I’m quitting Femslash Fandom

univcrse:

hijadepavlov:

When Clarke kissed Lexa in The 100, thousands of people rushed to binge-watch the show in order to catch up with the last couple episodes of the second season.
Though the show had never gotten the deserved recognition for its Filipino male lead nor any kind of criticism for the blatant racism in it, suddenly a horde of white fans was rushing to hype it’s “amazing” sapphic representation before The Debacle or to criticize its biphobia/lesbophobia after it all went to shit.

When the first rumors of Alex coming out in season 2 of Supergirl started circulating, again, a myriad of fans rushed to marathon season one so they could catch up in time for the return of the show, and were quick to start stanning Alex, Kara and Maggie, though most paid no attention to James Olsen.
Funnily enough, when Kara got with Mon-El, the criticism from these fans wasn’t that James/Kara had better build-up and that writing decision was blatantly anti-black; but that Kara had better chemistry with Lena, a white woman who should have been played by a disabled actress and instead had her disability completely erased.
These fans don’t criticize the ableism in that choice, the racism in sidelining James or the issues with Maggie Sawyer being promoted as latina when she isn’t, yet praise Supergirl’s representation for (white, cis, thin, able bodied and neurotypical) sapphic women non-stop. The only criticism seems to be that Kara/Mon-El is happening instead of yet another white F/F ship.

Yet, though these and many other examples (Orphan Black, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter and OITNB are ones that comes to mind) show that Femslash Fandom™ is always willing to collectively flock to a new show as long as there are (white) sapphics in it, it doesn’t look like they (we?) apply the same to all media.

A common argument by white sapphics who refuse to watch racially diverse shows is that there are no sapphics in them (for example, The Get Down), or that they are treated badly (for example, Jane The Virgin). It is impossible to have a conversation about how important the racial representation in these shows is without a white sapphic jumping in to derail the conversation, so one would expect that the combination of racial diversity and sapphic representation would be a winning match for Femslash Fandom™. And yet…

As predicted by many black fans at the beginning of the season, Queen Sugar’s first season, though critically acclaimed, went almost entirely unnoticed by fandom. The show is led by a black bisexual woman and her siblings, and Nova (the lead) was shown to be kissing her girlfriend from the very first promos that aired near the beginning of 2016. The show doesn’t have homophobia, Nova is a fully fleshed character and her relationship with her female lover gets decent screentime, which is way more than The 100 could ever say about Clarke and Lexa. Yet the great majority of Femslash Fandom™ completely ignored it.

For two seasons now, fandom has also completely ignored Rosewood. From the very first episode we knew that the show had a main black lesbian happily engaged to a white bisexual woman, and the fans watching it made sure to publicize it on Tumblr and Twitter as much as they could. Yet, now in the second season and with Pippy and TMI only getting more development and screentime as time passes, I have yet to see a single Rosewood gifset crossing my dash, much less one in the many Multifandom Femslash Blogs™ I used to follow.

The first season of No Tomorrow is close to an end and, save for the tweets from my friend @tryingtosprinklealittlefairydust, I had not seen it mentioned it at all. It’s particularly strange, since it’s been almost a month since episode s01e06 aired, and one would assume that a badass, hilarious, hot pansexual Indian woman kissing a beautiful, sweet, charismatic Latina would have Femslash Fandom™ running to catch up with it before the next episode.
Now, with Kareema and Sofia happily engaged, I can’t help but wonder why there is only one gifset of them together in the entire #notomorrowedit tag, and a grand total of maybe fifty gifsets for the show at all.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, really. It seems like lack of sapphics is always a good reason for y’all not to watch a racially diverse show, yet non-white sapphics are never a good enough reason to begin one.
Following femslash blogs is an endless parade of racist white ships that exist only at the cost of black and brown men being sidelined in canon, abusive ships and content from awfully racist shows that are hailed as progressive because white sapphics get to feel good about themselves at the cost of everyone else and, the fact is, I’m often everyone else.

As a chronically ill, neurodivergent bisexual latina, I’m not content giving up every other part of my identity to feel like I can be part of a community that doesn’t give a shit about me or any other sapphic who doesn’t look like Alycia Debnam Carey or whatever over straight white actress y’all are stanning for playing a lesbian on TV this week.

this is so so real. white feminism and Femslash Fandom are inextricably linked at this point and it alienates so many wlwoc

all of this + the fosters. it has loads of main characters of color and an interracial lesbian couple as one of the main ships, yet no one watches it?? even though the storyline of lesbians coming to terms with their sexuality after being married to men/having kids is so underrepresented??? and if u compare no tomorrow to wynonna earp where everyone FLOCKED and was hailing it as amazing and talking about how beautiful the wlw were from the earliest stages, way before they even kissed….it has everything to do with whiteness. Femslash Fandom cares about white women only.