There was a scandal in the Steven Universe Fandom a year or two ago. A young fan artist posted a picture on her Tumblr of Rose Quartz. She’d drawn Rose skinny, although on the show she is quite chubby. The fandom was full of people overjoyed at Rose being fat, over a fat woman being presented as powerful and desired. They pounced on that poor girl and piled threats on her until she nearly committed suicide.
What demographic would better understand bullying than fat women? And yet, they became the victimizers, the bullies.
(This ties in to my earlier post about how bullies and victims are NOT different. We are all humans. Period.)
I’ve seen bullying in the SCA. In LARPS. In Science Fiction Conventions. It happens again and again and there’s this shock. The refrain is always, “But I thought we were the good guys! We’re the ones who were mistreated and misunderstood! Aren’t we the most accepting people ever?”
Sadly, no. We are still people. There is no “Them and us” there is only “us” and sometimes, we are just the worst.
Lately I’ve seen a lot of calls urging us to “just elect women” or “Let’s have black women run the country!” And hey – I agree, more representation would be hella awesome. But remember that Kelly Ann Conway is a woman. Omarosa is a black woman.
Let’s not call for women to run the country en masse as though we are one uncomplicated union. Let’s call for Maxine Waters to run the country! There are women out there who are hard-working and clear-thinking and we need them for their heart and their minds and we owe it to them and to ourselves to identify them and lend our support to them as individuals.
No one wants to be identified only as a member of a group. Have you ever been asked to speak for your demographic? It’s annoying, and uncomfortable, and ultimately futile because you aren’t your demographic.
I digress.
During the last election, I felt like women were definitely going to agree with me that Hillary was a clear choice. I was shocked again and again to talk to women who disagreed. They blamed Hillary for not dumping her cheating husband. They said she just wasn’t likable. But surely, there were so many women out there, and no matter what they thought of Hillary they would never vote for someone who treated their entire demographic like dirt!
Then the election happened and my first thought was, after the dumbfounded numb shock, “I was thinking of women as a whole. They were thinking of themselves as individuals. Individuals who might have absorbed misogyny or racism or just hate themselves. Oh what a mistake I made. I should have campaigned harder.”
… I guess what I’m saying is: don’t assume virtue. Don’t let us be burned again. No demographic is going to “save” the mid-term elections. The only thing that can save our democracy is every fucking one of us. That means you, specifically, dear reader.
We can’t put our hope for the future in anything but ourselves, and that’s hard, and it’s hard to maintain energy against the never-ending mountain of bullshit, but somehow we got to. We got to love and forgive and resist with all our hearts.
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