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

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Being engaged with a kind of marginalization which mirrors one's own can be extremely cathartic and educational, as well. It's one of the reasons why some people prefer writing/engaging with fantasy than realistic works. If understanding real world fascism through the lens of Harry Potter fascism is what it takes for somebody to grapple with the horrors of current politics without falling into debilitating grief, then so be it. It's why some trans or neurodivergent folks might resonate strongly with fictional types of non-humanism in ways which aren't actually self-dehumanizing; sometimes you want to be non-binary in peace without thinking about how transness is constructed and oppressed in society, and instead you ant to explore your own gender through the lens of a fictional society of dragons where there isn't that looming binary, or you want to consider your own thought processes as being structured mechanically without the "haha, you're a freak" social weight attacked to it. Sometimes it actually helps us critically engage with weighty and personal experiences when we allow that distance or that veil of allegory.

When it comes to understanding yourself through the context of understanding others, well. There's plenty that could be said about realizing how fucked up your parents were by gaining experience of what somebody's life with good parents looks like, or somebody with body dysmorphia finding solidarity with somebody with gender dysphoria, or even a transmasculine person reading about transfeminine-based queerness as a way to get to know their own feelings about transness without being swallowed by dysphoria and shame.

However a really important experience for me was when I took Latinx Studies. It turns out that a lot of Latinx-American racial theory and narratives... closely resemble East Asian-American racial theory and narratives. And while I have all kinds of shame and hatred and bitterness and regret surrounding my culture and my heritage and my upbringing, that weight didn't carry over into learning about other peoples' experiences being Latinx. So I actually learned things about the politics of immigration and assimilation and stuff... without my trauma brain screaming "NONONONONONO!" and shutting everything out. And yeah, in some way you could say that I used another culture I didn't belong to in order to make things about me (in my own head!). However I don't see how that makes me different from any other non-Latinx student in the class. And, in fact, there were very few people in the class of recent immigrant generational status, which essentially meant that when it came to lessons relating to first- and second-generation immigration experiences versus third+ generation experiences for Latinx folks in the US, it meant that I had more firsthand insights to share about cultural disjoints and assimilationist politics than many of the actually-Latinx-but-third-generation-and-beyond folks who were raised to be much more competent of hegemonic American culture than I was. Despite how interested I am in the social sciences, I always steered clear of anything to do with East Asia or East Asian-Americanism or even family systems because it hit too close to home. But because I started my theoretical basis of immigration and non-black/white racial politics and culture-passed-down-through-generations with Latinx Studies instead of Asian American Studies, I actually know useful things about immigration and racial politics and generational culture. I have a framework in which to understand my dad telling me that as an American, I oppress him, and I have a more profound understanding of the politics of the US-Mexican border than most average non-Latinx folks I know. I makes me better for me and it makes me better at being a respectful ally/activist, because wow, that whole "putting yourself in other peoples' shoes" isn't all that bad of a thing when it comes to building connections and inspiring people to treat each other like fellow humans!

Also learning about queer Chinese identity (as in what queer people are doing in China, not Chinese-American queer identity) in my transnational queer studies class taught me a lot about my own culture (which was obviously never taught to me because why would my parents know about or teach me about queerness??) and gave me a lot of resources to articulate just how the constructions of male and female really are different between the American culture that I know and the non-American culture I was formatively raised in. And some dipshit tumblr activist would tell me "oh, but that's okay, because you are queer and Chinese, so that's your heritage and it's not appropriation or fetishization or disrespectful!" Except that's ridiculously wrong, because according to Chinese people born Chinese, I'm not one of them. Because it turns out that racial/ethnic politics are culturally bound, too! And the queerness that I bring with me, which is backed in the Western view of transgenderism being distinct from queer sexuality, would also be super out of place and even imperialist within the realm of native Chinese queer culture, in which there's not actually a distinction between what Americans would ostensibly identify as "butch lesbianism" and "transmasculinity." So actually, it would be a really ignorant take to extend the logic of "you shouldn't write outside of the identities you are" and say "but you're the race I say you are (Chinese), which matches the race I say those other people are (Chinese, but in China), and you're queer and they're queer (true, but queerness is constructed in different contexts! in relation to different systems!), so therefore if you wanted to write about being a Chinese trans person (in China), that'd be fine!" Which is exactly what they'd do! And in fact, at a certain point, people who engage in bad identity politics on tumblr tend to think so heavily within the realms of race/class/gender/ability/maybe religion that they forget about how very relevant identities such as immigration status/nationality/body type/language/geographic stability/etc are just as relevant. And because intersectionality and the matrix of identity is all about how literally everything is relevant, it quite actually does make significantly more sense to say "okay, never mind with policing individual-level identity credentials, let's just say we should all strive to be humble and focus more on institutional things and naming patterns on that scale."

[22degreehalo]

Yeah. I can't speak to any specifics of what you're talking about, but I'd had similar experiences of understanding myself through other kinds of people.

Ever since I first discovered it when I was around 11, I've written and read a lot of slash fanfiction. As a teenager this lead to my discovery of many parts of the LGBT+ community, where I also tried to contribute as actively as I could, and which felt like the most comfortable place for me. As I identified as bi (and cis), that all seemed to make perfect sense.

But as time went on, it became more and more clear that I was actually on the asexual spectrum. I was scared of that for a lot of reasons, so it took a lonnnng time to admit that I wasn't just full bi. And then, even worse, I came to realise that I might actually be aro/ace. I HATED the idea of this with every fiber of my being. It felt so lonely and awful and like I was destined to be miserable and alone forever (not to mention that I was finding it really hard to find work at the time and was super scared how I'd manage to support myself without a partner).

Unfortunately, I had that revelation riiight around the beginning of the ace discourse. Which also coincided with the rise of antis and fujoshi discourse.

Suddenly I was second guessing everything. Why was I spending all my time thinking and writing about gay/bi men when I wasn't either? Did that actually make me a terrible appropriative fetishising straight piece of shit?

To some extent, I still don't know exactly why I tend to be drawn to those stories. (Partly, I think it really is just lack of complex, interesting f/f relationships that aren't already canon.) But the fact is, I could relate to a lot of it. The feeling of not fitting in with the majority? Of knowing that people around you want you to do something, but you can't? That they specifically want you to get into a nice pretty heterosexual family that will make them look good to the neighbours? Of trying to make yourself feel something and failing? Of wondering if you're even capable of romantic love or attraction? all of these were my experiences.

But writing about gay/bi people is easier, because it didn't hit quite so close to home. I could still imagine a happy ending that was counter mainstream but didn't feel like giving up. I could still imagine someone else understanding and caring about me above everyone else. For me, it was still too hard to see that when it came to being ace and aro.

As for why it was usually men? Partly the same deal - I know I'm supposed to relate to women, so it's especially jarring when I can't. Reading about cis women having sex in particular made me more and more self-conscious about my own asexuality.

Not to mention that I have also realised over time that I likely have ADHD inattentive, and while I think I'm probably not autistic, I definitely relate to those experiences a lot. And there's a LOT to that a big part is how it makes wlw spaces not comfortable for me: part of the reason I don't especially relate to women is that most women are neurotypical! But the current feminist politics on tumblr leans heavily into 'women are all BEST FRIENDS who HAVE EACH OTHER'S BACKS, don't be #notliketheothergirls, men are all bad because they never do chores and aren't emotionally available' (neither of which I'm great at either? :/) so... wlw spaces are sometimes rly uncomfortable to me right now because I don't feel that innate female bonding and attraction and then feel guilty and feminist because of it.

AND: part of ADHD for me is that I'm just... super self-conscious 24/7 around other people. I'm constantly trying to stamp down on my weird traits and just be Normal, even though ordinary conversation and ways of hanging out are really tiring and difficult for me. But I honestly have never seen this properly expressed in fiction? Usually neurodivergent characters are portrayed as not caring if they look or act weird, and female neurodivergent characters are just rare altogether. Instead, I found these feelings were way better depicted in stories about people feeling ashamed of their own queerness, and in stories about men dealing with toxic masculinity and finding it hard to express themselves.

So tl;dr, growing up I had these feelings of difference but found a way to deal with them in a way that was healthy and productive - I actually have helped out with several different LGBT+ activist things! But this whole idea that you're only supposed to write about people like yourself really fucked me up, because that wasn't what I needed at the time, and in fact might well only hurt me more than anything. But as usual tumblr decided that rhetoric is the only thing that matters, not real-world consequences, and you're only entitled to do something that goes beyond that extremely narrow view of acceptable behaviour as long as you can write up three full essays of intricately detailed and analysed information as to why, yes, you do actually Need it. :/

[zenolalia]

I'm still working my way through the rest of this discussion so I don't have much to actually say in response to your points here (other than, thank you for articulating them!), but I do want to point you to this fic I wrote a few years ago, which is specifically about how two neurodivergent characters are perceived by the people around them, including by a third ND character--a young woman who is highly concerned with assimilating to normative society, and who offers the main two advice on how better to do so. It's short, and barely a drop in the bucket, but as you mentioned an absence of ND characters who are aware of their divergence from the norm and care about it, I thought it might be worth offering.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785884