(Note: this is a scheduled post. I am still on hiatus. The terms and conditions in my pinned post still apply)
ISFF and the ensuing ATATU and yfii fallout has shown me just how much antiblackness there is on this site. and i want to talk about my experiences with it.
I've been on this hellsite coming up 6 years now. I was generally unaware of discourseblr, mainly using this place as a way to share funny memes and cool art, and to interact with fandoms. Also around the time i first joined, i was still trying to work through my own internalized racism and anti-blackness that prevented me from fully connecting with my heiritage as a mixed person, so stating in confidence that I was unapologetically Black was not a priority for me in the beginning.
I had heard all the crazy stories about how this place was the ground zero for all kinds of shenanighans. But when ISFF happened and i saw not only all the pedo defenders come out of the woodwork, but also the people who harassed Black bloggers like afroartnic off the site for speaking up, who described ISFF's deactivations as "lynchings" and comparing her to Emmett Till...that is when I saw what everyone was talking about.
And now with yfii and this-is-internoirism basically cosigning blackface as a-OK as long as it's in the bedroom and you're getting hard to it, and how suddenly all the folks that were with me when i spoke out against the ISFF crowd for racism are nowhere to be found, im starting to see it. I really am starting to see just how ingrained the antiblackness and tokenisms are here.
The way everyone rallied around me when i made the ISFF lynching post but are silent now makes me feel tokenized. When i speak out and criticize someone that yall already dont like, then we can uplift this Black person. But when i criticize someone that yall do like and think can do no wrong, then its all "oooh what happened to you? you used to be so chill and cool, but now youre just a bully and harrasser." My voice is only valuable to a large portion of the white and non-black userbase so long as i always agree, always nod along, and never speak up when i see some bullshit.
To say that im some bully harrasser thats just scouring this site waiting for people to misspeak is such bullshit. If you scroll back far enough on my blog, you will see that at one point, i regularly liked and reblogged posts made by ATATU, yfii and this-is-internoirism. I focused on these blogs so much because these were sources that i thought i could be safe with and trust on certain issues. When i first got word on what yfii said, i seriously had to do double and triple takes once i saw the post, because i could not believe that this blog who i had grown to trust was saying this shit. And when i sent that ask to this-is-internoirism, i was shocked speechless once again by the bullshit i was seein on my phone. And from what ive been reading, hearing that Snail (ATATU) sided with yfii over encyclopediamorbidica, who was the one who helped clear their name over the predator allegations, pissed me clean off. I definitley did not handle everything that happened back then 100% properly, but to say that I just chose those folks at random because of their sex/sexuality/race/gender is a flat out lie. I'm more similar to the people I'm speaking out against than I am different, and if I hadn't been following all 3 blogs for as long as I had, I probably wouldn't have heard anything about this, or started any of this to put it more honestly.
"Just block and ignore," no, the fuck i will not. i do not have the privelege of being able to exist on a majority white/non-black website that consistently has controversies similar in nature to all this shit without being affected by it. You cant avoid this shit on here if youre Black. And I did not spend all this time growing confident in my Blackness and heiritage just to stuff it all down again for the comfort of this website. All the Black bloggers here and myself deserve to take up space and have our voices heard, especially when we dont agree with yall and act as your token yes-men.
Why don't I leave tumblr then if its so racist, you may ask? Because despite all the bullshit that goes on here, this is the once social media platform where I have the most fun, thus where I am the most active. And considering everything that's happening in the world, as a Black person, and especially a queer Black person, I deserve this space to have fun, to have the ability to have such a close knit community while also still being able to have reach beyond my moots. Antiblackness and racism is not just limited to tumblr. It is everywhere on the internet, just like it is in real life. I'm not going to leave this site, this place where I can express myself and have met so many wonderful people and encountered so many awesome resources that I wouldn't be able to find on an algorithmically driven site, just because I refused to sit down and be the good little palatable token.
To close this off, id like to remind yall about the origins of the word "woke." "Woke" was coined by Black Americans to describe remaining vigilant and aware of systemic injustices, racism and discrimination. It was then co-opted by white leftsists, bastardized and mocked by conservatives, and has now been reclaimed by white leftists as a way to poke fun of those conservatives and make ironic internet memes and video essay titles. To a lot of leftists, it has become this funny silly meme word to "own the MAGAts." But when Black leftists actually put the true meaning of woke into practice, especially when it comes to criticizing white leftists, then nobody wants anything to do with us. And yet, just like I've said in the ISFF lynching post, y'all would have hardly anything if it wasn't for Black folks carrying so many movements throughout history. None of you "queer" fashion, none of your "queer" culture, none of your "queer" slang, and of course you would have never gotten your hands on "woke," or the concepts that that word originally entailed.
Tumblr, the website known for its large queer userbase, "the gayest website ever," is never going to be able to fully rid itself of Blackness, no matter how much yall despise us. Black culture built the foundations for queer culture and the queer rights movement. Any place where there is queerness, there is Blackness. To throw Black users back to the wolves once we're no longer useful or once we disagree with you is to also throw your own self proclaimed queerness to the wind and align yourself with cultural hegemony.
"We need more queerdos on this site!!" you can't even handle a queer Black person calling out some racism from your favorite blogger, get fucking real. Being called out for racism is not worse than having to experience it. Get over yourselves.