metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2015-03-14 05:26 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2015-03-14 05:26 pm
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you swim in a dudely sea
Hordes of people are freaking out about Tempest's suggestion not to read any books by straight cis white men for a whole year.
So, like; none of them ever had a year where they didn't read a single book by a Latina lesbian, and a trans black woman, and a Malaysian man, and so on, did they? They read something by every single combination of ethnicity and sexuality every single year?
Wait, they didn't? There was a year they didn't read anything by a gay Latina? THEN WHY THE FUCK IS IT A BIG DEAL IF THERE IS A YEAR IN WHICH SOMEONE DOESN'T READ ANYTHING BY A WHITE MAN.
Incidentally, I did this. One year right after college, I decided I was going to only read books by women, for one whole year. I highly recommend it. I read books I wouldn't ordinarily have read, that didn't at first appeal to me, simply because I had arbitrarily placed more familiar books temporarily off limits. I picked up books by authors who were labeled by their marketing as not FOR me; same reason, and it was great.
But more importantly, it reprogrammed my brain. It took white men out of their Center Of The Universe, Authority, Source And Validator Of Information status in my internal map of the world in a way that they have never fully recovered from; though I should do a refresher year sometime. You really, really, really cannot tell what the water you are swimming in is like till you step onto dry land sometime. Yes, there are tons of great books by white guys. I read them now! But it did me no harm and great good to spend a year leaving them to one side.
So, like; none of them ever had a year where they didn't read a single book by a Latina lesbian, and a trans black woman, and a Malaysian man, and so on, did they? They read something by every single combination of ethnicity and sexuality every single year?
Wait, they didn't? There was a year they didn't read anything by a gay Latina? THEN WHY THE FUCK IS IT A BIG DEAL IF THERE IS A YEAR IN WHICH SOMEONE DOESN'T READ ANYTHING BY A WHITE MAN.
Incidentally, I did this. One year right after college, I decided I was going to only read books by women, for one whole year. I highly recommend it. I read books I wouldn't ordinarily have read, that didn't at first appeal to me, simply because I had arbitrarily placed more familiar books temporarily off limits. I picked up books by authors who were labeled by their marketing as not FOR me; same reason, and it was great.
But more importantly, it reprogrammed my brain. It took white men out of their Center Of The Universe, Authority, Source And Validator Of Information status in my internal map of the world in a way that they have never fully recovered from; though I should do a refresher year sometime. You really, really, really cannot tell what the water you are swimming in is like till you step onto dry land sometime. Yes, there are tons of great books by white guys. I read them now! But it did me no harm and great good to spend a year leaving them to one side.
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B: seriously only white cis men can write non-problematically about disability? Seriously? Get over yourself; the rest of us can be disabled too.
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Secondly, where on earth did I say that? If you look at my other replies you'll see I cite Elizabeth Bear's Jenny Casey books as the most recent non-problematic depiction of disability in SF/F I can remember. If I have to go back a decade to find my diversity represented in a way that I can't see a problem with, do you really think I care who writes the next one? I just want a novel I can point at and say 'look, X gets it right, you can write realistic and well rounded characters in contemporary SF/F', and I don't want people to skip that book simply because of who the author is, not when it may be the only book that gets it right this year. The one thing I'm passionate about here is doing something about my diverse community's near total absence from leading roles in my genre of choice.