Kelly Marie Tran Speaks Out On Online Harassment

[Agent Z]

Today in the New York Times, Kelly Marie Tran speaks out for the first time since her social media was pulled due to mass harassment.

It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them.

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.

And those words awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at 9, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me. Or at 17, when at dinner with my white boyfriend and his family, I ordered a meal in perfect English, to the surprise of the waitress, who exclaimed, “Wow, it’s so cute that you have an exchange student!”

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. 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.

Because the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors, inheritors of the Manifest Destiny ideal, taught me I existed only in the background of their stories, doing their nails, diagnosing their illnesses, supporting their love interests — and perhaps the most damaging — waiting for them to rescue me.

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/m...arie-tran.html

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Its sad what happened to her. Stay strong sister.

[dkrook]

I wonder who are all these people harassing this poor lady who just wants to act and why are they doing this?

[Sacred Knight]

There's a term for it now. Its called toxic fans/fandom. To a degree, any fan of anything takes the subject matter too seriously. Its part of what being a fan is. But there's a level beyond, and that's the type of fan that does stuff like this when things don't go their way.

[WebLurker]

I wonder who are all these people harassing this poor lady who just wants to act and why are they doing this?

Entitlement. They want the franchise to be a certain way and think it's okay to hurt people to accomplish that end. We've seen it in video games and comics before and now. It's probably not going away anytime soon, but we should remember that it's pure harassment and cyberbullying and treat it as such.

[Starter Set]

Its sad what happened to her

It really is cause that's something who must be really hard to take on.

That's one of the worst thing to be hated not because of what you have done, but just because of what you are.