Please Dont Attack Normal Chinese AO3 Users.

Please don’t attack normal Chinese AO3 users.

Chinese readers like myself are also desperately calling for the vote now on our own social media(weibo and qzone), what Tiffany G says doesn’t stand for Chinese Fangirls.

We are actually more concerned and scared than ever for if she won she might giveaway Chinese AO3 writers’ personal data to certain people and lead to horrible things in the real life. 

SHE IS WORKING IN A GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION.

Please vote for the future of AO3 and the freedom and safety of Chinese writers. And please don’t take Tiffany as a average Chinese fangirl, don’t attack us in a dark time like this.

我们都是一样的人，我们不想成为孤岛。

We are just like you. We don’t want to be lonely islands.

In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.

There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.

I realized what happened after about two seconds.

The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.

For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.

I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.

when your art program’s closing message hits you straight in the heart and makes you stop and contemplate the state of it all

Periodic reminder that you are not immune to reactionary radicalization through fandom.

We all know the "jokes" about how old bronies either came out as queer or became fascists - except they're not really jokes, and a lot of the queer ones admit to having been in the pipeline before they came out (some in a way that implies they never totally got out of said pipeline and don't understand the gravity of it),

GamerGate was an entire right-wing reactionary movement that was - and this is not hyperbole - partially responsible for turning fascism into a "legitimate" position by the American Overton window, composed entirely of people who feared losing their fan spaces,

We've had terfs right here on tumblr dot com BRAGGING about how useful fandom is as a recruiting space,

TJLC was a big pipeline for acephobia on this hellsite in particular, when people argued that headcanoning Sherlock as ace was inherently homophobic because it was denying a TOTALLY GONNA BE CANON (while the creators were promising that it wasn't going to be canon) gay pairing, and puritanical, and just HAVING that headcanon was saying that people COULDN'T ship Johnlock, all in the interest of a "fake" sexuality and "pretending to be oppressed" and oh whoops there you went,

We see people who all but center their fandom activity and identities around figuring out which people in predominantly queer fandom spaces are SECRETLY PEDOPHILES AND GROOMERS, acting consciously or otherwise under the assumption that predominantly queer fandom spaces are just massively infested with them in a way that other spaces are not for SOME reason, who twist the definition of "pedophilia" in these spaces until it covers shipping a 17-year old fictional character with an 18-year old fictional character, or a 30-year old with a 45-year old, or including an autistic character in a ship, and drawing two 17-year old characters kissing constitutes "child porn", and who unironically say we should bring back the Hays Code and Censorship Is Good Actually And Our Problem Is We Don't Do It Enough and this often becomes a pipeline to "sex ed is child abuse; people shouldn't even know what sex is until they turn 18; you need my consent to wear certain outfits in public if I see them as sexually charged, and Pride SHOULD be an assimilationist sideshow for our corporate overlords family-friendly party with no sadness or anger or ESPECIALLY acknowledgement of sex allowed",

We've seen otherwise progressive people defend literal hate symbols in fanart when pushback against the above brand of reactionaries gets corrupted into zero-nuance "it's us vs. them so anything they don't like is Good",

Even outside of those examples some of the most vicious, unapologetic, blatant queerphobic abuse I've seen in recent years hasn't come from right-wingers but from LGBT+ people, dressing their deep, violent, seething hatred for queer people who aren't exactly like them in a thin veneer of progressive language, who have become so convinced that they're the main character of the fucking universe that they think writing or enjoying a queer story that doesn't resonate with them is more queerphobic than sending a queer person who writes or enjoys such a story countless rape and death threats and denying their identity,

We've seen these examples again and again and again, and we keep seeing it again and again and again, so I am once again on my knees BEGGING people to recognize that this is not Something That Happens To Other, BAD People, or Something That Happens To People In BAD Fandoms, or Something That Happens To People On The OTHER Side Of Perennial Drama; this is something that CAN happen to you.

These things are the result of the fact that fandom is, by nature, a place of heightened emotion and if you don't know what to look out for that is very exploitable; you need to know the methods people use to do this, simply Being In The Right Fandoms or Liking The Right Ships is not enough.

So, if you see someone trying to convince you that you have the ONLY valid approach to any specific character, or ship, or show, or whatever, that your ship is activism and your fanfics are praxis, and liking something else or liking the same thing differently is Only For Bad People, that is the single biggest red flag that YOU NEED TO RUN, THEY'RE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT WANT

do folks genuinely not understand the appeal of the "enemies to lovers" trope, as it shows up over and over in fantasy & adventure fiction? really?

obviously it's cool if you don't personally like the trope. we're all different. but i'm seeing an increase in posts asking "what is wrong with people who ship this dynamic??" like it's so far out and strange, we can't possibly conceive of why people would like this. like... really?? enemies to lovers??? literally one of the oldest tropes in existence?? in the poppin-fresh year of our lord 2020, fandom is genuinely confused about this?

(disclaimer: i am, very specifically, talking about enemies to lovers, as it presents in fantasy and adventure fiction. when people use the word "abuse" to describe the dynamic between characters from opposing armies who like... fight each other on horseback with magical swords, i question their grasp of narrative, not to mention their motives.)

like, picture it: someone who opposed you, coming to your side. someone who clashed against you, becoming someone who never would again. someone who is in the end overcome by your power, your character, your strength, your wit, whatever: overcome by the very force of you. someone who chooses to fall at your feet and take up your cause as their own, to wield their own significant power against your enemies.

and... someone you don't have to always be so fucking good for. someone who has heard you scream unprintable curses on the battlefield. someone who has undoubtedly seen rage and fear and desperation in your eyes. someone you've probably also hurt. someone who wouldn't blink if you put an arrow in a real enemy's back and might in fact hide the body for you. someone you know will be as strong at your back in a fight as you'll be at theirs; partly because, well, you've both lived through each other.

and as a woman, boy do i personally get the appeal of this trope (as a general concept, even when specific ships don't resonate w/ me). like we live in a world where men think it's "weird" that their girlfriend swears or farts; not shaving is a cardinal sin. women's humanity is disgusting to so many men and even to so many fellow women. women's righteous anger is laughed at, our legitimate fears are routinely dismissed and belittled. if we're not nice, if we're not sweet, if we're not doormats, we're discarded; if we are any of those things, we're looked down on, we're targeted, we're blamed.

and people can't understand at all why we might be drawn to stories where the very forces that oppose us, are so transformed by us, so drawn to us for everything that we are, that they literally leave their old selves behind in the dust to join us and devote themselves entirely to our victory?

inconceivable, i guess.

(second disclaimer: no, this trope is obviously not appealing to all women, what the fuck is appealing to all women, besides pizza?)

and furthermore, since nobody asked me.... the idea that we have to "protect" women from enemies-to-lovers stories, when those exact stories can offer some of us a cathartic brand of fantasy.... whew, fandom. stay infantalizing us i guess.

Hii!

I don’t understand what’s going on with AO3 and the election? I’ve been using it for about a year so this is all new to me! Is Tiffany getting elected actually bad?

I hate censorship, so seeing posts about them censoring stuff is concerning but idk how much truth to it there is 😳

I just want to be informed, and understand!

Hi! Welcome to AO3:)

since I'm not sure how much you know already, the background (background as interpreted by me: I am not speaking on behalf of the OTW) is: Ao3 is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that also runs Fanlore and publishes Transformative Works & Cultures. Anyone who has donated $10 to the OTW in the last year, and chooses "yes I want to be a member" at checkout is an OTW member. (This is not the same as having an ao3 account.) Every year, there is an election to fill either 2 or 3 seats on the Board of Directors. OTW Members (i.e. people who donated between 7/1/21 and 6/30/22, in this case) get to vote on this.

Most of the time, this election is only really followed by people on fail_fandomanon. Sometimes, it isn't.

Things the Board of Directors does: writes posts to send out to the general public when Things Are Happening (the recent csam attacks, the requests for more antiracism measures.) Writes posts to send to volunteers when Things Are Happening (see prev.) Keeps track of what all the committees are doing and how it ties in with whatever the strategic plan says they should be doing. Deals with the IRS/US laws. Approves large funding requests. Deals with emails that someone else has deemed outside their own wheelhouse. Herds cats. Proposes priorities. Points at something shiny, pats the org on the flank, and says "walk that way, walk that way!! Come on buddy, you can do it!!". etc etc etc.

Things the Board of Directors doesn't do: unilaterally determine ao3 content policy. Let us use the word "porn" on ao3 drive merch. Make decisions that are going greatly affect other volunteers' work without input and some level of agreement from said volunteers.

Anyway. This year, one of the five candidates for the three open board seats is Tiffany G. (More information about all the candidates and their platforms is at https://elections.transformativeworks.org)

Tiffany is a tag wrangler from an unspecified country that is, from context, assumed to be China. The candidate Q&A can be read here. Her answers were a little bit confusing, but she said she wanted to update the ToS policies on 'pedophilic and illegal content' because, quote, "people think we host child porn content and such things... It might... be helpful to clarify that to the public." Further down she said:

a) I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community. So in general, we have to do something to change. Things like making the rating system more specific and obvious to users will be what I want to do. b) Not really restricting the content being posted. I hope it is like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect. And all of these are not surprising to people who do not wish to see this.

I took this to mean "she wants to clarify to outsiders that ao3 does not host csam, is not only for erotica, and update the ratings and warnings system." I don't think that those things are necessary or should be a focus of the org, which is part of why I didn't vote for her.

Other people took it to mean "Tiffany is against pornographic or underage works and wants them to be banned." Some people took this, combined with her nationality, to the conclusion of "Tiffany is a secret plant of the Chinese Communist Party who wants to join the board, get all the ao3 user data, and then have the users from mainland China arrested" (despite the fact that this is not information the board would have access to, if for no other reason than ao3 is blocked in China so anyone trying to view the site from mainland china has to use a VPN anyway.) Some people are upset that the OTW elections committee "allowed" her to run in the first place, because they think that not letting anyone with opinions the current board or elections committee didn't like is an absolutely great precedent to set.

There are a bunch of comments on tw.org, and some in fail_fandomanon, that give more context to her comments in terms of Chinese fandom (though most posters still disagree with her position.)

This got... longer than planned. But to the question "Is tiffany getting elected actually bad" - If my interpretation of her statements are correct, I think it would be annoying, because she does not have the experience I think that being on the Board requires, and focuses on priorities I disagree with. Which isn't to say she'd never have a valuable perspective or ideas about something, but there are four other candidates that I think are much better suited to it at this point in time. If the people who think she is an antishipper bent on censorship are correct, she could probably make life very annoying for the rest of the board-- but considering the rest of them are not pro-censorship, I can't see how she'd have much influence in that direction in the org as a whole.

If the people who think she's doing espionage on behalf of the CCP are correct, then... look, I can't even finish that sentence because I find the idea of the CCP deciding that a) they need to get ao3 user data and b) the way to do that is to run a clearly unqualified candidate in a public board election absurd.

the tl;dr of this tl;dr is that there's a lot of fearmongering going around, and a lot of accusations and hate (and racism. let’s be real a lot of this is racism) directed her way. I don't know her, so I don't know what her "real" opinions are, but regardless of who wins the board election, ao3 is not going to be censored any time soon.

if for no other reason than if the Abuse team was told on top of all their other work, they now had to assess and remove fics reported for being "problematic", they would say "we'd prefer not to" and then proceed to not do it.

It's awesome that people are realizing the board elections and OTW membership are a thing now, though. We kept talking about how to encourage membership, and "running a very dramatic and wanky election" did not occur to us. In retrospect, I don't know why.