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// ]]]]>]]>blinkpink replied to your post: *casually waiting for the explosion of Eve Moneypenny/Bond fics and fanart and graphics, inspired by all of their incredible chemistry and snarky sexy banter and THAT FUCKING SHAVING SCENE, that will be of the same intensity as the 00Q ship*Because FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE is why. >:C
DING DING DING DING DING!
So, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I just don’t think this is right. Let me start by saying:
The lack of focus on characters of color in fandom is hugely problematic.
I am in no way arguing about that. Fandom is white as fuck, and that’s absolutely a problem, and we should absolutely be talking about it and working to fix it.
However.
Representing this Bond/Q vs Bond/Moneypenny thing as indicative of the race problem in fandom is, I think, largely missing the point. I am certainly not suggesting that there are no issues of race at play here; there are. I just don’t think racism is the whole picture, or probably even the primary explanation in this particular case.
Why do we slash? For many of us, in large part, we like slash because it’s transgressive. Deviance is a large part of the reason most kinksters are into their kink. And gay male relationships are, culturally, more transgressive than straight relationships of any ethnicity. (They’re even more culturally transgressive than gay female relationships, for reasons that have to do with gender roles and threats to masculinity and power dynamics blah blah blah.) To be clear, I am not defending any of those facts as legitimate or justifiable. The fact remains that, currently, in America and most of Western culture, they are true.
Personally, I am not interested in Bond/Moneypenny for the same reason that I’m not into Sherlock/Molly, or Harry/Ginny, or, Aragorn/Arwen. The sexual attraction between two straight people is obvious and commonplace; it’s not subversive, or rebellious, or kinky. It’s text, not subtext. And it’s just not that interesting, regardless of how amazing or gorgeous the woman is (which Naomie Harris is, holy shit) or how hot the chemistry is between her and the leading man. Besides, canon ships just aren’t as much fun – we don’t like the things we’re expected to like, by and large, because we’re kinky deviant motherfuckers.
Now, I am TOTALLY interested in Moneypenny/Sévérine. And Molly/Irene, and Ginny/Hermione. My favorite ship at the moment is Michonne/Andrea from Walking Dead. So why don’t we see more femmeslash? Pretty simple – because most people in fandom like dudes. It’s mostly straight women here, and most of us queers like men as well as women, and the few men in fandom tend to be gay, so the percentage of fans sexually attracted to men, and therefore interested in reading/writing about them sexually, is just a lot higher than those interested in women.
So characterizing the lack of Moneypenny/Bond fic, especially in comparison to the amount of Bond/Q fic, as “because white people” just isn’t correct. More importantly, it distracts from other hugely important issues, which are:
- There is an unacceptable lack of main characters of color in the original source material.
- There is an unacceptable lack of female main characters in the original source material.
It’s not about fans ignoring women of color in favor of white men. It’s about being forced to choose between racism, by ignoring canon interracial couplings, or heterosexism, by following the man+woman mold set everywhere in media. It’s about the most interesting characters on screen nearly always being straight white men, too – not that their straight-white-manness makes them interesting, mind, but that’s how those roles are written and casted. (I’d argue that if Q were a black man and Moneypenny were a white woman, we’d still be shipping Q/Bond over Moneypenny/Bond, no question.)
That’s not to say we have no control over the situation as fans. I think conversations like this one are helpful, as is thinking about the way we channel our kinks and desires. But when we talk about things like race dynamics, let’s not ignore the intersections with all the other dynamics at play, like sexual orientation – let’s not falsely attribute all the blame where it doesn’t belong.
Work to change the biases at the source, and don’t guilt people for their pleasures.
I don’t have the brainpower at the moment to reply to all of your points, but I want to address a few things:
I agree with you that there are multiple dynamics in play that impact the way in which fandom operates with shipping—racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, etc.—however (IMO) racism is the hugest one. Characters of color—and especially female characters of color—are not shipped as frequently as white characters. In all variants of slash. Fandom, which is overwhelmingly white (at least in Western culture), will turn and twist itself into knots and bring in every other white character to ship with its WhiteCisStraightMen rather than invest the same depth of intensity in shipping canon characters of color—even if that character of color is just as complexly written as a narratively comparable WhiteCisStraightMan, or has just as intense (or deeper!) of a relationship with said WhiteCisStraightMan as another White character, regardless of gender.
I have to disagree with you re: fandom’s response to Q potentially being Black. Even if the Black character is the canon White character’s best fucking friend, they will still not get the same level of love. Go look at the number of Rhodey/Stark fics. Or Gus/Shawn fics. Compare the numbers to the undeniably greater numbers of Stark/Rogers fics, or Shawn/Lassiter fics. Compare the number of male-slash pairings featuring a PoC in any fandom up against all-white fem-slash pairings in that same fandom. This same pattern plays out again and again, fandom after fandom.
The thing about shipping is that you don’t have to choose. This idea of “having” to choose between heterosexism and racism in your shipping just feels like bullshit to me. NO ONE IS FORCING FANS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO PAIRINGS. THERE IS SPACE FOR BOTH OF THEM TO BE LOVED AND RESPECTED.
People can ship all the WhiteCisStraightMen they like (speaking as a shipper of many such fellows). These posts are not about “guilting” folks for their pleasures. I love me some 00Q, and some Sherlock/John (sharing space on my shelf with Moneypenny/M, and Sally/Anthea, and Joan/Sherlock).
However.
If fandom is not consistently showing, at the barest fucking minimum, the same amount of respect to ships featuring characters of color, if the only thing that fandom ever ships consistently with a passionate and unparalleled zeal and intensity are WhiteCisStraightFolks (regardless of gender), then it is indeed, “BECAUSE FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE.”
Because AGG shouldn’t be the person who has to write these things all the time: this IS working to change biases at the source. Where do you think the source is? It’s in us! AGG is right: the beauty is, we don’t have to choose! The point is not, “Feel guilty for what you know you enjoy reading!” It’s, “While you’re at it, give these other characters/ships a try too.”
It’s not like most of us are deliberately going out of our way to avoid POC characters. Speaking as a cis white woman, the reason I catch myself tending to skim POC characters is because I don’t feel that immediate sense of connection with them, because I don’t share their background. You know, the same reason POCs feel alienated by being surrounded by nothing but white characters.
So that’s the point: give them a shot! Maybe the character won’t be to your taste, for entirely individual reasons. It’s not like we always have the power to decide whether a character or a ship works for us or not. But at least take a chance on a couple of those stories where somebody’s picked them up and said, “Damn, this poor character’s unsung awesome needs a moment in the sun.”
Because the unloved, underutilized, overlooked character? It usually is a POC and/or a woman. Speaking as someone who’s been around the fandom scene for about 20 years now, AGG’s right: they ARE effaced, more than the white men. Which is particularly rough when there are fewer of them in the source material to begin with. (Fewer women than men; fewer POC than whites; fewer POC women than white women. A lot of shows and movies don’t even HAVE women of color.)
And if you’re a writer, at some point give a shot at writing them. You don’t have to make your stories about them, but speaking as a writer myself, and knowing many writers, most stories allow for the space to work a bit with secondary characters; give them a little more depth than the stereotypes they’re usually served with. And sooner or later, if you write enough, you’ll almost invariably get bitten by the “I want to change it up a bit” bug. When that day comes, consider the POC characters as an option.
And here is the thing about fandom, the reason this is our problem: fandom is recursive. It feeds off itself. What happens in fandom, influences fandom. If nobody’s writing or reading or talking about stories that ship POC, then they will continue to not exist. Conversely, every time somebody talks about it, or writes it or reads it or recs it, they give the subject another little push to get it rolling. Every time you so much as spend a few moments fleshing out the POC character’s characterization, you’re making readers THINK about it.
And again: it’s not like most fans are going around saying, “Ewww, black men, no!” We mostly just don’t THINK about it till somebody points it out to us. Not every ship is everybody’s Thing; no one’s saying Shawn/Gus or Bond/Moneypenny is required to be your personal cup of tea. But it deserves thinking about. If the voices of POC and female characters are silent in fandom, where we are prepared to grab literally any fucking thing and go mad with it, then where the hell can they have a voice?