Existence is its own justification.: seanan

Existence is its own justification.

The ongoing discussion about diversity in fiction is, well, ongoing; that's sort of what ongoing discussions do. (Also, I have been neck-deep in edits for the past month, so the fact that I used "ongoing" three times in the prior sentence feels deliciously naughty.) On the one side, you have people saying "representation matters." On the other side, you have people saying that the urge for diversity in fiction is "selfie culture" (and somehow that's bad?), and that fiction should show us new things, not just be "a representative of the self," and that it's "jarring" when they encounter "minority characters" who don't somehow fit a list of cultural and social ticky-boxes that would justify those characters existing as anything other than straight, white, male. "Cis" doesn't even need to be spoken. There's no way a trans* character could exist for any reason other than to talk about their genitals, and that would be the ultimate in jarring, thanks.

And people wonder why I spend so much time wanting to set the world on fire.

I think it's very telling that the people who say it's wrong to want representation in fiction are almost overwhelmingly white. If I want to read about white people having amazing adventures and doing incredible things, being heroes and villains, simple and complicated, handsome and hideous, loved and hated, all I need to do is pick up a book at random. There is a literally 90% chance that I will get all those things from whatever book I've chosen, especially if I'm going for the "classic literature" of the science fiction/fantasy/horror world. 90%! And that may honestly be low-balling the number! If I were a straight white man, of course I wouldn't see any issue with representation in fiction—I'd be on every page I turned! Even as a straight white woman, I'd be on a lot of pages, even if half those pages would have me either naked or screaming (or both, if I had happened to grab a Gor book). There's no problem with representation here!

But I've never been a straight white man. I've never been a straight white girl, either. I was a bisexual kid with a lot of questions and not very many answers, and it wasn't until I encountered ElfQuest that I actually felt like I saw myself on a page. No, I didn't think I was an elf, although I sort of wished I was, because elves are awesome, but it was Cutter and Leetah and the rest who introduced me to the idea that I could love boys and girls, and not be a bad person. I wasn't indecisive or wicked. I just had a lot of love to give, and my set of criteria for who got it wasn't based on gender.

Let me restate that: I was already bi. I had already been attracted to girls, guys, and a kid in my class who went by "Pup" and refused to be pinned down to either gender (and my second grade teacher never forced Pup to commit either way, which was pretty damn cool of her, given that this was the 1980s). Books did not make me choose my sexuality; books told me a) that my sexuality existed, and b) that it was okay, it was natural, it was not proof that there was something wrong with me. And especially in grade school/middle school, sexuality is invisible in a way that very little else is. No one knew I was queer until I came out. It wasn't even a matter of openly hiding it; sex wasn't on the table, I didn't feel like sharing, I didn't share. No one knew that I was different. Everyone thought that when they read their books about little white girls having adventures, they were reading about me, too.

You know what's not invisible? Race. "I don't see race" is bull. When we read those books about little white kids having amazing adventures, we knew that it was white kids having adventures, because adventures are for white people. At the age of eight, we all understood that our non-white classmates were not represented in the books we read, and very few of us had the sophistication to jump to "this is a lack of representation." Instead, we jumped to "I guess Oz doesn't like black people." Because books shape your view of the world, books remake you in their image, and the books we had said little white kids go on adventures, little kids of any other race are nowhere to be seen.

This is a problem.

So some of us grew up, and for whatever reason—maybe it affected us directly, maybe it affected our friends, maybe it was just pointed out—we started trying to show a world that looked more like the world we actually lived in, where everything wasn't a monoculture. And for some reason, this is being taken as a threat. How dare you want little Asian kids to go on adventures. How dare you want queer teenagers to save the world. How dare you imply that transwomen can be perfectly ordinary, perfectly competent people who just want to not get eaten by the dinosaur that's been eating everyone else. That's selfie culture, that's diversity for the sake of diversity, that's wrong. And after a great deal of consideration, I have come to this conclusion:

If that's what you think, you can go fuck yourself.

That's not politic, and it's not nice, and it may cause a couple of people to go "what a bitch, I'm done," but I don't fucking care. Because I am tired of people needing to thank me for making an effort. I am tired of receiving email that says it was distracting when so-and-so turned out to be gay, or asking why I have Indian characters in three separate series (and the fact that having an Indian woman show up and never speak a line is apparently enough to put Indexing on the same level as Blackout for some people just makes me weep for humanity). I am tired of "oh you feel like you're so open-minded" because I write about gay people, bi people, poly people, people who are exactly like the people that I know. I want to be unremarkable for my casting choices, and only remarkable for my characters being awesome (because let's face it, my characters are awesome).

A lack of representation in fiction leads to a lack of self-esteem, because selfie culture is important: we need to see ourselves, and the people who keep trying to dismiss that as somehow selfish or greedy or narcissistic are the ones who've had a mirror held up to them for so long that they don't even see it anymore. White becomes so generic, so default, that it's not mentioned when describing a character ("blonde hair, blue eyes" vs. "oh, she's black, of course, that's the biggest thing"). Humanity is huge and diverse and amazing, and saying that only a small, approved sliver of it belongs in fiction is a dick move. If diversity is distracting, it's because it's so rare.

We can fix that.

mpoetess

December 6 2013, 16:37:00 UTC 3 years ago

New comment

Yes. Yes, please. Dear deity-or-lack-thereof-of-choice, yes. This.

seanan_mcguire

December 7 2013, 23:26:52 UTC 3 years ago

I hope we get there.

kaberett

December 6 2013, 16:41:01 UTC 3 years ago

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

December 7 2013, 23:27:02 UTC 3 years ago

arianhwyvar

December 6 2013, 16:51:13 UTC 3 years ago

Yes. So very yes. Thank you.

December 7 2013, 23:27:13 UTC 3 years ago

So very welcome.

mrs_norris_mous

December 6 2013, 16:51:17 UTC 3 years ago

Thank you.

December 9 2013, 15:55:39 UTC 3 years ago

Always welcome.

geekhyena

December 6 2013, 16:55:32 UTC 3 years ago

So very much THIS.

December 9 2013, 15:55:47 UTC 3 years ago

Yay!

sirriamnis

December 6 2013, 16:55:44 UTC 3 years ago

As someone who knew she liked boys AND girls as early as the age of five, thank you. And I agree whole heartedly with everything you've said here.

December 9 2013, 15:56:33 UTC 3 years ago

It's weird how we're happy to have little kids play at heterosexual love, but homosexual love? NOPE. I mean, come on. When I was five, I wanted to hold hands with girls (and boys), not fuck them.

3 years ago

elialshadowpine

idancewithlife

December 6 2013, 17:18:53 UTC 3 years ago

Fiction is where some of us got our earliest dreams. It's where some of us learned there were families different from our own. It's where we learned to hope that we could change our lives if we could only get to adulthood. Since I'm white it was easier for me to read myself in when I was young. It should be easy for *everyone* to find stories they can read themselves into; to say, "I'm like that. I could do that."

December 9 2013, 15:56:44 UTC 3 years ago

Agreed.

kerrykhat

December 6 2013, 17:19:10 UTC 3 years ago Edited: December 6 2013, 17:19:45 UTC

I remember reading Page by Tamora Pierce when I was about 11 and crying when Kel mentioned that in the Yamani Islands, people who were LGB weren't stigmatized. It was the first time in any book I read where people like my moms were explicitly mentioned and considered normal. Even though a family like mine wasn't shown, the fact that the possibility existed in that world meant so much to me.

labelleizzy

December 8 2013, 07:10:50 UTC 3 years ago

did you know that

tammypierce was here on LJ?

poincaraux

December 6 2013, 17:25:41 UTC 3 years ago

It's often too easy to pick my battles and not comment on things that don't bother me. So, in this case, let me fix that: the diversity of your characters doesn't bother me, and that's a good thing. Thanks.

December 9 2013, 15:57:06 UTC 3 years ago

badgermirlacca

December 6 2013, 17:26:43 UTC 3 years ago

Their argument sounds to me a lot like "MY selfie culture is okay. YOUR selfie culture is wrong."

December 9 2013, 15:57:17 UTC 3 years ago

Pretty much.

vixyish

December 6 2013, 17:40:59 UTC 3 years ago

Hear, hear.

The claim "diversity is distracting" is so telling. What is it distracting them from? "Waiter, there's a black person in my default-white SF!"

When I was reading the pieces that led to all this, the most infuriating thing was the idea that any "diverse" characters need to have historical background/justification in order to be in the story. They need a reason to exist. That's telling, too. Why don't the white characters need a reason or a historical background to justify their existence? Why don't the male characters need a reason to be in the story?

If these people had the self-awareness to examine the context of what they're saying... *sigh* *burn*

December 9 2013, 15:57:46 UTC 3 years ago

If they had that kind of self-awareness, the human race would suffer an asshole deficit.

gement

apocalypticbob

December 6 2013, 17:42:13 UTC 3 years ago

Art is the first place that so many of us feel less alone, less strange. For me, it was a parody song at a renaissance festival when I was 16 that suddenly opened my eyes to realizing I wasn't crazy, wasn't the only one to have the desires I had or the feelings I had. Songs, books, poetry, visual arts. We HAVE to keep making these things inclusive, not exclusive. Keep doing what you are doing, Seanan, and I will keep buying your books and recommending your books. We DO get to change the world, one piece of art at a time.

Yesterday George Takei posted on his Facebook an interview with Nichelle Nichols, in which she was ready to resign from Star Trek because she kept getting written out of shows. A zealous Trekkie came and implored her to remain with the show, because what she was doing was so important that she should not abdicate her role. That self proclaimed Trekkie was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He told her that the images we see, for good or ill, become part of who we are and what is normal to us.

Keep writing it until it is normal.

naamah_darling

December 6 2013, 23:38:29 UTC 3 years ago

That was EXACTLY the example I was thinking of for why representation is important. Mae Jemison cited Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration for becoming an astronaut -- the first Black woman in space. It is TREMENDOUSLY important that we see people like ourselves in our entertainment. The stories we love become part of us and shape our own narratives in ways so profound it's difficult to credit.

December 6 2013, 17:45:32 UTC 3 years ago

Huzzah and thank you. For writing awesome characters (damn right they are!) and for saying these true and wise things.

December 9 2013, 15:58:12 UTC 3 years ago

You are always welcome.

Deleted comment

ankewehner

December 6 2013, 19:14:08 UTC 3 years ago

mh, tangent... I don't know if you (both of you) still care, but there's a new Elfquest series out, published at Dark Horse. I heard of it a bit too late to pre-order issue 1 that will hit comic stores in January, so I thought I'd mention. (There is a prologue/special issue, too, already out.)

oneminutemonkey

elliemurasaki

December 6 2013, 18:04:27 UTC 3 years ago

YES THIS ALL OF THIS

December 9 2013, 15:58:39 UTC 3 years ago

YAY

beccastareyes

December 6 2013, 18:06:17 UTC 3 years ago

Yes. This. Having settings that don't just default to what the author assumes is 'normal' is good for everyone, but especially kids who need to know that people like them can have lives outside of Very Special Episodes about bigotry. (Those Very Special Episodes might have been important steps, but they aren't the destination.)

December 6 2013, 19:17:03 UTC 3 years ago

Reminds me how I loved stories of girls dressing up as boys and proving they were "just as good" as the boys (hey, boys were the only ones who got to do anything interesting in these stories otherwise...) when I was a kid, but nowadays I'm more like, "yeah, we know. We've known for decades, you just weren't listening", and rolling my eyes.

autopope

December 6 2013, 18:10:09 UTC 3 years ago

Thanks for Doing It Right. And saying this. It's important.

December 9 2013, 15:59:17 UTC 3 years ago

Always welcome.

<3

miintikwa

December 6 2013, 18:22:25 UTC 3 years ago

*standing fucking ovation*

December 9 2013, 15:59:28 UTC 3 years ago

*curtsey*

argonel

December 6 2013, 18:35:26 UTC 3 years ago

Let me say this, as a white male I read Sci-fi and Fantasy to read about people who are different me. Keep telling awesome tales about people who aren't like me, and a few who are. Seeing things from different perspectives only helps me be a well rounded human.

greyduck

December 6 2013, 19:20:26 UTC 3 years ago

Seconding the above comment, 100%.

wendyzski

ashabardon

December 6 2013, 18:41:40 UTC 3 years ago

Yes and thank you!

December 9 2013, 15:59:47 UTC 3 years ago

Very welcome.

lysystratae

December 6 2013, 18:43:35 UTC 3 years ago

Exactly

December 10 2013, 16:58:39 UTC 3 years ago

shanejayell

December 6 2013, 18:43:51 UTC 3 years ago

Damn right.

December 10 2013, 16:58:48 UTC 3 years ago

Yay.

museclio

December 6 2013, 18:45:29 UTC 3 years ago

And this is part of the reason that like Jim Hines, even if you were not my favorite writer, I buy every book you write and every anthology that you are in.

December 10 2013, 16:59:00 UTC 3 years ago

Thank you; that means a lot to me.

ravens_shadow

December 6 2013, 18:45:32 UTC 3 years ago

So many thoughts.

If someone is writing an urban fantasy, diversity does belong there, because our cities are filled with diverse people. If someone is writing a secondary world fantasy, diversity belongs there, too, because many cultures interacted through the centuries, and differing sexual orientations did not 'begin' in just the past few decades. Harbors, marketplaces, castes, borderlands--all offer the opportunity for people of different backgrounds and cultures to interact, and come into conflict, which is great for a story. If it's distracting, I wonder if it's because the reader is getting too wrapped up in expecting the characters to make as big a deal about a diverse cultural or sexual background as he/she (the reader) is, and the characters aren't.

I have to mention The Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliott. It's secondary world (alternate history, sort of, with magic) epic fantasy, and nearly every character is a character of color. They have different backgrounds (Phoenician, Afric, Celtic, etc.), and that diversity is just a matter of course.

hsb

December 6 2013, 19:10:00 UTC 3 years ago

This this this.

I started a long rant, but actually, it boils down to: I want to see people like the people around me in the stories I read. And people who are different, and some sense that if your world has a big ol fundamental difference, like zombies or dragons, or spacetravel, that has affected social patterns, but hasn't obliterated the old ones. Because why would it?

H

kimuro

December 6 2013, 18:55:52 UTC 3 years ago

I went to college in the late 70s. Among my circle of friends there were ... a Muslim Persian girl (my closest friend), her Jewish roommate ( swear to God that never occurred to me until I started writing last month!), several RHPS floor-show performers, God knows how many homosexual youths (I only know of one because she asked me out) and plenty of black college students, mostly in pre-med chem or bio (because that was my major) . There was even a male ethnic Hawaiian cheerleader ... with lovely legs (he refused to wear anything other than shorts no matter what the weather).

So tell me, if I'm writing a story true to the college life I experienced at that time, how can it be anything BUT diverse?

Of course, that's college. High school should be more homogeneous, right?
My hs was more than 50% black, I had a wicked bad crush on a Jewish boy, one year we had a transfer student from Turkey, I can remember being amused by a younger schoolmate whose name was Yung Man (Korean, iirc). My circle of friends at the time included four homosexuals (3 male, one female - I had a bit of a pash on her, she was gorgeous).

Ironically, my older sister, one academic year above me, had that homogeneous non-diverse scholastic experience that is supposedly the norm. We did go to the same school. We just didn't see the same things.

December 6 2013, 22:25:28 UTC 3 years ago

Your friends sound awesome. :)

notalwaysweak

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