#has a lot more privilege than say a cishet black disabled woman

[transmasc-wizard]

im very tired of disabled people being forgotten to, you know, exist

[broodsys]

been on the fence about saying this. don't really want to become a politicized blog, but still, i think it's worth mentioning

but over the last few years, i've been noticing a trend - just personally noticing, i'm not saying it's exclusive to the last few years bc i doubt it is - about leftist people becoming radicalized in ways rooted in exclusivity

and the thing is, this happens. propaganda works. exposure to ideas works. and then, once the beliefs begin to take root, there's a reactiveness there, a defensiveness, that becomes harder and harder to get around. i say this as someone who's been there, and is really determined to never return. but it takes intention

so, one thing i've been seeing a lot of since the election is a wave of hating all men. i get it. really, i do. but i am here to gently, compassionately remind ppl that this is the exact opening te/rfs look for. this is their in. they'll like your posts about hating men. they'll establish a connection, a rapport

some other points about the All Men Are Awful Monsters discourse:

harms trans men, like myself. contributes to us feeling like accepting the gender we are is harmful, damaging, etc. makes us more likely to stay in the closet. also works to exclude trans men - especially those who pass - from queer spaces

speaking personally, when ppl seem to accept the fact that i'm a man but turn around and disparage all men, i feel like they view me as a woman-turned-man, or a Man Lite, or something else along those lines. i'm not! i'm just a guy.

harms trans women. whether through arguments of "male socialization," or considering the penis to be a tool of violence rather than just genitalia, or through only accepting them provisionally, if they're feminine enough, if they pass enough, etc

harms all trans people, including nonbinary people, because it demonizes the role of masculinity; whether that's a past role for them, or a present role, or a partial/sometimes role, or something else entirely

harms disabled men, neurodivergent men, queer men, POC men, etc.

specifically works to support some really heinous stereotypes about certain groups of men, like Black men

and also

makes men - including cishet, white, able-bodied men, privileged men - less likely to escape their own radicalization. i don't expect this point to matter to everyone, but if any of your personal activism work revolves around deradicalization, i think this has to be one of your tenets

and none of this is to say:

that you have to admire or forgive men who do bad things

that you have to forgive men who have abused you or others

that you have to accept patriarchy

that you cannot speak of your own abuse or struggles

that you must, personally, guide every man to what is "right"

that you cannot point out things like how western men have voted in the recent election

it's really just about questioning the "all men" phrasing. i understand where it's coming from. i get the pushback against the "not all men" argument, i really do. i sympathize with the frustrations. but anytime you take a whole entire demographic and label them in one way, you are limiting your own perspective, whether that's your intent or not

the language we use matters. that includes the language we use in our own thoughts. repetition creates pathways, pathways become familiar routes, familiar routes become ingrained, and ingrained routes become very, very difficult to question. yes, you know that your "all men" is really just saying "all men who do bad things," but brains are silly. all men can eventually come to mean all men. all of them. forever. and even if that wasn't true, your "all men" might mean "all men who do bad things," but you'll draw in people who think you literally mean every single man

i'm not trying to shame anyone. i'm not trying to start an argument. i'm just saying, from experience, that this is something to be aware of. and even if the potential harm to men and trans people doesn't really matter to you, i'd hope that most of the people following me don't want to be sought after for recruitment by te/rfs, so that's something to keep in mind

[susiephone]

Hi 👋 I just wanted to ask you if you don’t mind me asking but What’s wrong with “cishet white male” authors? & why should it matter if they were white or black & male or female? It doesn’t matter the sex/skin colour of a person but the content of their character, that’s what Martin Luther King Jr say just as long the writing of the story is competently done then it shouldn’t matter what colour of there skin is, sorry for the long post have a great day, 👋 (Thank you for reading.)🙏

nothing’s inherently wrong with authors who are white, cishet, and, now that i think about it, able-bodied, it’s just..... their stories get promoted, read, and celebrated way, way more than any other group, especially in american literary circles. (it gets worse when you get into certain genres, such as fantasy and sci-fi. the only genre i can think of that isn’t male-dominated is romance, which is, surprise surprise, really looked down on by a lot of people.... despite it being by far the most profitable.) 

when i took english classes in high school, i could count the number of authors of color we read on both hands, and the women of color could fit on one. (and i know very well that, as a white woman, i am VERY privileged over many other authors -- despite being female and queer, my race unfairly tips the scales in my favor in a lot of ways, not just professionally.) publishing -- and all of media, really, follows a nasty cycle:

very few marginalized authors get published, and of those, very few get the same sort of promotion that other authors get. fewer people read their books, so those books don’t make as much money. and instead of thinking “man, we should’ve promoted more,” the publishing company thinks, “welp, looks like gay/black/trans/girly/disabled/whatever books don’t make money.” so then they’re less likely to publish those books in the first place. this is ALSO why supporting good representation is so damn important -- if the corporations don’t see it as profitable, we won’t get much more. because capitalism has fuuuuuuuuucked art in a big way.

(lindsay ellis did a FANTASTIC video about how the great western literary canon is very, VERY white and male -- link here.)

so the way i see it, the best way we can combat the issue is to seek out, read, and promote books by marginalized authors, especially in genres where their work is 10x more likely to be overlooked. 

tl;dr: we need more diversity in fiction and in the publishing industry, so i’m doing my part by seeking out books that tend to be ignored.

[queeranarchism]

I'm gay and I say cis hets to refer to straight ppl but also to make a distinction between cis straight ppl and trans straight ppl bc obviously trans ppl don't benefit from the same privilege. Also I'm Black and if a white person says "white ppl" I don't feel offended at all, quite the opposite actually. So I don't understand how a lgbq cis person saying "the cis" (including themselves) or "cis hets" to challenge cisnormativity, cissexism and/or queerphobia is... wrong?? Not trying to be rude xx

It’s not like there this is no circumstance in which cisgender lgb people can use ‘cishet’, although really, ‘cisgender and straight’ would be more accurate because it is important to recognize that they are two seperate parts of an identity and two seperate forms of privilege. 

It’s just that I do NOT want people using ‘cishet’’ for everything they hate while ignoring their own cisgender privilege and the amount of transphobia that exists in LGBT+ spaces. If you acknowledge that cisgender privilege is a thing, acknowledge it all the time, including when you look in the mirror. 

If you want to look at it another way, take two other seperate forms of privilege, like sexuality and gender. You probably wouldn’t want white woman to constantly complain about ‘white men’ while denying her own white privilege and ignoring racism in women’s spaces, would you? That would be hypocritical. Same with cisgender lgb people who use ‘cishet’ but never face their own cisgender privilege and their own transphobia. 

There is also a side issue of people using ‘cishet’ to exclude asexual and aromantic people from LGBT+ spaces. Those people are horrible aphobic shitheads. 

AND there’s a side issue (often overlapping with the aphobia issue) of liberal LGBT people presenting ‘cishets’ as a coherent enemy who is irredeemably evil, as a way to keeps us boxed in, focussing only on our own group instead of creating bonds with people we have a lot in common with. 

So if our group is trans people, liberal identity politics has us rooting for rich powerful trans people but not for the cisgender disabled man next door, even though that guy has experiences of oppression that are a lot closer to ours than a trans celebrity ever will. 

If we’re going to create real revolutionary change we need cross-identity solidarity. Presenting all ‘cishets’ as inherently evil both erases transphobia within our own ranks and keeps us away from groups who we could work with to make this world better. 

[hub-pub-bub]

he saying “it takes a village” may sound hokey but it applies to publishing. I’ve played many roles myself: I’m a writer. I am also a freelance editor and do authenticity reads (also known as sensitivity reads). By profession I’m a production editor (aka managing editor), technically one of the last lines of defense as a book becomes a finished product you find on a shelf. We’re responsible for consistency, clarity, error checks, and making people in-house as well as out-of-house happy, but we’re only one of the cogs in a machine that has input on a book’s content, presentation, and promotion. Prior to the manuscript hitting my desk it goes through the agent, the acquiring editor, the editorial assistant, possibly additional editors, beta readers, and authenticity readers (should the author choose to hire them). The book is then launched to marketing, publicity, and sales teams who attempt to sell it in many ways to many people before it’s a physical object. A book goes through many hands and is seen by many eyes before it hits the shelves.

And that means all those eyes that look at this book during the publishing process have a responsibility to speak up when said product is problematic, when the issues are glaring, when alarms have been signaled.

All those eyes that look at this book during the publishing process have a responsibility to speak up when said product is problematic.

The most recent dust-up over an ill-conceived book has people again asking the question: “Who can/should write what?” That is not the right question to ask. How about: What’s your reasoning and responsibility when choosing to write outside of your own experience? Craft does come into play, but skill is not enough. I agree with Brandon Taylor that empathy is a factor, too. To write a Black character as a white person is not the same as using the “we” narrative voice. To write a transgender character as a cisgender person is not the same as attempting to create a braided essay or tell a story nonlinearly. There are points of structure and personal bias that writers bring to their work. This is also inherent in how we read and critique work. Recognizing that we view certain groups under certain gazes can help editors offer feedback to better deconstruct what’s working and what isn’t, as well as why. We need to acknowledge that craft and empathy go hand in hand before attempting to martyr ourselves as victims of “mobs” when we’re not owning our own failures to spot the issues we’ve created and/or edited.

I’m learning my own lessons as an editor of a short story anthology. The contributors are amazing and ethnically representative; I am humbled and honored by those contributing to the anthology and am reminded of how varied and full the voices are each time I re-read stories to suggest edits.

Among the stories that were submitted to me were two written by abled people that include disabled characters. Where my marginalization (as a woman of color) can help me identify problematic areas, my privilege (as a cishet, abled person) can easily allow me to dismiss it. This is why it’s important for me to listen to and engage with friends and voices in other communities — in this case, voices like Alice Wong who leads the #CripLit chats and the DisVisibility Project, Karrie Higgins who is vocal about disability on her blog and on social media, Vilissa Thompson’s Ramp Your Voice, Keah Brown’s essays on feminism & disability and creation of #DisabledandCute, Alaina Leary’s writing on disability representation on and off screen, the existence of Disability in KidLit, comedian Zach Anner’s videos on YouTube reflecting how inaccessible the world is, and Cara Gael O’Regan’s In Sickness + In Health podcast. Because of their work and the work of so many others I had sources that helped me determine something was off in these stories.

We Need Diverse Books, But We Also Need Diverse Reviewers How to approach criticism in the era of Trump electricliterature.com

I asked, “What is the reason for this (disabled) character in this piece?” As in, are they there to serve the abled protagonist? Are they someone you still don’t have a hold on yet? What gaze are you viewing them through and why? By asking this question I hoped to spark the understanding that while the story was good, these particular characters weren’t working as written. These writers are not bad writers, nor are they bad people. Mistakes get made and both sides can catch them sooner rather than later. And when we can’t catch them in time or at all, the next step is to acknowledge this and do better — and sometimes, that means cutting an incompletely thought-out character or story, rather than trying to fix it. In this case the revised stories were scrapped and we decided on other ones. Even if it meant one less story in the anthology, I had to stand by this. As editors that is our job.

I could’ve done things better as an editor. I shouldn’t have waited as long as I did to be firm about my concerns. I hired authenticity readers after revisions and should’ve hired them for that first draft. The readers noted things that I as an abled woman couldn’t catch, specific words that I had glossed over. This more direct perspective can have more impact with the writer.

The burden of editing is heavy when you’re the only one doing it. My main concern is that I do the authors and their work justice. I want to make sure their voices shine and that their stories feel complete. An editor’s job is not to “push an agenda,” but to help the stories be what they are in full. Our job is not to force our voice but to help clarify the authorial voice. Our job means analyzing what does or does not work (and why). There will inevitably be criticism that is not always boasting but biting. This is writing. This is the profession.

An editor’s job is not to “push an agenda,” but to help the stories be what they are in full.

Do you know what a character (especially a marginalized character) is who isn’t fleshed out? A device. As writer I also have to recognize this. I wrote a story where one of the side characters was a gay man dying of AIDS. He was a representation regularly seen in media, practically a corpse. A friend and reading partner who clearly remembered this moment in recent history, had been a nurse to afflicted friends during this time said to me, “Give him more humanity.” That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t seeing this character as a person. He was a tool in a story I was telling and that wasn’t fair to him or the reader or the community I was portraying. I was filling a trope dictated by my own ignorance.

If the writer cannot see these issues, then we as editors (and as agents, friends, and readers) can help. The ultimate responsibility always falls on the creator, but the many people who see the book on its way to publication are culpable too. We’re here to aid writers, and in a sense that does mean protecting them. But protecting the writer also means ensuring the work works. Understandably editors (and agents) are “worried about their clients.” We’re worried about how things may be taken or dissected. I do wonder, though, if this concern stems more from the desire to protect the privileged masses over the marginalized ones. This can also be part of the inability (or unwillingness) to make the effort required to see inclusivity and parity come to fruition. It means that someone, possibly those of us in a position of power, will be uncomfortable and need to face that discomfort. Senior editor Kate Sullivan at Delacorte wrote about the need for editors to “check ourselves.” Checking ourselves includes not prioritizing the white gaze; analyzing the prose at a micro not just macro level; and discerning why editors don’t connect with marginalized voices and do connect with white, socioeconomically well off, cishet ones. To not do any of these things under the guise of “protecting” the writer or more so enhancing the work is a failure on our part.

An editor has the power to make sure these issues don’t see the light of day. An authenticity reader does not have this power or say, and shouldn’t be the only line of defense. Even with our commentary, our pleas, our well-crafted letters saying how harmful this portrayal is there can always be a rebuttal from the author, a perceived “workaround,” a way to fix something that can and has reduced people to facile creations, almost marionettes for a particular gaze. As my friend said, Give us more humanity.

Understandably editors (and agents) are “worried about their clients.” I do wonder, though, if this concern stems more from the desire to protect the privileged masses over the marginalized ones.

If we’re making the same mistake when it comes to bad representation, when it comes to the consistent issues brought up by marginalized communities, it’s because we’re not listening. It’s because the wealth of information available at our fingertips, often for free and much of it online, is not something we’re taking the time to digest. We can ask authors all day long to become more informed, but how does that help progress within the industry if those of us representing them do not do the same, or do so only when inclined and shamed? For those of us in the publishing profession, are we listening and learning or posturing? Is commerce more important than community? Are we also uplifting unheard voices to find their stories and helping them start and maintain their careers? There are a lot of questions we should be asking. Not about what we have the “right” to publish; that demeans those continually fighting for the right to live and exist, to have equality on a daily basis. What we (especially editors) should be asking is: Who’s responsible for where we are now, and how will we see actual change?