What is the racewanking about?
The Buffista Book Club: the Harry Potter iteration
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By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Oh, dear, I knew someone would ask.
A Harry Potter kink comm used the word "miscegenation" as a prompt, and further defined it to mean all interracial and interspecies relationships, meaning that stories with Neville/Parvati were classed in the same category as Aberforth/goat.
A fan, who happened to be African-American, noticed this and wrote the moderators of the comm, asking if they realized that the word and the concept were actually very offensive, and could they change it to something like "interracial"? The mods said no, because they weren't going to let anyone censor them.
Then hell broke loose. Two days later, they took the prompt down and sort of apologized, but not before a lot of ugly stuff happened.
Oh yeah--I did read about that.
I don't know where this concept that the word "miscegenation" was in itself offensive came from. It simply refers to the intimate involvement (marrying, dating, having children with, etc) of two people of different races. I mean, I'm not saying that the person wasn't offended, but I don't see it.
I didn't know miscegenation was often considered offensive when I was censured for using it not too long ago. I found a lot of usueful information on the wikipedia page.
there were ( and may still be ) laws against miscegenation. which changes it from a descriptive term to a negative. I never heard it used in a neutral or positive way.
Like beth, I've only ever heard the word used in a negative & offensive way, in the context of laws or social taboos against interracial marriages. Furthermore, I've only heard it applied to situations in which one of the partners is white. The term carries a strong connotation that the white person in the relationship is degrading him- or herself by mixing with a person of color. It may not have the same connotations in different countries & languages, but its history in the U.S. is pretty gross.
there were ( and may still be ) laws against miscegenation.
not in the United States. Loving v. Virginia overturned them.
My history teacher in tenth grade told us that it meant slave owners having sex with their female slaves. And that was what I assumed it meant until, when I was reviewing for the US History AP exam with my dad, I said something like "And there should have been a law against miscegenation" and he gave me a very odd look. Then I told him where I'd learned the word, and he told me to go look it up in a dictionary.
(OK, this really has nothing to do with anything.)