I feel that in Asian fandoms with an intl audience, there are two definitions of racism used by two different groups of people.

Domestic racism: e.g. the racism racial minorities experience in say the US

International racism aka colonizer mentality: e.g. “Asia is so backward” https://twitter.com/personbabbles/status/1297327502780637184

Westerners’ conception of racism is often exclusively domestic racism, which often expresses itself in more overt ways, e.g. hate crimes, police brutality, insults based on race etc.

Domestic racism happens against racial minorities in Asia too, and that’s also overt, but Asians as a whole (including racial majorities) are also subjected to INTL RACISM aka colonizer mentality, and this is often more covert.

Intl racism has extremely real impact on Asians. Racist attitudes of this sort was the BASIS of colonization, which comes in two parts: colonization (aka when colonizers occupied our countries) and neocolonization, which is still happening today.

COLONIZATION

If you’ve studied intl political economy, you’d know that colonization had both the effect of (1) coercively forcing us into agricultural toil to feed industrialization in the west, thus decimating local manufacturing (2) creating political instability and conflict.

This has had lasting impact. A key issue in developing countries now is an over reliance on agriculture and primary goods, instead of manufacturing. BUT WHO’S FAULT WAS THAT. Political instability caused by colonization is also STILL a problem in many ex-colonies.

NEOCOLONIZATION

In the modern “free” post-colonial era, neocolonization continues in the form of trade and debt agreements (cemented in the early post-colonial period) that heavily disadvantages ex-colonies and developing countries.

But outside economics, there’s also a cultural aspect, aka cultural imperialism, which is when the values and practices of one culture are deemed as superior to another, which leads to attempts to impose the “superior” culture on native cultures.

This is absolutely the kind of “Asia is so backwards” racism that is often expressed benevolently as “Asian people are so backward but it’s not their fault! We need to help liberate these poor backward Asians from their backwardness!”

We’re not like this bc we’re backwards.

We’re like this bc of YOU.

Asia has a proud cultural, political, and intellectual history. The Western Age of Enlightenment was in the 1700s. The Chinese “Age of Enlightenment” was in the Zhou Dynasty, 500 BC???

Mencius, a Confucian scholar, was lecturing about progressive taxation, universal education, welfare, and criminal rehabilitation 2,000 years ago??? Mencius was against GST (which is a regressive tax) and recommended a progressive income tax????

And in Asia nowadays, a lot of us are educated?? Many of us speak good English and participate in English-speaking fandom?? We just face MUCH steeper barriers to immigrate for better work opportunities, PURELY on basis of nationality??

We don’t need your volunteerism.

We don’t need white saviors getting seed funding to come to Asia and set up social enterprises that just DRIVE OUT LESS FUNDED LOCAL VENTURES THAT ARE DOING THE EXACT SAME THING.

We need renegotiations of trade agreements made during the Uruguay round.

We need BETTER DEBT TERMS. From 1982 to 98 alone, indebted nations paid 4 TIMES their original debt w the IMF. The interest ex-colonies paid over the decades FAR OUTSTRIPS the amount they first borrowed.

We don’t need your white savior complex.

WE NEED YOUR COUNTRIES TO STOP FUCKING US OVER.

INTL RACISM IN FANDOM

Intl racism is the underlying cause of ALL THIS BULLSHIT that we have to suffer economically, politically, and socially, so it stands to reason that being exposed to intl racism in our own goddamn fandoms is INFURIATING and a HUGE SOURCE OF MINORITY STRESS.

And that’s the EXACT attitude that antis in BL fandom exhibit today? Defining Asian queer media as a separate genre from western queer media, and deeming it AS A WHOLE to be “problematic”, “fetishization”, “homophobic”, and “backward”, largely on basis of source country alone??

It’s “poor Asians are so backward and we need to liberate them from their backwardness” ALL FUCKING OVER AGAIN. Y’all are turning Asian fandoms into ONE BIG MICROAGGRESSION as if we don’t have ENOUGH POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC BULLSHIT TO DEAL W ALR.

Like OP said, we don’t need you to come into Asian fandoms offering “baby’s first political commentary” like you’re contributing something instead of REHASHING DISCOURSE FROM 20 YEARS AGO. Why do antis still characterize BL with titles like Okane Ga Nai, which was published 1999?

“Yuri on Ice and Given are the exception the rest are fetishy”. Erm no?? It’s just that those were just written in the 2010s??

This is a interview w Japanese LGBTQ activists on the evolution of BL. The stuff antis keep harping on was common in the 90s... https://twitter.com/animesocmegan/status/1259005917418459136?s=21

And now we’ve got these ASSHATS coming into danmei fandom, harassing us chinese fans for telling them that “martial sibling” romances are a popular romance trope and is NOT incest. And then saying that “Chinese culture excuses incest” for fuck’s sake???

For fuck’s sake, they are calling fans of danmei “fujoshis” for “liking the yaois” as if Japanese and Chinese BL are the same genre. The assumption is Asian means “problematic” “fetishy” and “backward”.

Do y’all even hear your own racist selves??

THE TWO RACISMS

This brings me to my final point. Western antis seem to fucking love their oppression Olympics, and they love bringing it into intl fandoms.

I’ve observed this huge issue where domestic racism is framed as “the real racism” and more serious than intl racism.

“That’s just xenophobia.” It’s not “just” xenophobia you fucking twat it’s all the BULLSHIT like IP laws that keep us from accessing life saving technologies. It’s us paying a never-ending debt for decades, where interest payments are now many times more than the initial debt.

I feel like the western context of racism is very overt that they undermine the more covert forms of racism. Western antis usually know about colonization, but they more often focus on the covert forms of racism in that e.g. the enslavement and the violence when we were occupied

But they seldom focus on the covert forms of racism we continue to experience in the era of neocolonization. They don’t treat the racism they show to us as “real racism” and iN fAcT tELL uS tHaT wE dOn’T uNdeRstAnd tHe hArM cAuSeD bY cOLonIzaTion when we call their exertion of

Moral control over Asian fandoms what it is: neo-colonization. Instead, they say that we’re trivializing colonization by using it for fandom discourse. It honestly has “that’s not real racism” written all over it.

Anyway.

Fuck the Uruguay round of trade agreements. Fuck IMF debt agreements. Fuck intl IP laws. Fuck cultural imperialism. And fuck antis being fucking racist in Asian fandoms.

Final note: I’m not japanese but this is my Very Bottled Up Gripe About Colonization as a Chinese person in a Chinese BL fandom, living in a Southeast Asian ex-colony, dealing with anti stupidity and colonizer mentality.