The internet is a double-edged sword. It yields the power to amplify voices often marginalized within the larger cultural conversation, and social media, in particular, has been invaluable for overlooked communities looking for a connection.
Kelly Marie Tran made history when she became the first woman of color to land a lead role in a Star Wars film. Her portrayal of Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017 was an inspiration to countless Asian-American women and girls who, up until that point, hadn’t seen themselves represented nearly enough in the franchise and in Hollywood as a whole. Though Tran’s performance should have been celebrated, dozens of Star Wars fans tried to diminish her talent by posting racist and sexist comments on online forums and her personal Instagram page.
Now, two months after wiping her Instagram account, Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran is opening up about the online harassment she faced, the “self-hate” it caused, and how she made it to the other side. “It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them,” Tran wrote in her Tuesday op-ed for The New York Times. “Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories.”
Tran says the harassment “awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of it.” “Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was ‘other,’ that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them,” she shared. “And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.”
She admits that the online abuse had her going “down a spiral of self-hate” and blaming herself, even thinking, “Maybe if I wasn’t Asian.” “And it was then that I realized I had been lied to,” wrote Tran. “And it was in this realization that I felt a different shame — not a shame for who I was, but a shame for the world I grew up in. And a shame for how that world treats anyone who is different.”
She continued, “I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings. This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward.”
A sense of entitlement accompanies modern fan culture as if by loving something, you then become an investor with a right to dictate how you receive your returns. Too often these days, fandom is an incubator where enthusiasm curdles into self-righteousness and enables racism and misogyny. As Tran has shown us, the answer to online toxicity is not for the victims to toughen up. It’s for the rest of us to unleash our inner empathy warriors and beat back hatred with love.
Source: New York Times
