Helen Keller is one of the most esteemed disability advocates in all of history. So it was an especially powerful moment when, on this day in 1952, Keller herself awarded IBM head Thomas J. Watson the Migel Medal, an award honoring IBM’s inclusion and diversity standards hiring people with disabilities, including those who are blind. It was a history-making start to a workplace culture of valuing diversity and inclusion—a culture that still thrives today.
Let me start by saying, it might not be the best idea to come into Texas from out of state to, say, protest. Texans, and I mean in general not just the ones that tend to vote all Red, tend to be… leery of outsiders coming and dictating our policies and tend to recoil and become defensive if this happens. It’s easy to help from afar and help homegrown advocacy and assistance groups and trans people directly affected by our laws.
Here’s some orgs to look into:
Equality Texas: Highly rated LGBTQ advocacy group. If you support only one group, ET is maybe the best
Trans Education Network of Texas (TENT): Another local group that is focused on advocating for trans Texans and educating cis people on trans issues, they are focused just on trans issues if that’s what you want to focus on.
OutYouth: Offers a physical safe haven for LGBTQ kids in the Austin area. It’s been around as long as I’ve been alive.
ACLU of Texas: The ACLU’s Texas branch which has been on the ground fighting against transphobic bills from day 1
Texas Health Action: Runs Kind Clinic which offers free transition related care and other resources for the LGBTQ community in Texas, based in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas
CW: How long have you been involved with sex work?
K: I’ve been in different types of sex work and I think that it’s important to that there is a difference between cam work, street work, escort work and other types of sex work.
When I initially got involved with sex work it was as a street worker. It was done out of necessity. I was a teen and I was homeless. I turned to sex work as a means to survive. Through doing that I ended up in what I realize now as a form of trafficking. At that time I didn’t realize that I was a victim of trafficking. I didn’t understand that being shared among a group as a teen was trafficking. So, for me, that experience was not at all comparable to what I do now.
What I do now is work through an escort agency. I get to pick my clients. I meet with them and we engage in a theme that is already predetermined. I meet my clients as a character I have created for them. I have also done porn work and I have done some dominatrix work as well.
CW: Speaking in terms of broad brush categorizations, feminism offers various frameworks to conceptualize sex work. Generally speaking, some second wave feminist framework views sex work as a type of rape in that people usually don’t do sex work without being pressured – either economically, through relationships, etc – into sex work. Since being coerced into sex acts is rape, sex work is viewed as being one of patriarchy’s most effective forms of subjugation. Moreover, the sex industry can be viewed as the DNA of patriarchy in that every form of female subjugation is sexualized. Other forms of feminism are more discursively focused on reducing harm, shame and guilt. Third wave feminism gave rise to a significant focus on sex worker health needs and even union organizing.
I don’t want to give you a contrived description of feminism. The lines that I’ve drawn aren’t, in actuality, hard and fast; there’s a lot of overlap and shades of grey between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism. I don’t know that I’ve met a feminist who’s not concerned with the personal, the political and the social systems that coerce certain experiences. Many feminists – from radical feminists to “4th wave” feminists – agree that sex workers themselves should not face arrest for doing sex work.
K: I think it’s situational. There are certainly instances where sex work is forced. That’s real. However, I don’t find it to be true that every form of sex work that I’ve experienced was rape. When I was doing sex work – street work – out of necessity, I was a very different person than I am now. I was very insecure about my body; I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. I was vulnerable and financially, it felt like it was my last option.
Where I am now, I’m financially stable. I’m on really, really good terms with my body. I like my body as it is. I understand my sexuality. I’m a much happier, much more stable person. If I were the same person I am now – as a teen back then – I would not be doing sex work because that experience was so dehumanizing. I didn’t have any say over my body, my environment, who I was with or what I was doing.
When some feminists say that all sex work – in every way and in every circumstance – is being “prostituted,” I experience that language as being dehumanizing. Moreover, I think that being referred to as a “prostitute” is also problematic, similarly with the word, “John.” Our culture has a certain idea about what that looks like and who does that kind of work. Sometimes sex work is only viewed in just one way; it’s easy to do.
I think that when people want to demonize sex workers or they want to do away with all sex work, they tend to ignore the underlying reasons that some people go into sex work. If it is done out of necessity, loading them down with cultural baggage around language doesn’t help. Attacking sex workers doesn’t help. Trying to outlaw sex work doesn’t help. When sex work is what you have to make it to the next day, dealing with sex work and sex workers by taking away that only option isn’t any real intervention into the underlying issues.
Help looks like knowing why people are engaged in sex work. It looks like learning about what their needs are and offering material support systems and safe spaces. Simply outlawing sex work without first addressing the issues that make some people go into sex work isn’t helpful.
Sex work and sex workers aren’t monolithic. Taking an intersectional approach to each person’s experience and offering real and substantive support isn’t as easy as seeing us all in only one way or hoping that a magic bullet in the form of prohibition will address the issues of sex work and sex workers.
As to porn, there are many different forms and it’s important to note that. Also, it’s important to note that there different reasons some do porn. Some are able to define what they will and won’t do, who they will and won’t do it with, what scenes they will and won’t do and they’re able to work with people who they have good chemistry with. Not everyone has that control. There are others who do it because they need money now and they don’t have a say in what they’re doing, and they may not enjoy the work they’re doing.
In the porn work that I’ve done, everything was negotiated and I didn’t do anything I wasn’t okay with doing. Before anything happened, I got to meet everyone else. We had control; if we wanted to stop, we would stop. The production company I worked with was very willing to work with us as performers.
Today I enjoy my work; I don’t do it out of necessity. Where I’m at with my work is that most of my clients are people who I would be with, with or without the payment. If it ever again becomes not fun or enjoyable, I’ll move on to something else. For my current situation, it’s hard for me to see how some view it as such a negative or damaging thing.
CW: Do you see your artistic work and your sex work blending in any way?
K: Absolutely. I do a lot of performance-based artwork and specifically, character acting. As I mentioned before, when I arrange a theme with a client, I figure out what their interests are, and I develop a character that meets with them. For me, my work is performance. It is performative and it is performance.
I provide my clients with the option of presenting as male or female, masculine or feminine; creating different hair and makeup if that’s wanted, facial hair if that’s wanted. For me, it’s an extension of my performance work and I don’t really view it as anything other than performance.
I know that I am a very sexual person. I have a very high sex drive and for me, it seemed foolish not to utilize this skill set as a performer and as someone who really enjoys sex, particularly with people whom I get to choose and who want to have sex with me and is willing to pay for that privilege. For me, what I do now, it’s like the perfect job.
CW: Can you talk about inherent work risk in sex work?
K: From my own experience, street work was definitely more dangerous and more high-risk in many different ways. When I was doing street work, I was doing it because I needed the money and because I needed a place to stay for the night. There was always this fear when I would have a potential client drive up – do I get into this car? If I get into the car with this person, are they going to hurt me? Are they going to rape me? Are they a cop and if so are they going to hurt me, rape me or arrest me? There was always this fear and the fear was always coupled with wondering what the next person might be like. Is there going to be a next person? Is the next person going to be better or worse? Or, will I sleep outside tonight?
If you’re seen and known as a sex worker, you are automatically dehumanized and so there was also fear about just people in general. All of these issues are made worse if you’ve seen as a trans sex worker. When I was doing sex work, as an intersex bodied person, I was working as female, but my body was not visable as a typical female’s body. I was therefore seen as a trans woman sex worker.
There were instances where I was harassed or attacked because I was viewed as being a sex worker. I had instances where I would get in the car with someone and they’d pull a gun on me and rob me of what little money I had made. I was very fortunate to have never been arrested and while I had interactions with cops, I fortunately never experienced violence from a cop, though I knew others who had.
As I work now, working for an agency, the agency that I work for is membership-based and all of the clients that go through the agency and are members and all have a background check. I certainly acknowledge that’s not 100% safe; at the same time, I’m dealing with different demographics. There’s a huge difference in the amount of money that I’m making versus street work. The amount that I charge makes it so that my clients are more professional individuals. I’ve only had one problem with a client who attempted to do a sex act that was barred as per our agreement. I had said that it was not going to happen and then he started to get violent towards me and I was able to get out of the situation. I contacted the agency and let them know about the incident and they lost their membership.
While it’s not totally safe and there is the occasional jerk, I feel much safer than I did doing street work. Going back to what it’s like for street workers, I have a huge amount of privilege working through an escort agency, in being able to talk about being an escort, even to people who are active in politics and to people who are police officers who are my friends. I don’t fear violence or arrest for talking about it.
Access to condoms and other barriers is a lot easier for me and location is also a privilege. When I was doing street work, I was working out of someone’s car, behind a building or a stranger’s home. There wasn’t a safe space to do what I was doing. As an escort, I do in-calls and out-calls. When I do out-calls, they are in hotels I have to approve of. There’s a different level of safety.
CW: How do you think our culture should regard sex work?
K: I don’t think sex work is ever going to go away and in that regard, I think legislating prohibition is foolish. That being said, I’ve seen some amazing things being done in other countries. I think it’s always important to recognize that there are different types of sex work and different reasons for going into sex work.
I recall hearing about a country where there was an area where sex workers would buy a permit to do sex work and those without permits would be fined. The money raised through this funded services for sex workers. While something like that won’t work for every situation, I think it’s a step in the right direction. There are places where sex work has structure, legal protections, safety standards and I think that’s also beneficial. I think vocational training is good as long as it’s not punitive or corrosive; some people would definitely want that. Making social services available to all sex workers would be helpful as long as it recognizes different forms of need. There is no one thing that would address all issues for sex workers and any legalization would need complex structures built into it.
I think it would be really important to make it so that sex work wasn’t a crime first and foremost. I would like to see some way to be able to report income legally so that tax money could go into funding necessary services for sex workers. How do we fund services for sex workers when there’s no way for us to pay into a system to support sex workers? I know that some may not prefer to pay taxes on their work, but we need to be able to fund services.
CW: How do you feel about laws that target sex workers?
K: Unless you’re going to address the underlying issue, people are going to do what they have to do to survive. Prohibition isn’t helpful and at the same time, it’s important to recognize that people wouldn’t be doing it if they had another option. If it’s a housing issue, provide them with housing. If it’s a drug issue, provide them with harm reduction skills and support systems. I think that if you don’t want people to do street work out of necessity, instead of making it illegal, address the underlying issues.
I want to acknowledge that when I was doing street work, I was underage. I don’t view children or teens able to make informed decisions about sex work. In that regard, I think child trafficking is a totally different issue than the sex work that I do today. When I talk about sex work done out of necessity, I’m specifically talking about people who are of age. At the same time, turning the kid into a criminal due to their circumstance isn’t helpful either.
CW: As someone who did sex work as an underage kid, what kind of support did you need?
K: Being arrested or taking me back to my parents would have been the worst thing for cops to have done. Our culture isn’t set up to actually address the needs of queer youth who are doing sex work. For me, my parents were the reason I was on the streets. Bringing me to my parents would have caused me real harm. Shelters can be of some use, but at the time, shelters wouldn’t take someone with a body like mine. Shelters that did work with me were not safe. I don’t know if a counselor would have helped. Having real resources that could actually help someone like me would have been great.
The root of doing survival sex work is the need for food and for shelter. Cops aren’t able to provide that and social services – without the state getting involved, a legal case and months of dealing with bureaucracy – aren’t able to work with underage kids. Because the reality is that our society isn’t set up to help in a way that’s immediate and substantive, the best thing for me at the time was to not be arrested, to have some practical harm reduction materials – condoms, lube, a list of resources – because the street was better than the other options available to me at that time.
I mean, there were times where maybe an unsafe shelter or jail would have been preferable to sleeping outside or having to deal with my parents. But, it’s not always the best thing and for someone who’s trans or intersex, any option can be dangerous.
CW: For the individuals who are reading this and who may be doing sex work, what advice would you share with them?
K: If they are of age and they’re doing sex work because it feels good and they make good money, I would tell them to have fun. If they’re doing sex work because there’s a necessity behind it, I would tell them to be safe, to connect with other sex workers, look for a Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) in your area, and definitely connect with them. Say in contact with other sex workers, share information and keep each other updated about bad clients. I recommend using apps likeKitestring that will alert your friends if you miss a check-in and at least let someone else know where you’re going to be and how to contact you.
Support:
If you are a sex worker and would like resources or someone to talk with, you can call the National SWOP 24/7 helpline at 877-776-2004.
Remember all those times people kept saying “Stop talking about racism in Fandom” or “Why’re you bringing this up when REAL racism is happening right now?”
Or
“They’re JUST comic books, they don’t mean anything. Focus your anger on REAL issues.”
Ya’ll remember that shit? Because I fucking remember that shit. All those “Comic book purists” people like to coddle and make excuses for, well, they could just be the next person to shoot up a Black church.
Funny how fandom acts as a microcosm for larger issues, ain’t it?
where are all those “let people draw whatever they want” folks whenever an artist is being harassed over their trans or disability headcanons? when artists of color are being chased off the internet for their personal interpretations of characters who are either fanonically white or aracial? where are you all hiding?
that’s right, you only come out of the woodwork when artists are being genuinely nasty and making people feel unsafe. you don’t really care about letting people draw whatever they want, you just want people to be complacent in disgusting practices
isn’t it interesting how the people who go this is just like *insert piece of fiction* when faced with real world oppression always use media that’s filled with white bodies and tell white stories for their comparisons? like it’s honestly so disturbing that people gotta filter the actual suffering of poc thru a white fictional lens in order to feel any type of way. I don’t want these people to read another book I want them to realize what they’re doing and learn how to empathize with people who are different from them lol.
I think it’s pretty weird that people constantly think that bringing up racism or “problematic” things in a given media means that your orchestrating a full out boycott of it. People did it with SU and Agent Carter and now when people were talking about Frozono’s wife and how she’s staying a disembodied force of sassy one liners in the year 2018 and pointing out the dehumanization of that automatically means now tumblr is “at it again” trying to boycott Incredibles 2. Like why does people talking about racism make you so uncomfortable that you come to those conclusions.
*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade*
hey….
nothing you ever read, watch, or participate in will be ideologically pure and without its problems. your quest to consume the most unproblematic material will be, in the end, fruitless. your enjoyment of anything will be sapped away, leaving you a husk starved for media.
it is okay to enjoy things that have problems to them, so long as you do it critically and with an open mind, and take care to consider others.
One of my long term fandom friends (back from ye olde message board days of yore) has been posting for weeks about how her teenage daughter is “out of control” and she just posted in the facebook group about how her daughter has ruined Christmas by deciding to be a lesbian and the whole group just went “Karen, you’ve been writing gay m/m slash fic for three decades” and she went “but that’s different, that’s not REAL” and I’ve never tried to actively set someone on fire with my brain before but
“I came to you guys for support not to be attacked”
That’s funny, that’s really funny, because that’s probably how your child feels. You fucking shitheel.
Two of the other mom’s in the group just offered to take M for Christmas and keep her with them when school restarts because she deserves to be loved. One of them actually said “deserves a real mother” and I just spat my tea everywhere.
We all just got banned from the group but for anyone concerned “Aunt” Bee (wonderful, great A+ person) just posted in her personal feed that M showed up at her house and is safe.
crash course in why anyone who implies liking slash makes you an ally is talking out of their ass
tbh the people i’ve met who really empathize with villains are people who have been villainized in their own lives and unjustly made to feel like they’re bad people by those around them. They doubt themselves and instinctively want to support disliked and obviously flawed characters, characters doomed to fail, and attempt to find the good in those characters that no one in their own lives see in them.
real evil people don’t relate to villains, they see themselves as the hero. :\
There’s also some interesting studies about how villains are portrayed as gender nonconforming (read: bad) - feminized men and powerful women. It’s meant to code the character as off-putting because they don’t fit the social code, but being queer, you might just see an ally.
not only that (adding onto the previous point, not disputing or derailing bc it’s absolutely true), but a lot of villains are also:
1) mentally ill / neuroatypical and for ages have been almost the only kind of characters you could look to for that even if nearly all of them are portrayed violently or inevitably become victims of their own minds,
2) abuse/assault survivors, usually as children
3) disenfranchised by other means which drives them to their villainy (living in or have previously lived in poverty, exploited by employers/had their work stolen, experimented on, etc.) which parallels in a way how poverty/racism/institutionalized violence can lead to crime for survival. villains have their initial anger invalidated and further villainized by story narratives, so seeing them fight back against it and come back again and again to keep fighting tbh can be satisying!
I’m putting it out there that using round wide eyes to implicitly state innocence and purity in a character; and small “slanty” eyes to convey dishonesty and deceit in your antagonist is actually racist lmfao.
I see some of you bring out this concept in you character designs over and over and yeah it’s not a conscious thought process but thinking “this is the evil character who is morally decrepit - how should I really bring that out in their image?” And then linking that immediately to drawing smaller eyes is racist yellow peril derived stereotyping.
I’m sure most of us have been guilty of this at some stage including myself so can we all just grow up and leave this bullshit behind in this year? 谢谢
Other “evil” looks based in bigotry:
- dark/heavy/thick eyebrows (racism/antisemitism)
- hooked noses vs “cute”/button/patrician (ditto)
- faces described as angular (as opposed to like strong-boned or whatever)
- “swarthy” complexion (thanks tolkien)
- blonde hair/blue eyes = hero/ine
- accents.
- “shifty eyes” iirc, I remember learning they just indicate a lot of thinking, which could be lying, yes, orrr dealing with a second language/unfamiliar dialect, or dealing with NTs as someone who’s not, or trying to figure out if the authority figure is trying to get you to agree to something they can use against you, or…
Bigotry around disability that often intersects with racism includes making villains or “shifty” characters dramatically scarred and/or having acne/acne scars, missing eyes or limbs/digits, walking with a limp and/or cane, missing and/or crooked teeth (this one can also be pretty classist, and “buck teeth” and a gap between the front teeth have a history of anti-Asian and anti-Black caricature behind them, respectively), overweight in a way that’s portrayed as “disgusting” proof of their “greed” or like moral decay or whatever, etc!
These visual markers often get layered on top of the above racist stereotypes to make a character’s design seem more “untrustworthy” or “creepy” or “unsettling,” hypersexualized/fetishized/desexualized, “aggressive” or “passive”, “mean and “scary” or “cowardly and despicable”, and so on and so on - always ask yourself and your subconscious WHY they do these things! And ABSOLUTELY hold yourself accountable for this, (my fellow white artists especially!!!)! Fighting the racist messages we’ve taken in our entire lives takes work, and it takes time, and it’s always worth doing.
okay like. supposedly being interested in m/m relationships, or even a specific m/m relationship because you like the specific dynamic depicted is fetishizing. because it’s only acceptable to take an interest in any m/m relationship if you’re a man who likes men, apparently. BUT then also m/f relationships are supposedly relatable and accessible to everybody???
or maybe.
just maybe.
that’s a bullshit argument used to shut down enthusiasm for anything that isn’t heteronormative as well as to shame a group of what is perceived to be young women and girls. because any time young women like anything at all, however harmless or even positive and uplifting, that thing is relentlessly mocked and derided as shallow and ridiculous.
this post has so much going on that i guess i gotta write a whole essay so here we go
as a gay man, i can say with full and total confidence that more often than not, women’s consumption of our relationships, and our sex lives, and our trauma is fetishistic. it’s not about fighting heteronormativity. it’s really not that deep.
finding another man loving man in fandom is incredibly difficult, especially in shipping circles. i’ve been in the tumblr business for almost seven years, and i’ve met maybe 1 or 2 guys total who write slash besides me. slash fiction is dominated almost entirely by women and woman-aligned people, and it’s been this way for a very long time. even a good amount of smutty slash fanzines in the 70s-90s were written by women who liked to write about boys fucking. when i met another guy who wrote slash fanfic, i was completely shocked. it had taken 6 or so years to meet him, and i was completely bowled over. and i just thought “boys don’t write about boys loving boys, that’s not our thing”. but what i wanna know is why isn’t it our thing???
why aren’t most slash fanfics written by boys who love boys? why isn’t a genre, a subculture ABOUT US, something that we’re seemingly not allowed to participate in? why do we feel like outsiders when writing our own stories? why are some of them most praised “gay shows” and “gay books” (for example, the song of achilles and yuri on ice) all written by women, and read by women, and aren’t really catered towards gay men at all even though we’re the SUBJECTS of the story.
when you go through websites like goodreads and look under the “gay romance” section, you see names like madeline, jane, abigail, marie, amy. i mean, abigail roux’s writing alone probably takes up half the list! you might see a sean or a david thrown in, but for the most part, stories about men loving each other are written by women. ones that are written by men often don’t get the attention reigned in by the foxhole court and cut and run. that’s where the issue lies. in a community supposedly dedicated to us, our love, our sex, our relationships, we take the back seat. we don’t get recognition. we don’t get control. we don’t get to tell OUR stories OUR WAY.
not to mention, much of slash has always been smut. and that smut, for a lot of questioning boys who love boys, that’s our first exposure to sex between two men. i know it was for me. but when it’s written by someone who’s never been a man having sex with a man (and no, if you’re a cis girl having sex with a cis man is not the same way trans men have sex with cis men, but y'alls abysmal treatment of trans men will have to wait for another post), it’s often written inaccurately and unsafely. not using a condom? unsafe. spit as lube? definitely not safe. SHOVING IT IN???????? REALLY NOT SAFE. rimming someone without having them clean or use an enema first????
not only unsafe, but also really gross. the general consensus (and yes i asked) about this is that safe sex has been deemed by slash shippers to be “boring”. they want to get right to the fucking, no time for prep (which is literally the most important part), no time for cleaning, no time for lube, no time for protection. this is incredibly dangerous for young men who love men who are trying to figure out all the different ways that we can make love to each other. if this is their only exposure, they’re going to think that doing this is okay. they’re going to think “yeah, i can just shove my tongue into someone’s dirty asshole” or “i don’t have to prepare my partner before shoving very large into something very tiny” which is not the case and will get people hurt. i know fic isn’t supposed to be a sex ed class, but the lack of sex safety is really concerning.
and when men who love men like myself bring up the fact that maybe you guys should stay in your lane a little and let us take the wheel in a genre entirely dedicated to us having sex with each other, you somehow claim that we are “kinkshaming” you and being misogynist by taking away “the one place where women can explore their kinks without judgement”. which is complete and total bullshit because FIRST OF ALL gay people are not your kink. we are not your fetish, we don’t exist for your entertainment or your gratification. if you really think that two men who make love to each other is your “fetish”, then maybe that’s telling you something. human beings aren’t kinks. so fuck outta here with that.
and the obsession with boys enduring homophobic and sometimes transphobic abuse and rape for the sake of ~angst~ and hurt/comfort is uh pretty fucked up. the obsession people have with gay trauma is by far the most disturbing of all. like so many woman slash writers go out of their way to subject gbt male characters to all sorts of injury and abuse just so they can be ~comforted~ and possibly get comfort sex. the idea that you want to see us hurt just because you think it’s cute when we comfort each other isn’t okay. like, didn’t someone want to write a check please fanfic about the pulse shooting??? yeah how can any of you look at that and think it’s okay. it’s not okay. in no world is that okay.
so this brings me to your claim that if gay/bi/pan men (including trans men and male-aligned people) tell you to maybe chill out and maybe let us write stories about us for a change, that’s a misogynistic/homophobic/shallow statement. this just blows my mind. i need a little more clarification about why it’s such an evil no-no for us to want to represent ourselves or speak for ourselves or tell our own stories. because it kinda seems homophobic that you’re so angry about gbt men wanting to represent themselves. it almost sounds like you only think our love and our sex and our lives exist only for you to write and read about. you’re making it sound like we are objects made for your consumption, and by establishing ourselves as real people is ruining your fantasy.
nobody’s saying you can’t be supportive of gbt boys and want to write about them in your stories. but for the love of god, don’t get angry when we want to tell our own stories, and don’t pitch a fit when we express that we’re uncomfortable with being objectified for your own sexual gratification.
tldlr; men who love men have never existed for your consumption. we are not your “escape from heteronormativity”, we are not your “safe space for kink exploration”, we are not your favorite ships, we are not your kudos on ao3. we are real men with real stories who want a chance to express ourselves in a genre that’s about us but that we seemingly aren’t allowed into. we are people, and we deserve to and be seen as people and treated like people. stop speaking over us and invalidating our concerns about how we’re being treated. and that’s the tea. ️♂️☕️
@ all you straight fujoshis
Oh my gods this. This is everything I try and fail to say when people ask me how to explain fetishization vs storytelling.
Do you know how many books by gay men I edited in my time at the erotica publishing house? One.
Out of literal thousands of manuscripts, there was One gay man writing m/m, the rest were all by women, and I feel safe in saying, the majority of them, not from within the LGBTQA+ community.
And boy howdy did they pitch fits when we turned to them and said “your manuscript does not meet our health and safety requirements please revise” because our house had a strict safe sane consensual rule, along with body positivity, which everyone LOVED when they were writing m/f stories. But when it came to m/m we had so many authors say “ew, but that’s not ~sexy~ :/” to which my reply was often a very politely phrased “literally don’t give a fuck Susan, you know what else isn’t sexy? Bleeding assholes, which coincidentally is what you’re being.”
But y'know, nicer. Because I’m a fucking proffesional.
Anyway. Do you want to know what happened to said singular man writing m/m fiction? He got dropped after a year. Because, and I quote, this is a direct line from our then marketing team, about a gay man writing gay erotica: “that’s not what women want to read”
And if that’s not one of the most precise and fucking infuriating demonstrations of what the fuck is wrong with the “but I write gay slash fic! I can’t be homophobic!” “~allies~” (spoiler: you’re not) in fandom and yes, even in “real” publishing, I dunno what is.
There is a Difference between storytelling and fetishization, and all y'all crying “kinkshaming!” when someone asks you to treat them with respect, need to stop.
…And when it comes to activism and relations within a marginalized group, it’s important to note that it’s never appropriate to throw people who fit stereotypes under the bus (because this is usually in order to clean up their appearance as a whole to cater to the oppressor).
People who fit stereotypes are just living, breathing, and being. They never asked for their identity and characteristics (that may or may not be a source of pride for said group) to be weaponized by the oppressor and used to dehumanize their entire group.
Usually an attempt to distance yourself from those who fit your group’s stereotypes is rooted in you wanting approval from the oppressor. That’s not activism.
“a writer’s character’s viewpoints don’t reflect the writer’s viewpoints!!!” actually, they do.
that doesnt mean having a, for instance, homophobic character means the author is homophobic. but how is the homophobia treated? is it criticized? is it excused, idealized? is it framed so that the homophobia is clearly wrong? does the inclusion of homophobia in the narrative serve a point?
writers, especially professional published writers, know that their writing has an impact, and the morals they put forward in their work reflect deeply on themselves. they know how they frame and present their work can completely change the result and effect it has.
so maybe the character’s viewpoints don’t say much about the writer, but how the writer presents this character and its viewpoints says a hell of a fuckin lot about the writer.
don’t worship people. i’m serious. no matter how good they sound, how popular they are, how stinging their comebacks are, how moral they seem—do not worship people.
this is something that tumblr does constantly, and whether it starts as a joke or not it ends with many people taking it quite seriously
do not hold anyone above criticism, do not make a person synonymous with an idea. every human has feet of clay, and making yourself loyal to those flaws will only make more trouble for you
how often have you seen posts gushing about how amazing and perfect someone is, only for there to be a condemnation of their problematic history ten posts later? rebel wilson, jennifer lawrence, there’s even an entire blog dedicated to pointing out how your fav is problematic. most recently there was conchita wurst, who was worshiped for being a drag queen persona and turned on when people finished reading the wikipedia article and found out about the exploitative reality show she was on.
people can be important, people can say wise things, feel free to value them for that—but don’t elevate them to a position of godliness. nobody can live up to it.
Via Instagram user wanderlust.on.wheels click the link for their wonderfully honest post about what #DisabilityIsNormal means for them. https://instagram.com/p/BEC1grYQaoV/
