After seeing multiple creators having to publically out themselves or reveal past traumas in order to get fans to stop yelling at them for representing a certain minority/concept in fiction, can yall learn to take a second to consider how your words and actions affect others? Especially in fandom spaces? By demanding that people can only talk about certain issues if they’ve personally been affected by them, you are directly forcing people to reveal their trauma/minority status.
This was prompted by fans’ response to the latest episode of a TMA featuring substance abuse, but also remember a few months ago when Jameela Jamil was cast to play a queer woman in an upcoming movie and there was so much backlash that she had to come out as queer? That fucking sucked.
^^ and the same thing happened with Keiynan Lonsdale from Love, Simon?
#hot take–‘you’re not x so you can’t write x’ is bad praxis#if you can’t find something actually wrong with the actual portrayal#maybe take a step back and ask yourself if perhaps your trauma is getting in the way of you’re enjoyment of the media#which is a totally valid but SEPARATE issue from creators being bigoted (via @dinosaurrainbowstarfish)
I hate “If you’re not X/haven’t experienced X, you don’t get to write about X.” Partly because of this- it forces people to make their traumas and identities public knowledge- and partly because it honestly seems inclined to shut down empathy. “You haven’t experienced X yourself, so you are dramatically and irrevocably different from people who have, to the point where you’ll never be able to conceptualise X well enough to write about it non-offensively.”
Sorry, but that’s bullshit. To give an example I’m qualified to give- If a neurotypical person wanted to write about, say, an autistic person facing ableism, and put actual care and thought into it, that’s brilliant. Like, yes, please do this! Please try to understand and relate to us and think about how the world looks to us! Thank you for thinking our stories are worth portraying!
“You’re neurotypical, therefore you’re Not Allowed to write about an autistic character facing ableism”? Fuck off. That sounds like a good way to discourage people from writing autistic characters, for a start, while also entrenching the (already very prevalent) idea that we’re too other for non-autistic people to comprehend.
I wrote a book about an autistic character and was pressured to out myself. I’ve heard stories of authors being asked invasive personal questions about their sexuality or gender identity by agents who are deciding whether to take on their work.
The whole #ownvoices thing started as just a way to draw attention to existing marginalized authors, but once it became a trend and a “selling point” it really started to become harmful to those same authors.
To some degree, the identity of the author has always been treated as a commodity or a marketing tool in the publishing industry. But it’s gotten worse in recent years. And it’s hard to know how to fight it. I want a world where stories are judged on their own merits and not by which identity boxes the author can check, but it’s harder to create a viral hashtag campaign around that idea.
If you have put yourself in a position where you would be less upset if you learned someone went through something traumatic, you have not put yourself in a moral position.
So much this. People often write about their trauma in fictional terms as a part of processing the real life experience. Please don’t force people to have to recount those experiences to justify to you, a stranger on the internet, why they are or aren’t allowed to write about something. Some of us have to do that shit with people in real life, we don’t need to also do it on the internet in fandom communities, which are supposed to be an escape. You aren’t entitled to other people’s back stories. You aren’t entitled to other people’s trauma. No one is obligated to out themselves, share their mental health diagnosis, or other sensitive, personal info to anyone, but especially not to entitled strangers on the internet.
