stitchmediamix:

kyberfox:

Since we already see fan artists (and writers) up to some nonsense let me spell a few things out very clearly.

Finn and Poe are the same size.

Look:

John is barely an inch taller than Oscar, a difference that would entirely disappear in Poe’s fluffy hair and as you can see above, often does. Physically they’re the same build, they after all fit into the same jacket without any difficulty and without it looking too big or too tight on one or the other.

Edit: A picture of John and Oscar next to each other.

So could artist stop drawing Finn as much larger or buffer than Poe and writers stop describing him as such? He isn’t. It’s bad art/writing and lack of skill.

And it’s also kinda racist.

There are some folks in the notes that don’t get how portraying a Black guy as big and bulky WHEN HE ISN’T is racist (and that don’t understand how to use google) so let me just slide in here to share

a) this entire post I wrote about sexual racism and Black male bodies AS a Black person

and b) a long and super relevant quote from said post:

Black male bodies are objectified in a very specific way: The bigger they are, the more inherently violent and sexually accessible they’re portrayed as.

Hell, even when the Black characters in question aren’t huge, they’re turned into these hulking hardasses out to bust a nut in the nearest vulnerable non-Black character. Back when I had the opportunity to come on the Fansplaining podcast and talk to Flourish and Elizabeth about race in the Star Wars fandom, one of the things that I brought up was about how claiming that your love of sizekink has nothing to do with race doesn’t mean anything if you’re going to portray Black characters in ways that explicitly call back to or mimic sexual objectification in mainstream society.

That fandom immediately rushed to center size difference in Poe/Finn stories on how much bigger (taller, muscular, dick…ier) Finn was than Poe.

Except… both John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are the same height and while John is a bit thicc, there’s no glaring size difference to be had. There’s nothing about John Boyega’s body that renders it immediately more intimidating than Oscar Isaac’s. So why is it then, that when fandom portrays their characters in relation to one another, Finn is frequently portrayed as a behemoth standing besides Poe?

We call it “sexual racism”.

Because that’s what it is.

It’s racism along the same lines as discriminatory practices that lead to people listing their preference for white people on dating websites. It’s the other side of the coin so to speak. We frequently see people talk about sexual racism from a place of revulsion, but the opposite is also racism. Objectifying someone because of their Black body and your beliefs about what said body can do for you in a sexual capacity is racist.

Just because you personally don’t see bulking Finn (and John Boyega) up in fanworks as an act of racism – because you personally have a kink for size difference or whatever – that doesn’t mean that you’ve suddenly negated centuries of sexual racism that was and still is used to objectify and dehumanize Black bodies and that does show up in how fandom portrays Black characters as big beasts that are juxtaposed against slighter non-black characters.