Medieval Studies has a white supremacy problem.
Recently, this came knocking on the SCA's door with what's been called "trimgate". Royals outside my kingdom wore a commissioned garment with a trim based on the Snartemo V pattern. I will not link or display the image directly, as it would be a distraction. They have abdicated and their Kingdom is in a healing process right now. I'm not here to interrupt or otherwise impede the healing of another Kingdom, my Kingdom is still healing from its own, very different, trauma.
What I want to unpack is what I'm seeing as an aftermath. This is a departure from my usual writing, so if you've come here for research updates and the like, this is an entry you can certainly skip. I feel compelled to say something, anything, in the effort that my words can help explain what so many people are still feeling, and it requires me to break down the fantasy and build in the very real person who does the research into the hypothetical Erdeneqadajin.
I am a white gay man, and a father to two beautiful black children. My entire life outside the SCA is looks and judgments. I come to the SCA as an escape from the grind of life. Much of my found family plays the game; we encourage each other and support each other.
What I'm seeing is that this is not the rule, but rather the exception for people like me.
If you clicked on the link for the Snartemo V pattern, you can see the original is believed to have a fylfot, or Norse swastika. The interpretation that is causing the outrage took the swatiska, and matched it with other symbols of the Nazi party and the neo-Nazi movement. Whether this is based on an academic interpretation of the weave, or infused with artistic license, I don't think matters. What does matter is that it was there, large, in photographs for the SCA, devoid of context.
What matters more is that when there was an outrage, a justifiable outrage, those people were made to be the problem. They were told they were opposed to historicism, that the history of the garment outweighed the real history that came after it. The glossing over of the co-opting of Norse history by white supremacy and what could have been a real discussion of how the SCA, which is increasingly seeing a surge of Viking-age personae, separates people who are lovers of the real history of the Vikings from those who use the fantasy of Aryan crusaders ridding the world of non-Aryan people.
This echos the complaints about the harassment policy put in place to help combat bullying and sexual harassment that needed addressing right before the #MeToo movement exploded into consciousness. Where "the SJWs are ruining the game" with their "PC nonsense".
Even more, it's the same vein of complaint levied against Inspirational Equality, which was launched directly for people like me, who kept seeing men fight for their wives and wondered what the real harm was if a man wanted to fight for his husband (or wife for wife, of course). Once again, it was the SJWs making problems for the rest of the society, clutching their pearls about things that "weren't important".
At what point, then, do we admit that there is a huge problem with Reactionary Conservatism embedded within the culture of the SCA? When do we soul search and determine who wins -- the people who take into consideration the modern meanings and visuals of what we're doing in conjunction with the history we're looking to be inspired by?
More personally, who gets to feel comfortable in the SCA? The people who think it's ok to put swastika on garb, harass women and keep it straight? or is it the people who think that ignoring the importance of the swastika is Holocaust denial, think that all people should have protection and see no harm in letting other people fully participate?
I don't know if there's really enough people looking for an answer to that. That's a huge problem that needs addressing.
