On Gatekeeping
Dec. 18th, 2021 10:37![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superborbMy thesis: everyone's unique and varied life histories mean that blunt forms of gatekeeping invariably hurt those they intend to help. No one is static and failure is how we grow.
I'll first discuss how my particular background affects my perspective, why I think gatekeeping negatively impacts people within the diaspora community, with a detour into how this leads to the facile recommendation of “research”.
The direction I'd like to push the conversation: examine your take and ask yourself who is going to read it? Who is going to read “you’re a guest in this house” and feel like, wait, are they really Chinese? What effect do you intend to have?
Disclaimer: the timing of this post is obviously in conversation with other tweets; however, it is not intended to directly address any particular tweet, but overall trends in fandom. In other words, this is not a subtweet of anyone, but rather arises from several conversations I've had over the last year. Parts of this post were written as far back as 2020!
This post benefited greatly from feedback from many friends; Erin most especially helped reframe and identify weaknesses in my argument.
Asian diaspora conversations happening in non-fandom spaces have been circling around the ideas of multiplicities of stories, that the diaspora is not a monolith. Accordingly, as I was talking with friends, I think there is a particular aspect some of our histories that may be somewhat under-discussed: I may have grown up a minority, but I've always been able to be a part of a significantly Chinese, Asian or PoC community if I wanted to be. I was in anime, jpop, kpop fandoms back in the 00s, when those fandoms were heavily Asian. There were plenty of non-Asians in those spaces, but I never craved a retreat /and been unable to find it/. I've never been in fandom and felt that there was no one I could talk to about racism, or complain with about microaggressions, etc etc.
This leads me to have a higher stress point for two reasons. First, though I've been subject to the racism that pervades both the US and fandom, I've always had people at my side. After teenage-hood, I never questioned this part of my heritage as something that might not belong to me. This means that if I read something like (paraphrased from many similar tweets), "XYZ is required to play in this sandbox or you're fake Chinese," I can easily dismiss this in a way that others cannot.
Second, I can also ignore originators of eyerollingly bad takes without it bothering me. Bad take borne of laziness? Muted, blocked, gone. What this means is that I've curated enough that I don't see that tipping point number of shitty takes and boring nonsense that might lead to lashing out. I recognize that not everyone comes from this place, and so it can build and build until it seems like the entire fandom is a racist, lazy pit. But there needs to be a differentiation between what’s actively harmful and what is personal dislike, between what benefits from being a fandom-wide conversation and what does not.
When I read some of the most gatekeeping takes, I wonder how much of the conversation is coming from people having FEELINGS about their diaspora-ness or their Chinese-ness, and projecting it all over fandom. Obviously, people can have all the feelings they want. And fandom can often be that space close to one’s heart where racism stings all the more after a day of microaggressions. But consider who is going to read a rant about who is qualified to speak and write in fandom. The person who might not feel fully sure in their belonging to the diaspora community? THAT'S the person who reads “you’re not Chinese Chinese” and thinks, ‘oh, I don't really know if I belong here. Am I Chinese enough to pass muster?’ When you set strict rules on how people should behave-- who in the diaspora leaves because they see over and over that they don't belong?
I think it should be self-evident why this Harms Our Community, Actually.
(I woke up to FOUR c-diaspora friends feeling like maybe they’re not Chinese enough for some arbitrary gatekeeper. In a single evening! I don’t have /that/ many friends who are in this fandom!)
And maybe here the issue is format: there is a nuanced discussion to be had between the Western diaspora and the Eastern diaspora, the 1st gens and later gens, on What It Means to Be Chinese. What Is Authenticity. Culture is dynamic, ever changing, etc etc. This is a conversation I've had in RL circles, but it has to be nuanced from the start or you end up implying Chinese culture is a monolith and, incidentally, offending everyone in the room. Yet, the simpler, emotional appeal is more likely to do numbers, carrying the conversations in ways it may not have been meant to do.
(But surely the diaspora is a bonus audience to mainland-produced cnovels and cdramas. If you insist on viewing fandom as a host/guest structure, we're also guests, with no more right to fandom than anyone else outside the original audience. The host is the author, the producer, the director. I disagree with this view that we can only have a relationship to art that is mediated by the business considerations of who is the original audience. And what happened to the "you're not paying for being in fandom with your contributions" that was going around?! Since when do you have to pay in with your culture, with your blood and bones?)
As comfortable as throwing rules into the ether might seem, it leaves little room for failure and merely serves to crystallize an in- and out-group. Who is the audience? Any conversation in fandom is not accessible to anyone who isn’t already in these spaces, who don’t know the Right People. In other words, it biases the audience towards the leisurely online, the educated, those who have the right cultural background to pick up the hints on what is acceptable behavior before they misstep. I hope the discussion above clarifies why even if you intend from the beginning to form an in-group, you’re likely to instead hurt members of that in-group.
If instead we embrace failure as a mechanism for learning, what happens? The example that jumps to mind is caveman!LWJ, which arose from misreadings. It spawned conversations that led to everyone understanding the language more, and a collective enrichment of our community. I argue that the main factor that led to this success is a concrete goal, beyond just punishing an individual, supported by accessible resources.
What happens when you suggest people "just do research" without any infrastructure to help? (The difficulty of research for fiction is, of course, not a new problem, though perhaps it is a more sensitive problem when it has a racial dimension.) It leaves room for people to call out things whenever they feel like it; this fuzziness inevitably leads to interpersonal frictions exploding through this rule-violation instead of more profitable avenues. It's the obscenity test ("I know it when I see it") in another form.
So, what's the solution? It has to lie in some form of building infrastructure, not in vague extortions to "research!!!" without any way to go about it. It's in increasing knowledge resources, not attacking people for gaps in their knowledge. A “buckle up” twitter thread, a couple hours of reading books, is simply not going to bridge the gap alone. As an example, I have a friend who is very well read and good at research. It was impossible for her to determine that 'niang' is not a contemporary term without directly asking. There was, before the conversation conducted via tumblr posts on register in Chinese, no easily accessible resource that would rebut the caveman!LWJ reading. There are many cases where the only way to find an answer to a question I've had myself has been calling my mom or grandma! In short, “just do research” is not always actionable advice.
And the failure point of setting expectations for anything in China so high that it is impossible to reach is that people simply don’t write them and turn to Western modern AUs. Hey, if you’re an urban Westerner, it’s easy to research! Look, I don't read modern AUs and find even most diaspora AUs questionable, but I suspect people simply aren't going to put more thought into their porn settings just because they’re scolded. At the same time, increased education has nearly completely overcome the caveman!LWJ of early fandom, providing us with evidence that you can change fandom's collective views. To be clear, I am not saying people can’t call out a racist trend or express unhappiness in their own space; I just think that to push back on a trend, if you want to enact a change, you need a concrete goal in mind. No, "people shouldn't write stuff I don't like" isn't an achievable goal. Perhaps something like, showing by example how care can be taken.
In conclusion: people should be allowed to fail in fandom, to get things wrong, to learn and to grow. If you're going to try to set norms, you need to consider their side effects and the rationales and logic behind those decisions.
I'll first discuss how my particular background affects my perspective, why I think gatekeeping negatively impacts people within the diaspora community, with a detour into how this leads to the facile recommendation of “research”.
The direction I'd like to push the conversation: examine your take and ask yourself who is going to read it? Who is going to read “you’re a guest in this house” and feel like, wait, are they really Chinese? What effect do you intend to have?
Disclaimer: the timing of this post is obviously in conversation with other tweets; however, it is not intended to directly address any particular tweet, but overall trends in fandom. In other words, this is not a subtweet of anyone, but rather arises from several conversations I've had over the last year. Parts of this post were written as far back as 2020!
This post benefited greatly from feedback from many friends; Erin most especially helped reframe and identify weaknesses in my argument.
Asian diaspora conversations happening in non-fandom spaces have been circling around the ideas of multiplicities of stories, that the diaspora is not a monolith. Accordingly, as I was talking with friends, I think there is a particular aspect some of our histories that may be somewhat under-discussed: I may have grown up a minority, but I've always been able to be a part of a significantly Chinese, Asian or PoC community if I wanted to be. I was in anime, jpop, kpop fandoms back in the 00s, when those fandoms were heavily Asian. There were plenty of non-Asians in those spaces, but I never craved a retreat /and been unable to find it/. I've never been in fandom and felt that there was no one I could talk to about racism, or complain with about microaggressions, etc etc.
This leads me to have a higher stress point for two reasons. First, though I've been subject to the racism that pervades both the US and fandom, I've always had people at my side. After teenage-hood, I never questioned this part of my heritage as something that might not belong to me. This means that if I read something like (paraphrased from many similar tweets), "XYZ is required to play in this sandbox or you're fake Chinese," I can easily dismiss this in a way that others cannot.
Second, I can also ignore originators of eyerollingly bad takes without it bothering me. Bad take borne of laziness? Muted, blocked, gone. What this means is that I've curated enough that I don't see that tipping point number of shitty takes and boring nonsense that might lead to lashing out. I recognize that not everyone comes from this place, and so it can build and build until it seems like the entire fandom is a racist, lazy pit. But there needs to be a differentiation between what’s actively harmful and what is personal dislike, between what benefits from being a fandom-wide conversation and what does not.
When I read some of the most gatekeeping takes, I wonder how much of the conversation is coming from people having FEELINGS about their diaspora-ness or their Chinese-ness, and projecting it all over fandom. Obviously, people can have all the feelings they want. And fandom can often be that space close to one’s heart where racism stings all the more after a day of microaggressions. But consider who is going to read a rant about who is qualified to speak and write in fandom. The person who might not feel fully sure in their belonging to the diaspora community? THAT'S the person who reads “you’re not Chinese Chinese” and thinks, ‘oh, I don't really know if I belong here. Am I Chinese enough to pass muster?’ When you set strict rules on how people should behave-- who in the diaspora leaves because they see over and over that they don't belong?
I think it should be self-evident why this Harms Our Community, Actually.
(I woke up to FOUR c-diaspora friends feeling like maybe they’re not Chinese enough for some arbitrary gatekeeper. In a single evening! I don’t have /that/ many friends who are in this fandom!)
And maybe here the issue is format: there is a nuanced discussion to be had between the Western diaspora and the Eastern diaspora, the 1st gens and later gens, on What It Means to Be Chinese. What Is Authenticity. Culture is dynamic, ever changing, etc etc. This is a conversation I've had in RL circles, but it has to be nuanced from the start or you end up implying Chinese culture is a monolith and, incidentally, offending everyone in the room. Yet, the simpler, emotional appeal is more likely to do numbers, carrying the conversations in ways it may not have been meant to do.
(But surely the diaspora is a bonus audience to mainland-produced cnovels and cdramas. If you insist on viewing fandom as a host/guest structure, we're also guests, with no more right to fandom than anyone else outside the original audience. The host is the author, the producer, the director. I disagree with this view that we can only have a relationship to art that is mediated by the business considerations of who is the original audience. And what happened to the "you're not paying for being in fandom with your contributions" that was going around?! Since when do you have to pay in with your culture, with your blood and bones?)
As comfortable as throwing rules into the ether might seem, it leaves little room for failure and merely serves to crystallize an in- and out-group. Who is the audience? Any conversation in fandom is not accessible to anyone who isn’t already in these spaces, who don’t know the Right People. In other words, it biases the audience towards the leisurely online, the educated, those who have the right cultural background to pick up the hints on what is acceptable behavior before they misstep. I hope the discussion above clarifies why even if you intend from the beginning to form an in-group, you’re likely to instead hurt members of that in-group.
If instead we embrace failure as a mechanism for learning, what happens? The example that jumps to mind is caveman!LWJ, which arose from misreadings. It spawned conversations that led to everyone understanding the language more, and a collective enrichment of our community. I argue that the main factor that led to this success is a concrete goal, beyond just punishing an individual, supported by accessible resources.
What happens when you suggest people "just do research" without any infrastructure to help? (The difficulty of research for fiction is, of course, not a new problem, though perhaps it is a more sensitive problem when it has a racial dimension.) It leaves room for people to call out things whenever they feel like it; this fuzziness inevitably leads to interpersonal frictions exploding through this rule-violation instead of more profitable avenues. It's the obscenity test ("I know it when I see it") in another form.
So, what's the solution? It has to lie in some form of building infrastructure, not in vague extortions to "research!!!" without any way to go about it. It's in increasing knowledge resources, not attacking people for gaps in their knowledge. A “buckle up” twitter thread, a couple hours of reading books, is simply not going to bridge the gap alone. As an example, I have a friend who is very well read and good at research. It was impossible for her to determine that 'niang' is not a contemporary term without directly asking. There was, before the conversation conducted via tumblr posts on register in Chinese, no easily accessible resource that would rebut the caveman!LWJ reading. There are many cases where the only way to find an answer to a question I've had myself has been calling my mom or grandma! In short, “just do research” is not always actionable advice.
And the failure point of setting expectations for anything in China so high that it is impossible to reach is that people simply don’t write them and turn to Western modern AUs. Hey, if you’re an urban Westerner, it’s easy to research! Look, I don't read modern AUs and find even most diaspora AUs questionable, but I suspect people simply aren't going to put more thought into their porn settings just because they’re scolded. At the same time, increased education has nearly completely overcome the caveman!LWJ of early fandom, providing us with evidence that you can change fandom's collective views. To be clear, I am not saying people can’t call out a racist trend or express unhappiness in their own space; I just think that to push back on a trend, if you want to enact a change, you need a concrete goal in mind. No, "people shouldn't write stuff I don't like" isn't an achievable goal. Perhaps something like, showing by example how care can be taken.
In conclusion: people should be allowed to fail in fandom, to get things wrong, to learn and to grow. If you're going to try to set norms, you need to consider their side effects and the rationales and logic behind those decisions.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 00:13 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 14:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 13:54 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 14:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 15:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 15:23 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 19:04 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 19:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:41 (UTC)This happened as a one-off in one of my friends’ fandoms. The source material barely had anything to do with the modern AU the author came up with, so no one could have pre-emptively posted a backgrounder about it. The AU itself was deeply political, but projected the author’s Western country’s politics onto the AU’s Asian country. There is def enough info on English Wikipedia to indicate that this AU was a really freaking bad idea, but it’s probably several pages into a Wikipedia dive. And even a backgrounder would have been contested given the political polarization of the country in question.
Given what my friend told me, the fandom is small enough that it would have been obvious what any gentle attempt at course correction was talking about, and any fic criticism is seen as something to be avoided. I don’t know what the best way to pre-empt something like this is. Encourage people to reach out?
no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 15:38 (UTC)I guess the real answer is for people to be curious about other countries' politics, so there is a base level of knowledge, but of course that's easier said than done.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-24 23:08 (UTC)I'm Chinese diaspora and I am very carefully not following whatever conversations are ongoing; I did dip a toe into off-Dreamwidth Untamed fandom last year and then backed out because of that feeling, as you put it, of [paying] in with your culture, with your blood and bones. And part of that was feeling like I sometimes had to measure my identity -- and also feeling alienated when I sometimes saw an equating of heritage with knowledge or with having a particular opinion.
And because wank was just a little more personal, it was so much harder to read. Caveat that some of it was probably a Me thing, and I think it was the right call for me to not engage heavily with the fandom (or Twitter) just not for me!), but -- throwing that out there as a personal experience of how being diaspora made those fandom conversations more difficult.
+100 to all of this, especially building the infrastructure and your conclusions.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-26 15:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-13 23:06 (UTC)Now, if only people started to understand this.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-14 15:01 (UTC)