don't want to put you in a pop coma

State of the Bear:

1) I've participated in Warren Ellis's Blue Monday Signage Self-Portrait meme. Down the bottom.

2) I said I wasn't going to do this, and I already regret it.

But I'm on the horns of an ethical dilemma here. I'm still trying to stay out of the cultural appropriation debate. Yes, I am. Because it's not about me, and it hasn't honestly been about me in days, and honestly I don't care what people I don't know think of me. I'm not here to defend myself and I'm not here for a pat on the head.

Here's the thing: It's not about me. It's about people feeling marginalized and feeling that their voices are going unheard and being dismissed, and there's a lot of provocative language going around, and it's become personal enough that there's no way I can say much or anything at this point without seeming to choose sides. And since I have dear friends on both sides of the argument, and I currently disagree with things that most of them have said, and I am politically about the worst candidate for peacemaker around, I'll be over here wishing we could all stand down from our ego-defense and self-justification a little and maybe listen some.

I will, however, share something that I wrote in part as a reply to a comment by browngirl which seemed so wise and balanced to me that I needed to respond. I'm not going to link to her comment, because I don't want to lead the flamewar there, but here's what I've learned (am learning) during this past week.

I think there's an elephant in the room that I think is getting largely talked around, and I think it's because to half of the discussants, it's so invisible they don't realize it exists, and to the other half, it's so enormous they can't understand how anybody could MISS it.

It goes like this. (White people, please pay attention here.)

1) I, as a white writer, am coming at including COC in my work from an outsider perspective. I am aware of this, and even if I attempt to write those COC from a subject position rather than an object one--

2) a white audience may find my outsider-written characters more compelling than insider-written COC (because they conform to a pre-existing outsider bias)

3) which may mean that my outsider-written COC contribute to a dominant image of "what POC are like" in dominant/colonizing/assimilating culture

3a) which is perceived as competing for space with insider portrayals, and thus reinforcing the object position I meant to undermine

4) thus also leading to a perception or reality of silencing or further marginalization of writers of color, which is

5) entirely at odds with my own intention of *increasing* the representation of same in the field.

6) Facepalm, lather, rinse, repeat.

So, no, writers of pinky-beigeness, nobody is telling you you can't write characters of color. They're telling you, please listen when (and after) you do. I know that's not what it feels like you're being told, but that's because you are missing the context of existing marginalization. If you do choose to write characters of color, you are also choosing to accept the criticism of same. However, if you choose to write for publication, you are choosing to accept criticism of your work. Period.

Put on your big boy pants and suck it up. As nojojojo has pointed out, writers of color are also not immune from these criticisms and difficulties, either.

(in exemplia: in the post on othering in which I planted the seed for this meltdown, I criticized kenscholes's construction of women publicly. Ken is a friend of mine. We share an editor and an agent. You know what Ken did? He sent me a nice email saying "Thanks." Ken has big boy pants.)

And you know what? There is absolutely a place for outsider or commonly-othered characters as written by more mainstream creators.

I am thinking of this, because I am much more familiar with the insider trading of queer politics, as the Brokeback Mountain problem, and that one, I can comprehend from an insider point of view. Which is to say, BBM, a movie about two white gay closeted men, was created from a story written by a straight white woman (AFAIK?) and directed by a straight Asian male.

Mainstream society found this story a lot more accessible than many (all) queer movies about the queer experience, and I think in a lot of ways BBM *was* very narratively honest in its depiction of both closeted homosexuality and the collateral damage related to same. I ALSO think it changed the zeitgeist, awakened a lot of mainstream viewers to the idea that Gay People Are Human Beings, and may have made the world a better place.

However, comma, it is a movie about Tragic Gay Guys Who Die Or Are Miserable Because They Are Gay. And the queer community is really, really tired of that shit.

(I'm not equating the queer experience and the black experience, but I am drawing an analogy between the way art is perceived by insiders and outsiders to a marginalized subculture. So I think maybe we-collectively need to find a way to talk about and correct that sense of marginalization. Some of which is as simple as to, hello, encourage white readers to read Sherman Alexie instead of or at the very least in addition to what's-her-name.)

In other words, there's two such massively different sets of experiences at work here that we almost can't hear each other, and we really don't understand what each other are saying.