#qtpoc fandom

A post shared by Q (@qt.pop)

Captain America as a Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs quote. 

I keep thinking, like everyone, that America is in an extra amount of trouble. We feel like we are seeing the rapid destruction of what little good we had going for us.

And I’ve also been reflecting on how it felt growing up in this country, specifically in a part of the country that wasn’t red, or ‘overtly racist’. I wasn’t experiencing the racism of the ‘50′s so without being able to name what I was experiencing it became a personal problem and not a systematic one. I had great disdain for this country’s institutions but I only had those emotions in short bursts because I couldn’t survive burning that hot all the time. I ended up apathetic and disconnected from almost every part of myself.

What I and other BIPOC know is this has been the standard. We have been living this reality for generations. It is just now coming back around to affecting non-BIPOC folks enough for it to feel like the collective end of the world (verse just the end of the world for a few).

I will absolutely defend Mackie. He’s not homophobic and nothing he said was grounds for a twitter roasting or cancellation. It was misguided and messy but not irrecoverably harmful. His argument is rooted in homophobia, though, and I don’t need to defend that.

This idea that it is a problem when m/m characters who are close friends get shipped because it, in any way, negatively impacts the important work of showing non-toxic male friendship is homophobic. Mackie also had some pretty classic straight panic in his answer. ‘I can’t hang out with my guy friends without worrying about how it’s perceived.’ Again, it doesn’t make him homophobic, but this fear is rooted in homophobia.

Yes, there are a lot of problems in fandom, there is a lot of toxicity. There are issues of exploitation. All of that is vastly more complicated than, gay fandom won't just let two guys be friends.

It is not the lgbt community that has hindered m/m platonic intimacy. We aren’t the ones that for centuries have insisted the only way men can interact with one another is through toxicity. Us projecting our queer desire onto fictional characters, especially when there isn’t actual or good queer representation, is not the reason men are uncomfortable in expressing their friendships however they see fit. Men did this to themselves/each other. 

Homophobia and heterosexism created the conditions that Mackie is concerned about. It’s that logic that has decided that physical and emotional closeness between men = gay. In that way m/m non-toxic platonic relationships are queer. They directly challenge heterosexist ideals of m/m relationships. 

Queerness isn’t about sex (or even romance) exclusively, and to have a bias towards believing it does is also classic homophobia (as well as anti-ace/aro). This bias seems founded in truth because sexuality in the gay community feels flaunted, but this comes out of the history of our sexuality being criminalized and punishable by death. Along with the normalization of heterosexual desire which makes it invisible and queer desire hypervisible. Fandom seems overly sexual (and can be) because it is one of the few spaces where queer desire can be expressed in relative safety. Where we can explore sex, along with a slew of other topics that aren’t touched upon elsewhere. 

And it’s not just lgbt folks who are exploring queer desire. Fandom is filled with straight folks who are drawn towards gay ships and not solely to fetishize it (though yes that happens a lot). Homosexual desire is not exclusive to gay folks, it’s something everyone experiences in some capacity, whether it is sexual, romantic, platonic, or pragmatic. In TFATWS, Zemo was literally reading about this on the plane when he stole Bucky’s notebook. 

There is not as much separation between queerness/gay relationships and m/m platonic friendships as we are led to believe, and that’s not an issue. We don’t need to distance these things. In fact, they also often coexist, gay men regularly experience platonic intimacy. 

In the conversations around the Mackie Debacle (AKA the Variety Bullshit), and a few other conversations I’ve seen, people have continuously pointed out that the majority of fandom is white and straight. It is important to remember that our little bubbles we create on the internet aren’t necessarily the majority, but the minority/majority dichotomy is old and tired. I don’t want us generalizing fandom as something white and straight and toxic, even if that is the true majority.

Fandom historically and presently is a place for those that are left out of the mainstream and canon. It belongs to QTPOC and BIPOC. Of course, it is overrun with white hets, they appropriate everything, but that doesn’t make it theirs. It doesn’t make them the default.

I saw this important post about people justifying the way fandom is based on the fact that its strength is that it is unmoderated. The poster points out how fucked up that logic is and the importance of taking extra care in the spaces we are creating.

Because it isn’t unmoderated, it’s moderated by us. By the collective, by the fans. And the abuse and racism and toxicity make it clear there are systematic issues with the way fandom and fan spaces have evolved.

QTPOC and BIPOC can’t create spaces that are untouched by racism and homophobia, it gets into everything, it’s internalized, it can’t be rooted out by us alone. That’s the work of those that benefit from it. We can moderate our spaces though. We consistently have flourished and thrived inside despicable conditions for centuries. It’s exhausting and we have every right to our anger and displeasure and to voice that. And we have every right to our joy and passions.