(CONTD) social circle, too. That might have something to do with personal experience, but I also think that it’s associated with us thinking of white women as competitors in a way that we don’t consider white men as competitors, whereas white men are often perceived as being assets or a way for us to gain more power (even if this perception is often inaccurate.) To take the Klonnie-Elena example, Klaus can validate Bonnie with his attention through the male gaze, in a way that Elena can’t. So if anything I think (and I’ve observed this in fandom) the natural inclination of WoC when reacting against oppression is to be more attuned to, and angry about, oppression from white women, than from white men, because we can at least see something to be gained from white men (because of the enormous value placed on sexual validation from a white man), whereas white women can only take from us, for the most part. (END)
———-
Wow ok thank you for engaging with that post. I appreciate your analysis here and I do think, like you say, that it varies from person to person. Not every WOC experiences white supremacy in the same way, and the spaces where that more intimate violation happens – spaces of friendship, spaces of trust, space of ‘sisterhood’ – become blurry and complex and twist themselves into monstrous emotional baggage that we carry around.
A couple things I disagree with for me personally: I don’t see white women as competitors, because competition implies an equal playing field (for me at least) and common goals, neither of which I share with white women (the majority of them at least). And also, the particular degree of intimate violation I’ve talked about experiencing at the hands of white women is marked by an acute sense of betrayal and invasion, which is what I meant when I referenced the particularity of that violation.
So in the case of Bonnie and Elena, I don’t see Elena as a competitor with Bonnie so much as she’s an active agent in the emotional/physical violence Bonnie’s made to endure, because Elena’s entire narrative significance is premised on Bonnie’s dehumanization. And by that I mean, Elena’s identity as the always-desirable, always-protected, always-valued white woman is built on the back of WOC, and specifically Bonnie. So when I indulge in fantasies of Bonnie murdering Elena, it’s not removing the competition, it’s straight up crawling out from under the boot that’s stepping on you and then ripping that boot to shreds.
I also disagree with the part about seeking validation from the white male gaze. It is cognitively dissonant to imagine that WOC can gain any kind of wholesome validation from the white male gaze: the white male gaze is PREMISED upon seeing women of color as the ultimate Other, the fetish, the object, the mule. So again, when I indulge the fantasy of Bonnie fucking Klaus while still covered in Elena’s blood, it’s not about her seeking anything, it’s about her TAKING, it’s about her CLAIMING, power. It’s fucking the system, literally and figuratively. It’s the inversion of conquest, which has always been characterized by male military violence over a feminized body. For Bonnie as a WOC to murder Elena and then fuck Klaus all on her own terms, is a fantasy of the subaltern, and as such it’s not a fantasy that’s legible to or resonant for, white women.
I also think there’s a conversation to be had here about power fantasies and specifically revenge fantasies, and the role they play in our personal engagements of trauma. I was talking with a friend about how my OP about Klaus/Bonnie/Elena got a number of likes from WOC, but only one person reblogged it and hardly anyone commented. I don’t think it’s because these fantasies/traumas/ power issues are rare, I think there’s a hesitance and fear of discussing what a WOC power fantasy would look like, because we’ve been so conditioned to deny those needs. Heck, I even feel guilty typing this and engaging this issue to this degree, and what’s that about?
So yea, I can see where you’re coming from and I appreciate and recognize the truth in some of what you’re analyzing here, but I definitely don’t think the language of ‘validation’ and ‘competition’ is articulating the specific nature of the “terror and pleasure” fantasy I’m trying to work through.
POC of TVD 