This rather rambling post/bit of navel gazing is inspired by two recent blog entries.
Words and Moral Compass
http://thepaganandthepen.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/words-and-moral-compass/Diversity in M/M fiction
http://reviewsbyjessewave.blogspot.com/2009/07/exploring-diversity-in-mm-books-yes.htmlThis is not meant to re-open RaceWank 2009, so sit on your hands until that urge passes.
We create worlds when we write. No one will argue this. We project a vision of the future, of the past, of alternate realities just off our own, of our own as it is or as it should be.
There are those who say writing with an agenda is dull and evil. All writing comes with some agenda. Straight romance contributes to heteronormativity. Gay romance normalizes same sex relations by saying everyone is worthy of a happy ending. Science fiction offers us a vision of the future, whether bleak or shiny. Fantasy, wittingly or not, tells us what the writer considers idyllic. Humor and satire tell the reader what to find ridiculous.
There is a joke about the King of Saudi Arabia telling George Bush his children like American television, but his son is most disappointed there are no Arabic people on Star Trek. Bush thinks for a minute and says "Well, that's because it's set in the future."
Science fiction writers in particular have to be aware of what they're doing when they create--deliberately or not--their futures. Making a completely white version of the future will attract notice from some quarters. Many readers will never notice. Even today, many people live in a mostly white world. Their neighborhood is white. Their kids' school is mostly white. Their church is all white (Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week). Their entertainment choices are mostly white, whether by default or preference. How many current country singers of color are there? How many rock singers?
But those who do notice the all-white future will question it. And they will feel left out. And they will strongly reconsider whether to buy that author in the future.
Some people won't write diversity because they are afraid they'll get it wrong. Yes, of course you're going to get it wrong. If you write anything other than your own autobiography (and sometimes even then) you'll get it wrong. Do it anyway. Be sensible, fair-minded and when your readers inform you of something you've overlooked, apologize, learn and correct.
I had an incident where I was writing a sideshow novel. One of the male characters was to be black. Since the Pain-King and the Wolf-Boy were already set, I had a choice of the Giant or the Magician. My worry was that neither of them had enough lines, being secondary characters. I never even thought of the Giant being seen as the product of slave breeding programs. I was quickly corrected and Elijah Grant, the Carolina Giant, became white, while Marvello the Magician was black.
Someone said, if you have to research, it's a sign your life isn't diverse enough. I have been thinking on that. Diversity is something most of us have to work at. (Social lives are something some of us have to work at!) Birds of a feather and all that. We often surround ourselves with like-minded people from similar backgrounds. And some of us are fascinated by cultures we only read about and have no contact with.
For example, I don't currently know any Asian people. I supervised students from Thailand, China, Japan and Vietnam when I worked in a university library. But if I wanted a character from any of those countries, I would have to research hard to get anything right. Living where I do, I tend to think of characters in terms of black and white. In other regions, Hispanic characters or Asian ones might be more common.
The discussion at Jesswave's blog got me thinking about the religious world-building of the future or of the current milieu. The US religious population is about 78% Christian, about 16% identify as no religion (only about 4% as atheists or agnostics), 2% Jewish, About 1/2% each Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and neopagan and about 2% other.
In 1998, 94% of adults asked in a Harris Poll said they believed in God. In 2006, an online Harris poll showed this had dropped to 73%. (the online part may skew it) A CBS poll in the same year said 82% believed in God and 9% in some other Higher Power.
The majority of people one meets every day are some sort of Christian, from apathetic country club types who only go to promote their career to head-covering home-schooling true believers. Contemporaries should reflect this to some degree.
As for futuristics Christianity will likely continue to lose ground. No religion will keep growing. Pagan and other may keep growing to about 2-5% and top out.
If a writer creates a contemporary or future world that is a Christian theocracy, she had best have a reason why there's been an upswing in belief. If all the contemporary characters are atheists, the author and reader both need to know why. If religion just doesn't figure into the story, that's one thing. But someone in small town Missouri loudly proclaiming there is no God and the people going to church are morons? That's going to cause a stir, esp in a town when you know who is a good person by where their car is on Sunday. If everyone in the story is pagan...again, this needs to be done in a believable way.
My point, and I think I do have one, is that writers need to be AWARE of their agendas and the worlds they create. An all white, all male, all gay, all butch, all atheistic world isn't a reality but it seems to be a popular setting for a lot of m/m fiction.
We are creating a genre. We are creating visions of the future and the world as it could be. When we leave anyone out of these visions, by accident or on purpose, we're saying certain people have more rights to a happy ending than others.
Write the story as it needs to be told. But know why you need to write that story.
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