Let me preface this with: it's not that you're wrong. You are never wrong, except about whether or not the longhair always tops. We answered the question ages ago: people don't do race-swapped characters because it's hard and amazingly flame-baity.
You're right about everything you said except I need to quibble about the motivation.
While agreeing that gender is constantly modeled, I disagree that it somehow makes gender EASIER than race. Race is also constantly modeled. All of the protestations that could be made about the ambiguity of race are, I think, quibbles about cultural relevancy.
Because a genderswap or a sexswap involves SO. MANY. CHANGES. Can we really look at the gulf between man and woman, and then the gulf between white and hispanic, and say "white/hispanic is the bigger shift"?
Setting all that completely aside, race-swap would not by a longshot be the most outlandish extremity that characters are pushed to. Here are some of the AUs I have recently seen:
* Characters are personifications of famous Final Fantasy weapons * Characters are overlaid onto characters from Rent * Characters are locked into a love hotel and forced to have sex with each other to unlock doors
For some reason, race lives in a place much more critical to identity than, apparently, even gender; it lives in a place much more intensely and sensitively ordered than class or sexuality. It's not a thing anyone can take lightly. Race is too serious business to play with.
My position is basically that the underlying, fundamental, strip-off-all-the-bullshit-and-look-at-the-thing reason that there are not race-swapped characters is because the matter is sensitive beyond anything - and that it's fundamentally so sensitive because ...
wow I am about to say something that would start a flame war even I couldn't live through. PASS! Let's talk about it somewhere else some time, you wild minx.
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Date: 2010-03-03 05:33 am (UTC)You're right about everything you said except I need to quibble about the motivation.
While agreeing that gender is constantly modeled, I disagree that it somehow makes gender EASIER than race. Race is also constantly modeled. All of the protestations that could be made about the ambiguity of race are, I think, quibbles about cultural relevancy.
Because a genderswap or a sexswap involves SO. MANY. CHANGES. Can we really look at the gulf between man and woman, and then the gulf between white and hispanic, and say "white/hispanic is the bigger shift"?
Setting all that completely aside, race-swap would not by a longshot be the most outlandish extremity that characters are pushed to. Here are some of the AUs I have recently seen:
* Characters are personifications of famous Final Fantasy weapons
* Characters are overlaid onto characters from Rent
* Characters are locked into a love hotel and forced to have sex with each other to unlock doors
For some reason, race lives in a place much more critical to identity than, apparently, even gender; it lives in a place much more intensely and sensitively ordered than class or sexuality. It's not a thing anyone can take lightly. Race is too serious business to play with.
My position is basically that the underlying, fundamental, strip-off-all-the-bullshit-and-look-at-the-thing reason that there are not race-swapped characters is because the matter is sensitive beyond anything - and that it's fundamentally so sensitive because ...
wow I am about to say something that would start a flame war even I couldn't live through. PASS! Let's talk about it somewhere else some time, you wild minx.