Random rambling thoughts
Apr. 16th, 2017 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwaterspark(a.k.a. My executive functioning is shot to hell and I don't want to work on my paper :( )
Social media has become this scary place where misunderstandings are rife and often the basis for explosive, caustic arguments. For someone who struggles with socializing and also experiences intense anxiety and emotional distress at the idea of inadvertently offending people, watching the social media arguments is almost enough for me to swear off interacting on social media entirely. "Call-out culture" has become a massive thing on Tumblr and Twitter, and it's scary.
Also, I am usually the first person to get defensive at the "stop feeling offended so much" anti-SJW strawman argument, but...sometimes, it does kind of feel like people base their social justice criticisms on misunderstandings, reaches, or oversimplifications of nuanced issues. For one, social media (especially Twitter) is prone to misunderstandings because of the brevity of people's posts/tweets, or because someone may be speaking to a specific audience but their post is misinterpreted by someone not from that audience.
For another...I do worry about people's comprehension sometimes, especially in the context of fiction. I've lost track of how many critical reviews of Batman v Superman complain about Lex Luthor not having a motive in the movie when he literally has an entire monologue about his motives. And warped oversimplification of social justice is how we get gross criticisms such as the ones complaining about Deadshot being a black man who uses guns, or Katana being a "stereotype" for being...a Japanese woman...who speaks Japanese...in Suicide Squad.
(I've also seen a book reviewer complain about an aspect of a book that was literally disclosed in the book summary.)
And I worry about it happening to me, with my book, because I don't have the spoons for these kinds of interactions, especially when phrased in an aggressive way.
These are the potential criticisms of Project E by some hypothetical reader my paranoid brain has come up with:
- "This book stereotypes asexuals because the asexual character is socially awkward!" [But...y'know...socially awkward asexual people do exist...I'm one of them, and there is apparently a disproportionate overlap between the asexual and autistic communities and erasing that is not cool...]
- "This book represents racial minorities negatively because the racial minorities are victimized!" [This is a difficult question that I honestly struggled with because the alternative, to have everyone be white and make the story about white suffering, did not seem to me to be better, and I personally thought that having an implicit meta commentary about how marginalized people are the ones suffering was more productive than replicating The Bucky Barnes Effect.*]
- "This book is victim-blaming regarding mental illness!" [I wanted to write Project E from the protagonist's POV in as immersive a way as possible, which meant getting into the self-victim-blame-y nature of depression (which I know all about, having been there, done that, and got the t-shirt). I think there's enough external evidence to make it clear that I don't agree with his thoughts, but there is some logical deduction involved, and I'm no longer confident that all readers are capable of making deductive leaps, given things I've seen on Goodreads and social media.]
- "This book is arophobic because the protagonist, at one point, says he doesn't want to be alone!" [Even though the character means the word "alone" literally, as in friendless and completely isolated, people sometimes interpret "alone" to mean "romantically single" and it's annoying.]
(*The Bucky Barnes Effect(TM) is my name for the fact that white male characters who undergo suffering and trauma are often popular and viewed protectively by (white) fans, whereas characters of color (and women) in similar situations often aren't nearly as popular. It's a complicated issue for sure, with some people saying that writing/reading about characters of color who suffer is too personally traumatic (and I personally don't like writing/reading about female characters in traumatic situations for this exact reason), but the argument that convinced me is that The Bucky Barnes Effect results in the centering and valorization of white characters' pain while not allowing that kind of sympathetic narrative for a character of color.)
Sometimes I even wish people not of a racial minority don't get up in arms about perceived stereotyping, because stereotypes can be complex. I, for one, am not upset by portrayals of Asian Americans' parents as strict and harsh, or of Asian American "overachieving" culture. I know it's a stereotype, obviously, but it's also a reality for many Asian Americans. That reality shouldn't be erased, either.
I wish there was more room for thoughtful discussions about how writing outside of one's own cultural background will always involve uncertainty and potential falling into stereotypes/pitfalls. And the authors who try to incorporate multiple forms of diversity are usually more likely to end up in those pitfalls (especially if they're neurodivergent and don't have enough friends of diverse backgrounds to pepper with questions...like me...*cough*), but having authors only write white characters out of fear of screwing up with characters of color is not exactly better. But, whether people are sympathetic to the claim or not, harsh criticism of authors for mistakes in diversity rep is going to deter authors from writing outside of their own experiences, and that's something we need to deal with. And there is a hierarchy in terms of harmfulness of rep—I don't view writing an Asian American academic overachiever character on the same level as representing that all Asians/Asian cultures are the same, for example.
But I really doubt we can have these thoughtful conversations over social media. (Sigh.)
Social media has become this scary place where misunderstandings are rife and often the basis for explosive, caustic arguments. For someone who struggles with socializing and also experiences intense anxiety and emotional distress at the idea of inadvertently offending people, watching the social media arguments is almost enough for me to swear off interacting on social media entirely. "Call-out culture" has become a massive thing on Tumblr and Twitter, and it's scary.
Also, I am usually the first person to get defensive at the "stop feeling offended so much" anti-SJW strawman argument, but...sometimes, it does kind of feel like people base their social justice criticisms on misunderstandings, reaches, or oversimplifications of nuanced issues. For one, social media (especially Twitter) is prone to misunderstandings because of the brevity of people's posts/tweets, or because someone may be speaking to a specific audience but their post is misinterpreted by someone not from that audience.
For another...I do worry about people's comprehension sometimes, especially in the context of fiction. I've lost track of how many critical reviews of Batman v Superman complain about Lex Luthor not having a motive in the movie when he literally has an entire monologue about his motives. And warped oversimplification of social justice is how we get gross criticisms such as the ones complaining about Deadshot being a black man who uses guns, or Katana being a "stereotype" for being...a Japanese woman...who speaks Japanese...in Suicide Squad.
(I've also seen a book reviewer complain about an aspect of a book that was literally disclosed in the book summary.)
And I worry about it happening to me, with my book, because I don't have the spoons for these kinds of interactions, especially when phrased in an aggressive way.
These are the potential criticisms of Project E by some hypothetical reader my paranoid brain has come up with:
- "This book stereotypes asexuals because the asexual character is socially awkward!" [But...y'know...socially awkward asexual people do exist...I'm one of them, and there is apparently a disproportionate overlap between the asexual and autistic communities and erasing that is not cool...]
- "This book represents racial minorities negatively because the racial minorities are victimized!" [This is a difficult question that I honestly struggled with because the alternative, to have everyone be white and make the story about white suffering, did not seem to me to be better, and I personally thought that having an implicit meta commentary about how marginalized people are the ones suffering was more productive than replicating The Bucky Barnes Effect.*]
- "This book is victim-blaming regarding mental illness!" [I wanted to write Project E from the protagonist's POV in as immersive a way as possible, which meant getting into the self-victim-blame-y nature of depression (which I know all about, having been there, done that, and got the t-shirt). I think there's enough external evidence to make it clear that I don't agree with his thoughts, but there is some logical deduction involved, and I'm no longer confident that all readers are capable of making deductive leaps, given things I've seen on Goodreads and social media.]
- "This book is arophobic because the protagonist, at one point, says he doesn't want to be alone!" [Even though the character means the word "alone" literally, as in friendless and completely isolated, people sometimes interpret "alone" to mean "romantically single" and it's annoying.]
(*The Bucky Barnes Effect(TM) is my name for the fact that white male characters who undergo suffering and trauma are often popular and viewed protectively by (white) fans, whereas characters of color (and women) in similar situations often aren't nearly as popular. It's a complicated issue for sure, with some people saying that writing/reading about characters of color who suffer is too personally traumatic (and I personally don't like writing/reading about female characters in traumatic situations for this exact reason), but the argument that convinced me is that The Bucky Barnes Effect results in the centering and valorization of white characters' pain while not allowing that kind of sympathetic narrative for a character of color.)
Sometimes I even wish people not of a racial minority don't get up in arms about perceived stereotyping, because stereotypes can be complex. I, for one, am not upset by portrayals of Asian Americans' parents as strict and harsh, or of Asian American "overachieving" culture. I know it's a stereotype, obviously, but it's also a reality for many Asian Americans. That reality shouldn't be erased, either.
I wish there was more room for thoughtful discussions about how writing outside of one's own cultural background will always involve uncertainty and potential falling into stereotypes/pitfalls. And the authors who try to incorporate multiple forms of diversity are usually more likely to end up in those pitfalls (especially if they're neurodivergent and don't have enough friends of diverse backgrounds to pepper with questions...like me...*cough*), but having authors only write white characters out of fear of screwing up with characters of color is not exactly better. But, whether people are sympathetic to the claim or not, harsh criticism of authors for mistakes in diversity rep is going to deter authors from writing outside of their own experiences, and that's something we need to deal with. And there is a hierarchy in terms of harmfulness of rep—I don't view writing an Asian American academic overachiever character on the same level as representing that all Asians/Asian cultures are the same, for example.
But I really doubt we can have these thoughtful conversations over social media. (Sigh.)
