![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Thoughts on authors having to out themselves to justify their work
This started as a response to a tumblr post about "multiple creators having to publicly out themselves or reveal past traumas in order to get fans to stop yelling at them for representing a certain minority/concept in fiction" which I felt was being too simplistic.
Basically: people should be able to write about their own experience without having to out themselves. Enforcing a narrow idea of who is 'allowed' to write certain stories (or assuming that only privileged people would even want to) hurts everyone.
But I also think criticism should be allowed to sometimes bring up the privilege of creators/actors etc, even when there's a chance they may be in the closet. We just need to be more careful about how we do it.
And I didn't like the implication that there should never be any backlash or concern over this sort of thing.
Note: I scrolled through the OP's blog and they mentioned there was complex cultural stuff going on with the Jamila Jameel thing making it a poor specific example. But that doesn't really affect their argument or mine.
1) I think it’s reasonable to generally encourage own voices etc, or be personally reluctant to trust certain kinds of authors to handle certain topics. But the way to do that is to just consume and promote works that you know are by the relevant group, not attack works that seemingly aren’t.
2)There are certain casting choices where I think it’s reasonable to complain on principle. Like if, say, a cis woman is cast as a trans man character, even though there’s a small but non-zero chance that the actor is actually a closeted trans man. But such criticism should bear in mind the possibility that you’re wrong about the actor and hold up even if you are, and shouldn't say someone is definitely cis/straight etc when all you can say is that they're not known to be anything else.
Like if it turns out that Eddie Redmayne is a closeted trans woman, and the creators of The Danish Girl knew that, I'd say it was still bad to cast someone who was publicly seen as a cis man in the role of a trans woman. So someone could acknowledge the possibility that Eddie Redmayne is actually a woman while still criticising the casting.
If you think it would be ok if the creator/actor etc was X, then that's different, and requires a more thoughtful approach. Like you might complain about the pattern of (seemingly) straight writers creating popular works about queer people, but at most just make a tired sigh about any individual case, which isn't going to do any real harm to the author if they are queer but closeted.
3) There’s messy situations where people do have a problem with the actual portrayal, and find it so offensive they assume it must have been created by a transphobic cis person etc, but then the author comes out and says they were drawing on personal experience and it’s all a mess. See: I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. I mean this would happen a lot less often if so much criticism didn’t assume a simple Problematic-vs-Good Representation dichotomy, and there was more space to acknowledge differing reactions and unfortunate trends without jumping so quickly to This Should Never Have Been Made.
But like... we need to give marginalised people space to work through their reactions to things that hurt them, even if it’s in confronting or controversial ways, in both art and criticism. How we can do that while minimising the hurt we do to each other is a question I have yet seen any simple answers for, though we should all keep trying anyway.
The second OP describes themselves as a "pro-shipper", and while I'm certainly not an anti I do think some pro-shipper/anti-anti rhetoric leans to much into being against any public criticism or negative reactions to media, at least those that bring up social justice issues. I'd like to be able to discuss and critique the things I consume without being being stifling or stifled, and it's not always straight-forward even for me as a random blogger, let alone for more visible critics.
EDIT: Too tired to articulate it but a very important aspect I didn't mention is the power relationships involved. Me criticising Eddie Redmayne up there is one thing, a BNF going after some no-name queer teenage fan for drawing Rule 63 art is quite another.
Basically: people should be able to write about their own experience without having to out themselves. Enforcing a narrow idea of who is 'allowed' to write certain stories (or assuming that only privileged people would even want to) hurts everyone.
But I also think criticism should be allowed to sometimes bring up the privilege of creators/actors etc, even when there's a chance they may be in the closet. We just need to be more careful about how we do it.
And I didn't like the implication that there should never be any backlash or concern over this sort of thing.
Note: I scrolled through the OP's blog and they mentioned there was complex cultural stuff going on with the Jamila Jameel thing making it a poor specific example. But that doesn't really affect their argument or mine.
1) I think it’s reasonable to generally encourage own voices etc, or be personally reluctant to trust certain kinds of authors to handle certain topics. But the way to do that is to just consume and promote works that you know are by the relevant group, not attack works that seemingly aren’t.
2)There are certain casting choices where I think it’s reasonable to complain on principle. Like if, say, a cis woman is cast as a trans man character, even though there’s a small but non-zero chance that the actor is actually a closeted trans man. But such criticism should bear in mind the possibility that you’re wrong about the actor and hold up even if you are, and shouldn't say someone is definitely cis/straight etc when all you can say is that they're not known to be anything else.
Like if it turns out that Eddie Redmayne is a closeted trans woman, and the creators of The Danish Girl knew that, I'd say it was still bad to cast someone who was publicly seen as a cis man in the role of a trans woman. So someone could acknowledge the possibility that Eddie Redmayne is actually a woman while still criticising the casting.
If you think it would be ok if the creator/actor etc was X, then that's different, and requires a more thoughtful approach. Like you might complain about the pattern of (seemingly) straight writers creating popular works about queer people, but at most just make a tired sigh about any individual case, which isn't going to do any real harm to the author if they are queer but closeted.
3) There’s messy situations where people do have a problem with the actual portrayal, and find it so offensive they assume it must have been created by a transphobic cis person etc, but then the author comes out and says they were drawing on personal experience and it’s all a mess. See: I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. I mean this would happen a lot less often if so much criticism didn’t assume a simple Problematic-vs-Good Representation dichotomy, and there was more space to acknowledge differing reactions and unfortunate trends without jumping so quickly to This Should Never Have Been Made.
But like... we need to give marginalised people space to work through their reactions to things that hurt them, even if it’s in confronting or controversial ways, in both art and criticism. How we can do that while minimising the hurt we do to each other is a question I have yet seen any simple answers for, though we should all keep trying anyway.
The second OP describes themselves as a "pro-shipper", and while I'm certainly not an anti I do think some pro-shipper/anti-anti rhetoric leans to much into being against any public criticism or negative reactions to media, at least those that bring up social justice issues. I'd like to be able to discuss and critique the things I consume without being being stifling or stifled, and it's not always straight-forward even for me as a random blogger, let alone for more visible critics.
EDIT: Too tired to articulate it but a very important aspect I didn't mention is the power relationships involved. Me criticising Eddie Redmayne up there is one thing, a BNF going after some no-name queer teenage fan for drawing Rule 63 art is quite another.
no subject
Antis use point two in order to 'complain on principle' because someone who writes, say, underage on AO3 definitely doesn't *seem* like a CSA survivor because they're clearly a *pedophile* in the rhetoric. Worse, you get the whole 'only survivors can write this content' which is also a huge pile of...idek, to be honest. It's definitely not great that this is the take antis have as well.
And the problem is, this issue doesn't just affect like one or two minority groups, but also in the realm of anti rhetoric it also affects like - being pressured to disclose if you're in the kink community, or if you're into certain kinks, or if you're a CSA survivor, or an SA survivor and so on and so forth, and it's these specific point above that get co-opted to create very aggressive environments that basically create 'if you're not X minority, then you're a pedophile/rapist/etc.' It's pushed forward by TERF/SWERF agendas, it's political, and it's pretty horrific to be involved in it in any manner.
But like... we need to give marginalised people space to work through their reactions to things that hurt them, even if it’s in confronting or controversial ways, in both art and criticism.
This is true, but this is also 100% what antis say to justify hate campaigns. Like I see this said way more by antis than I see it said by anyone else. And 'even if it's in confronting or controversial ways' is also 100% used to justify 'go kill yourself' messages; after all, that's confronting *and* controversial. At the moment, these arguments are used more and more to justify death threats and doxxing, than I see them used to justify *not* hurting people. So while it's true that people need this space, it's also complicated by the fact that this is very empowering specifically for bullies and abusers. Abusers love to be told it's okay to work through their hurt in controversial and confrontational ways.
And the fact remains that someone who is say, queer and POC but *also* an anti, calling someone like me who is queer and white who is a CSA survivor a 'pedophile' for writing underage (which I've done like once, but oh well) or a 'rapist' for writing dubcon, goes a very long way on these points and arguments, feeling perfectly justified, because their hurt is valid and they believe that hurt justifies them censoring other people's content by trying to destroy the person who created it.
So yeah, I have complicated feelings about this, because I experience - sometimes on a daily basis (at least if I dare to go on Twitter) - what antis have turned all of these very compelling arguments into, and I know what it's like to be personally obligated through bullying and abuse to disclose painful truths about myself, just to not be called some of the most horrendous things on earth, by people who just can't conceive that I could have been *hurt* by those people vs. *being* one of those people. It's... It's pretty unspeakably awful.
And of course, antis get woke points/clout for taking up all of these points, because obviously they are valid points that make sense if you're only specifically talking about say, the Eddie Redmayne situation (or like any media situation where it's obvious that a Sea of White has portrayed POC in literally the worst ways possible because they just didn't include any POC in the creation process). It's just, a person who is on a crusade to destroy people who write kinks they don't like can literally use those *exact same points* to prop up their status as a puritanical moral panicking bully and abuser. And they do.
And I think that's also why the kickback has been particularly aggressive this time around from the 'we shouldn't have to account for ourselves or be forcibly outed to justify art' camp. Like, there is a large number of queer folk occupying minority spaces who are hurt by antis co-opting these arguments to justify cruel and unusual levels of behaviour in their quest to eliminate content they don't like and think shouldn't exist.
(I completely agree with your point 1 by the way, that's the only one that antis haven't really aggressively co-opted yet because it doesn't work in their agenda of destroying people).
The answer isn't to say that people don't have a right to work through their hurt in confrontational ways either; I'm just offering my perspective as a queer disabled CSA survivor who is regularly the victim of antis (for writing content that survivors frequently write) who sometimes use these exact same arguments to justify their positions. It's...just...complicated, which you already know <3
no subject
First: it is absolutely intolerable that you get pressured to disclose being a survivor because of what you write. I know you know I know that but...just saying it anyway. I've had less extreme experiences along those lines and it was indescribably awful.
You make a very good point about it mattering who exactly is getting criticised, and how. Which is something antis actively erase, even though paying attention to social power is the basic point any social justice analysis has to start from or it's automatically useless. I am going to think about it then edit my post, because it doesn't go without saying.
The way good arguments get coopted to justify harassment etc makes it so hard to have a productive conversation. And unfortunately it goes both ways. Look at the coopting of "cancel culture" by white male celebrities, which of course then gets used as an excuse by antis to say anyone criticising it is the equivalent of a whiny white male celebrity etc. Did you know "politically correct" originally gained popularity as a way for feminists etc to gently poke fun at themselves for being too rigid? And look at the way nazis grabbed onto the idea of free speech, to the extent that people now view the very phrase "free speech" as a right-wing dog-whistle. How do we have a productive discussion of free speech in that context? :(
I don't have much personal interaction with antis so it's less immediately fraught for me, but I totally get why you'd have an intense negative reaction to any arguments which superficially resemble theirs.
My immediate emotional reactions are a bit different, from years of being made to feel like a bad person for mentioning that I thought Stargate was maybe a bit racist etc, and I do worry fandom could swing back to that. Especially since I've seen older anti-antis who very explicitly think fandom's approach back then was 100% ok. Though in more recent years I've also been made to feel bad for defending the existence of ~problematic subjects in porn, and I do also have the worry we'll swing further into anti-ness than we have already. I worry in two directions /o\
no subject
This is very much my experience with anti-shippers as well, though not nearly to that brutal extent.
There's a bonus level where if you've disclosed that anything you write is based on personal experience, then people bullying use what you've disclosed as a way to work out how to hurt you worse because they know your trauma triggers.