This is why privilege checking is so fucking annoying:

[skywaterblue]

afinch would like me to know my drabble is OFFENSIVE AND ERASES THE GLBQT EXPERIENCE because same-sex daemons don't work that way!

Except the drabble in no way says that Sam is gay, just that Sam is visibly different in a way he can't hide and Josh doesn't notice or care.

Shit like this is why I am basically tired and done with fandom.

Comments

[devilc]

Word.

I'm not done with fandom, but I keep a very tight filter on it.

[skywaterblue]

It's pretty tedious to argue 'my privilege' to a random internet person who doesn't know I'm a disabled queer Jewish woman. Especially one that has so much random racist nonsense in it. (Seriously? So a half-Gyptian side character in the main novel with a same-sex daemon is living in the College because his people aren't tolerant enough? OH-KAY.)

[devilc]

Also, this --

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/423402

[skywaterblue]

LOL. The one with Psy under it is pretty awesome too.

[sarken]

I like how they point out that same-sex daemons don't necessarily equal gay when you'd already said that in an earlier comment.

[skywaterblue]

And the drabble has NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT EITHER WAY. She's basically mad I used the vaguest tag possible. I wish AO3 had a way to freeze comment threads or ban people from commenting. I don't want to delete it.

[sarken]

I honestly went in expecting there to be unintentional subtext from which a reader could assume he was gay, but there is... nothing. You kind of have to assume Sam is subtextually, canonically gay, or that the story is an attempt at commentary on "Sam is gay and no one cares" story, for it to work.

Deleting things tends to cause more problems than it solves, yeahs. :\

[skywaterblue]

It isn't a commentary on "Sam is gay and no one cares" stories, unfortunately. My much worse ulterior motive was wanting to write another fic about Josh's weird relationships to daemons and Sam's drabble was just an easy pickup on a character I've never particularly liked either way.

Of course, a large part of the fandom DOES think that, but you have to really be bringing a lot of baggage from the wider fandom to read that into this one.

[sarken]

Ha! That's funny because I was going to say something like, "The story says more about Josh than it does about Sam," but I didn't want to offend you.

[skywaterblue]

I accept my own flaws. Sigh.

[pauraque]

The best thing is that such people ALWAYS assume they are talking to a cisgender straight white person. Which results in stuff like a white person telling an Asian person that they can't possibly understand what people of color go through, and a cis person lecturing a trans person about how their fic about a trans character rings false to the trans experience, to name just two other recent examples I've seen.

[skywaterblue]

Right? Person doesn't know anything about me or my privilege levels, or yours. I saw a recent post somewhere discussing how privilege checking is really the new acceptable way of bullying on the left, and thought: you know, yep.