Thoughts For No Reason Whatsoever I'm Sure

[superborb]

1. Diaspora vs Chinese-from-China feelings on culture. Growing up diaspora means living through racism that completely colors the perspective -- it's hard to explain why wearing qipao as a costume is A Problem or cultural appropriation broadly to people who haven't had the experience of it being uncool and othering when you do something and then cool when a white person does it. From someone who grew up in the dominant culture, it just seems like a good thing that people are interested, right?

Anyway, this leads to a feeling (a logical one!) of possessiveness over the tidbits of culture that you can claim for yourself.

2. The nuances of cultural erasure for a canon that was created by the dominant ethnicity and culture of Somewhere Else. As point 1 says, I highly doubt Chinese-from-China would feel as possessive over MDZS/CQL as diaspora fans do. They have many canons that reflect their world; as diaspora, there is relatively few canons that speak to the Chinese diaspora experience. So we attach ourselves to the things we can see a glimmer of ourselves in, in familiar faces, even though we aren't really their target audience.

I personally don't like most modern AUs or really, fic that gets too removed from the Chinese roots of the canon and just /feels/ wrong. It's just not what I enjoy reading. But I'd argue that it's way more erasure to celebrate [insert vaguely often American modern AU here] through its ubiquity and influence on the fandom. I know I fall more on the "this is a transformative works" fandom side of things generally, though I also know that fic and fandom can be deeply racist. But blanket bans on what kind of transformative works are permissive... MDZS/CQL are out there in the world! We can't erase it by any fanworks.

I do fully understand /why/ people are uncomfortable with certain transformations, I just think that in the absence of criticism of transformations that are similar, it leads to point 3.

3. I am so, so, so uncomfortable with anti-Semitism in a world where the alt right is resurging. Adding to the previous tweets I made a while back, characterizing Jews as "greedy," "taking over" are clearly dogwhistles. Please, I beg you, do not. The double standard where Christian AUs don't get backlash? Also seriously anti-Semitic.

As a nonreligious person who grew up in the US, where Christian Chinese are common, I absolutely 100% really do not like Christian AUs. And hey-- I can skip them when they're tagged. The fic getting backlashed was tagged as AU and Jewish from the very beginning.

In conclusion, I don't really want to be ~discourse all the time~ like I feel like I've been recently. I wanted to do two things: a. to push back on the narrative of "you're pushing out diaspora folks!" a bit and b. leave an opening for my ideal, a more nuanced discussion about why certain things feel like erasure and certain things do not. I think it would be revealing.

Comments

[goss]

Growing up diaspora means living through racism that completely colors the perspective -- it's hard to explain why wearing qipao as a costume is A Problem or cultural appropriation broadly to people who haven't had the experience of it being uncool and othering when you do something and then cool when a white person does it.

I SO FEEL YOU ON THIS OMG.

I only *really* felt this when I was at college in Canada, living amongst a dominant white society. For the first time in my life, I felt weirdly othered for wearing my cultural clothing (like, go back to your country or whatever if you don't want to assimilate here), which stood out in sharp contrast to when white people would wear bindi and East Indian prints, they were thought of as being cool and stylish.

It makes me extra wary about how I engage in Chinese drama fandom. Because, like, I feel a deep connection to many of the Asian cultural elements (philosphy, clothing, family traditions, etc.) that I see in Chinese period dramas, and yet it's not exactly "mine" to embrace fully.

Having only been exposed to Western media fandom, I remember being so excited and that feeling of...recognition the first time I saw The Untamed, which is a large part of what makes it special to me. But I tend to sorta tip-toe on the outskirts of the fandom in terms of my own engagement, mainly because of the issues you bring up in your post.

I even feel weird sometimes about using cdrama reaction gifs and icons sometimes, like the one I'm using in this comment.

Anyway, I am enjoying your reflections and examinations of your own feelings about this issue, btw. So thanks for putting it out there. :)

[superborb]

Yes yes yes!

There's also the thing that I didn't really want to get into where I'm pretty sure that like, a lot of the western chinese diaspora fans ran totally roughshod over anime fandom in their teens notably NOT respecting japanese culture. Because it was the closest they could get to something ~cool~ and also felt connected to?

But also by like, being concerned about it and doing research, I feel like you're being more introspective about issues than a lot of fandom is, where it's all knee jerk backlash in one direction or the other.

[rekishi]

it's hard to explain why wearing qipao as a costume is A Problem or cultural appropriation broadly to people who haven't had the experience of it being uncool and othering when you do something and then cool when a white person does it. From someone who grew up in the dominant culture, it just seems like a good thing that people are interested, right?

Well. This is the sort of discussion I usually stay out of for the simple reason that I am the dominant culture whee I am (though being ex-US, our racism discussions have to be different), and obviously I'm still making this comment.

Because I do understand your stance. However, the general currency in a lot of these discussions is "it's okay if it's being shared!" which is how we explain bagels and the alphabet. And then we get to the very difficult situation where the culture-in-the-original-country (China, India, what have you) does share these things freely and encouragingly. Even though white people look very silly in a qipao, if you spend extended periods there then you're encouraged at some point to wear it (at least a decade ago, this happened to my friend) and also bring it back to you and yours. Same for sari and bindi, where you are very much encouraged to wear it when you go there and spend time with the people there.

So how in the world do we draw the line between sharing and taking? Yes, not everyone will go to China and India and wherever, but how do you tell the difference if you don't know the people? Is someone who lived a two years in India and adopted sari as a dress choice required to stop when they came back to their non-Indian country of origin? Can I still plait my hair even though I have no clue where plaiting originated (ok I'm being facetious, sorry, although this actually was an honest to god argument one)?

And I'm really really sad that this is a discussion we need to have and that people just can't accept that other people are different and maybe not like themselves. Othering and xenophobia are animal instincts and we should be beyond those (clearly we aren't, the human brain is a jerry-rigged mess).

I don't think there are good answers and I am trying to be very very careful about all of this as you know and we talked about this before.

As for anti-Semitism (there are Christian AUs, srsly?) *sigh* I wish people would recognize that this is *also* racism, but this is a huge problem also with the way race (I hate that word, I know that it's a concept in English, but it is really so deeply deeply wrong) is perceived in the US. There is also no good solution, aside from making people more aware and I know that this backfires more often than it leads to a fruitful discussion.

I'm sorry. It's all I can say, I'm sorry people are being...well. Like this and I'm sorry people still grow up feeling othered in their own country of birth. That's really deeply shitty and I wish there was a solution. And yes, I know it happens everywhere.

:(

[superborb]

Yeah, it's a complicated situation!! And I think it is so much more complicated when you take into account things said on the internet being difficult to tell what perspective you're coming from.

I guess to me, it matters the intention and the level of respect. And being able to have these conversations is important to me, at a higher level of sophistication than like... twitter dunks :T

[rekishi]

I find it admirable than you can still hold on to twitter

[superborb]

It is fun usually! But nuanced discussion is not its forte

[belleweather]

I feel so seen by this comment -- I worked in Delhi and Hyderabad, and wearing Western clothes as a woman was just completely untenable emotionally. Not only was I encouraged to wear local clothes for cultural reasons, I was encouraged to do it for safety reasons; the "eve teasing" was far less if I met local expectations for female dress. While I didn't adopt the sari for every-day (although I wore it to an occasional formal event where that was appropriate and have my two saris carefully stored in acid-free paper just in case I get the chance again) I did end up with an entire daily-wear wardrobe of kurtas... and then came back to the US and felt like I couldn't/shouldn't wear them outside of the house. Ironically, they stayed boxed up until I moved to the middle east, where they were perfectly acceptable again and it was like re-uniting with old friends.

[rekishi]

Kurta! Thank you, it was 7 in the morning and I was 'late' for my usual start time writing this and was too addled by early morning fog to remember the correct word.

Yes, the safety aspect is certainly also something I failed to consider in my comment as well. It's definitely a factor, in-country.

It's difficult and it will remain difficult and it's something to treat carefully about. I have a colleague who's Indian but with her looks she might as well be from any place in the Levante. When she wears kurtas someone might just as well think she was culturally appropriating who doesn't know her. There's no good solution to this dilemma, or at least I haven't seen one yet. I still hope to see one in my lifetime though.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

[narie]

I did the same in my time working in India, and then yes, they were relegated to homewear only.

[lirazel]

Thank you for your thoughtful reflections. It's really helpful to have different perspectives out there.

[superborb]

Thanks for reading my thoughts!

[jo_lasalle]

As someone who doesn't have any cultural diaspora experience, I appreciate reading your perspective on this. Without wanting to get into this particular flare-up, for various reasons, I try to be more conscious these days of where I might have knee-jerk reactions that color my reading or interfere with my understanding or empathy on issues like this, and IDK if I was your target audience here, but, I find it good food for thought.

[superborb]

I did write partially for the non-diaspora audience who may feel like everyone diaspora has a certain perspective -- bc I've heard people complaining privately, but all that is obviously not in the public awareness.

[ilanala]

I really appreciate you mentioning the antisemitism angle. I can't say if people really went there because I've been trying to avoid this discourse (in part because it sets off fun intergenerational trauma alarm bells about "A Jew is doing a bad thing and there's going to be a backlash against all of us") but I definitely saw some comments that veered toward antisemitic tropes I've encountered a lot in non-fandom circles lately and it's super stressful to run into that in fandom too. There are valid points to be made, but you can't fight racism (or, more generously, cultural misunderstandings) by responding with the same.

Being part of a different diaspora (in complicated ways that mean I pretty much never see myself reflected in media), I really sympathize with the way a lot of Chinese diaspora fans are excited about and feel possessive of MDZS/CQL and other danmei, and I don't doubt that people (including me) get a lot of things wrong. And it would never in a million years occur to me to deliberately insert anything Jewish into this canon so I'm kind of mystified by that aspect, especially when there was already a big backlash before. But it does feel like a lot of people are trying to make everything very black and white and also not wanting to accept that this is a big international fandom and it's too late to tell people "This is not for you" (if in fact there was ever a time for that).

(Don't mind my very rambling thoughts, since I have a lot about this. Hopefully there's something coherent in there.)

[superborb]

La, between the comments my friends have made that they're getting the "backlash against all of us" feeling very strongly AND the very obvious antisemitic tropes that even I can see, I would strongly recommend that you not look too much at this discourse.

I wish we could have these interesting points without this... *handwaves* associated mess.

[ilanala]

I mean, I freely recognize that the fear of backlash is partly (understandable) paranoia based on history and past experiences, but I'm seeing a lot of comments coming at this from the POV of "Jews are basically just privileged (possibly extra privileged) white people." That POV underlies a lot of antisemitism I've encountered in recent years so seeing it pushed in these discussions, however unconsciously, definitely puts me on edge.

It sounds like the authors of both fics that triggered these arguments have responded poorly and at least some people got racist about it and that's not good either. It sucks that instead of having valid conversations about cultural erasure and fanfic transformations (and also just better understanding the culture underlying MDZS), we get bogged down in people fundamentally misunderstanding each other and, at least in some cases, not wanting to try.

[superborb]

Yes, there's been a lot of... explaining Judaism from non-Jewish white people which is weirding me out. A lot of well, Jewish people are white, right? Which is really frustrating.

That definitely did NOT help yeah. There's definitely bad actors who were out and out racist AND actors who were out and out anti-semitic, and they make it really hard to engage with other people thoughtfully.

[ilanala]

The whiteness of Jewish people is a complicated question and something that has been weaponized against us in the modern social justice era (basically "You look white and therefore must not be oppressed in any way, let alone be the target of white supremacists, and you wanting to talk about antisemitism is just white fragility/centering whiteness"). So even the way people are talking about that in this context makes me nervous and also makes me feel like a lot of the Chinese diaspora people involved are assuming that the Jewish experience is very different from theirs because Jews are white, right? And it is different in some ways but not in others (especially if you're not a very assimilated, multi-generational American Jew), which makes it particularly a shame that these clashes are happening.

(That tweet in your thread that I felt compelled to reply to was, however innocently it may have been intended, sounding a lot like Khazar Theory which is a whole antisemitic myth about Ashkenazi Jews being fake European converts that has been used to justify a lot of nasty stuff, so...yeah. There's a lot going on that people probably don't see if they don't know what to look for and that makes it hard.)

[superborb]

Yes! I think the problem is that there's a lot of dogwhistles that people are either willfully ignoring or are too ignorant to know about (and don't care to learn about!), so it's like a minefield...

[douqi]

I was reflecting on what you said and it really would be good to have a nuanced discussion of 'why is THIS in particular singled out as an example of erasure, instead of the literally thousands of coffeeshop and college AUs set in default America?' Why has 'CQL/MDZS characters doing Christmas stuff' been categorically declared as not erasure, since this blew up?

If one of the arguments in favour of transformative fan work is the argument from diversity, then an AU from a marginalised perspective/based on a marginalised culture is by that measure more valuable than 'generic' AUs, all things being equal?

Qualifier: I'm diaspora from Asia (not Chinese majority, but with a significant established Chinese minority population) and have always had access to East Asian media, and a decent (if idiosyncratic) education in Chinese language and literature, so I'm probably not getting the depth of possessiveness some Western diaspora folk may feel in relation to the show.*

*but also I'm feeling kind of tired about always having to insert this disclaimer. I understand the need to be careful. But sometimes I just want to say things and be taken in good faith.

[superborb]

Yes! This is the kind of question that interests me, and I wish we could have this conversation more broadly. I don't have a good answer bc to me-- the modern AU is worse from ubiquity, so...?

I hate how gatekeeping the arguments have become. Like you have to be diaspora to have an opinion. Or the new version, you have to be a practicing Taoist.

[belleweather]

It seems like we all bring our own perspectives to this kerfuffle. From the eyes of this non-Askenazi, Diaspora Jewish woman with super complicated feelings about Jewish belongingness from spending two very challenging years living in Jerusalem, I'm really perplexed because there is a documented history of Jewish people in China and as those people intermarried and assimilated, ethnically-chinese Jewish people, for thousands and thousands of years. Beyond the whole idea of that being unpopular/impossible to discuss in mainland China, I definitely have feelings about the idea of rejecting even the possibility of a Jewish/Chinese identity. There is so much pressure in Israel and big parts of the diaspora to privilege a very Ashkenazi-centered Eastern-Europen based idea of what Judaism is, and pressure for everyone else to conform to it -- giving up their own languages, historic practices, etc. in the process because we supposedly don't need those if we have a 'homeland' now. Sephardim, because there are many of us, are able to leverage numbers somewhat and push back, but smaller communities whose communal traditions are being lost and with that a lot of what I personally find beautiful and valuable in the Jewish community (or at least, consigned to a sort of cold 'well, that's historical and we don't do that/need that anymore.)

So, I don't know. I feel like we know little enough in canon about Lan Zhan's mother that you could certainly explore the idea that she was from any number of communities in the area, including historically Jewish ones, and how learning about that history might effect how that character views himself and his world. But maybe that's a fic that needs to stay on my HD for now.

(Anyway, that you for letting me abuse your comments section to get that off my chest because it's been making me crazy for weeks.)

[superborb]

I wish we could explore interesting perspectives and AUs like this, but it does seem like it would need to wait until things have cooled down a lot...