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valarltdThis rather rambling post/bit of navel gazing is inspired by two recent blog entries.
Words and Moral Compass
http://thepaganandthepen.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/words-and-moral-compass/
Diversity in M/M fiction
http://reviewsbyjessewave.blogspot.com/2009/07/exploring-diversity-in-mm-books-yes.html
This is not meant to re-open RaceWank 2009, so sit on your hands until that urge passes.
We create worlds when we write. No one will argue this. We project a vision of the future, of the past, of alternate realities just off our own, of our own as it is or as it should be.
There are those who say writing with an agenda is dull and evil. All writing comes with some agenda. Straight romance contributes to heteronormativity. Gay romance normalizes same sex relations by saying everyone is worthy of a happy ending. Science fiction offers us a vision of the future, whether bleak or shiny. Fantasy, wittingly or not, tells us what the writer considers idyllic. Humor and satire tell the reader what to find ridiculous.
There is a joke about the King of Saudi Arabia telling George Bush his children like American television, but his son is most disappointed there are no Arabic people on Star Trek. Bush thinks for a minute and says "Well, that's because it's set in the future."
Science fiction writers in particular have to be aware of what they're doing when they create--deliberately or not--their futures. Making a completely white version of the future will attract notice from some quarters. Many readers will never notice. Even today, many people live in a mostly white world. Their neighborhood is white. Their kids' school is mostly white. Their church is all white (Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week). Their entertainment choices are mostly white, whether by default or preference. How many current country singers of color are there? How many rock singers?
But those who do notice the all-white future will question it. And they will feel left out. And they will strongly reconsider whether to buy that author in the future.
Some people won't write diversity because they are afraid they'll get it wrong. Yes, of course you're going to get it wrong. If you write anything other than your own autobiography (and sometimes even then) you'll get it wrong. Do it anyway. Be sensible, fair-minded and when your readers inform you of something you've overlooked, apologize, learn and correct.
I had an incident where I was writing a sideshow novel. One of the male characters was to be black. Since the Pain-King and the Wolf-Boy were already set, I had a choice of the Giant or the Magician. My worry was that neither of them had enough lines, being secondary characters. I never even thought of the Giant being seen as the product of slave breeding programs. I was quickly corrected and Elijah Grant, the Carolina Giant, became white, while Marvello the Magician was black.
Someone said, if you have to research, it's a sign your life isn't diverse enough. I have been thinking on that. Diversity is something most of us have to work at. (Social lives are something some of us have to work at!) Birds of a feather and all that. We often surround ourselves with like-minded people from similar backgrounds. And some of us are fascinated by cultures we only read about and have no contact with.
For example, I don't currently know any Asian people. I supervised students from Thailand, China, Japan and Vietnam when I worked in a university library. But if I wanted a character from any of those countries, I would have to research hard to get anything right. Living where I do, I tend to think of characters in terms of black and white. In other regions, Hispanic characters or Asian ones might be more common.
The discussion at Jesswave's blog got me thinking about the religious world-building of the future or of the current milieu. The US religious population is about 78% Christian, about 16% identify as no religion (only about 4% as atheists or agnostics), 2% Jewish, About 1/2% each Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and neopagan and about 2% other.
In 1998, 94% of adults asked in a Harris Poll said they believed in God. In 2006, an online Harris poll showed this had dropped to 73%. (the online part may skew it) A CBS poll in the same year said 82% believed in God and 9% in some other Higher Power.
The majority of people one meets every day are some sort of Christian, from apathetic country club types who only go to promote their career to head-covering home-schooling true believers. Contemporaries should reflect this to some degree.
As for futuristics Christianity will likely continue to lose ground. No religion will keep growing. Pagan and other may keep growing to about 2-5% and top out.
If a writer creates a contemporary or future world that is a Christian theocracy, she had best have a reason why there's been an upswing in belief. If all the contemporary characters are atheists, the author and reader both need to know why. If religion just doesn't figure into the story, that's one thing. But someone in small town Missouri loudly proclaiming there is no God and the people going to church are morons? That's going to cause a stir, esp in a town when you know who is a good person by where their car is on Sunday. If everyone in the story is pagan...again, this needs to be done in a believable way.
My point, and I think I do have one, is that writers need to be AWARE of their agendas and the worlds they create. An all white, all male, all gay, all butch, all atheistic world isn't a reality but it seems to be a popular setting for a lot of m/m fiction.
We are creating a genre. We are creating visions of the future and the world as it could be. When we leave anyone out of these visions, by accident or on purpose, we're saying certain people have more rights to a happy ending than others.
Write the story as it needs to be told. But know why you need to write that story.
Words and Moral Compass
http://thepaganandthepen.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/words-and-moral-compass/
Diversity in M/M fiction
http://reviewsbyjessewave.blogspot.com/2009/07/exploring-diversity-in-mm-books-yes.html
This is not meant to re-open RaceWank 2009, so sit on your hands until that urge passes.
We create worlds when we write. No one will argue this. We project a vision of the future, of the past, of alternate realities just off our own, of our own as it is or as it should be.
There are those who say writing with an agenda is dull and evil. All writing comes with some agenda. Straight romance contributes to heteronormativity. Gay romance normalizes same sex relations by saying everyone is worthy of a happy ending. Science fiction offers us a vision of the future, whether bleak or shiny. Fantasy, wittingly or not, tells us what the writer considers idyllic. Humor and satire tell the reader what to find ridiculous.
There is a joke about the King of Saudi Arabia telling George Bush his children like American television, but his son is most disappointed there are no Arabic people on Star Trek. Bush thinks for a minute and says "Well, that's because it's set in the future."
Science fiction writers in particular have to be aware of what they're doing when they create--deliberately or not--their futures. Making a completely white version of the future will attract notice from some quarters. Many readers will never notice. Even today, many people live in a mostly white world. Their neighborhood is white. Their kids' school is mostly white. Their church is all white (Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week). Their entertainment choices are mostly white, whether by default or preference. How many current country singers of color are there? How many rock singers?
But those who do notice the all-white future will question it. And they will feel left out. And they will strongly reconsider whether to buy that author in the future.
Some people won't write diversity because they are afraid they'll get it wrong. Yes, of course you're going to get it wrong. If you write anything other than your own autobiography (and sometimes even then) you'll get it wrong. Do it anyway. Be sensible, fair-minded and when your readers inform you of something you've overlooked, apologize, learn and correct.
I had an incident where I was writing a sideshow novel. One of the male characters was to be black. Since the Pain-King and the Wolf-Boy were already set, I had a choice of the Giant or the Magician. My worry was that neither of them had enough lines, being secondary characters. I never even thought of the Giant being seen as the product of slave breeding programs. I was quickly corrected and Elijah Grant, the Carolina Giant, became white, while Marvello the Magician was black.
Someone said, if you have to research, it's a sign your life isn't diverse enough. I have been thinking on that. Diversity is something most of us have to work at. (Social lives are something some of us have to work at!) Birds of a feather and all that. We often surround ourselves with like-minded people from similar backgrounds. And some of us are fascinated by cultures we only read about and have no contact with.
For example, I don't currently know any Asian people. I supervised students from Thailand, China, Japan and Vietnam when I worked in a university library. But if I wanted a character from any of those countries, I would have to research hard to get anything right. Living where I do, I tend to think of characters in terms of black and white. In other regions, Hispanic characters or Asian ones might be more common.
The discussion at Jesswave's blog got me thinking about the religious world-building of the future or of the current milieu. The US religious population is about 78% Christian, about 16% identify as no religion (only about 4% as atheists or agnostics), 2% Jewish, About 1/2% each Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and neopagan and about 2% other.
In 1998, 94% of adults asked in a Harris Poll said they believed in God. In 2006, an online Harris poll showed this had dropped to 73%. (the online part may skew it) A CBS poll in the same year said 82% believed in God and 9% in some other Higher Power.
The majority of people one meets every day are some sort of Christian, from apathetic country club types who only go to promote their career to head-covering home-schooling true believers. Contemporaries should reflect this to some degree.
As for futuristics Christianity will likely continue to lose ground. No religion will keep growing. Pagan and other may keep growing to about 2-5% and top out.
If a writer creates a contemporary or future world that is a Christian theocracy, she had best have a reason why there's been an upswing in belief. If all the contemporary characters are atheists, the author and reader both need to know why. If religion just doesn't figure into the story, that's one thing. But someone in small town Missouri loudly proclaiming there is no God and the people going to church are morons? That's going to cause a stir, esp in a town when you know who is a good person by where their car is on Sunday. If everyone in the story is pagan...again, this needs to be done in a believable way.
My point, and I think I do have one, is that writers need to be AWARE of their agendas and the worlds they create. An all white, all male, all gay, all butch, all atheistic world isn't a reality but it seems to be a popular setting for a lot of m/m fiction.
We are creating a genre. We are creating visions of the future and the world as it could be. When we leave anyone out of these visions, by accident or on purpose, we're saying certain people have more rights to a happy ending than others.
Write the story as it needs to be told. But know why you need to write that story.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 08:32 pm (UTC)And while I'm very aware of my agenda - it does drive my fiction - I still find this a useful reminder. Danke.
~M~
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 01:13 am (UTC)The implication of the story is scary: in the future we will have wiped out all the Arabs.
And it got me thinking about my own SF and how white it tends to be, because for me "male" defaults to 20s-30s, white, tall, middle-class and white collar. My father was, my stepfather was. My husband is. (my grandfathers were blue collar, drivers, and I carry that on)
wiped out all the Arabs.
Date: 2009-07-13 03:54 am (UTC)I will confess that in my futures, I tend to do exactly that, but it's always in the context of a mutual nuclear immolation with Israel, which is what I strongly believe is actually going to happen. I still have Arabs left, but all their cities, within say a thousand miles of Jerusalem, are radioactive wastelands. [That's my Little Ray of Sunshine Hat in the icon btw]
Something this entry also made me think of was that early on I started to very specifically describe my Amazon Witches - generally tall, solid, dark skinned - because if I did not, most would see them as white and slim*, aka Dominant Culture Beauty Standard.
~M~
*Big Knockers? lol
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 08:36 pm (UTC)I like this post, but I think this: Be sensible, fair-minded and when your readers shout "racist," apologize, learn and correct. is a problematic framing of the issue. People, in general, don't approach the issue by coming into someone's blog and shouting "OMG RACIST." They're more likely to say something like, "Look, I don't know if you noticed this, but xyz is a problematic stereotype and I think your story would be better if you didn't use it."
(The problem is that people often respond to this calm criticism with actual racist remarks like "well, I'm not writing my story for YOU PEOPLE anyway! YOU PEOPLE are too stupid to understand that my story is a fantasy! You're not part of my audience!" And that's when people get angry and point out that "you, the AUTHOR, are being a racist." But it really doesn't often start out like that.)
I only mention it because "screaming racism" is so often used as a characterization of people who speak up about this kind of thing, but it's so very rarely reflective of the actual approach. Calling it all "shouting RACIST!" is just a way for people to make excuses for not listening, because who can blame you for not wanting to listen to "screaming" or "shouting?" Etc.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 10:59 pm (UTC)While it does feel a bit like being shouted at, especially if that's the only feedback you've heard about that story, there are valid points being made about the reader's reaction. Since we write to elicit a reaction, we need to make sure it's the reaction we want, not "you use some problematic stuff in here and it affected my enjoyment of your work."
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 11:39 pm (UTC)When I read something that was obviously written for the purpose of pushing someone's political or social ideas, it bugs me. It comes off as false and trite and I feel manipulated. That doesn't mean I don't want to read, or write something that deviates from my personal experience--far from it. But I don't enjoy reading something written to manipulate me.
If people only wrote their experience, there would be no fiction. Still, I agree with you, that if you're writing outside of your experience, you should research and try to get it as right as possible, and be prepared to apologize when you inadvertently step on toes.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 01:21 am (UTC)Everyone deserves a happy ending...until they prove themselves unworthy by their own actions.
I try not to be blatant about my politics, but my books come off more liberal than they did 5 years ago.
Consider:
Lesbian Episcopalian pastors.
Women leading nations.
Gay men getting married legally.
Holiday decorations that aren't just trees, santas, creches and menorahs.
Legal hemp being used for industrial purposes.
A world where the socialist democracies are depicted as doing better than the libertarian capitalists.
All of those push a subtle agenda of inclusion and progress. Yet, they don't get in the way of the rollicking adventure story or the romance.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-26 06:08 pm (UTC)Thanks for referencing my Pagan&Pen post. Incidentally Sally died and we've had her funeral meanwhile.
here's a blog about state of the world
http://helgaleena.mylivepage.com/blog/141/1253_THE_BIG_PICTURE_%28if_the_world_had_only_1000_inhabitants_meme%29
I have in the past posted my personal agenda there once or twice.
writing with an agenda
Date: 2009-07-13 04:06 am (UTC)I write with a ferocious agenda, but do so because "a story, if done well, can draw you in and get you to 'see' a world from the inside, live in it, feel it in a way that a straight forward explanation cannot." Of course well done propaganda goes back to The Iliad.
I call the paradigm Stories and Works. I present a story of the world I wish to see become real and then present an actual strategy to do so.
I recently shifted from Space Opera to a grittier version. We'll see how that works.
~M~
no subject
"Ergo why I do research; to correct this problem & seek diversity."