#compare black women's marriage stats to white women's here in the states and you'll see there's a big difference there

[bookishfeylin]

I read something you said and you put into words what I've been struggling to verbalize for a while. I'm a bi brown woman, and always happy for representation. But it bothered me that Fandom insists black and brown women are always gay to push them out of the way for a white ship, or white authors (in this case SJM), lazily slapping on queer on a woc (Emerie) for brownie points. I'm not saying men loving us validates us, or that we need them to, but it is weird that a lot of media refuses to put woc into loving relationships with men. You saying that it says "woc aren't deserving of love from men" was finally what I was looking for to describe it. So thank you.

Hi nonny! I think you're talking about either this or this post? But either way, you're very welcome, though before I fully answer this ask, I want to add the disclaimer here that I'm straight and cis, though I've also seen many LGBTQ+ POC complain about this phenomenon too, like @positively--speculative.

Firstly: Of course LGBTQ+ POC need representation, and deserve it. I don't want anyone who reads this to think otherwise. Representation matters. But this is a nuanced conversation that needs to happen.

The problem is that many white authors and their fandoms want to seem "woke" and "diverse" without actually caring about their diverse characters. So they'll make the POC the token gay and sideline them so they can focus on the white (usually cishet) ship. They won't develop the character or give them a personality beyond their race and sexuality, half of the time don't even bother to give them a love interest or even a relevant love story with screen time***, and mainly use them as little more than a background prop for the story of the white ship. @positively--speculative has discussed how white fandom did this with Valkyrie after Thor Ragnarok came out: white fandom claimed Thorkyrie couldn't be shipped because it "ruined" Val's bisexuality. Never mind that there's no other woman in Thor Ragnarok that Valkyrie can be reasonably shipped with, apparently we just don't deserve to see Val in love at all! (I recommend checking out all her posts tagged Thorkyrie if you want more of her--a Black bisexual woman's--perspective, on the matter). And Sarah J Maas is a big offender for doing the same to her WOC.

As you and I both said, a large part of it is people being uncomfortable with WOC being the romantic interest of men (this is especially true of ships that involve Black women. A lot of the time fandom considers the Black woman to be an "independent lesbian" who doesn't need romantic love from a man, so her male love interest should be with [insert popular white character here]). What it ultimately boils down to is racism, and us not being seen as viable love interests worthy of romance (from men).

But many people simply don't want to admit that, and merely switch to the 'this woc is a lesbian' game. And it sucks, doing a disservice to all the marginalized people involved.

***or they're fetishized.