Subtle Accordions

Chelsea Manning to be freed in four months after Obama commutes 35-year sentence

On Tuesday, President Obama commuted the sentence for Chelsea Manning

Manning, a transgender woman, has been serving a 35-year sentence in a men’s prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. 

She’s set to be released on May 17 of this year.

The Arkenstone of Thrain, also known as the Heart of the Mountain and the King’s Jewel

First, I’m just going to say that I didn’t particularly WANT to write this post, but given that some people deliberately seem to be missing the point when it comes to this discussion of the AO3’s current policies regarding abuse and how they don’t protect marginalized members of fandom, I’ve elected to do something. Also: this post contains discussion of racism, including the replication/quoting of racist slurs and abuse.

A disclaimer: I’ve been in fandom for over a decade at this point. I’ve been a user of the AO3 since 2009, and I was writing fic for years before that. I was around for Racefail, for the J2 Help Haiti Big Bang Debacle, and I was around for the giant debate in fandom whether warnings for common triggers such as rape, sexual assault, and explicit depictions of violence should even be used. Because of that long history in fandom, I’m not surprised to see that many people are regurgitating the same exact arguments as before, but I am disappointed, deeply so, that we seem to have taken so little from those arguments and developments in fandom over the years.

As before, I really encourage everyone to read stopthatimp’s posts on this topic, both the original and the follow-up posts she’s made, which can be found here: http://stopthatimp.tumblr.com/post/152352331803/ao3-censorship

What I wanted to do was discuss in depth an incident she’d touched on, about the racist troll in Hockey RPF fandom that, in 2014, posted a deliberately racist fic to the tags involving Sidney Crosby and PK Subban. PK Subban, if you’re not aware, is a black Canadian player, and Sidney Crosby is a white Canadian player. The fic was tagged with “interracial kink”, posted anonymously, and sets out to deliberately fetishize PK Subban as a black man. When other AO3 members protested in the comments, the author responded with outright racist trolling, using racial slurs in response to critical comments. I want to say this again, because I don’t want this to be overlooked–this isn’t just a case of an author posting something in good faith that other people found offensive. This is a troll deliberately choosing to post something offensive, then responding to critical feedback with comments such as “this fandom will never ship a mulatto and a wetback”.

At this point, many people went to the AO3 Abuse Team to report the author, believing (and reasonably so) that such behavior was harassment, and should not be allowed on the AO3.

I’m reposting some of the Abuse Team’s responses, with permission of duckgirlie, who was one of the AO3 users that contacted them originally. During that exchange, the member of the Abuse Team stated that:

“unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that content to be.” This is an accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness, which is one of the main goals of the Archive.” [emphasis theirs]

They later went on to state that the author’s behavior was NOT harassment by the definition of the Terms of Service, and that they felt “that both parties (the commenters and the author) are equally responsible for the conduct reported to us.” [emphasis mine]

As far as I’m aware, the author was the only person using racial slurs in the comments. To me, the notion that you could go into the comments to discuss a fic with the author, be met with racial slurs, and then be somehow be held “equally responsible” for what happened in those comments is beyond baffling, it’s inexcusable.

When duckgirlie politely pressed the Abuse Team for clarification as to how racial slurs would not be deemed harassment under the AO3’s TOS, she was told that unless slurs were directed at any “specific users”, the AO3 would not delete comments because they were simply “offensive”.

The email ended with this: “We understand that not everyone agrees with these policies. The OTW has decided that our goal is maximum inclusiveness of content. By necessity, that content will includes things that many different people find offensive.” [emphasis mine]

Inclusiveness of content. Not people. Not, say, the people of color who were talking and arguing with the author in the comments, who already had to deal with a fic that fetishized and dehumanized a popular character in a fandom they all were in, but now had to face the casual use of racial slurs in those comment threads, slurs that deliberately thrown in their faces–and then had to discover that by the AO3’s standards, none of this counted as harassment. On the contrary, they were “equally” at fault for what had occurred.

The most insulting of the comments on that fic have since been deleted, either by the Abuse Team or by the author themselves, I’m not sure. The fic, however, is still up.

It’s been two years since this happened. For all that I know, the AO3 Abuse Team might handle this differently now than they did then (although personally I doubt it). The reason I bring this story up is because to me, this was the moment when it became brutally clear that I, and other fans of color, are afterthoughts as far as the AO3 is concerned. We are told, over and over again, in ways both small and large, that we are not valued, that our jobs as fans are to shut up and assimilate and not cause waves, because that’s just not NICE, you guys.

This is peak White Feminism at work here. The idea that one abuse policy will fit all, the idea that it’s more important to preserve the “free speech” of racist trolls rather than making a good faith effort to support the fans of color who are being attacked by said trolls is, frankly, privileged bullshit, and is a MAJOR reason I do not support the OTW/AO3 financially. Because I do not trust the AO3 to support me if needed, not when their stance on plagiarism is stronger and more nuanced than their stance on racist/bigoted abuse.

(Rex Stout wrote between the 1920s and the 1970s, and the eras changed but Wolfe and Archie never aged; I’ve long wanted to set them in a more modern era, so HERE IS MY CHANCE. This also kind of fills @sellahdor​’s prompt for the Leverage crew trying wilder and wilder grifts to get something they want from Wolfe.)

The only reason Nero Wolfe allowed a known felon and a woman into the old brownstone on 35th for as long as Parker was tolerated was her reaction to the orchids.

Sophie tried to grift me and when I said nuts she tried to grift Wolfe, which I allowed because I thought it would be amusing, and he said nuts even faster than I did. I found out later that Alec Hardison tried to hack us but due to Wolfe’s dislike of technology the only hackable items in our lives were my cellphone, which I use purely for personal purposes, and the television, which is not a useful provider of intelligence on the motives and inner lives of the four single men living under the brownstone’s roof. Fritz also has a pressure cooker with a bluetooth connection, but it’s rarely plugged in.

The brownstone was on high alert after we found out that certain delicate inquiries into the whereabouts of Eliot Spencer by Wolfe (via myself, his amanuensis, goat, and errand boy) had triggered defensive assaults rather than friendly first contact. Well, you can’t have everything in life, and that included the Spencer family recipe for vinegar-poached game birds that Wolfe had read about in some ancient gastronomy book and wanted from the current holder of the recipe.

(There is a readmore below! Read more! If the readmore doesn’t work, try reading the post off mobile.)

Me making LGBT headcanons now:

there is no clear line in the sand between Old Fandom Folks who were there for Strikethrough and the people who are critical of Ao3′s abuse policies, and its’ really shitty and a huge misrepresentation that the Discourse has made it seem like there is no overlap at all between those two - that anyone who disagrees with AO3′s abuse policies entered the fandom two hours ago and are still wet behind the ears. 

because there is an overlap and a large amount of the overlap are fans of colour who have spent the best part of a decade in white fandom and have been left out of discussions for the same amount of time. 

the entire debacle has come down to drawing lines in the sand between “old fans” and new fans. Old Fans automatically know better and have lead harder lives and Seen Some Shit and therefore know that free speech is worth it, no matter the content or curation or consequence. New Fans are the ones who the former group think were born yesterday. 

and i have been through Strikethrough and the gigantic cleanup and exodus and drama that came in its wake and I am twitchy as hell about the way young fans approach things - not only because they co-op social justice phrases, but because that really is a slippery slope of deciding who or what works you agree with and how to curate something that fits your moral standards and ethical purity. But the way the Old Fans camp approach things is hardly better - because it basically says that allowing racist works/abuse is necessary for the archive’s function. 

the conclusion that many of these discussions come to (when deigning to talk about racism and racist abuse at all) is that allowing racist works and trolls is simply collateral damage that comes at the cost of ao3′s policy, which is Holy, Pure and Untouchable and the only safeguard against homophobic witch hunts that strikethrough was. people arguing in favour of ao3 come to the conclusion that policing or removing racist abuse is only one step away from falling to Moral Guardian squeamishness and targeting queer fans. 

so it’s not just that white fandom thinks racism is a minor inconvenience for fans of colour - we all know this, every person of colour who has been in fandom for long enough time knows this - they literally think it’s a burden we should have to bear for the greater good, the greater good being ao3′s approximation of free speech, apparently. 

i use the ao3 and i think it is important that it has a strict policy against unnecessary takedown and moral pearl-clutching - but you can be in favour of it and think that it needs to implement huge fucking changes. 

because honestly - if white fan’s discussions around the fears and dangers of censorship means not only throwing poc in fandom under a bus, but saying that our concerns are just opening the door for moral witchunts and therefore “just the price of admission” then it’s really damn telling how they think our presence is only the footnote in their Holy Discourse. 

this shit isn’t new in the history of social discourse, white women have saying for literally decades that poc who criticise their movements are helping the patriarchy or whatever, it’s just really fucking tiring to see cropping up in new forms and taking new shapes in every goddamn discussion.  

A small flower shop 🌻

Last night I felt hopeless. Now I feel fucking angry. I am a white woman and last night I learned that most of my fellow white women in this country are more than happy to stand with white patriarchy. More white women voted for donald rapist trump than Hillary Clinton. 

This tells me that most white women are against sisterhood solidarity. They value their white privilege over all. They support the male privilege of [white] men. No fucking wonder women of color don’t trust us. I don’t trust us either.