Mythopoet
Auror
Ok, that was a pretty click-baity title, but I really am trying to find a way to express myself here that won't be offensive. *crosses fingers*
In recent months there have been several threads dealing with the subject of "diversity" in our storytelling. The basic consensus is that diversity is a good thing and should be promoted through writing if at all possible. Generally these threads have explored diversity through race and gender, placing emphasis on writing compelling female and minority characters. Often times these threads descend into the chaos of competing views on what is "acceptable", what is "offensive", and what is the right way to view gender and race. I've participated in several of these threads intermittently, but always felt bothered by them. Not by the content of the posts in particular, but by the subject overall. I've finally identified what bugged me about it. In a few words...
I just really don't care about these issues.
That's probably going to offend some people because these are some of the big issues of our time. But let me try to explain.
I find issues of race and gender equality boring. (Yeah, I'm really digging myself in here.) Maybe this is because I'm not a minority, being extremely white. (Seriously, I can't even tan. I'm pasty.) One could argue then that I am not concerned about issues of race because I'm part of the privileged race and therefore don't understand the obstacles minorities face. One could argue that my indifference to race is a huge problem. I wouldn't necessarily argue against those claims. On the other hand, I am a woman, even a small, feminine woman. I've experienced condescension. (I recently had a potential landlord insist that he needed to talk to my husband rather than me over the details of a rental agreement, even though I am always the one in our relationship that deals with these things. Needless to say, we didn't rent from him.) I've experienced issues when people viewed me as a "bitch" because I was in a leadership position and acted like a leader, a position in which they wouldn't have had any trouble with a man. I know there is injustice in the world and inequality. I know it's a problem.
But at the same time, it isn't actually "racism" and "sexism" that is the problem. They are merely symptoms of the problem. They stem from much deeper fundamental flaws within the human nature that no amount of "representation" and "diversity" will address. So I see these efforts as useless and thus boring. We're treating the symptoms while the disease rages on, consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head they say so my thinking is...
Why not just make my own imagined world just the way I want it? A world where I don't have to deal with boring issues of race and sex at all, but can just write the kinds of stories about the kinds of people in the kinds of places I find compelling?
Is it escapism? It sure as hell is. But if I'm forced to live in a fundamentally flawed world full of fundamentally flawed people, I see no reason not to use my imagination to escape, at least for a time. Racism and sexism and every other sick human prejudice are never going to go away. There's only one real solution for them and most people won't accept it. (And I won't go into it here, because that's a whole different messy topic.) Call me crazy, but I just don't find issues that the human race has always had and always will have and there's nothing I can do about it very interesting.
Quite bluntly, I find those issues boring. I don't want to explore them in my writing and in my fantasy world. I would much rather write about awesome fantasy things than mundane real world things. I would rather make my fantasy world fundamentally different from our real world with its own problems that I find more compelling.
I think there are probably other fantasy writers who feel the same way and who feel like they are often being shamed into dealing with "diversity issues" in their work. Yeah, I know, people who make such calls always claim that they're not trying to pressure anyone. It still comes across as pressure. So I'm just writing this to say, I don't think fantasy writers need to or even should deal with this kind of stuff. If this is the kind of stuff you, as a writer, find interesting then great. Do your thing. But let me do mine. I just want to write fantasy.
In recent months there have been several threads dealing with the subject of "diversity" in our storytelling. The basic consensus is that diversity is a good thing and should be promoted through writing if at all possible. Generally these threads have explored diversity through race and gender, placing emphasis on writing compelling female and minority characters. Often times these threads descend into the chaos of competing views on what is "acceptable", what is "offensive", and what is the right way to view gender and race. I've participated in several of these threads intermittently, but always felt bothered by them. Not by the content of the posts in particular, but by the subject overall. I've finally identified what bugged me about it. In a few words...
I just really don't care about these issues.
That's probably going to offend some people because these are some of the big issues of our time. But let me try to explain.
I find issues of race and gender equality boring. (Yeah, I'm really digging myself in here.) Maybe this is because I'm not a minority, being extremely white. (Seriously, I can't even tan. I'm pasty.) One could argue then that I am not concerned about issues of race because I'm part of the privileged race and therefore don't understand the obstacles minorities face. One could argue that my indifference to race is a huge problem. I wouldn't necessarily argue against those claims. On the other hand, I am a woman, even a small, feminine woman. I've experienced condescension. (I recently had a potential landlord insist that he needed to talk to my husband rather than me over the details of a rental agreement, even though I am always the one in our relationship that deals with these things. Needless to say, we didn't rent from him.) I've experienced issues when people viewed me as a "bitch" because I was in a leadership position and acted like a leader, a position in which they wouldn't have had any trouble with a man. I know there is injustice in the world and inequality. I know it's a problem.
But at the same time, it isn't actually "racism" and "sexism" that is the problem. They are merely symptoms of the problem. They stem from much deeper fundamental flaws within the human nature that no amount of "representation" and "diversity" will address. So I see these efforts as useless and thus boring. We're treating the symptoms while the disease rages on, consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head they say so my thinking is...
Why not just make my own imagined world just the way I want it? A world where I don't have to deal with boring issues of race and sex at all, but can just write the kinds of stories about the kinds of people in the kinds of places I find compelling?
Is it escapism? It sure as hell is. But if I'm forced to live in a fundamentally flawed world full of fundamentally flawed people, I see no reason not to use my imagination to escape, at least for a time. Racism and sexism and every other sick human prejudice are never going to go away. There's only one real solution for them and most people won't accept it. (And I won't go into it here, because that's a whole different messy topic.) Call me crazy, but I just don't find issues that the human race has always had and always will have and there's nothing I can do about it very interesting.
Quite bluntly, I find those issues boring. I don't want to explore them in my writing and in my fantasy world. I would much rather write about awesome fantasy things than mundane real world things. I would rather make my fantasy world fundamentally different from our real world with its own problems that I find more compelling.
I think there are probably other fantasy writers who feel the same way and who feel like they are often being shamed into dealing with "diversity issues" in their work. Yeah, I know, people who make such calls always claim that they're not trying to pressure anyone. It still comes across as pressure. So I'm just writing this to say, I don't think fantasy writers need to or even should deal with this kind of stuff. If this is the kind of stuff you, as a writer, find interesting then great. Do your thing. But let me do mine. I just want to write fantasy.