What's going on with #yesGayYA

[cleolinda]

I have been writing (good) and having health issues (bad), so I've been quieter than I would have liked. However, before I can get to a number of other things, we have a publishing kerfuffle to discuss. Yes, another one. It's gotten pretty bad.

The short overview from the Guardian: YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters: Authors say

Comments

[ceilidh_ann]

Thanks for putting this together. And so wonderfully formatted!

The whole thing got so messy in such a short amount of time. I don't think anyone really wanted to admit that there was something wrong with the publishing world in regards to LGBTQ representation in YA, as noted by how quick many people were to unquestionably defend & support the agent's post. It's all well & good to defend LGBTQ content in YA and support diversity on twitter & blogs posts and so on, but when it comes to the crunch, the numbers back everything up. 1% is embarrassing. At the end of the day, we just need to support LGBTQ YA books with our wallets as well as our words. I've had worse reasons to buy more books!

[cleolinda]

Thanks. Re: formatting, this is one of those moments where I do not in the least regret dropping out of grad school, because 1) I clearly got sufficient learnings out of the classes I did take, and 2) oh dear God I do not want to pay to write things like this for a grade ever again

[cleolinda]

You know, that's interesting. I haven't seen anyone even bring that aspect up.

[the_gneech]

Nice summary! Thank you. :)

-The Gneech

[syvia]

*leans back satisfied and has a cup of tea* This post was fantastic. Thank you, Cleo. :)

[evewithanapple]

I'm really, really uncomfortable with the tenor of Lindsay's post. So much of it sounds so much like she (and the people backing her up) are trying to blacklist or silence the authors insolved by painting them as diva-tastic troublemakers who wouldn't accept that their book sucked. It's not quite Chrictopher Navatril terriroty (. . . yet) but it seems to have been done in a similar spirit, and I don't like that at all.

And yeah- the agent/publisher response to the whole thing seems to run along the lines of "nuh-uh! I'm not a homophobe! The mean authors called me a bad word!" This is the opposite of constructive, especially since the authors never said that. They said "this is a systematic problem, and we need to address it." Making it All About Them is not only disengenous, it's also silencing and dismissing the people who are ACTUALLY being hurt by this- i.e. the gay teenagers.

[cleolinda]

I understand the tone of both her note and the agent's post itself: there's a lot of personal hurt there, and people are often compelled to say some really rough things when they want to defend others. My question is how present Joanna Stampfel-Volpe was for the actual conversation. I mean, she totally might have been there. If she wasn't and The Agent in Question simply told her the story, that's yet another telephone in the game, as it were. And it's not even that I think TAIQ is lying, either. I just think people involved are very invested in their own idea of themselves as good, not-homophobic people (which may also be objectively true), and it hurts to be told that well-meant advice was silencing, particularly if they don't see it that way. Maybe you even minimize what you actually said because you're afraid you've damaged the agency itself, and your defenders run with that. And so people come out with guns blazing, and the further we get into people's feelings and away from the event itself, the more distorted the story becomes

[evewithanapple]

Oh, that's exactly what I think happened. I just- I don't know, I come from a place where allies, nice and supportive as they may be, sometimes have to be told "look you did a hurtful thing here, and you have to stop doing this. It's not about your feelings." And (good) allies do so, because they recognize that it really is Not About Them. Stampfel-Volpe and Lindsay do not seem to be in that place yet. And they're not going to be productive allies until they do.

[cleolinda]

Yeah. I have friends who would not only defend me out of pure loyalty, but who would CUT PEOPLE they thought were out to hurt me. So I understand a lot of the aggression here, while not quite being sure how advisable it is.

I truly don't think I'm homophobic; I would vote for gay marriage, for example. And yet I think I could have advised someone to take the safer path--at least, before thinking about all of this. And it would have been wrong of me to do so. It seems obvious in retrospect, looking at someone else's choices, but I think there's a lot of things we can do that are not mindfully homophobic (or sexist, or racist, etc.) but are effectively silencing without us realizing it. I don't like to throw around the word "privilege" lightly, but that's basically what it is. I would notice sexism in a heartbeat, but I might not notice other unconscious prejudices, because I'm fortunate enough to not to have to live with them.

[mazarin221b]

God. I reblogged that announcement when it came out, and just...no. I can't wrap my head around it. Finding myself an author for the first time ever (of fanfic) and that fanfic being mostly of the slash variety, I'm really pretty incensed for the authors here. You can't just...flip a character's sexuality like turning off a light switch. Sure, it may not be the most important thing about who they are, but it is who they are. And doing so in service of sales to make people more comfortable with their own latent homophobia? Just feeds the ugly beast, no matter what the marketer's personal opinions might be.

[cleolinda]

Honestly, that anonymous comment was kind of a gift, because it was such a perfect illustration of why YA publishers are so anxious about LGBTQ content in the first place, as completely separate from any possible personal homophobia.

[mazarin221b]

But that doesn't mean I want to read about it. I read to escape and if a book leaves me feeling enraged or depressed or anything that isn't a feeling I want to have hanging over my day or week, it's not a book for me.

ARGH.Yes, I get why they're so worried about it, but Jesus, why buy into BS like that. This feeds perfectly into a discussion I've been having with an LJ friend about the almost obsessive over-tagging of fanfic posts with rating, pairings, warnings (and don't even get me started about using "slash" as a warning), etc, and how it really spoils the story reading (and honestly, telling) experience for so many people. Are people so terrified of feeling slightly uncomfortable these days that they want everything spelled out on the back of the book for them so they can decide? No suspense, no trying to work anything out on your own, no reading between the lines? Why not just write a damn summary of the plot for the jacket, let people check it out, then decide if they want to read it?

[profbutters]

OH MY GOD YES. This is my EXACT position on LJ stories! I absolutely refuse to label my stories with M/M, F/F, or anything like that at all. I'll suggest a rating, yeah: if it's NSFW, I'll say so. I'll warn for triggers, although I just don't write dubcon, etc., and it's very limited.

The only reason pairings make sense is for shipping purposes, I suppose. It's irrelevant for original fiction. But there are too many ratings, and if people insist on using M/M as a *warning,* I will have a cow. I won't warn for something I consider to be normal, whatever normal is. And that's that.