Re-Blog: "PSA: Your Default Narrative Settings Are Not Apolitical"
Excellent, insightful, educational and extremely well-researched essay by fozmeadows on tumblr about why the argument "but it's historically inaccurate" when it comes to women and poc in non-stereotypical roles in fantasy writing is total bullshit.
Highlights:
Which leads me back to the issue of prejudice: specifically, to the claim that including such characters in SFF stories, by dint of contradicting the model of straight, white, male homogeneity laid down by Tolkien and taken as gospel ever since, is an inherently political - and therefore suspect - act. To which I say: what on Earth makes you think that the classic SWM default is apolitical? If it can reasonably argued that a character’s gender, race and sexual orientation have political implications, then why should that verdict only apply to characters who differ from both yourself and your expectations? Isn’t the assertion that straight white men are narratively neutral itself a political statement, one which seeks to marginalise as exceptional or abnormal the experiences of every other possible type of person on the planet despite the fact that straight white men are themselves a global minority? And even if a particular character was deliberately written to make a political point, why should that threaten you? Why should it matter that people with different beliefs and backgrounds are using fiction to write inspirational wish-fulfillment characters for themselves, but from whose struggle and empowerment you feel personally estranged? That’s not bad writing, and as we’ve established by now, it’s certainly not bad history - and particularly not when you remember (as so many people seem to forget) that fictional cultures are under no obligation whatsoever to conform to historical mores. It just means that someone has managed to write a successful story that doesn’t consider you to be its primary audience - and if the prospect of not being wholly, overwhelmingly catered to is something you find disturbing, threatening, wrong? Then yeah: I’m going to call you a bigot, and I probably won’t be wrong.
[...]
Because ultimately, these are SFF stories: narratives set in realms that don’t and can’t exist. And if you still want to police the prospects of their inhabitants in line with a single, misguided view of both human history and human possibility, then congratulations: you have officially missed the point of inventing new worlds to begin with.
What I personally find interesting (or perhaps I should say disturbing) about this is how pervasive these attitudes are. When I first started brooding on the novel that I'm now writing, the characters were all white and lived in a pseudo-English fantasy medieval setting. It took me a long time (years, in fact, because I've been thinking about this story for a while) to realise that they didn't have to be white, and that a made-up country could be based on English medieval culture and yet not have an English medieval climate. Also, some of the male characters could actually be women!... All the worse because I am a non-white woman myself. You have to actively work against this brainwashing, and that's the thing so many writers are either too lazy or too blind to accept. You have to work on it, or it will never get any better, and that is without exception.
Highlights:
Which leads me back to the issue of prejudice: specifically, to the claim that including such characters in SFF stories, by dint of contradicting the model of straight, white, male homogeneity laid down by Tolkien and taken as gospel ever since, is an inherently political - and therefore suspect - act. To which I say: what on Earth makes you think that the classic SWM default is apolitical? If it can reasonably argued that a character’s gender, race and sexual orientation have political implications, then why should that verdict only apply to characters who differ from both yourself and your expectations? Isn’t the assertion that straight white men are narratively neutral itself a political statement, one which seeks to marginalise as exceptional or abnormal the experiences of every other possible type of person on the planet despite the fact that straight white men are themselves a global minority? And even if a particular character was deliberately written to make a political point, why should that threaten you? Why should it matter that people with different beliefs and backgrounds are using fiction to write inspirational wish-fulfillment characters for themselves, but from whose struggle and empowerment you feel personally estranged? That’s not bad writing, and as we’ve established by now, it’s certainly not bad history - and particularly not when you remember (as so many people seem to forget) that fictional cultures are under no obligation whatsoever to conform to historical mores. It just means that someone has managed to write a successful story that doesn’t consider you to be its primary audience - and if the prospect of not being wholly, overwhelmingly catered to is something you find disturbing, threatening, wrong? Then yeah: I’m going to call you a bigot, and I probably won’t be wrong.
[...]
Because ultimately, these are SFF stories: narratives set in realms that don’t and can’t exist. And if you still want to police the prospects of their inhabitants in line with a single, misguided view of both human history and human possibility, then congratulations: you have officially missed the point of inventing new worlds to begin with.
What I personally find interesting (or perhaps I should say disturbing) about this is how pervasive these attitudes are. When I first started brooding on the novel that I'm now writing, the characters were all white and lived in a pseudo-English fantasy medieval setting. It took me a long time (years, in fact, because I've been thinking about this story for a while) to realise that they didn't have to be white, and that a made-up country could be based on English medieval culture and yet not have an English medieval climate. Also, some of the male characters could actually be women!... All the worse because I am a non-white woman myself. You have to actively work against this brainwashing, and that's the thing so many writers are either too lazy or too blind to accept. You have to work on it, or it will never get any better, and that is without exception.