maggienotmegan

So, in the last few years, it's slowly hit home that my white privilege affects my writing as much (perhaps even moreso) than it does other aspects of my life. This would seem to be only common sense, but I have never claimed to have a high WIS score, okay?

Posts such as [Unknown LJ tag]'s "I Didn't Dream of Dragons" made me realize that (with some notable exceptions, mostly from books published in the last ten years or so) my favorite books were all about white people. Communities such as racebending drove home the fact that my favorite TV shows (and even just TV shows I occasionally watched) were all about white people.

They were also all about heterosexual, monogamous, vanilla, cisgendered people (again, with some notable exceptions), with mainly male heroes.

As a pansexual woman, I realized that I wasn't represented fairly early on, although it still took me till my late teens to really notice, and even longer for it to sink in. Now I watch my favorite TV shows, and I still enjoy them, but there's always that edge of "Wow, all the women in this show DIE" or "Would it kill you to have a queer character?" or so, so often, "THERE IS NO GENDER BINARY STOP ENFORCING IT JERKWADS."

For years, I have written (at least internally, on my mental story-harddrive) interesting female characters, three-dimensional queer characters. I have characters that I know inside and out that are pansexual, asexual, and everything in between.

I have no genderqueer or transgender characters.

I have no characters of color.

In fact, I have very few characters that don't represent myself and the people I grew up with. My characters represent the white, liberal, upper-middle-class geeks of the world.

And don't get me wrong - I strongly believe geeks need more representation, especially female and queer geeks, because dude. We're not just single straight white guys. Not by a long shot.

But you know what? That's not good enough. It's not good enough for characters of color and non-cisgendered characters to merely exist in my stories. (seanan_mcguire has a great post on why, focusing on the need for front-and-center queer characters.)

It's an easy conclusion, really, that I should include more characters of different backgrounds than mine - that I should represent the experiences of people of color, of non-cisgendered people, of non-Christian (or atheist) people.

It's a hard conclusion, too, because it's terrifying. Wouldn't it be worse to try and do it WRONG? And the effort involved in trying to do it right - sometimes it's all I can do to write a basically-me character.

A lot of folks have written up some excellent explanations for why I ought to write characters of color despite this fear. (And I think the reasoning holds true for any kind of character that significantly differs from the white, christian, heterosexual, cisgendered norm.) matociquala 's theory on "Writing the Other Without Being a Dick," as zie puts it, is to first of all stop thinking of them as the "Other." Quit dividing the world into "us and them." Again, something that seems like common sense, and simple enough, although zie also points out that simple does not necessarily mean easy. As zie says later,

if I am writing a character who has a personal background that is not bog-standard, there is going to be some twelve year old kid out there who is going to find that character, and it's going to be the only character like them they have ever seen, and if I screw it up then I am, essentially, tossing sand in the eyes of that kid.

So how do I write without tossing sand?  I research.  I get people whose experiences I'm trying to represent to read what I've written and tell me when I've been a dumbass or a dick.

And yes, it's going to take me extra work, extra effort.  But it's worth it.  

I'm having a hard time right now, taking the novel I started several years ago and revising the story to no longer be about a group of white nerdy kids.  It's particularly difficult because these are characters I created so very long ago, and changing them feels terrible.  I want Shan to stay Shan, but at the same time, I know Fatina is a more compelling character, one much more desperately needed, and one that will make my story better.

TL;DR:  Thank you, Internet.  Even though you've made my life a whole lot harder now that I know I have privilege and need to check it, I wouldn't have it any other way.  (Even if I sometimes want the damn cookie I by no means deserve, because honestly, who doesn't want cookies?)



Further Reading Material:
rydra_wong  "Writing Characters of Color (Now with 10% Less White Liberal Anxiety!)"

Writing characters of colour is not fundamentally any different from writing any other characters: it’s the same process of trying to extrapolate creatively from canon in an interesting and hopefully plausible way.

Admitting ignorance is one thing; jumping from “I don’t feel that as a white person I can ever fully understand the African-American experience” to “therefore I cannot ever write Aiden Ford, because I will get it wrong and the Scary Black People will hurt me" is another.

And for the UR DOIN' IT WRONG category, shweta_narayan 's helpful "Tough Guide to Fantasyland's Exotic Locales"

The Evil Empire (EE) lies to the South and/or East of Fantasyland proper, generally on the Other Continent; its inhabitants are Natives. Tourists will see amazing amounts of Squalor right beside displays of Massive Wealth here, and Terrible Oppression co-existing with Great Decadence. The laws will all be very harsh, but there will be such Corruption that the rich are never subject to them (unless they personally anger the Tyrant). Tourists must be given opportunities to marvel at these contradictions, because one never sees this sort of thing in Fantasyland proper, where Average Folk are contented unless under the Dark Lord, Massive Wealth and Elaborate Courtly Rituals are sources of National Pride rather than signs of Oppression, and sophistication signals Progress rather than Moral Decay.

In related topics, see: Whitewashing, as talked about on Racialicious using the example of the recent (ridiculous and racist) Hunger Games controversy.

How is it, when Rue is so clearly described that fans insist they believed her to be white? White people are considered the norm in society; the default person. It’s as simple as when you hear the words “All-American”, I can say with certainty that you are not picturing a minority person of color. This is white privilege.

I’m a longtime Hunger Games fan and have followed many conversations on the internet concerning the casting of the film. Whenever the conversation comes to Rue there is always (1) person who is surprised to find out Rue is black and (2) another person who is upset that Rue is black. Upset as if they have been tricked or as if something has been stolen from them. Upset as if they now have to reevaluate how they feel about Rue–a character many fans love dearly because of her incredible courage. “OMG, THERE IS A BLACK PERSON IN MY BOOK!?”

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