(no subject)

[lady_organa]

I wrote about this on my writing blog, but I was just looking at an article on racism on the wiki that really hits a nerve for me on this whole issue.

Okay so in fantasy vampire, fairies, elves and whatever else are called races.

Like I have problem with that. To me it seems to be othering races as 'not human' you know what I mean? I just don't like it, I find it distasteful. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but yeah I wanted to record my thoughts on that.

This entry can also be found on DW at: http://leia-solo.dreamwidth.org/304181.html

Comments

[starrysnafu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always found the fantasy race thing to be inaccurate, at the very least... Vampires, fairies, elves, are all treated like other species, but then they're called races...

Like we talked about this in biology class somewhat, what makes a creature a distinct species from another, and settled on ability to cross-reproduce as a generally good criteria... and while that applies with some fantasy species (i.e humans and elves, offpsring is half-elves) most fantasy series don't pay attention to scientific law whatsoever, so I don't think they can use that one supporting fact to justify what they're doing.

And what they're doing is like you said, obviously mixing up species and race in a way that makes the use of the word 'race' toward various humans to be deeply iffy...

Like, an elf and a human are vastly different (lifespan, constitution/biology, abilities, etc) but different races of humans have only a very few minor distinct trait differences, i.e skin pigmentation, adult lactase production. The word "race" shouldn't be being used for both of these things--it's implying that the human races are that vastly different as to be essentially different species.

There are a lot of really iffy things in fantasy... sorry for the ramblings, I just have a lot of sci-fi/fantasy thoughts as well...

[lady-leia-solo.livejournal.com]

Like, an elf and a human are vastly different (lifespan, constitution/biology, abilities, etc) but different races of humans have only a very few minor distinct trait differences, i.e skin pigmentation, adult lactase production. The word "race" shouldn't be being used for both of these things--it's implying that the human races are that vastly different as to be essentially different species.

This exactly! This is what I was trying to say but I couldn't formulate it properly. Your whole comment is gold!

[http://users.livejournal.com/unnecessary_/]

Oh, that's really interesting! I'm glad that you pointed that out! I've always considered fairy to be a culture and body type, just like a race might be, but thinking of them as "not human" makes it sound terribly racist. I'll avoid using that from now on. In my novels I call them "species of human" instead of races.

[lady-leia-solo.livejournal.com]

I like species as category way better because it makes more sense to me than the word race describing them.