Meta: The Viennese Bitch Paradox
THE VIENNESE BITCH PARADOX: Writing about Justice in Worlds That Don’t Have Much
My title (Middleman shout-out intentional) comes from one of Freud’s jokes and a feminist magazine. In Vienna, if people saw a man and a woman walking down the street together, they assumed they were having an affair. If they saw two men or two women together, they assumed *they* were having a homosexual affair. And if a man walked down the street alone, they assumed he was a masturbator. I was going to say that I can waste as much time on “TV Tropes” as the next person, but I really can’t, because after a short while, my fic-writer’s self-protective instincts come into play. Because, well, if it’s a trope for a character to be smart and a trope for similar characters to be stupid, and a trope for a character to be cheerful and a similar character to be depressed, then there is precious little scope for anybody ever to write anything fresh, interesting, or worthwhile.
(Cut for Length)
I got really frustrated with “Bitch” (the feminist magazine one) because a lot of the time, there would be a scathing book review of, say, “Concepcion is a Particle Physicist.” The reviewer would say something like, how dare this writer not confront the limited economic and educational opportunities for Hispanic women? Then the next book review would be about a novel in which Maria Rosa is a hotel maid. The reviewer would say something like, how dare this writer perpetuate the stereotype that Hispanic women hold low-status, low-paid jobs? (Whole ‘nother rant that just because someone has a job that isn’t lucrative or respected doesn’t keep that person from being a hero in many ways; a maid or a farmworker or factory worker could in fact be smart, sexy, funny, brave, self-educated, talented, a person of deep faith, or many other things that can make great fiction.)
I daresay that in any kind of writing, you pick your priorities and, if you’re going to write for any medium more broadly-based than your drawer, you have to be prepared to take your lumps. But it really is difficult both to reflect conditions as they exist and conditions as you wish they would be.
Fandom, of course, contains many people and quite often multiple opinions per fan on any given issue, so the generalizations that apply to everyone are few, far between, and probably trivial. So I hasten to say that it is not true that all fans have only two toggle settings, either declaring that a particular professional or fan text is either Flawless or Fail. But, more often than I’d like, I’ve seen pyramiding comments: 1. There are problems with the way this text depicts people who have not traditionally been privileged. 2. Therefore, this text is Fail. 3. So the person(s) responsible for it are also Fail. 4. So nothing they have ever produced is worth reading or watching.
There are a lot of reasons why a text can depict something that a reader or viewer sees as unjust. Sometimes-like “Gone With the Wind,” the text is all, Yay injustice! And we have to recognize that. If it’s a current text, then TPTB need to know why consumers (and especially ex-consumers) object. But, as Scott said about Rob Roy, there are plenty of things that are “ower bad for blessing and ower guid for banning”-that do have value in some ways, even though they are somewhat flawed, or even horribly flawed. But recognizing this should lead us to Lear’s response to Non-human-Caused Climate Change: “O, I have ta’en too little care of this.” Not to look for Fail so we can pat ourselves piously on the back for how superior we are to the poor sinners, but so we can understand how far we are from justice ourselves.
Sometimes the depiction is in fact a condemnation-honestly, Swift did NOT advocate eating Irish babies. Sometimes the depiction is about something that, as far as the writer is concerned, is just The Way it Is.
A lot of fandoms are based on science fiction texts, partly because, well, spaceships and aliens are just cool. Also, zero-grav sex. But sometimes they’re based on science fiction because of the option to write about A Way It Is That Isn’t Like The One We Have Now. Unfortunately, there are a lot of failures of imagination by writers who can’t imagine anything other than Now + Shiny Spaceships.
However, there can be well-thought-out and reasoned Utopias, or Dystopias-one can assume that everything will get better, and a benevolent World Government will take care of all of the planets under its benevolent aegis, in which case one would expect equality and opportunity for all. Or one can assume that the handbasket has already been launched and can’t be retrieved. In which case one can expect people to treat each other even worse than they do now. (I’m actually kind of surprised that so few characters in Blakes7 expressed overt racism, because it’s supposed to be a horrible society, the anti-Star Trek.)
When I’m watching something, or reading something in a book fandom, I have a multiple role-as a person being entertained, as a critic, but also as a writer. I want to learn techniques-why is that so exciting, or so funny, or so moving? And it’s less fun, but I also want to see why things don’t work, are too narrow, or don’t try to understand characters beyond “They’re Redshirts” or “they’re Evil.” I wouldn’t write if I didn’t believe that there are ways to understand more and think deeper-or, at least, Try Again. Fail Better.
My title (Middleman shout-out intentional) comes from one of Freud’s jokes and a feminist magazine. In Vienna, if people saw a man and a woman walking down the street together, they assumed they were having an affair. If they saw two men or two women together, they assumed *they* were having a homosexual affair. And if a man walked down the street alone, they assumed he was a masturbator. I was going to say that I can waste as much time on “TV Tropes” as the next person, but I really can’t, because after a short while, my fic-writer’s self-protective instincts come into play. Because, well, if it’s a trope for a character to be smart and a trope for similar characters to be stupid, and a trope for a character to be cheerful and a similar character to be depressed, then there is precious little scope for anybody ever to write anything fresh, interesting, or worthwhile.
(Cut for Length)
I got really frustrated with “Bitch” (the feminist magazine one) because a lot of the time, there would be a scathing book review of, say, “Concepcion is a Particle Physicist.” The reviewer would say something like, how dare this writer not confront the limited economic and educational opportunities for Hispanic women? Then the next book review would be about a novel in which Maria Rosa is a hotel maid. The reviewer would say something like, how dare this writer perpetuate the stereotype that Hispanic women hold low-status, low-paid jobs? (Whole ‘nother rant that just because someone has a job that isn’t lucrative or respected doesn’t keep that person from being a hero in many ways; a maid or a farmworker or factory worker could in fact be smart, sexy, funny, brave, self-educated, talented, a person of deep faith, or many other things that can make great fiction.)
I daresay that in any kind of writing, you pick your priorities and, if you’re going to write for any medium more broadly-based than your drawer, you have to be prepared to take your lumps. But it really is difficult both to reflect conditions as they exist and conditions as you wish they would be.
Fandom, of course, contains many people and quite often multiple opinions per fan on any given issue, so the generalizations that apply to everyone are few, far between, and probably trivial. So I hasten to say that it is not true that all fans have only two toggle settings, either declaring that a particular professional or fan text is either Flawless or Fail. But, more often than I’d like, I’ve seen pyramiding comments: 1. There are problems with the way this text depicts people who have not traditionally been privileged. 2. Therefore, this text is Fail. 3. So the person(s) responsible for it are also Fail. 4. So nothing they have ever produced is worth reading or watching.
There are a lot of reasons why a text can depict something that a reader or viewer sees as unjust. Sometimes-like “Gone With the Wind,” the text is all, Yay injustice! And we have to recognize that. If it’s a current text, then TPTB need to know why consumers (and especially ex-consumers) object. But, as Scott said about Rob Roy, there are plenty of things that are “ower bad for blessing and ower guid for banning”-that do have value in some ways, even though they are somewhat flawed, or even horribly flawed. But recognizing this should lead us to Lear’s response to Non-human-Caused Climate Change: “O, I have ta’en too little care of this.” Not to look for Fail so we can pat ourselves piously on the back for how superior we are to the poor sinners, but so we can understand how far we are from justice ourselves.
Sometimes the depiction is in fact a condemnation-honestly, Swift did NOT advocate eating Irish babies. Sometimes the depiction is about something that, as far as the writer is concerned, is just The Way it Is.
A lot of fandoms are based on science fiction texts, partly because, well, spaceships and aliens are just cool. Also, zero-grav sex. But sometimes they’re based on science fiction because of the option to write about A Way It Is That Isn’t Like The One We Have Now. Unfortunately, there are a lot of failures of imagination by writers who can’t imagine anything other than Now + Shiny Spaceships.
However, there can be well-thought-out and reasoned Utopias, or Dystopias-one can assume that everything will get better, and a benevolent World Government will take care of all of the planets under its benevolent aegis, in which case one would expect equality and opportunity for all. Or one can assume that the handbasket has already been launched and can’t be retrieved. In which case one can expect people to treat each other even worse than they do now. (I’m actually kind of surprised that so few characters in Blakes7 expressed overt racism, because it’s supposed to be a horrible society, the anti-Star Trek.)
When I’m watching something, or reading something in a book fandom, I have a multiple role-as a person being entertained, as a critic, but also as a writer. I want to learn techniques-why is that so exciting, or so funny, or so moving? And it’s less fun, but I also want to see why things don’t work, are too narrow, or don’t try to understand characters beyond “They’re Redshirts” or “they’re Evil.” I wouldn’t write if I didn’t believe that there are ways to understand more and think deeper-or, at least, Try Again. Fail Better.