "I know, but there's nothin' we can do."

I say "Hold on, I know a guy." And I call up my old friend, Guillaume Mezzanine - the bush pilot. I say "Guillaume, you used to exorcise office supplies back in the day?" He said "Sure did." I say "Well I got a Hewlitt Packard here with some kinda Carly Fiorina themed curse on it, you think you can help me out?" He says "I'm already on my way." And that's when I hear the propellers of Guillaume's biplane landing in the parking lot (he has excellent timing), and Guillaume walks in wearing a priest's outfit. I say "Guillaume, you used to be a priest?" He says "I did, but I had to quit 'cause I'm too good at sex." I said "Guillaume, you're one bad motherfucker!" We high five and he starts throwing holy water at the Hewlitt Packard going "Let the power of Christ compel ya, let the power of Christ compel ya..." It starts printin' out nastier and nastier photos of Ted Cruz - one where he's in a leopard-print thong bikini and suckin' on a lollipop flies up into the face of the sales guy, and he starts vomitin' black ink all over the store. Ouegh! Ouegh! Ouegh! Guillaume responds by pullin' out a photo of Jude Law, and he says "Let the power of 'young Pope' compel ya, let the power of 'young Pope' compel ya..." The machine rises up off the ground, starts shakin'... the photo of Jude Law bursts into flames... I go "Guillaume, what's going on?!" He says "It's summonin' beasts..." All of a sudden, snakes and gerbils from the Petco next door start floodin' in - and the fish, well they're just doin their best. I say "Guillaume, what do we do?" He says "I don't know! I've never seen evil like this before." I say "Hold on, I've got an idea so crazy it might just work." I grab a stack of those nasty thirst traps and I tape 'em into a long chain. I shove one end into the paper supply tray, it starts printin' thirst trap photos atop thirst trap photos. I connect the two ends together creating an infinite loop of nasty Republican smut, the belt of thirst trap photos starts spinning and spinning spinning, faster and faster and faster the sides of the printer start to crack and emit this terrifying light. Guillaume says "Don't look into the light!" Of course the sales guy looks right into the light and his face melts off like a pat of butter on a hot stack of flapjacks, and then the printer implodes! Creating an unholy wind suckin' everything in the store into it! The gerbils, the snakes, the thirst trap photos! Guillaume and I hold on for dear life! Ahhhhhhhhhh - pft!

And it stopped.

I look at Guillaume and I say... "Is it over?"

He says "Yeah."

"It's over."

Late night thoughts

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

For Christmas this year, I got a Jurassic Park Velociraptor toy, and even though it’s now a few days past Christmas, I decided to make this stopmotion video because I couldn’t stop laughing at the idea. Enjoy!

drive-by thank you