Why women of color struggle to find a place in fandom

Writing for New Republic, cultural critic Angelica Jade Bastin explains:

I have been reading comics obsessively since I was about ten years old. I can probably quote from John Ostranders original Suicide Squad run in my sleep, Ive watched all of the Star Trek series more times than I can count, and I often whip out Klingon when Im nervous. But Ive found that the love and knowledge I have on these subjects never seems to be good enough for the people who grow furious at a black woman writing about these properties. White male fans often dont want to face how their beloved properties often have troubling racial and gender politics. (Just peruse the comments on my review of X-Men: Apocalypse for RogerEbert.com: The author feels like the X-Men series in general has failed its female charactersignoring the fact that Mystique is elevated to a leadership and relevance level well above the source material. Many didnt want to face a critique coming from a woman, and a fan, who knows them better than they do.) You can only delete emails and block people on Twitter for so long until you feel burnt out. The reason why we dont see more black women writing about these subjects with such visibility isnt because we havent been interested in them, its that publications rarely give us the opportunity, and when we do write, we often find ourselves facing personal scrutiny that has little to do with the actual writing. At times, Ive been left to wonder, why do I love these stories so much when they rarely care about people who look like me?

You can read the full piece on New Republic.