David Gillon

By the time I was three tweets into #WhitewashedOUT I wanted to beat my head against a wall.

The initial focus was Hollywood's whitewashing of several recent prominent Asian roles, Scarlett Johanssen as Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange, as a symptom of a wider problem within the movie industry, but it turned into an outpouring of experience of racism. @BethPhelan, who just organised #DVpit,  tweeted about her experiences as a child, and that really struck home because of the parallels with disability related bullying I experienced as a kid. Different otherness, identical hate.

The number of people tweeting about trying not to appear Asian as a kid was heartbreaking.

And the number of writers/screenwriters tweeting about being told to white out asian characters was truly disturbing.

There were the usual handful of idiots railing against it. and proving its point, but two things about them disturbed me. (I looked at a bunch of profiles, you usually find about half are blank, pointing at professional bigots running pure attack accounts, but half weren't). First, the number identifying as Trump supporters, second, the number who seemed to have some link to fandom. That 'social justice warrior' tag beloved of the Puppies was very prominent.
 

George Takei has a good take on Marvel's defence of their Doctor Strange casting: They must think we're idiots

Today's achievement was almost destroying the "Fans for Accessible Conventions" facebook group. Whoops.

There had been several incidents of disabled congoers being attacked in the group for being angry (not for being angry at people, just for being angry).

So I put up a post saying (at greater length) "Disabled people have a huge number of access issues to be legitimately angry at. Please allow us the space to articulate that rather than trying to tone police us."

It got a lot of likes, it also got a lot of people convinced I'm the Prince of Darkness.

Quite a few conrunners don't seem to understand that not being able to afford or otherwise provide an accomodation doesn't mean disabled people are magically not being excluded. Apparently telling them this is attacking all the work they do. It got ugly. At least one person flounced out of the group in a huff.

I think it needed saying, I'm just hugely surprised it was so controversial.

The bit I regret is that one of the people I reacted to, for stating people shouldn't vent, and who was accusing me of being 'vicious' towards her for explaining why we were legitimately angry, which left me frantically trying to work out what I was saying that she was reacting to, turns out to have PTSD. *headdesk*  I don't know that I could have avoided triggering her, but I could have handled it better if I'd known.

Anyone thinking of going? 

A non-DW friend just noted she's planning to go, and seeing as I missed out on Eastercon over health stuff I though I might take a look. I think Heathrow's a bit too far for commuting the same way I did Worldcon, so I'll have to look at room prices and figure out if it's affordable. Comment from anyone who went last year also received with interest.

Tickets go up on the first, so  some advantage to booking quickly.