rocmegamanx:

I really want to draw again, but I feel like I can’t, because…well, one reason is that I don’t want to offend or disgust anybody.

Why do you think blogs like LayOffTheBleach or Escher Girls exist? Because they get offended by art that’s either white-washed(i.e. racist) or has sexy women in it(i.e. sexist, misogynistic, etc.). There are a lot of bad art blogs on Tumblr too. I have self-submitted some of my really old stuff to one blog or two, but I don’t want my most recent stuff on there.

Not to mention, if I draw a specific picture that’s “abnormal”, the Internet will judge me for making “fetish” art and try to dox me or run me off the Internet.

I’m gonna have a hard enough time dealing with same-face syndrome and drawing backgrounds more often. I don’t need people staring at me like I’m some kind of ableist, racist, sexist, or even cissexist for drawing specific things.

I hate to sound like I’m making “yet another excuse”, but I think, ever since I was involved more often with Tumblr, that all the social justice stuff has also scared me away from drawing.

“Just DRAW”, you may say. “JUST DRAW.”

But the thing is: there’s too many things I have to worry about when drawing. Not only stuff like:

• Backgrounds
• Getting rid of same-face/same-body syndrome(i.e. buying a book to help me identify what race a specific person that I’m drawing from life is)
• Actually starting on making stories/Making Comics
• Getting rid of fear of being judged or laughed at or verbally spit on  or getting a critique so brutal it would make me lose my will to live
• Getting enough money to do all of those things

But also, I have to deal with avoid being:

• Ableist(If I draw a character with any type of disability, such as missing limb or blindness, people will think of it as a fetish pic and will be disgusted and then actual people with disabilities might me a figurative punching bag on which to vent their rage)
• Sexist(I currently draw more women than men, so people might think that I only draw that way because I see women as sex objects, which is honestly not the case. Also, again, see Escher Girls.)
• Racist(I mostly draw white characters, with a few characters of other races here and there. The problem is, I mostly draw white characters. If I don’t draw a crapton of non-white characters to balance it out, then I’ll be called a racist)
• Cissexist/Homophobic(I’m not trying to get into gender politics here, because, honestly, I don’t understand gender issues all that much. I try to avoid them because of the whole pronoun issues and not fully understanding transgender issues. But worst of all, I’ve never actually developed the sexuality or gender issues of any of my characters. And I fear being accused of being straight and narrow(minded) because of it.)

TL;DR: I’ve made too many enemies on the Internet(most of the time unintentionally). I don’t want to make any more by drawing stuff that might offend people.

That’s why I’ve been turning to food and cooking, because at least I can cook in the safety of my own house and not have to worry about offending people online.

BRHood: Yeah, okay, this is a lot of wtfery. And also, reminder that we do track the dlotb and damnlayoffthebleach tags.

For starters, no one cares if all you draw is white people. If you’re uninterested in expanding your repertoire to include PoC, that’s on you. If you want to go “all I draw is this and that’s all I can do” and not challenge yourself to get better, you’re doing yourself an injustice. Which if you want to do, it’s on you. Artists will be happy to lose the competition. 

Now, if you’re drawing PoC and you’re whitewashing, ie you draw a Korra fanart and she’s light as hell/white skinned, THAT’S a problem. And yes, that is racist. Considering PoC have so little representations of them, we have every right to demand that people not whitewash the few Characters of Color we get. Crying “I’m afraid to draw a PoC because I may be called racist” is a pitiful excuse. If you mess up, just fix it. Learn not to do it the next time. Why is that hard? If you mess up drawing a fist your first time, don’t you practice until you get it right? Why would THIS be different? 

Also, DLOTB doesn’t talk much about sexism and whatnot unless it’s people drawing racist, hypersexualized caricatures of characters of color. Which is another valid call out. If the only white people you ever saw in the media were racist stereotypes or caricatures lacking any depth and just there to be “the white one,” you would get annoyed of it. And also, no one cares if you draw mostly women. People are going to care if your women are ALL one-dimensional troupes, oversexualized, and obviously there just for dudes to jack off to. If you take the time to DEVELOP a female character, even her being sexualized could help create a good character people will LIKE. The Femme Fatale is popular for a reason. 

However, you won’t be ABLE to do that if you don’t take the time to learn about gender issues. Saying “I don’t know about this stuff, so that’s why I make things sexist/racist/transphobic/homophobic/ableist/etc is again a lazy excuse. LEARN. There are WAY too many bloggers on tumblr alone with resources after resources of things pertaining to sexualities, gender, and race. Not learning is pure laziness. It’s showing that you WANT to live in ignorance. And if you actively choose to live in ignorance, anyone has the right to call you out on it. 

And with that, this whole entire post of “I’m afraid to draw because I might fuck something up” is pure BULLSHIT. YOU CANNOT PLEASE ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME. Some people love and relate to JK’s Rowling’s Harry Potter. Some people can point out 100 examples of how racist, sexist, ableist, etc the book series is. Does that stop JK Rowling from writing? No. There is no such thing as a perfect art/story/movie/etc. Even people who love something will have at least one or two issues with it (unless they blindly admire something, which is again ignorant and terrifying because of how little they must think in order to do that).

Your works being problematic isn’t the end of the world. You learn from it. You take it in. You grow from it. If your response to criticism is “but I don’t know about this and I don’t want to learn so stop hating on me,” then yeah, you’re going to get hate. If your response is, “omg, I never thought about it like that. It was jacked up. I’ll keep that in mind in the future,” people will easily forgive your fuck ups. And better yet, YOU CAN ACTUALLY LEARN AND GROW AS AN ARTIST FROM IT. Which is going to do nothing but benefit you while also making you one less shitty person in the world that people who deal with oppressions have to deal with. 

And in general, if you can’t handle any type of critiques without wanting to quit, you’re in the wrong business. I write. You think I don’t have a few characters who I think may be read as problematic? You think I’m not aware of some characters people may not take too kindly of? I’m preparing having to deal with a bit of backlash of trying to get more people represented. I’m aware of people accusing me of tokenizing characters and the like. I’m prepared to deal with it. And I will by accepting the critiques, and use the critiques to make my next work 100xs better than my first. But my response isn’t going to be “I’m afraid to write because people may tear my story apart.” If you can’t handle people not liking your work and giving hash critiques, then maybe you should give up art. Because ever artist gets a LOT of it. Even those revered as the best do. So if you can’t handle that, quit. That’s one less competitor artists have to contest with in a very competitive market. 

BRHood: I just went into the Korra tag to see if anyone was posting any whitewashed fanart we could address. 

And there was very little of it. I don’t know if maybe I just searched at a good time or what. The only few whitewashed ones were either “works in progress” (so there is a chance for someone to go back and add color, so I didn’t see the point in addressing it now) or were on other websites. But it seems that most people seem to now understand that Korra is brown and drawing her anything else is wrong. 

Which is ironic since it was the very whitewashed Korra tag that got us mods on DLOTB talking about whitewashing of brown people in the media, and prompted us to start this blog. So it’s interesting. 

Of course there are quite a few other anti-whitewashing blogs out there, so it’s not like it’s JUST us. But it seems people are realizing that it’s really messed up, and yes racist, to draw brown characters lighter/white. I just wanted to comment on that. 

moniquill:

Where is it that your piece is set that there just aren’t any POC there? I mean, I’m sure there are places like that. Wherever it is that white people fly to when they take white flight comes to mind. Maybe you’re writing a story set in a gated community in the suburbs of Portland (Ranked Whitest city in the US based on census data!) Maybe you’re writing a story with a very limited cast, like a family saga of a white family, or a Protagonists-vs.-nature survivalist story where there just aren’t very many people.

But even if that’s the case?

It is relevant to ask yourself why you chose to set it there.

Because this brings back the argument of ‘It wouldn’t be realistic to have POC there!’

I mean, it’s not TRUE that there were no POC in medieval Europe… But it’s a well-accepted cultural myth. And given that myth, the question still begs: Why are so many people so eager to choose to set their stories there? Why are people deliberately choosing places where the audience will accept ‘POC just don’t exist here’?

Why are the fairies in Ferngully white, when the movie is set in Australia?

Why is it that the only black people in Middle Earth are orcs?

Why are there Chinese words but no Chinese people in Firefly?

Why did Pixar make a movie set in (whitewashed) Medieval Scotland?

What’s the explanation for the overpowering whiteness of LA in Buffy The Vampire Slayer?

Why are white Disney Princesses from ahistorical fantasy-worlds, but POC princesses have to be from quasi-historical locations? Pocahontas is from Virginia. Mulan is from China. Tiana is from New Orleans. Meanwhile Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Aurora are from unknown and untagged Kingdoms. Ariel lives in what appears to be a Caribbean reef, but all the humans and mermaids are white. Why do the POC princesses need scaffolding to explain why they’re there? Why are the POC Princesses -not actually Princesses- (unless they marry into it, in Tiana’s case)?

The answer to all of these is, of course, ‘creator choice’. Individual TOTALLY NOT RACIST (tm) people made individual choices.

But these choices aren’t made in a void.

So, yeah. If you don’t have POC characters in a piece with a sizable cast, it’s probably pretty racist. Even if you set it somewhere where GOSH, there just AREN’T any POC and that’s not your fault! They just aren’t there!

Because why are you setting it there?

Does the story REALLY demand that? I mean, some stories do; Downton Abbey is set in WWI Era England among a particular rich, landed family; the story is kind of about how awful that place and time was. The Secret of Roan Inish is set in a remote area of Ireland that hasn’t seen immigration since the vikings stopped showing up, which is relevant because some dude decides to fuck a sealfairy because she’s a slightly different shade of white and that’s kind of a crux of the story. Both of these are good and sense-making narratives where POC are thin on the ground.

They still don’t exist in a void.

The creators chose these stories about white people as the important ones to tell.

That’s worth looking at critically.

(via doriansennui)

Bobby: Follow and support!!

Stop Whitewashing Zutara

ichilover:

Okay. I have been following this whole thing from the beginning, and here’s what I have to say.

The original picture, to me, was not intentionally whitewashed. It didn’t bother me, because I could see that Katara was originally brown before effects were added. 

What did bother me, however, was the artist’s (and her sister’s) reaction to PoC getting upset. You don’t make fun of something like whitewashing. You don’t belittle the oppression of PoC.

And furthermore, to all the people trying to tone police, I understand that you came to the tag to see pretty pictures and fanfictions, and this mess is annoying. But these are the kind of discussions that need to occur for our fandom to be informed. 

And remember: the oppressor cannot define the oppression.

You cannot define when how and why PoC are allowed to be offended. That in itself is oppression.

So while I understand some people’s frustration, you really can’t write off a subject like this. Just be understanding, and we can learn together and become a better fandom.

irresistible-revolution:

So we’ve had about a week of people explaining and calling out whitewashing in the Zutara tag. Yet THIS whitewashed fanart has been in the tag for a few hours now and no one has said anything. But let’s all stop with this ‘drama’ and get back to Zutara right?

(via alostbird)

shenanagin:

So, I’m reading Warm Bodies and I get to this description of this cool, Half-Ethiopian supporting character. I think Nora’s pretty much the best.

“Nora is sitting in the sand in front of the log, playing with some pebbles and pinching a smoldering joint between her middle finger and the stub of her ring finger, missing past the first knuckle. Her eyes are earth brown; her skin is creamy coffee.”

So I look up what fine dark-skinned honey portrays her in the movie.
This is the actress.

what. why.

What was the problem with casting a black actress? The author of the book said that the casting directors ”… paid more attention to the actor’s personalities than their physical appearances, and I think that was the right choice. Personality is what matters in a character, not superficial indicators like height or hairstyle or even skin color, and the personalities of the cast all fit beautifully.”

So… a dark skinned girl can’t be funny, tough and strong during the zombie apocalypse? What exactly does he even mean by that?

(via notjustacookie)

BRHood: I remember a while back on DLOTB, we were discussing the idea of racebending Characters of Color. This started more so when someone asked if it would be whitewashing to take a Black character and draw them as East Asian (the person asking I believe was East Asian). I remember the consensus was keep PoC characters their original race since it’s not like we all get the representation in the (western) media that we deserve. Taking it away from white characters through racebending is one thing. But taking it from other PoC seems wrong.

I bring this up because there have been a few submissions in which people racebent originally East Asian (Japanese) characters to make them Black for fanart friday. And on my dash, I’ll see racebent fanart of East Asian characters. And then I see everyone going “Omg, this is so awesome,” and yet I never reblog it because it makes me feel off. As a Black girl, I understand the fun it may be in racebending these characters. I get that it may be desirable to see these characters we enjoyed looking more like us, but I find it problematic that no one sees the issue in erasing these PoC identities. Especially when so few get that representation in Western media to begin with.

And I can’t help but feel that the reason so many people excuse is because these characters often get coded as white. Thinking of Sailor Moon for example. Growing up with it as kids, few of us understood that the story took place in Japan. We didn’t think of those girls as East Asian; in our minds, they were white. So when people racebend them in fan art to make them Black, and everyone cosigns on it, I feel as though it’s because they’re not seen as PoC characters in general. So it’s easy to ignore what, in my opinion, is an injustice.

And it also bothers me because if we are coding these PoC characters are white, we’re erasing their ethnicity, culture, and race. We’re ignoring that they ARE PoC as well, and putting them on the same level as white characters. And I’m not a fan of that.

That’s just my thoughts on it. I also wanted to make this to kinda say why certain people who may have submitted racebent Sailor Moon fanart and wondering why they weren’t posted, this is the reason why I myself have not published them.