[ SECRET POST #5042 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5042 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 47 secrets from Secret Submission Post #722.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/4TlX4uR.png

[(Anonymous)]

I'm confused about this idea. As a country that has a teeny tiny minority of black people (~1%) should we ignore their existence entirely in media because only a tiny percentage of media writers are black? Or only have black people in shows written by black writers, so like 1 black character in every 200 shows or something?

In my country at least it seems like a push towards less visibility for minorities.

[(Anonymous)]

Is #OwnVoices a conversation that's taking place in your country?

[(Anonymous)]

Good question. Because of the hashtag I assumed it was a Twitter thing and therefore international.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's ok to ignore it if it's less than 1 percent.
A country like that has more disabled people that need more visibility, if we're going for the social justice points. Not every country faces the same issues as the US.

[(Anonymous)]

I thinking it's silly to say that only minority writers should write about characters from that minority. At the same time, some of my writer friends who are white have expressed reluctance to write POC characters because they're scared of getting it wrong and getting yelled at by the internet. This just seems like a lose-lose situation.

I'm a POC and I don't plan to have any ethnicity "off limits" even if I don't belong to that group.

[(Anonymous)]

People go too far with stuff sometimes

[(Anonymous)]

I think #ownvoices is a good label to add to everything else. Reading a book about a character with an identity, and knowing the author is themselves that identity, is a good insight to have about their portrayal and its potential accuracy.

That being said, I say potential accuracy because not every POC or LGBT author's experiences do represent people and their experiences accurately, and some authors certainly melodramatize and fetishize their own culture and experiences to a secondhand-embarrassing degree (like fuck Amy Tan and her career orientalism tbh), so...

You'll probably be fine if you treat whatever you write about with respect, just like many many other books out there

[(Anonymous)]

(Cozy werewolf anon)

First off, those bookstagrammers are toxic. You have my permission to stop following them.

Secondly, as an author/reader I like the idea of #ownvoices for the TRADITIONAL US book market. #ownvoices has brought to light a LOT of the inequality in traditional book publishing which is heavily dominated by white men in MOST categories. (Outside of romance.) To me, it shows agents are trying to be more aware that the US market isn't majority white anymore and are trying to address the problem.

There's even one organization that goes through romance books and sorts them by if they have POC in them or not by publishing house and it's telling, very telling how LITTLE POC there are in the market and that's just in romance! I think there was 7 to 10% last year, maybe? And that was an actual increase from the years before.

Thirdly, as an author/reader I dislike how #ownvoices has been appropriated and wrested away from POC, LGBTQA, disabled, and non-neurotypical authors by neurotypical people trying to speak FOR them and how it should be used. Those people are toxic. They do NOT have a say in this fight. Listen to POC, LGBTAQ+, disabled, and non-neurotypical authors/readers when it comes to what THEY feel/want to see.

BECAUSE... YOU OWE NO ONE YOUR PERSONAL STORY. You do not have to out yourself as non-neurotypical, POC, LGBTQA, disabled, or a victim of trauma to WRITE about these issues. (Yes, because sexual assault/abuse victims get lumped into this.) People who say otherwise and demand your story are entitled, rude, and WRONG. So, write the story YOU want to write and makes you happy no matter what the main characters are. Do the research. Get sensitivity readers. Don't rely on stereotypes. That's part and parcel of the job of writing. As long as you don't HURT anyone deliberately, that's the best you can do. (And if you are making a point with what/how you write something and people MISS it, well, that's on them, not on you.)

FOURTHLY, if you're still worried, there's a difference between representation and diversity. You can have diversity in your stories without appropriating the representation of someone else's story. You can write about a POC having adventures in a world where race doesn't matter and isn't a correlation of medieval Africa/India/China or what have you. See Star Trek. You can put POC people, disabled people, non-neurotypical people in the background or in significant roles in your story that aren't necessarily the protagonist.

So much of what goes on is anecdotal, and no two people's lives are the same. I know for a fact people want to see something other than cis-het neurotypical, able bodied white people in stories and IF YOU PUT IN A GOOD FAITH EFFORT, they will not be like your toxic bookstagrammers (Who you should unfollow)and will be forgiving b/c they know no two people's lives are the same!

Lastly, if you want some POC, LGBTQA+ books that HAVE been traditionally published, check out CoolCurryBooks on Tumblr and twitter. She runs a database for scifi and fantasy books with and by POC, LGBTQA+ books.

I get your fears. I do. I have stories that worry me in the planning stages because of race. I have to remind myself, my characters are people first. Not their sex. Not their orientation. Not their skin color. They are people! I can't let my fears stop my stories. Go out and write the stories you want to write and make you happy! Bless.

[(Anonymous)]

This is an A+ comment. Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

you're welcome, and thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

This comment perfectly says everything I wanted to say, but way better than I ever could. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Aww, thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh OP, I too am a writer who isn't out of the closet and I feel your anxiety on that one. <3

[(Anonymous)]

This whole discourse is really counter productive.

"I want diverse stories!" "Ugh, there's way too much white/cis/straight stories!" "But it can only be #Ownvoices!"

"You're a bad person if you don't write POC/LGBT+ people." "You're a bad person if you write POC/LGBT+ people and aren't that ethnicity. You're a bad person if you write two white gays together." "You're a bad person if you write a protag that isn't white and you're not white." "You're a bad and fetishizing person if you write a non-white love interest." "You're a bad person if all characters in your novel are cis." "You're a bad person if you write trans people and are cis yourself." "You're a bad person if you write a non-white friends and neighbors and family, because they aren't the protag, so you're going into the Gay Best Friend/Black Best Friend trope."


Pick one. These discourses cannot coexist. No single author is going to be every identity. You either get only #Ownvoices with a very narrow and not diverse cast because someone doesn't want to get yelled at, or you get authors writing stories which may not be their #Ownvoice, but are diverse.

In the ideal world, the person would have it vetted and be careful to write with sensitivity.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah this.

[meadowphoenix]

to me where #ownvoices discourse when bad was when it bought into two ideas: a) that marginalization of an author eases problematic characterization of marginalized groups in a way it doesn't from non-marginalized people and b) that specific types of characterization are a no-go or are the only right way to right for marginalized groups. and "X character can only be written by X creator" is right at the corner of those two erroneous concepts.

as a marketing technique, it's great. Lots of people want to read about people like them by people like them, and publishers need to be transparent and proud of the representation they have for what they publish, since marginalized groups are often left out of traditional publishing both as creators and as subjects. as a bulwark against critique on the content of a book? fucking stupid.

also, authors of all stripes need to stop taking criticism so fucking badly, my god.

[(Anonymous)]

Criticism these days = getting sent death threats, doxxed and attacked online, unfortunately! Just look at the "criticism" the Love, Simon author got, which forced her to out herself because she kept getting harassed to the point where people were sending her threats and calling her horrible things and severely harmed her mental health.

[meadowphoenix]

no death threat forced her to out herself, since reality would not and has never stopped the type of people who send death threats or who harass and all of her pr people would have told her that outing herself would probably up the harassment not lessen it. because not only do those people not care about truth, they also used marginalizations against people and she would get a whole new cadre of assholes because some people just hate lgbt folks and love new targets.

what she felt coerced by was criticism that she was too straight to write gay kids, and that in particular hurt her feelings because you know, she's not! and that feeling that people are unfairly judging you? that's internal, and it's not something she had to give in on.

death threats are def a morale killer, especially now that everyone feels like they must be Really Online, but it's clear from what she actually wrote about it that it's that people got her and her work Wrong, that made her come out. And if she didn't really want to....yes she should have ignored it, because it's not really a defense against the criticism of the dynamics in her books.

[(Anonymous)]

I definitely understand being comfortable with #ownvoices. I"m bi, but I don't necessarily want to beat someone over the head and proclaim ownvoices about it. (The opposite of out and proud, I guess.) I'm not comfortably out yet, and may never be. I don't want to feel pressured to declare myself, especially when so many of my characters are bi.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly this is a very flawed idea. You can be from a culture and know less about it than another who's learned. This is a very common occurrence when it comes to religion, and isn't so far dissociated that it doesn't play the same effect on other interpretations of this ideal.
Being a POC doesn't mean you've lived the same life as another POC, or a different minority, nor does being white except you from knowing both the struggles and racism being faced in day to day life... Take being Irish, Jewish, for example. Even an 'African' American living in the south, a black person living in the north, and so on and so on- It's ridiculous as it is unfair.
There is no one voice that can 'own' anyone other than their own selfs.

Everyone lives their own life and faces their own strifes, and of course some of these are symptomatic of society, or even as a result of hundreds, going on thousands of years of prejudice- each experience is their own.
Assuming/putting all the pressure that certain minorities are fully knowledge beyond their own experiences and knowledge. Restricting them to be the /only ones allowed/ to write about such characters. Is not only racist, but completely unfair to those involved.

This is some serious shit when you get down to it. I know more than a few individuals who refuse to write about certain problems, things they've lived with, things that are too painful to put to paper.

Bottom line is that this is more than less, fictional writing, respect and research should go into what you write, be it fic, and certainly when you attempt original works. Empathy is the key here, not segregation.

[(Anonymous)]

This x 1000. You put it perfectly!

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like a tragedy of the internet is that just about any political issue can be appropriated by "white knights" who are more into policing, bullying, and harassment than actually making the issue work.

[(Anonymous)]

Where #ownvoices is good: bringing more diverse / minority authors into publishing as opposed to yet more cishet white men.

Where it falls down:
1. Just because an author technically qualifies as #ownvoices doesn't mean their experience will resonate with everyone, because
1a. Lived experiences are wildly different even between people who fit in the same category (for instance, I'm queer, and you could take four more people of my exact flavour of queer - bi ace - and get five entirely different experiences)
1b. #ownvoices is no guarantee of accuracy and can be incorrectly claimed just to boost your chances of success (a technically-#ownvoices Chinese diaspora who hasn't set foot in China in three decades isn't likely to write a very accurate story set in China, whereas a non-Chinese person who's lived in China for three decades just fucking might)
2. "Write only what you know" is a pox on writing and it's not suddenly the bestest idea ever just because you dress it up prettily with a hashtag
3. The fact that it's easily turned into a forceful "out yourself, or we're gonna decry your story as being inaccurate and appropriative and yell that you should be cancelled" is gross.

[(Anonymous)]

+ 1000