Holy mother of God *is horrified*

[elspethdixon]

Oh my God, every time I wincingly look back at the ongoing Cultural Appropriation bitchfight of doom, it gets worse. I'm not otherwise going to get involved, but here, I just couldn't help myself.

So, for those, like me, who hadn't seen or heard about Teresa Hayden's post wherein she expresses her anger over people badmouthing her husband (at least, that's what I assume she was doing from the descriptions - I haven't read any of the stuff involving him, either, but apparently he said things that offended people, refused to appologize when called on it, and then deleted his journal because people were yelling at him): Holy fuck, she calls fans of color and those who support them nithings.

In terms of offensiveness, as a former student of old English? Fuck, people, that's, well, not as horrible as the other n-word (which, please God, I hope no one's actually said), but it's pretty god-awful. Like, enough that I was reduced to staring at my computer screen in horror.

She has basically stated that all the people who disagree with her husband (including but not limited to, fans of color) are hateful, malicious, deformed, insane, sexually deviant, possibly cannablistic, sub-human or less-than human things. Because that's what that word means. It means monster. It means Not-a-Person. It means Grendal in Beowulf, the Ring-Wraiths in LotR, the in-bred, cannabalistic degenerate monsters in Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear."

That's what she's saying fans of color are. Maybe she doesn't really know what the word means and implies, but even if she just thinks it's an old spelling of "nothing" that would be offensive all on it's own.

And to think I used to respect her so much...

ETA: Apparently, there are differences between the Old Norse and Old English definitions, with the Norse one being a far worse insult and the Anglo-Saxon version being a little less on the digusting monster side and more on the outlaw side (see the discussion of several people with more expert knowledge than me in comments). Both versions are still insults, though.

Comments

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Ronon's hair is 'bizarre'? *raise eyebrows* I didn't see any "bizarre" or "scary" comments being tossed around about Jack Sparrow's dreadlocks in PotC fandom. Is this the same people who make him and Teyla cats instead of writing me the long, plotty, h/c-filled Ronon/Teyla fic I can never find?

Add to that the part where the movies made a lot of elves pale and blonde that weren't blonde in the books (like Legolas) and the whole visual metaphor that they have going on there gets kinda really sketchy.

I know *nods* Since elves are supposed to be a more enlightened species than humans, it probably says something that the only dark-haired elves are Elrond Half-elven and his daughter. Mostly it says that they wanted to cast Liv Tyler, I think, but you still get all the pure-blooded elves being blond while the half-human ones are darker. Legolas in particular I'd give a pass on because he's frequently been portrayed as blond ever since Greg & Tim Hildebrant got his hair color wrong in a 70s-era Tolkien calendar, but there are many, many spear-carrier elves in the films and like I said, they're *all* blond except for Arwen & Elrond. And then you have Grima Wormtongue as the only dark-haired Rohirrim (I mean, it makes perfect sense that they're all blond, since they're basically vikings with horses instead of longboats, but there's one dark-haired one and he's the evil guy?).

Personally, I was a little disappointed in the Gondor characters, too, because while I thought that Viggo Mortenson made a perfect Aragorn, and while I love Sean Bean to bits in, like, everything he's ever been in, I always imagined Gondor as a sort of Rome or Byzantium equivalent, with Minas Tirith as Alexandria and Rome and Constantinople and Troy all rolled into one, yet the men of Gondor were more Northern Europeans and not the dark-haired, dark-eyed people I'd been picturing.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

*G* Well, PoTC fandom had its own issues.

(Oh, man, don't even bring up the cats thing. That's another one of those things where, okay, the original story was just mentioned offhandedly, and then fen went nuts because OMG YOU'RE CALLING ME/HER/THEM/PEOPLE RACIST, and oof, now it's all anyone remembers, when there were MUCH crazier stories, like the "we're all doctors in a hospital" AU where Dr. Novak got demoted to a nurse because, I guess, men are doctors, ladies are nurses!)

Of course, that was a while ago, and I feel like fandom has at least moved up to, like, version 1.1.6 of this conversation as opposed to being stuck on level zero like we were for a while.

and then you have Grima Wormtongue as the only dark-haired Rohirrim

Huh, you know, I don't think I ever picked up on that, but yeah. Good thing we have some brown-haired hobbits or I might start feeling oppressed as a brunette! ;)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

My fiancee, who is dark-haired, notices these things, after a childhood spent reading stories where the princesses (other than Snow White) are almost always blonde (another little girl once told her that she could never be pretty, because dark hair just wasn't as nice as blond hair). So now I notice them, too.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Just jumping in to chime in; I have the "Mediterranean" type, olive skin, very dark hair and eyes (htough they're getting lighter as I age), and Snow White was my favorite princess because of that very same issue. Where/when I grew up (rural France, 70s and 80s), the Pretty, Popular Girl was always a blonde girl with blue eyes, and for a while I wished for nothing more than to be able to change my eye color. The Blonde Princess thing drove me crazy.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I'm *blonde* and the blonde princess thing drives me crazy. The amount of advertising money spent convincing little girls that they want to be blonde, pink-wearing princesses is disturbing when you really thing about it (and the weird thing is, the whole princess obsession isn't something I remember from the 80s, though of course, the pretty main character girl was still always blonde - c.f. Lady Lovely Locks and Rainbow Bright. And She-ra. And Jem of Jem and the Holograms was blonde when she wasn't being a pick-haired rock star).

[helens78]

Chiming in as well; my dad always rushed to point out dark-haired princesses/heroines, because in a world where there were really no Asian or part-Asian heroines, it was as close as he could find to heroines who actually resembled me. Brown eyes were even harder to find, but when he found them, he was always very excited.

When Beauty and the Beast came out and the heroine was brown-haired, brown-eyed, strong-willed, and a total nerd, I don't think I ever quite stopped being shocked.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Black hair and blue eyes is for some reason a very popular animated color combination (at least, it seems to be in comics - comicbooks are overflowing with black haired, blued people). Blue eyes are enough of a default that Marvel colorists frequently forget what model they're supposed to be following and give Spiderman or the Scarlet Witch (both canonically brown-eyed, and her eye-color is even mentioned in dialogue *and* is supposed to be sign of her ethnic background, given that she's half Jewish and half Romany) blue or green eyes.

Belle was one of my favorites as a little girls, because she read books, something relatively few other heroines did.

(then, of course, there was the near-total lack of anybody with glasses who wasn't a comic-relief nerd, prior to Harry Potter. You had Arthur the aardvark and that one 1940s American girl, and that was it - I shudder to think what it must have been like for any child with a disability, if even near-sightedness was non-existant through not being normal enough).