Free speech, political correctness, conversational in/tolerance and first principles

[Justin Isis]

The challenge would make more sense if the categories she mentions weren't so ill-defined. For example, why are Umberto Eco and Gabriel García Márquez on her reading list? These authors are light-skinned Westerners who appear to identify with the gender their societies assigned them. Also, where is the line between straight and gay? If an author had a fair amount of homosexual sex but still had children, do they count?

I'd rather she focused on CLASS, which seems sadly neglected in almost all these kinds of discussions. A writer who's had to work to support themselves and received absolutely zero encouragement from the family members and social register around them is going to have a very different perspective from one who grew up in an upper-middle class background and attended all kinds of supportive universities and writer's workshops - regardless of their skin color or sexual orientation.

[dr. locrian]

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

The challenge would make more sense if the categories she mentions weren't so ill-defined. For example, why are Umberto Eco and Gabriel García Márquez on her reading list? These authors are light-skinned Westerners who appear to identify with the gender their societies assigned them. Also, where is the line between straight and gay? If an author had a fair amount of homosexual sex but still had children, do they count? I'd rather she focused on CLASS, which seems sadly neglected in almost all these kinds of discussions. A writer who's had to work to support themselves and received absolutely zero encouragement from the family members and social register around them is going to have a very different perspective from one who grew up in an upper-middle class background and attended all kinds of supportive universities and writer's workshops - regardless of their skin color or sexual orientation.

These are excellent observations, Justin.

That stated--white or any other color--men have dominated prose writing for eons in every culture. Consequently, I've read far more material by men of any sort than I have anything else. And I would love to read more prose by women in general.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Nick's article has some good comments too.

Did you see Muckef*ck's comment, Quentin?

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This is part of the reason why I was so blown away by Nakagami Kenji when I finally read him. Finally, here was a Japanese writer describing the lives of the working class with brutal honesty rather than the sentimentalising I'd come to expect from bougie authors like Kawabata, Tanizaki, et al.

[Justin Isis]

Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian

That stated--white or any other color--men have dominated prose writing for eons in every culture.

...except for Japan, where the prose tradition begins with Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon - or, in other words, a woman writing a really long romance novel and a woman writing the 11th century equivalent of a nit-picking blog filled with mean-spirited complaints about anything and everything (the men were off writing poems in Chinese).

In all seriousness though, I get the impression that K. Tempest Bradford isn't very well traveled (or well read) and actually thinks she's being daring by suggesting something like this, not realizing her own reading list is shooting her in the foot. How American-provincial would you have to be to consider UMBERTO ECO marginal? The man is pretty much the embodiment of straight white Western heterosexual culture. And Márquez ...can you really imagine Gabo getting down with non-cisgender Cambodian post-op transmen or whatever?

Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian

And I would love to read more prose by women in general.

Most of my favorite writers are homosexual and/or non-white women (Joanna Russ, Djuna Barnes, Can Xue, Yumiko Kurahashi, Mina Loy, etc.) But I don't like them because of that, I like them because of their writing. On that note, who's the whitest, straightest male writer we can think of? Jonathan Franzen and John Updike are my nominations. Victor Hugo and Thomas Hardy also seem really straight and really, really white.

[dr. locrian]

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

...except for Japan, where the prose tradition begins with Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon - or, in other words, a woman writing a really long romance novel and a woman writing the 11th century equivalent of a nit-picking blog filled with mean-spirited complaints about anything and everything (the men were off writing poems in Chinese).

As soon as I sent that last message, I knew that I would regret that "every culture" comment. Curse my feeble mind!

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In all seriousness though, I get the impression that K. Tempest Bradford isn't very well traveled (or well read) and actually thinks she's being daring by suggesting something like this, not realizing her own reading list is shooting her in the foot. How American-provincial would you have to be to consider UMBERTO ECO marginal? The man is pretty much the embodiment of straight white Western heterosexual culture. And Márquez ...can you really imagine Gabo getting down with non-cisgender Cambodian post-op transmen or whatever?

Yeah, Eco and Márquez were both stretches. She would've done better excluding men of any race entirely.

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Most of my favorite writers are homosexual and/or non-white women (Joanna Russ, Djuna Barnes, Can Xue, Yumiko Kurahashi, Mina Loy, etc.) But I don't like them because of that, I like them because of their writing. On that note, who's the whitest, straightest male writer we can think of? Jonathan Franzen and John Updike are my nominations. Victor Hugo and Thomas Hardy also seem really straight and really, really white.

I don't know about straight, but H.P. Lovecraft was more desperately white than any other writer I've ever encountered. Of course, reading his voluminous, collected letters and Joshi's titanic Lovecraft bio really underscored HPL's frantic whiteness of being.

And I write this as a great HPL reader and admirer.

[Fenris Technique]

Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian

I mean, the article is clearly a subjective one. I don't really care if she personally likes reading non-white/white female or gay writers more than she does straight white males. Who cares? We straight male writers are doing just fine, thanks, and always have. So why should I feel threatened and/or offended by a stated opinion piece?

Well . . . I'm glad you're doing fine. I entered the publishing game a year an a half ago and am sitting on 90+ rejections while only garnering 3 paid acceptances. Perhaps our other esteemed forum members can teach me how to leverage my white, cishet, maleness a little more effectively because apparently I suck at it.


Joking aside, folks would be offended by her piece for the same reason folks are always offended by stereotyping - it suggests that ones failures are an inevitable manifestation of their physiology. Asians don't like to hear about how 'asians can't drive'. POC's don't want to hear about how they can't swim. Gay men don't want to hear about how they can't fight. OWG's (old white guys) don't want to hear about how they can't write inclusive fiction.

Everyone wants to be judged on their own merits and performance, not by the preconceptions people hold of their demographic.

There's also this whole assumption that 'literature' is a finite pie meant to be divided in an egalitarian manner among all, yet white guys have forcibly seized control of the 'literature pie' and deprived other demographics of their 'fair share' . . . but that's a whole other can of worms. To be clear, I'm not terribly offended by the blog, rather I'd say I'm disappointed by the amount of importance people are attaching to the race/sex/gender of authors. Never seen a bad story improve or a good story degrade based on the demographics of the author.

[dr. locrian]

I find it difficult to work up much outrage regarding my white maleness or anyone's negative response to it. Perhaps I would if there was a history of other groups persecuting white men for being white men. At least where I was born and raised in the Deep South USA, being a white male meant that I was never rejected or persecuted because of my sex or the color of my skin. I was rejected and persecuted for other reasons, but never for those.

However, I grew up with a LOT of people (some in my family) who absolutely had a persecution complex when it came to their sex and race. "The most discriminated against person in the world is the Pale Male."

Pffft.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I think Tempest was also encouraging people to make their own versions of the challenge so there wasn't any specific rules.

If I were to do a similar challenge I'd like to focus on regions where writing is harder (but still possible) to find.

I know some female authors are against women-only anthologies, but I'm attracted to these not because I specifically want a female perspective, but because they are collections of seemingly neglected authors (despite several big important authors like Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson).

[Justin Isis]

Quote Originally Posted by With Strength I Burn

I think for good religious poetry being celibate for long-stretches of time and daily solitude in natural scenery are typically necessary.

No, that's paying undue attention to externals. If you can't pull it off while having sex every day and hanging out in busy shopping centers, it isn't really religious. The immanence of Non-Being is basically constant penetration, exhaustive climaxes and crisp white Brooks Brothers shirts bought in crowded department stores.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian

However, I grew up with a LOT of people (some in my family) who absolutely had a persecution complex when it came to their sex and race. "The most discriminated against person in the world is the Pale Male." Pffft.

I think a lot of people get paranoid about this stuff if they're not used to discussing it in-depth outside their immediate circles. They imagine hordes of really monstrous feminists and lefties when there really aren't that many who are that extreme.
I often want tell them to calm down and just observe the debates and it probably won't hurt as much as they think it will. It was the same for me when I was younger before I was surprised to discover I agreed with a lot of the people I had previously felt threatened by.

But then some privileged people regularly discussing politics on a professional level still have a persecution complex and imagine their opponents to be far more monstrous than they really are.