3 ms·

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They

by Pxtl 6y ago

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. On the other hand, literature should be inclusive. That means including minorities, and not just as peripheral characters. We don't need more My Magical Gay Friend stories. I haven't heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. The only avenue that leaves is for straight white people to stop writing, and, y'know: No. The outrage does seem selective. I mean, one of the seminal classics of science-fiction literature on the subject of gender - and a very popular book among feminist readers - is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. And I've never heard anyone complain that she wrote a black protagonist, despite not having black experiences. But on the other hand, The Left Hand of Darkness isn't much about the black experience. It's more of a travelogue of a genderless society. So maybe that's the distinction? American Dirt isn't just about a Mexican, it's a story of the Mexican-American immigration experience. And maybe it's right that stories like that should be written by people who're closer to them?

makomk 6y ago
I'm pretty sure, having seen some interviews with Ursula K. LeGuin, that something as transgressive towards our society's assumptions about gender as The Left Hand of Darkness would not have been written or published today, and certainly not by her or anyone who had the same influences and social circles as she did.
iamatworknow 6y ago
>And maybe it's right that stories like that should be written by people who're closer to them? Both books should be able to exist simultaneously.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I haven’t heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. The best way to reconcile it is to stop engaging in the fallacy of division. Literature should be inclusive. Not every individual work of literature needs to be inclusive of every identity. Yes, a cis-het-male-Euro-American writer writing about unique experiences of cis-het-male-Euro-Americans (where characters of other backgrounds are seen only through the perspective of cit-het-male-Euro-Americans) might not speak to lots of people who aren’t cis-het-male-Euro-Americans. So what? It’s not a problem that such works exist, it is a problem when such works dominate available literature to the near-exclusion of other viewpoints.
- Pxtl 6y ago
  Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? Not the publishing industry as a whole that has been rightly lambasted as being too homogeneous historically. What do you tell a single writer? Should they contribute to the problem by telling more stories about white guys? Exclusively focus on their own experiences? Or should they try to learn from people around them and include those people in their stories to create more diversity? And if so, where's the line between diversity and tokenism? Between inclusion and appropriation?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? “Do what thou wilt” I'm not really into telling artists how to art, and the problem is not one that straight white artists are particularly poised to meaningfully contribute to solving through their art in any case. > Or should they try to learn from people around them I think this is a good thing for people to do as people, and if they happen to be artists it will inevitably have some effect on their art, but the solution to the problem of the world of any particular art being insufficiently inclusive of marginalized viewpoints isn't for artists from nonmarginalized communities to get to know marginalized communities so that the nonmarginalized artists art can speak for the marginalized communities.
  - nec4b 6y ago
    Or mind your own business and let other people write whatever they well please. It's fiction not science. Don't let the intellectual midgets bully you about what you can or can't write about.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Great literature transcends culture. Take Fiddler On The Roof, for example. People in... I forget, Japan maybe?... were saying "We understand why it's popular here, but why do they like it in America?" If you can reach to that level, it doesn't matter that you're a cis-het-male-Euro-American, or that you're a trans-gay-female-black-African. It won't matter if you set your story in America or Nigeria. Your literature will speak to lots of people in lots of different cultures and situations. But if you're just a run-of-the-mill writer, your stuff won't transcend anything. Still, you should try to include the real variety of people that your setting really has, and to do so with as much understanding of those people as you can.
jfengel 6y ago
It's a tricky dichotomy. Part of the resolution is to make characters' identities peripheral. The problem with the Magical Gay Friend story isn't that they're gay, but that they're in the story to be gay. What if you took some other character and just randomly decided, "The person he's married to happens to be named Tom". That's it. Another part is to collect characters. This is something every writer is supposed to do. They meet interesting people and build their characters using the pieces of real humans. So instead of this being "the gay character", it's based on Mike, the drone flying, amaretto-sipping, former gas station manager who went into security consulting, and really hates San Diego but has to go there all the time because his stepmom lives there. Oh, and he met his husband Tom when he needed help pumping gas because he was wearing a tuxedo on his way to a friend's wedding and didn't want to pump it himself. Your story about Mike could be anything. He uncovers a spy ring. He's unhappy with his new job and can't figure out what to do next. He tried heroin and really, really liked it. He and Tom don't have to be gay in this story. All they have to do is be people.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if Le Guin is tolerated because so many people assume, on the basis of other female authors from mid-century who wrote similar gender-questioning books, that Le Guin was a lesbian. As both a woman and a member of the LGBT community, she would therefore represent intersectionality, and in the current climate much can be forgiven such a person. (In actual fact, Le Guin was happily married to a man for decades, it just doesn’t get talked about that much because her career flourished independently of him.)
- lilactown 6y ago
  AFAICT Le Guin was criticized by feminists of her day for her decisions to be a home maker and - until later in her career - telling mostly stories of young men doing heroic things. She was "tolerated," lauded even, by the greater SciFi and Fantasy community _because_ she told stories that matched the tastes of young men back in the 60s and 70s. It was only later that she reconciled with feminism and began writing from the feminine perspective, and received a lot of criticism from her life long fans for it! There are valid criticisms of Left Hand of Darkness from an LGBTQ perspective, but it's also viewed as revolutionary for its time. Today, she's viewed as a complex person who contributed greatly to feminist literature - despite not being perfect - based on her merits, not because of some mistaken identity.
xenocratus 6y ago
> On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. To be a bit cynical, here's a quote from Goethe: > No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else Just because you're the same ethnicity/gender/whatever as someone else, does it mean you're "entitled" to claim you understand them? Or is it just some assumption that you can only write from experience and everything else should be disregarded? Many great works of literature contain a large breadth of characters coming from different environments, classes, genders etc. - should they be discounted automatically because the author could not have been "authentic" when writing them?
tjs8rj 6y ago
My response to this is: why should anyone care? Write a book about whatever you want. If people want a “more authentic rendition” then read the story by the Mexican American immigrant author. If the white author has a flair to the story you enjoy, then read that. There can be annoyance and criticism as well of course. The author shouldn’t be “punished” by institutions though. Simply don’t buy the book.
throw67456756 6y ago
> I haven't heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. Both arguments are pushed by the woke on purpose, to both be able to complain if no minorities are in a story and to complain if there are. The way to reconcile it is that no one should feel forced to be inclusive (this is how you get forced token characters) and "write what you know" is not a rule set in stone. Plus it's a terrible argument because minorities are not some hivemind. For example, I'm trans and just a trans person wrote a book, stars in a movie, etc, doesn't mean I'll agree with them and how they portray trans people. In fact in the current political climate we are far more likely to disagree (I don't believe in a hundred genders, I believe you need dysphoria to be trans, etc), and I often feel any representation is making a complete mockery of my condition. And as someone else has already pointed out, both types of books can co-exist. Lets take the extreme case that someone writes a shitty portrayal of some minority, it's bad, filled with cliches (or my reality where I feel these are actually hurtful to how we're represented, etc). So what? I'd rather have the right to critique and ridicule them then not, while also retaining my right to write whatever the hell I want. The other side's argument against my views are after all, very similar, that my view is hurtful. Who's right? Who's to judge? Currently it's only the side complaining the loudest. And let's go further. I'm not out except to close family. I'm also bi and not out due to the culture where I live. To anyone on the street/internet I look like a "straight white man". Were I to write a book with a character modeled after me probably no one would want to publish it because it's not pc, and if it was published many would try to cancel me. Another example, I might write something historically accurate with a minority character, but history is not pretty, it's racist and cruel, and whatever I wrote would probably have the same problem because context no longer matters. Is this really the world we want to live in?

by Pxtl 6y ago

makomk 6y ago

I'm pretty sure, having seen some interviews with Ursula K. LeGuin, that something as transgressive towards our society's assumptions about gender as The Left Hand of Darkness would not have been written or published today, and certainly not by her or anyone who had the same influences and social circles as she did.

iamatworknow 6y ago

>And maybe it's right that stories like that should be written by people who're closer to them? Both books should be able to exist simultaneously.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I haven’t heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. The best way to reconcile it is to stop engaging in the fallacy of division. Literature should be inclusive. Not every individual work of literature needs to be inclusive of every identity. Yes, a cis-het-male-Euro-American writer writing about unique experiences of cis-het-male-Euro-Americans (where characters of other backgrounds are seen only through the perspective of cit-het-male-Euro-Americans) might not speak to lots of people who aren’t cis-het-male-Euro-Americans. So what? It’s not a problem that such works exist, it is a problem when such works dominate available literature to the near-exclusion of other viewpoints.

Pxtl 6y ago
Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? Not the publishing industry as a whole that has been rightly lambasted as being too homogeneous historically. What do you tell a single writer? Should they contribute to the problem by telling more stories about white guys? Exclusively focus on their own experiences? Or should they try to learn from people around them and include those people in their stories to create more diversity? And if so, where's the line between diversity and tokenism? Between inclusion and appropriation?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? “Do what thou wilt” I'm not really into telling artists how to art, and the problem is not one that straight white artists are particularly poised to meaningfully contribute to solving through their art in any case. > Or should they try to learn from people around them I think this is a good thing for people to do as people, and if they happen to be artists it will inevitably have some effect on their art, but the solution to the problem of the world of any particular art being insufficiently inclusive of marginalized viewpoints isn't for artists from nonmarginalized communities to get to know marginalized communities so that the nonmarginalized artists art can speak for the marginalized communities.
- nec4b 6y ago
  Or mind your own business and let other people write whatever they well please. It's fiction not science. Don't let the intellectual midgets bully you about what you can or can't write about.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Great literature transcends culture. Take Fiddler On The Roof, for example. People in... I forget, Japan maybe?... were saying "We understand why it's popular here, but why do they like it in America?" If you can reach to that level, it doesn't matter that you're a cis-het-male-Euro-American, or that you're a trans-gay-female-black-African. It won't matter if you set your story in America or Nigeria. Your literature will speak to lots of people in lots of different cultures and situations. But if you're just a run-of-the-mill writer, your stuff won't transcend anything. Still, you should try to include the real variety of people that your setting really has, and to do so with as much understanding of those people as you can.

jfengel 6y ago

It's a tricky dichotomy. Part of the resolution is to make characters' identities peripheral. The problem with the Magical Gay Friend story isn't that they're gay, but that they're in the story to be gay. What if you took some other character and just randomly decided, "The person he's married to happens to be named Tom". That's it. Another part is to collect characters. This is something every writer is supposed to do. They meet interesting people and build their characters using the pieces of real humans. So instead of this being "the gay character", it's based on Mike, the drone flying, amaretto-sipping, former gas station manager who went into security consulting, and really hates San Diego but has to go there all the time because his stepmom lives there. Oh, and he met his husband Tom when he needed help pumping gas because he was wearing a tuxedo on his way to a friend's wedding and didn't want to pump it himself. Your story about Mike could be anything. He uncovers a spy ring. He's unhappy with his new job and can't figure out what to do next. He tried heroin and really, really liked it. He and Tom don't have to be gay in this story. All they have to do is be people.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if Le Guin is tolerated because so many people assume, on the basis of other female authors from mid-century who wrote similar gender-questioning books, that Le Guin was a lesbian. As both a woman and a member of the LGBT community, she would therefore represent intersectionality, and in the current climate much can be forgiven such a person. (In actual fact, Le Guin was happily married to a man for decades, it just doesn’t get talked about that much because her career flourished independently of him.)

lilactown 6y ago
AFAICT Le Guin was criticized by feminists of her day for her decisions to be a home maker and - until later in her career - telling mostly stories of young men doing heroic things. She was "tolerated," lauded even, by the greater SciFi and Fantasy community _because_ she told stories that matched the tastes of young men back in the 60s and 70s. It was only later that she reconciled with feminism and began writing from the feminine perspective, and received a lot of criticism from her life long fans for it! There are valid criticisms of Left Hand of Darkness from an LGBTQ perspective, but it's also viewed as revolutionary for its time. Today, she's viewed as a complex person who contributed greatly to feminist literature - despite not being perfect - based on her merits, not because of some mistaken identity.

xenocratus 6y ago

> On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. To be a bit cynical, here's a quote from Goethe: > No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else Just because you're the same ethnicity/gender/whatever as someone else, does it mean you're "entitled" to claim you understand them? Or is it just some assumption that you can only write from experience and everything else should be disregarded? Many great works of literature contain a large breadth of characters coming from different environments, classes, genders etc. - should they be discounted automatically because the author could not have been "authentic" when writing them?

tjs8rj 6y ago

My response to this is: why should anyone care? Write a book about whatever you want. If people want a “more authentic rendition” then read the story by the Mexican American immigrant author. If the white author has a flair to the story you enjoy, then read that. There can be annoyance and criticism as well of course. The author shouldn’t be “punished” by institutions though. Simply don’t buy the book.

throw67456756 6y ago

> I haven't heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. Both arguments are pushed by the woke on purpose, to both be able to complain if no minorities are in a story and to complain if there are. The way to reconcile it is that no one should feel forced to be inclusive (this is how you get forced token characters) and "write what you know" is not a rule set in stone. Plus it's a terrible argument because minorities are not some hivemind. For example, I'm trans and just a trans person wrote a book, stars in a movie, etc, doesn't mean I'll agree with them and how they portray trans people. In fact in the current political climate we are far more likely to disagree (I don't believe in a hundred genders, I believe you need dysphoria to be trans, etc), and I often feel any representation is making a complete mockery of my condition. And as someone else has already pointed out, both types of books can co-exist. Lets take the extreme case that someone writes a shitty portrayal of some minority, it's bad, filled with cliches (or my reality where I feel these are actually hurtful to how we're represented, etc). So what? I'd rather have the right to critique and ridicule them then not, while also retaining my right to write whatever the hell I want. The other side's argument against my views are after all, very similar, that my view is hurtful. Who's right? Who's to judge? Currently it's only the side complaining the loudest. And let's go further. I'm not out except to close family. I'm also bi and not out due to the culture where I live. To anyone on the street/internet I look like a "straight white man". Were I to write a book with a character modeled after me probably no one would want to publish it because it's not pc, and if it was published many would try to cancel me. Another example, I might write something historically accurate with a minority character, but history is not pretty, it's racist and cruel, and whatever I wrote would probably have the same problem because context no longer matters. Is this really the world we want to live in?