Good writing doesn't solve all problems
Off metafandom, a very good post : I Didn’t Dream of Dragons. An indian fan (and possibly writer?), deepad, talks about her experience reading sff in english about european people in an european world, and how a lot of the arguments white american etc authors make about "Writing the Other" are flawed. EDIT: She responds to some common criticisms here.
EDIT: Disclaimer 4a applies *sighs at self*
Something she said which touches on a topic I've been thinking about for a while is "I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me".
One of the axioms a lot of creative types seem to work from is that their only priority should be The Art. Great Art broadens the soul and civilises society etc, so an Artist should not let themselves be swayed by worries about social responsibility/hurting people's feelings etc. Any times questions like this come up they are either dismissed as making false assumptions (which is often true: playing violent video games does not in fact make you a murderer, and it is very hard to predict what effect if any a work will have on the population as a whole etc) or it's argued that these consequences only happen as a result of bad art, and the solution is to work even harder at making True Art. Which is what the artists were doing anyway, how convenient.
But this simply isn't true. For a start, no work is perfect, and unless you particularly concentrate on an individual flaw, making your work better may just result in improving other aspects. Something can be Fine Art while still being deeply flawed. As in the examples deepad gives, pretty much every single "Classic Novel" that mentions POC at all does so in a racist stereotyped way. Most Great Works don't do much better on class, gender, sexuality etc. And of course as any slasher will tell you a lot of the time these voices are erased completely.
Given that all works are flawed, not all flaws are equal. Plot holes may be annoying, but they are not equivalent to racism or other prejudice, and implying that they are, and that there's no reason to specifically try to avoid them beyond generally improving the quality of your work, is insulting to the people who suffer as a result.
You might argue "Ah but writers like Dickens were writing in an unenlightened time and laboured under all those racist/sexist etc misconceptions". Well guess what, so do we. And unless we make a concerted effort to rise above those misconceptions and prejudices it will be reflected in our writing.
You can write a genuinely complicated, subtle character who you see as a Real Person who is still offensive and reflective of prejudiced attitudes. The most obvious example is having them act just like "you" (white/male/american/christian etc) when in context they should have very different attitudes and behaviours. And if you're starting from flawed assumptions this can counteract your characterisation: if you were to write an australian Aboriginal character as a cannibal who rode around on the back of a kangaroo then no matter how well written they were it would still be hurtful to australian aboriginal readers.
Another obvious issue is that "good" is a relative term. If you deep down believe that women are irrational and get angry about random things for no good reason all the time then you won't have a problem with stories where this is the case. But I will find it unbelievably annoying.
EDIT: Since I don't think I made it clear: like I said, every story is flawed, and that's ok. And that means even if you specifically try not to use racist stereotypes or what-have-you you might (in fact probably will) end up doing it anyway. I'm not saying give up and don't write, or that perfection is required! Do your best and hope you're doing more good than harm, that's all we can ever do. I'm just saying that certain flaws are more important than other flaws, and should be focussed on in particular, and not just because they make the book less artistically valid. That's all.
Also: some sorts of stories actually rely on stereotypes etc. Traditional high fantasy, for example, is built on a lot of pretty sexist and classist tropes. Writing such stories "better" from an artistic POV may actually mean making them worse from a feminist etc POV.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't be written, though as I discuss here nor does it let the writers off the hook.
EDIT: Disclaimer 4a applies *sighs at self*
Something she said which touches on a topic I've been thinking about for a while is "I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me".
One of the axioms a lot of creative types seem to work from is that their only priority should be The Art. Great Art broadens the soul and civilises society etc, so an Artist should not let themselves be swayed by worries about social responsibility/hurting people's feelings etc. Any times questions like this come up they are either dismissed as making false assumptions (which is often true: playing violent video games does not in fact make you a murderer, and it is very hard to predict what effect if any a work will have on the population as a whole etc) or it's argued that these consequences only happen as a result of bad art, and the solution is to work even harder at making True Art. Which is what the artists were doing anyway, how convenient.
But this simply isn't true. For a start, no work is perfect, and unless you particularly concentrate on an individual flaw, making your work better may just result in improving other aspects. Something can be Fine Art while still being deeply flawed. As in the examples deepad gives, pretty much every single "Classic Novel" that mentions POC at all does so in a racist stereotyped way. Most Great Works don't do much better on class, gender, sexuality etc. And of course as any slasher will tell you a lot of the time these voices are erased completely.
Given that all works are flawed, not all flaws are equal. Plot holes may be annoying, but they are not equivalent to racism or other prejudice, and implying that they are, and that there's no reason to specifically try to avoid them beyond generally improving the quality of your work, is insulting to the people who suffer as a result.
You might argue "Ah but writers like Dickens were writing in an unenlightened time and laboured under all those racist/sexist etc misconceptions". Well guess what, so do we. And unless we make a concerted effort to rise above those misconceptions and prejudices it will be reflected in our writing.
You can write a genuinely complicated, subtle character who you see as a Real Person who is still offensive and reflective of prejudiced attitudes. The most obvious example is having them act just like "you" (white/male/american/christian etc) when in context they should have very different attitudes and behaviours. And if you're starting from flawed assumptions this can counteract your characterisation: if you were to write an australian Aboriginal character as a cannibal who rode around on the back of a kangaroo then no matter how well written they were it would still be hurtful to australian aboriginal readers.
Another obvious issue is that "good" is a relative term. If you deep down believe that women are irrational and get angry about random things for no good reason all the time then you won't have a problem with stories where this is the case. But I will find it unbelievably annoying.
EDIT: Since I don't think I made it clear: like I said, every story is flawed, and that's ok. And that means even if you specifically try not to use racist stereotypes or what-have-you you might (in fact probably will) end up doing it anyway. I'm not saying give up and don't write, or that perfection is required! Do your best and hope you're doing more good than harm, that's all we can ever do. I'm just saying that certain flaws are more important than other flaws, and should be focussed on in particular, and not just because they make the book less artistically valid. That's all.
Also: some sorts of stories actually rely on stereotypes etc. Traditional high fantasy, for example, is built on a lot of pretty sexist and classist tropes. Writing such stories "better" from an artistic POV may actually mean making them worse from a feminist etc POV.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't be written, though as I discuss here nor does it let the writers off the hook.