The Allowances of Art

[zenolalia]

There's a topic of conversation that has been rolling around my social media feeds, and which is extremely frustrating to me in ways that I have trouble articulating.

There's this persistent notion that you "shouldn't" write about characters with identities you don't share, because you "can't" understand the nuances of their lives. Sometimes, people will say you should only write about such characters if you've done extremely detailed amounts of research, and others will say it is utterly forbidden.

This is endlessly frustrating to me.

From the perspective of almost any of my myriad marginalizations, it puts people like me in a situation where no one will write for or about us except for ourselves. From the perspective of the marginalizations I don't share it, it leaves me without the ability to use my art as a way of expressing alliance and furthering equality. From the perspective of a writer, it just rings of the same censorship people are always trying to put on fiction, this time with a slightly different set of vocabulary.

I want to be able to read about, say, mixed race intersex people, without having to be the one who writes those stories for myself.

Basically, white/cis/hetero/men/whatever get the opportunity to be the audience. The rest of us are expected to be the creators. And we are expected to create only in extremely restrictive, and even separatist fashions.

I have a hard time expressing why, exactly, this line of argument is so frustrating to me. It seems more like a conflux of little things than any one major flaw.

But it's gettign more prominent again, and it's making me absolutely livid.

Basically, let straight white men write about queer poc so that queer poc like myself can take a goddamn break.

That's not mutually exclusive to "celebrate the art of marginalized people" either. But this expectation that marginalized people do all the hard parts...

Well.

It smacks of, "if you don't like white men being the protagonists of games, go make your own game," in progressive paint.

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

Another thing that pisses me off is that it artificially raises the barriers to entry. If you have to do a fuckton of research before writing about something or you'll get dogpilled, then most people won't do the excruciating amount of research.

Having high barriers to entry won't increase the amount of stories featuring marginalized people, it'll do the opposite.

[zenolalia]

Absolutely true. I actually used to write a lot of fiction about people "like me," which is to say American-acculturated people of color, queer people, disabled people, etc etc.

And I just don't anymore, because even, "this is based on a real event that really happened in my real life" isn't considered enough "realism" and "research" for a lot of people.

I've basically stopped writing fiction at all.

And I'm not the only one who finds this kind of expectation unmanageable and has since given up.

[stardust_rifle]

I've been thinking about this.

With these kinds of people, it's not exactly about doing the research so you don't fuck up and write something horribly offensive out of ignorance.

See, these people tend to think (mostly subconciously) that there's about 5-7 "narratives" that the lives of marginalized people fit into.

You see this most often with trauma survivors, but it's fucking everywhere. For people like this, research isn't simply like looking into the daily routine of an, IDK, technician on a nuclear submarine before writing an in-depth story with someone like that as your protagonist, but about Finding The Right Narratives.

Because every, let's say, trans person's life fits into narratives, then personal testimonies will all also fit into those narratives, and when those people write their stories with trans protagonists, those stories are going to follow The Narratives.

And when those stories have something that deviates from The Narratives (like a trans dude protag liking PiV sex), they must not have done the research! What does it matter if the author's a trans guy who likes PiV sex! They're probablly lying about their identity!

(sorry for the textdump, i had an epiphany and needed to tell someone)

[palominocorn]

[mindblown gif here]

And by extension, "I'm just like a privileged person, except I have darker skin/I love someone of my own gender/I use a cane to walk" is not a Correct Narrative.

I'm not sure how this fits in with the "we're just like you except for [thing]" that's common in the queer and sometimes disabled community, though. Cognitive dissonance? Not the same people pushing both?