Foolish Child #26: Foolish “Diversity”

Foolish Child is a biweekly comic series by Dickens! 

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Dickens

I am a queer coparenting mama to Dickens Jr. Doodler by day, 911 dispatcher by night. All my favorite shows look better on Tumblr. I am two years and 450K words deep into constructing a fanfic called Ages and I'm never giving up on it. Bering & Wells.

Alana has written 123 articles for us.

13 Comments

  5. It’s amazing how often I piss off people I know by pointing out shows they (and often I) love are problematic and flawed. Such people always whine how others are “offended by anything” and yet they’re the ones losing their shit because of questioning why “male”, “white”, and “straight” (and cis, among many other things, but let’s be honest a lot of people don’t have ANY representation) have to be default for so many characters.

    I don’t understand. There’s so many characters. So many shows. Everyone always wants to stand out from the crowd. How is this complicated?

    • I am always amazed by this, too. And I try to make it clear that I don’t care what anyone watches. I have my own laundry list of problematic shows. But I don’t sell them for anything but what they are, questionable tropes and all.

      It just seems like so many people would rather fall entirely within the good graces of TV show folks than question representation outside of themselves.

      Oddly enough, one of my good friends was a writer on one of my favorite problematic shows and we connected over all of my criticims of it.

      It doesn’t have to be malicious but a lot of people take it that way.

      • “But I don’t sell them for anything but what they are, questionable tropes and all.”

        That’s it exactly. Thanks, Dickens. I always adore your insight and commentary. “Foolish Child” is my favorite comic right now. :D

    • It’s… extra ironic that you chose a Black queer woman’s comments to point that out in.

      • All I mean is that this site is very good at professing to care about racial inclusivity in the media, but when there’s ever any conflict between racial inclusivity and two white girls fucking, they’re going to behave like the character in the red shirt every time – see: the recent discussion of the show “Gypsy”. You’re being given a platform, but it’s a very low priority for the site to actually live up to what you’re (IMO, reasonably) asking of white allies. It just doesn’t match up.

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