--- /dev/null
+<awol:Entry
+ xml:lang="en"
+ xmlns:awol="http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/"
+ xmlns:dc11="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
+ xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
+ xmlns:sioc="http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#"
+>
+ <dc11:title>Racism, the O·T·W & the End There·of</dc11:title>
+ <dc11:date>2023-11-21T23:18:26-05:00</dc11:date>
+ <dc11:abstract rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
+A follow·up to my previous post, [“End Racism in the
+O·T·W”][end_otw_racism], with the aim of providing thoughts on how
+fandom antiracist activism has gone of late, as well as clarifying and
+refining my own orientation towards the [Organization for
+Transformative Works][OTW] as an organization. And possibly also the
+future of fandom?
+
+[OTW]: <https://www.transformativeworks.org/> "Organization for Transformative Works"
+[end_otw_racism]: <https://blog.ladys.computer/2023-05-14/end_otw_racism/> "End Racism in the O·T·W"
+]]></dc11:abstract>
+ <sioc:content rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
+This post is a follow·up to my previous post, [“End Racism in the
+O·T·W”][end_otw_racism], with the aim of providing thoughts on how
+fandom antiracist activism has gone of late, as well as clarifying and
+refining my own orientation towards the [Organization for
+Transformative Works][OTW] as an organization. And possibly also the
+future of fandom?
+
+## Developments at the O·T·W
+
+In short, the organization has showed its entire arse. Regarding the
+End O·T·W Racism action in particular, I felt that [the
+response][OTW-Update] was incredibly infantilizing and beside the
+point. To quote an excerpt :—
+
+> Since the posting of our original plan in 2020, we have completed or
+> made significant progress on a series of goals to help protect our
+> users and volunteers against harassment:
+>
+> - We implemented the ability to freeze comment threads and turn off
+> comments on your works entirely, giving you more control to
+> moderate interactions on your AO3 fanworks.
+>
+> - User muting was introduced to help you avoid encountering works,
+> bookmarks, or comments from specific users when browsing the
+> Archive.
+>
+> - We have implemented comment blocking to prevent specific logged‐in
+> users from commenting on your works entirely.
+>
+> - You can now opt out of receiving gifts on AO3, as well as opt out
+> of allowing your works to be invited to collections.
+>
+> - We have improved admin tools to facilitate investigations by our
+> Policy & Abuse team.
+>
+> - Internally, we have updated our Code of Conduct to make it explicit
+> that discrimination based on caste is not tolerated in the OTW.
+>
+> - We also implemented methods for volunteers to contact and submit
+> feedback to the Board anonymously by introducing a separate
+> feedback form.
+>
+> We are still committed to working towards giving you more control
+> over how you experience the Archive going forward. To that end, we
+> will be expanding blocking features to cover more user interactions,
+> and further limiting how guest users can interact with you on the
+> Archive.
+
+Note how ⓐ almost all of these changes are technological in nature,
+and ⓑ none of these changes are actually specific to *combatting
+racism*. I didn’t participate in the End O·T·W Racism action because I
+wanted “more control” over my Archive experience, I participated
+because I wanted the O·T·W to cease being a racist organization.
+Absolutely none of the points listed tackle that problem.
+
+Astonishingly, in a very “senpai noticed me” moment, [the Fandom Against
+Racism team seemed happy just to have gotten a response at
+all][EndOTWRacism-Response], and did not offer any of these criticisms.
+This made me severely doubt whether the Fandom Against Racism team
+actually knew what they were protesting.
+
+That one specific response to that one specific action aside, the O·T·W
+clearly demonstrated, in the lead·up to its latest Board election :—
+
+- That it has a Legal staff with far too much power and influence over
+ the organization, whose area of expertise is narrow and misguided in
+ relation to the whole scope of things a platform like
+ [<cite>A·O·3</cite>][AO3] needs to handle (e·g sexualized photography
+ of minors).
+
+- That it has a Policy & Abuse team which is hopelessly overworked,
+ unable to tackle big problems (due, in part, to afore·mentioned
+ overreach of Legal), and unable to moderate even the comments of
+ <cite>A·O·3</cite>’s own blogposts.
+
+- That there are individuals in the O·T·W with long histories of racist
+ and abusive behaviour, at least one of which who was a member of the
+ Board and who *still* is a sitting chairmember of a committee. (There
+ are not good processes, or maybe any processes, for removing these
+ people from their posts.)
+
+- That members with·in the organization are completely willing to wield
+ its Code of Conduct as a retaliatory tool for silencing criticisms of
+ racism.
+
+- That East Asian volunteers, and mainland Chinese volunteers in
+ particular, have had an extremely rough time of it.
+
+- That the O·T·W still doesn’t know how to manage money and still is
+ not capable of hiring needed staff.
+
+- That the A·O·3 codebase is still a mess and there is still no
+ organizational interest or capacity to bring the contribution
+ pipeline up to the norms and expectations of your average open source
+ project.
+
+I’m not providing citations for the above facts because most of the
+discussion surrounding them happened informally on places like
+Dreamwidth and Tumblr. You should approach them with the level of
+rigour you generally would use for word‐of‐mouth utterances from people
+who were there and watched it happen, and I welcome anyone with the
+time to chronicle them in a more durable and comprehensive fashion.
+
+It is important to note that the O·T·W Board has changed, seemingly for
+the better, since most of this stuff went down. What this likely means
+in practice is just that the systemic problems in the organization have
+gone back to being hidden now that there are competent people in the
+role of acting as the organization’s face. However, they are finally
+moving forward on having an external audit with respect to diversity
+and inclusion, and that could, eventually, result in some actual
+change.
+
+## Developments in Fandom Antiracism
+
+These have likewise been largely disappointing. I was initially excited
+about the End O·T·W Racism action, because it seemed like a potentially
+very effective tactic at raising the issue and building an activist
+base for future antiracist work. I think that it was, but that base was
+squandered and the movement now seems to have died out.
+
+After their initial Call to Action, Fandom Against Racism announced
+[their second one,][EndOTWRacism-CtA2] a voting drive to elect a new
+O·T·W board. It’s important to understand that voting in an O·T·W
+election is restricted to those who have recently donated, which means
+this was *in fact* [a massive fundraiser][EndOTWRacism-Donate] for the
+very organization which they were supposedly critiquing. To add to
+this, there were (and still are) very serious doubts among many fans
+regarding the capacity of the Board to actually enact change (given the
+relative power of committee chairs), and it’s also worth noting that
+voting (a silent, confidential activity) shares none of the qualities
+which made the first action successful. To top it off, this second
+action was announced *prior to the announcement of candidates*, meaning
+it was unclear initially whether there were even any good antiracist
+candidates to vote *for*, or, indeed, whether there were enough
+candidates that voting would even matter. As it turned out, by the time
+elections rolled around, there were only as many candidates as there
+were open seats and voting was largely ineffectual.
+
+Poor choice of action aside, End O·T·W Racism spent much of this time
+cosplaying the very image of a large, ineffectual liberal nonprofit,
+introducing a mascot and promoting a [weekend of
+love][EndOTWRacism-WoL] in place of further radical disruption. They
+made analyses of each Board candidate (as tho᷎ they were experts) which
+generally fell short, rating them more‐or‐less on how many buzzwords
+they employed in their answers. They refused to comment on the long
+list of institutional failings of O·T·W as an organization, with the
+excuse that they were “focused on the topic of racism” (my paraphrase),
+as tho᷎ being an inept organization with no capacity for structural
+change wasn’t a primary means by which racism in the O·T·W has been
+perpetuated.
+
+There was a board meeting during this time, which they encouraged
+people to attend, and people did and it was a glorious mess (the extent
+of Fandom Against Racism’s influence in this is unclear). This was not
+followed up upon. After the (uncontested) elections wrapped up, [the
+Fandom Against Racism team seemed largely satisfied with the
+result][EndOTWRacism-Review] and went on haitus. Unsurprisingly,
+whatever base they had initially managed to gather is now nowhere to be
+seen.
+
+## My Position as a Fan Author
+
+In my previous post, I pledged to title all of my fics “End Racism in
+the OTW” until such a time as the demands of the movement were
+satisfied. Given the above, I am now rescinding the pledge, with a
+note‐to‐self that in the future I should probably add a stipulation
+that if everyone involved throws up their hands and says “good enough”,
+it’s fair to walk away.
+
+The thing I’m walking away from, tho᷎, isn’t antiracism but
+<cite>A·O·3</cite> and the fannish culture surrounding it. I’m not
+interested in fixing a racist organization or a broken platform,
+personally. I don’t think it is too big to fail, and honestly, I think
+its failure is inevitable. In the past year, more and more people have
+locked or removed their works out of concerns regarding harassment, A·I
+harvesting, or simply not wanting to share space with bigoted content
+anymore. This trend doesn’t seem likely to abate and consequently I
+think fandom does need to start treating the platform as fundamentally
+unreliable! Being a reliable, persistent archive is of course
+<cite>A·O·3</cite>’s big selling point so who can say where things will
+go from here.
+
+In terms of personal practice, *I’m* going to stop treating
+<cite>A·O·3</cite> as persistent or reliable by simply not continuing
+to do the work of keeping it that way. I’m going to delete more, post
+less, and communicate less often regarding changes. This of course
+raises the question of where the persistent home of my fanworks *will*
+be, but in the meantime feel free to shoot me an email if you’re
+looking for some·thing I wrote and it suddenly isn’t there anymore.
+
+For the things I do post to <cite>A·O·3</cite>, I still stand by these
+points and aim to be as blunt about them as possible :—
+
+- O·T·W meets any reasonable definition of a racist organization and
+ <cite>A·O·3</cite> meets any reasonable definition of a website which
+ promulgates bigotry and hate.
+
+- It is irresponsible and unethical to monetarily support such
+ organizations and websites, especially in the form of donations or
+ membership drives.
+
+- O·T·W, the organization, must earn your vote by being a welrun,
+ democratic organization with good processes before any candidate
+ running for any organizational position possibly can earn your vote
+ by having good positions. (And O·T·W miserably fails that objective.)
+
+I think there is value in continuing to stress these things to users,
+but as the size and strengths of movements wane, I think the tactics
+need to become more personal. Personal connections, communications, and
+investment are how durable activist networks are formed.
+
+When thinking about these problems, I’m also increasingly realizing
+the troubling implications of the fact that fandom “isn’t what it used
+to be”, by which I mean a space to be your authentic, weird, kinky self
+and nerd out about your passions, in a place where other people are
+also being their authentic, weird, kinky selves and doing likewise.
+Instead I think fandom has taken on different, more mainstream social
+functions, which is to say that I think that it has shifted from being
+counterculture to being culture. This is a problem because while fandom
+in its first formulation was some·thing to care about and fight for,
+fandom in its more recent incarnation is much harder to organize
+around. I think we need a concerted effort to bring about fandom in
+the former sense, and I think the starting place is not in “media”
+fandoms but in lifestyle ones (furry fandom, fashion/esthetic fandoms,
+musical genre fandoms, and so forth). In these latter examples, the
+word “fandom” might as well be replaced with “scene”.
+
+I want to be a part of scenes which give a shit about the silly things
+I care about (romantic c·dramas, anime, Pokémon, Nintendo). I want that
+much more than I care about belonging to any “fandom” or “fanspace” in
+the vernacular sense. And I think that having those scenes can form the
+bedrock of culture, not only fan culture but also culture in a general
+sense, a culture which produces interesting content for an audience of
+like‐minded people, some of which may reference some person or
+corporation’s Intellectual Property but a lot of which probably won’t.
+Plenty of “original content” is produced by S·F·F fandom, furry fandom,
+⁊·c, and the willingness of people to create unique works within those
+spaces as opposed to without I think is a testament to the fact that
+they have some·thing which other spaces lack.
+
+I’ve made my own small efforts at building these sorts of scenes, with
+the Mastodon instance I moderate and the Discord server I run and the
+[wiki I set up for my friends][Wiki]. I don’t think spaces like these
+are enough (I’d love a forum), but I think they are a start. We need
+bigger ones, tho᷎, ones that are big enough to host events or
+challenges or other sorts of community happenings, and big enough to
+where they can adequately serve the function of introducing one to new
+people and ideas. I’m very interested in the inflection point from
+“friends and family” to “community” and think that transition is the
+only kind of scale which matters.
+
+I’ve been pretty busy with life, work, and [inane highly‐technical
+Ecmascript programming][Piscēs], but I hope to get back to this sort of
+development soon.
+
+[AO3]: <https://archiveofourown.org/> "Archive of Our Own"
+[EndOTWRacism-CtA2]: <https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/post/720333769684484096/vote-to-end-otw-racism> "#VOTE TO END OTW RACISM"
+[EndOTWRacism-Donate]: <https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/post/721145850999586816/alt-text-image-of-a-cheerful-brown-owl-in-a> "DONATE To the OTW & Become and OTW Voter"
+[EndOTWRacism-Response]: <https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/post/719947217883037696/the-otw-has-responded-to-our-campaign-and-provided> "The OTW has responded to our campaign…"
+[EndOTWRacism-Review]: <https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/post/726465603305684992/2023-otw-board-election-review> "2023 OTW BOARD ELECTION REVIEW"
+[EndOTWRacism-WoL]: <https://end-otw-racism.tumblr.com/post/723473630905892864/weekend-of-love> "♥ WEEKEND OF LOVE ♥"
+[OTW]: <https://www.transformativeworks.org/> "Organization for Transformative Works"
+[OTW-Update]: <https://www.transformativeworks.org/an-update-from-the-otw-board-and-chairs/> "An Update from the OTW Board and Chairs"
+[Piscēs]: <https://git.ladys.computer/Pisces> "Piscēs"
+[Wiki]: <https://wiki.ladys.computer/> "Lady’s Wiki"
+[end_otw_racism]: <https://blog.ladys.computer/2023-05-14/end_otw_racism/> "End Racism in the O·T·W"
+]]></sioc:content>
+ <dc11:rights rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
+Copyright © 2023
+<a href="https://www.ladys.computer/about/#lady">Lady</a>
+<small>[Fangirl Extraordinaire]</small>.
+Some rights reserved.
+
+This blogpost is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><cite>Creative
+Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</cite></a>.
+]]></dc11:rights>
+</awol:Entry>
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