a.k.a. "A Letter to the Good and Frustrated Enjonine Shippers"
Dear Enjonine fandom:
Look, I get that it sucks to have stuff you don't want in your tag. Seriously, I do -- I'm a Ghostfacers fan; the tracked tag is 1/3 hate, 1/3 "OMG Ed/Corbett I ship it!" and 1/3 "Gay love can pierce the veil of death and save the day." I spend a truly egregious amount of time Ignoring or rebutting Problematic Shit in the #Ghostfacers tag, because I don't want to deal with bullshit.
So, Enjonine shippers at large, I beseech you -- please keep reading. I don't want to be perceived as a dick, but I need to make point here, and your tag is probably the best place to do it.
See, some of you guys...have been kind of awful. Like, acting in racist/homophobic/transmisogynist ways kind of awful. And that's (rightfully) pissing off a lot of people. So those people try and make the relevant people take responsibility for the bullshit they're spewing.
Queer E/R shippers who have been getting pissed over Enjonine are just trying to be heard and acknowledged, and are frustrated because in the real world they have so much shit to deal with, and they want to have one safe space left in the world, y'know?
But instead, the people doing the shitty stuff in the first place are whining about being called out on it, and Ignoring the people trying to call them out, and just generally not being cool about their being called out for ignorance or outright malice.
It's not that hard -- you fuck up, you apologize, you ask how you can behave better in the future, and then you do that. I'm a white cis able-bodied upper-middle-class college student; I'm privileged in a shit ton of ways, and I've fucked up and been called out, and guess what?
It's awkward and scary sometimes, yeah, because this is the culture I've been raised in, and evaluating the culture you're raised in can be really fucking frightening, because you always find it lacking, and find yourself lacking. I know, it's happened to me. But I sat down and made myself think about what I was saying and doing and assuming, and improved myself. It wasn't that hard, once I made myself accept that society made me this way, but I can also change myself, and in so doing help change what society will be like in the future. And that, coming to that realization? Made it really important to me to change the behaviors in me that are gross. It's an ongoing process, but I swear to you, you (general you) can do it, and it feels good, knowing that you can change.
So it's not impossible, far from it, for the folks who were doing Problematic Shit, to have sat down, thought about what they were saying, and apologized with the intent of fixing their behavior for the future.
But they haven't.
Instead, the shitty elements of your ship are claiming the E/R shippers are cyberbullying them, and that pisses off more people, and then it just becomes this massive self-perpetuating Gross Situation.
And it has the side effects of (a) making both ships look terrible and (b) preventing open and awesome discourse about canon and fandom and these characters we all love, no matter what exactly we ship. And when we shut down discussion, especially discussion about problematic things, we're doing a massive disservice to Hugo's memory.
Victor Hugo wrote this book to remind the world of history that was already fading. He wrote this book to prove points about the dispossessed and the way the system was still broken, hell, is still broken. He created characters as both fully-formed people and as symbols -- of ideology, of ideal, of the effects of one oppression or another. He talked extensively about the results of classism, of the prison system, of how poverty prevents so many people from achieving so much.
Like Eponine, for example. Eponine is what happens when a child is trapped in an abusive, criminal family. She's clever but not learned, harsh and happily cruel. She's powerful, and terrible, and wonderful. She deserves more than to die for Marius on that barricade.
Because Hugo was driving home the point that this is what the system does.
It ruins, it tarnishes, it destroys, and it self-perpetuates.
Just like racism, heterosexism, misogyny, transmisogyny, ableism -- any oppression codified by our cultures and societies at all -- they all self-perpetuate.
They self-perpetuate in major part because of two things:
A) They make it hard for the oppressed to individually climb to a higher social stratum, where they would have the voice and audience to decry the systems holding them back,
and
B) They've embedded and normalized themselves so deep into the culture that we have to actively analyze our behavior -- not even just privileged groups (you would not believe the internalized misogyny I still have to actively kick in the balls every day), either -- and fix it.
Resistance is scary. Resistance means having to think. Resistance means leaving your comfort zone far, far behind a lot of the time.
But resistance is the beginning of change. Resistance is where it starts.
So please, I exhort you, from the bottom of my heart, resist with me.
When someone on your ship says something gross -- when they, intentionally or through ignorance, erase Enjolras's about-as-strongly-implied-as-historically-possible-queerness, or say that a POC Javert or Ami is too weird or unrealistic, or something else that's gross -- let them know you won't stand for it. Tell them they're doing something gross that needs to stop.
Don't let them hide away behind the Ignore button, or in little private forums where the Big Scary Angry Queers can't touch them. Don't let them keep perpetuating the cycle of oppressions of our era.
Because resisting here will give you the courage to resist elsewhere. What starts here does not, will not, and cannot end here. Teach, and resist, and learn to unlearn the behaviors you have that perpetuate oppressions.
Have heart, stand up, and don't be complicit in behavior that is symptomatic of and perpetuates societal oppressions. Call out the filthy behavior -- be strong and stand with me.
Long live the future,
Shannen Murphy
