fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5042 ]

[ SECRET POST #5042 ]

⌈ 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.

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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.

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.

I think Abertalli was to some degree lucky because she had a book award and a Disney contract behind her. But I've seen pile-ons of new authors who did not properly disclose that resulted in pulled publications.

Most of the books I know about being pulled were pulled for content reasons, but the lack of ~own voices~ was def why criticism was so persuasive. which books were pulled for identity alone?

Honestly, I do hope her forced coming-out at least got a few people to consider the possibility that when they join in a pile-on like that, they might be wrong.

Authors should accept criticism gratefully - but not to a point where they're expected to not act like human beings.

And people who criticize should also accept being proven wrong gracefully, because that happens a lot more than people who base their social media brand on being "critical" like to admit.

If your criticism is based on an assumption about the author's identity, which then turns out to be incorrect, then you have to trash it and start over, ideally with a totally new reading of the work based on the new correct information you've learned. Your previous premise was just wrong. It was based on a mistake. And unless you're being completely intellectually dishonest, you have to admit that.

yeah I don't disagree with any of that, which is why I don't like the fact that it's considered okay to take criticism directly to an author. it is completely understandable that you'd get situations like this when people are hunky-dorey about effectively criticizing people in a way that is basically in their face and is about them as a person. like why are you tagging the author on twitter telling them about their life? why? parasocial dynamics are a menace.

I still think it's questionable to suggest that someone being wrong about you is coercive in the way implied. if someone is criticizing you based on identity and not content (which tbqf I think she was hurt about content criticisms too sooooooooo), then you can attack that premise without needing to correct the premise. but people really believe that socialization is always overcome with lived realities and no it's not, and a criticism based on that understanding is not an attack on your identity, as personal as it may feel.

if someone is criticizing you based on identity and not content (which tbqf I think she was hurt about content criticisms too sooooooooo)

The critic being wrong about the author's identity also casts doubt on the validity of the content criticism. It still might not be wrong - but it's a lot more likely to be in the face of an egregious factual error. Even in terms of content, the criticism is by no means guaranteed to be correct, and the idea that criticism of content can't itself be subject to criticism is weird. Not that I'm saying you said that, but there's this perception that pushback against criticism is whining or denial or derailing. No. Sometimes critics are just plain wrong, and their track record isn't necessarily any better than authors.'

The critic being wrong about the author's identity also casts doubt on the validity of the content criticism
I don't agree. it casts doubt on the motivation for the criticism, not its validity. "this sounds like a straight person wrote it" is going to be valid criticism regardless of whether a straight person wrote it or not.

How, though? Since LGBTQ people's experiences vary so much - and for that matter, the way straight people write LGBTQ people varies so much - we don't even know what "sounds like a straight person wrote it" really means. That's not very substantial without specific concrete examples. Regardless, learning the fact that a straight person didn't write it should require some self-examination on the part of the critic about their own stereotypes and pre-conceptions about "authenticity" might be.

Do they mean "this doesn't ring true in my experience?" Well that might mean the critic needs to think a little bit more deeply about the true hugeness of the breadth and variety of experiences, and how those experiences are written by people within the community.

one way oppression operates is to control the social narrative regarding some social construction. everyone within the culture learns the narrative, regardless of where in the construction you fall. it's just easier for those who fall in the negatives of that narrative to understand that it's bullshit. even when that control of the common narrative slips, the changes allowed are still noticable as common with the people with some social power within the construction.

"this sounds like a straight person wrote it" is identifying that social consensus of narrative.

"this sounds like a straight person wrote it" is identifying that social consensus of narrative.

That sounds like you think there is only ONE social consensus of narrative that everyone understands alike. There is not just one. There are many. They are regional, racial, gender-specific, and class-based. The allowable signifiers of queerness in one particular high school might be very different from those just 10 miles away, or just 10 years ago, or between different culture groups sitting 10 feet apart.

I do totally get your point about dominant cultural narratives. But judging every queer story against those narratives does nothing but give those bullshit narratives more power than they deserve.

sure, and if that's the case then that's a response, (that again doesn't actually require you to identity yourself to refute). but a) while this is changing rapidly, what is published does not tend to be that varied and does tend toward one social consensus of narrative and b) most critical theory with lenses that consider social construction understands a).

it casts doubt on the motivation for the criticism, not its validity

Criticism for suspect motives by definition should carry some doubts about its validity. If it's done in bad faith and/or based on a mistake, then of course its validity should be questioned. Criticism needs to hold up to some minimal level of scrutiny.

validity of criticism can be independently determined, since at its heart it is a determination of the logic of application of theory to text. bad faith criticism which is valid is going to be valid regardless of faith, and the same with good faith invalid criticism. validity doesn't require such external context. it's "does the text support the reading, and prove it with the logic of your theory and its application to the text" that's it.

Let's be real though, most of what passes for "criticism" on social media has no logic or theory. It's mostly emotional gut reactions that are mined to get hits and interactions, which will boost the user's visibility because of algorithms.

Theories that take the perceived identity of the author into account as a basis require a factual premise to build on. If that factual premise is proven wrong, then the whole theory has to be scrapped and re-thought. If I were to write a theory-based essay about "The Old Man and the Sea" based on a fallacious belief that Hemingway was Black and the fish was a metaphor for the racism he'd experienced, it would obviously fall completely apart upon the revelation that Hemingway was not, in fact, Black.

Any criticism based on "this is how straight people write gay people" that started out with an assumption that the author is straight - well, if it turns out the author is NOT, in fact, straight, that needs to go to the compost heap to hopefully grow some criticism that's more insightful at some time in the future.

well i don't disagree with your first paragraph at all, and honestly, that's true of some legit reviewers too. and while I think feelings are fine for reviews (i think you can get good information ), i dislike when people pretend their thoughts are grounded in some understanding.

I also don't disagree with the understanding that where the theory requires certain identities, not having that identity blows the theory. but i don't think "this sounds straight" does.

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(Anonymous) - 2020-10-27 06:17 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2020-10-27 07:03 (UTC) - Expand

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meadowphoenix - 2020-10-28 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

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.

But at some point, isn't this just totally undermining the basic argument and logic of #ownvoices as a whole?

there is a world of difference between "people want to support those who are similarly marginalized and read about those who are similarly marginalized so labels to that effect are useful," "in general marginalized people know the best about their own marginalization," and "this specific person is marginalized so their writing can not be criticized on the basis of that marginalization." the latter doesn't implicate the former two, imo, and #ownvoices is about the first, and somewhat is about the second.

OK but literally NO ONE is saying that "this specific person is marginalized so their writing can not be criticized on the basis of that marginalization."

Anyone's writing can be criticized on any basis whatsoever. Critics are not being silenced.

Critics can be disagreed with, though, and often should be. For all the talk about how authors can't handle criticism, critics are often even much worse at taking dispute than authors. There are a lot of Very Online critics who think they're being "silenced," when all that's really happening is they're being disagreed with, and they can't cope with that.

I don't disagree with your last paragraph, but regardless, coming out is one of many options you have which is not a requirement to refute criticism and it's questionable to therefore call it forced nor does the lack of coming out to refute criticism undermine the point of #ownvoices

How about we just don't do facile criticism based on an ignorant guess of what we think the author's identity might be? If we don't do that, then it won't force authors to come out, in situations where they might be unsafe, just to defend their work and their lives and their "right" to write a fictional story.

while considering that I don't think that it's force in such a situation since I don't think that's a great way to confront criticism, and considering that like "i hate men" it's very much possible to understand the social underpinnings of statements go beyond a literal reading, I can't agree.

Different anon. Uh no. "I hate men", or any other vague, vast group, is always a bigoted statement. Doesn't matter if the person means it literally or not.

(no subject)

meadowphoenix - 2020-10-29 10:50 (UTC) - Expand

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