In 2020, when I asked the OTW Board to document the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter, and racism, and they put it off, I started gathering evidence. I had an idea of writing a report, a thorough, researched, documented argument that could prove to anyone without a vested interest in denying it, that the Organisation for Transformative Works was infected, from top to bottom, with structural racism.

This post is not that report. I had not intended to become active in the org because I had already learned that it was futile, but in May 2023 I saw fellow and ex volunteers being abused by a hostile management, and there was no way I could keep quiet about it. I focussed on victim advocacy, and on uncovering facts by asking questions in public, so that there was a documentation that other volunteers could look towards. In the process, I became a target of the kind of relentless racialised microaggressions that wear you down, no matter how prepared you are. And then of course the org decided to escalate with the macro aggression of sending me a CCAP, the kind of blatantly racist written proof that, to anyone outside the org, was a piece of evidence beyond any doubt.

But of course, within the org, white volunteers are still busy debating its merits, and my misdeeds, and how much really, is merely a failure of process, rather than a success of the system that racism supports. A former Board candidate has blamed his resignation from the org on my observed and insinuated behaviour. (ETA: In a later posted accusation it seems that he has confused me with another PoC. Supposedly OTW's colourblind text based environment is supposed to prevent this kind of thing, and yet here we are.)

I knew that the outcome of pressing for accountability would be hostility and that if I were going to delve deep into racialised critique of the org, I would be punished for it. I may in the future post a complete list of the questions I have asked, less for people to litigate my tone, and more because they are issues worth following up on. I don't care to defend myself in further detail, beyond stating, for the record, that the only org information I have shared publicly is what I have copied to this blog.

But since I am not able to set a report before the org, or the larger fannish community, I do want to present a summary of what I know to be true. Because while I appreciate the support I have received (both within and outside the org) since I disclosed the CCAP, the racism that pervades each committee of the OTW is entrenched, and affects many volunteers of colour in ways much worse than it ever has me. It extends far beyond the current and recently resigned Board members, and is entrenched in both formal processes of how things get done or not, as well as in the informal, pervasive culture that shapes conversation in org spaces.

In 2020 the conversations and actions surrounding BlackLivesMatter were racist, as was the way the org treated those of us challenging the white leadership. (Both the BIPOC volunteers who I was in conversation with at the time have since left the org, but in private conversations confirmed their assessment of the org as “so damn racist idek”.) I can confirm that the transcript leaked from an org-wide Board meeting is accurate, and that the treatment that Black volunteer received was not the only time they faced such racist working conditions. They also shared information with me about other Black volunteers who had been driven out by the org’s hostile racial conditions.

In 2020 again, the conversations and actions surrounding the Chinese language were racist, as was the way the org treated the Chinese speaking volunteers. I can confirm that the various summaries linked here are broadly accurate, albeit confused in some minor details. I also want to stress that the racism that Chinese volunteers have faced is not limited to any one Board member or chair. I have both been told and have observed specific incidents and repeated patterns perpetuated by more than one Board member and Chair.

In 2023 the conversations and actions surrounding the proposed Weibo account shut-down were (breathtakingly) racist. There is a small summary of it publicly available here, as well as an account of a recently resigned Board Member’s explicit racism here, but it does not convey in any way the sheer scale of labour that Chinese speaking volunteers put into their statements of protest. It also does not communicate the complete apathy of the board, whose empty apologies contained neither accountability nor restitution. It also does not convey the total silence from the Communications chair, under whose purview the Weibo account falls and from Translation Chairs, in whose committee the largest number of cvols belong. (A briefly appointed co-chair posted an apology to the Weibo mods and larger cvol community, to which the current comms chair did not co-sign on to. Soon after, the co-chair stepped down.)

The level of dehumanising indifference and contempt that the OTW culture of whiteness breeds towards the experiences of racism that volunteers of colour must deal with is higher than the average English-based fannish community. For a professional non-profit with a stated value of inclusiveness, it is abysmal.

It is not just that almost every person in a position of power in the org is white—it is that they are utterly unequipped with the tools to diffuse their whiteness as a vector of systemic discrimination. Some flounder in learned helplessness, others are belligerently hostile to reform. All have collectively abdicated their responsibility in taking leadership to fix the problems they have caused.

I share this now because I want everyone who says they care about racism within the OTW to recognise the severity of the problem. Two Board directors resigning rather than holding their fellow director accountable, and said ex-director continuing to remain in multiple committees, with not a word said officially and publicly that these events are in any way related to racism, is a symptom, not a solution.

And I especially want everyone to understand the weight of resistance that Anh, Qiao and Zixin will be working under when they take their seats on the Board. Expecting more from them than from their white counterparts is unjust, and it is imperative to constantly call out the unequal burden of racism that they have to carry.

I do not, myself, have any hope for reform from the OTW, and I have no further interest in subjecting myself to its endless racism. But I want to validate the labour of the volunteers of colour who are carrying on working under hostile conditions, for the sake of providing a safe and welcoming haven of transformative works to their fellow international and marginalised communities. Their ability to survive and organise in itself is an act of commendable resistance.

ETA (29/7/23): The first round of candidate chats happened today, at the beginning of which Zixin was asked an anonymously sent in set of questions that the Elections committee had deemed so targeted that they shared them with her in advance, and chose to redact the last one from the public chat. Zixin shared her answers to the questions, including the redacted one, to the Board channel, in an attempt to point to the magnitude of harassment she was facing from Board and Chairs, including Alex Tischer. (I can only speculate as to who I think sent her those questions, but my suspicions fall on a Chair, rather than a Board member.)

Today she edited her post to say:
"I have changed my mind and will be comfortable should my words here be publicly shared outside the org, if that is what it takes for others to better understand the situation mainland Chinese volunteers (and any Chinese person) face."

I am posting the racist, malicious question below, and letting Zixin's complete answer stand on its own, as proof of the stakes that we are talking about when we support Chinese speaking volunteers.

And, you asked fellow volunteers about their feelings on using the OTW account to join a digital protest in China, without getting input from your chairs.

Elections Committee decided to remove this sentence from the question when they ask it in the public chat, for which I am very grateful. To clarify, I personally have no memory of using the OTW account to join any forms of protest in China or having the intention to do so. I have asked a few other Chinese-speaking volunteers who have been volunteering here since 2020 (when I started modding Weibo) in private after I received this question whether they remember me bringing up any conversation like this in the past, and they don’t remember anything remotely similar to this either.

I am grateful that Elections decided not to bring this sentence to the public, because I don’t want there to be open discussions about me organising or joining a protest in China, an accusation that has actually resulted in imprisonment for other people (and in worse cases, led to people being directly disappeared without going through any formal legal procedure, which has happened to more than one of my friends). One reason I ran for Board is because I believe that volunteers here who have interacted with me would not intentionally put me in a politically dangerous position, not because I am naive enough to believe the Chinese government cannot spot me when they notice my activities in the OTW (which a politically contentious discussion may lead to). It only takes one Chinese person (maybe a couple to speed up the process) working in bad faith to notice the wank in English media, trace down my personal Weibo account (where I have been outed in my volunteer identity), and click on a few links for me to potentially get invited for a talk in my local police station.

I want to take this opportunity to say that for me, I not only feel the discrimination for my skin colour, nationality, and ethnicity, but also for the political environment I am in. Alex, if you still don’t understand why asking Chinese volunteers to leave the org when we feel unsafe is dismissive, let me explain it here. I’m sorry I thought it was self-explanatory before. This feeling of lack of safety – that we might get persecuted for groundless rumours, for a false accusation towards the org, for using a VPN to access AO3 and Google – didn’t suddenly grow out of nowhere after AO3 was banned in China, or after we added a controversial language tag. It infiltrates our life, every second we breathe, study in school, interact with friends, go to work, comment on social media, etc.

I guess it’s hard to understand for people who have never lived under an authoritarian government before, but if you let this feeling control you and prevent you from participating in any activities that make you feel anxious, you don’t get to do ANYTHING in your life. You don’t get to write fanfiction (fic writers have been sentenced to 10 years in jail), you don’t get to post on social media (my mom is a civil servant and her workplace forbids her from having a Weibo account), you don’t get to discuss matters with your friends privately (WeChat has a vibrant censorship system that automatically blocks sensitive words and sends reports to public security), you don’t get to tell jokes in public (standup comedians and their companies have been banned because someone interpreted their jokes as mocking the authorities), you don’t get to use a VPN (people have been detained for using VPN services), you don’t get to volunteer for this organisation (foreign NGOs cannot operate in China without permissions from the Public Security Bureau, and it’s up to them to interpret what their definition of “in China” is). It is literally impossible to live a life without fear under this regime.

What you have suggested in the past, and have repeated again today – that we should leave the org if we felt unsafe or unwell because of volunteering – is dismissive of the fact that we cannot avoid it, and you are framing it as if leaving the org would solve the problem: It would not. If you were ever not clear about this before, allow me to make it clear to you now: it’s not that difficult for the National Security Bureau to trace down the identities of volunteers accessing org tools in the mainland, even if they have already left the org. We have made the choice of taking the risk of volunteering for the OTW when we joined, and I hoped org leadership could respect our decision and not dramatically increase the risk for the past, current, and future volunteers living in the mainland without consulting us.