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Jun. 21st, 2010 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mari4212Oh no you don't. This person posted a response to both the most recent incident of racefail and to people objecting to aspects of the H/C bingo. Where, in effect, she says that people raising objections to the J2 work, or pointing out the problematic issues involved with the H/C bingo cards, are acting to silence the poor authors.
I, erm, responded with this: People have already called you on the fact that what you're doing here seems aimed more at silencing those already hurt and coming from years of being silenced/having their pain and experiences ignored, than anything else.
But to use your example of the 30 years war, there's more ways to deal with the characters than what you listed. One, at the time, there was a trend in Europe's courts for "Moorish" medicine (for good reason, most of the advances made in medicine at that time were being made by Islamic doctors), and most blacks were automatically classed as being Moors. You could easily turn Ronon, who in canon comes from an advanced society, into a Moorish doctor of that type. Teyla could be written as his wife, and you'd hit that ship for several people, or as his sister. Or you could translate her level of otherization, and make her, say, a Sephardic Jew on her way through the Germanies to one of the ghettos. Both of those options would keep her character more intact than any way you could ever convince me that a pampered playtoy was a valid characterization for Teyla's personality. Elizabeth and Sam, well, there's a whole group of noblewomen who pretty much ran their husbands estates, took charge, and often times were major players within the larger cities. Write them there, and you keep their roles similar to the ones on the show, and you're still within the era's rules.
Even with your example, you don't need to mindlessly fall into those tropes which diminish characters of color and women. The fact that you automatically assumed you would have to use those hurtful tropes unquestioningly, says a lot. This is why people feel the need to speak up when they find stories like this. Because the sooner we convince people that the hurtful tropes are not the easy answer, the sooner people who lack one privilege or another stop feeling that fandom is punching them in the face for existing on the internet.
ETA: If you came here from the metafandom delicious link, you might move to my livejournal entry, where there is discussion in the comments.
I, erm, responded with this: People have already called you on the fact that what you're doing here seems aimed more at silencing those already hurt and coming from years of being silenced/having their pain and experiences ignored, than anything else.
But to use your example of the 30 years war, there's more ways to deal with the characters than what you listed. One, at the time, there was a trend in Europe's courts for "Moorish" medicine (for good reason, most of the advances made in medicine at that time were being made by Islamic doctors), and most blacks were automatically classed as being Moors. You could easily turn Ronon, who in canon comes from an advanced society, into a Moorish doctor of that type. Teyla could be written as his wife, and you'd hit that ship for several people, or as his sister. Or you could translate her level of otherization, and make her, say, a Sephardic Jew on her way through the Germanies to one of the ghettos. Both of those options would keep her character more intact than any way you could ever convince me that a pampered playtoy was a valid characterization for Teyla's personality. Elizabeth and Sam, well, there's a whole group of noblewomen who pretty much ran their husbands estates, took charge, and often times were major players within the larger cities. Write them there, and you keep their roles similar to the ones on the show, and you're still within the era's rules.
Even with your example, you don't need to mindlessly fall into those tropes which diminish characters of color and women. The fact that you automatically assumed you would have to use those hurtful tropes unquestioningly, says a lot. This is why people feel the need to speak up when they find stories like this. Because the sooner we convince people that the hurtful tropes are not the easy answer, the sooner people who lack one privilege or another stop feeling that fandom is punching them in the face for existing on the internet.
ETA: If you came here from the metafandom delicious link, you might move to my livejournal entry, where there is discussion in the comments.
