# How do you deal with sensitive subjects in writing?



## Trionix (Jul 29, 2020)

I’m worried about this issue. When it comes to writing about sensitive subjects, or even just touching on them, such as things like racism, sexism, oppression of one group vs another, how is that done nowadays, or rather, how is it received when read? I understand maybe not to do things such as romanticize the old mid 19th century south, or glorify ideas like that, but part of my story deals with similar issues. 

My story takes place in the distant, dystopian future where society lives vastly different than we do now, and social standards are turned on their heads as compared to today. Before I can bring some kind of solution in for the sufferings and inequalities experienced by characters in the story, I must first establish the existence and acceptance of such a world by most characters within it, and then establish actions to begin rectifying it. 

To clarify without giving my story details away, I am writing about a form of sexism in a world that we don’t currently have, and against people that aren’t people in the sense that we think of them, but yet still of human origins, and I feel that many people who read it may compare and judge it by today’s standards as they read it. The last thing I want to do in my first writing is to cause major offense.


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## Joker (Jul 29, 2020)

Someone is going to take offense no matter _what _you write. Welcome to 2020. As long as _you _handle it with tact, there's no problem.


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## thethreetearedeye (Jul 29, 2020)

It can be tricky for sure. I believe the best way to handle sensitive subjects such as sexism, racism, etc is to show how and why it is wrong. When I write and these things come up, I tend for there to be severe consequences to "the bad guys" that are perpetrating heinous things that could be considered sensitive. Neo-Nazis in a story getting violent? They die horrifically and the survivors are pulled into a hell dimension. Perverted drug lord that likes kids? His throat is torn out and eaten by those he abused. 
I know these are kind of extreme examples, but I think it paints a very clear stance what is bad and worthy of punishment. 

When you're creating a society that is future based, readers will most likely draw parallels with their current life and situation. What is sensitive to someone may not be to someone else. Try to hold an awareness for what you're writing. But also remember not everything is "100% pure wholesome unproblematic" content. Because there is no such thing. Remain tactful and think on what you're creating, and be sure to create a clear line in what is right and wrong in the issues you're depicting.


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## thethreetearedeye (Jul 29, 2020)

Biro said:


> But then you are writing in the tense of 2020 and not in the future.  If the future is no different than today it will mean that time and society has stood still and that has never happened in the life of humans on the planet.
> 
> We may not like or even agree with the future of what someone writes but thats what makes a story.




What I'm saying is people in 2020 will read it with 2020 minds. Regardless of whether or not someone likes a future story they don't have the perspective of _that _future. That's why I said they will most likely use their own lives off to compare against the issues of whatever story based in the future. 
My point is that because of that people may find things offensive where other won't. You can write whatever, but themes of racism and sexism have current issues going on today, so it would be easy to connect similar themes to stories based in the future. Really its up the reader to think critically on the implications of the themes and how it translates into a futuristic society.


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## luckyscars (Jul 29, 2020)

Trionix said:


> I’m worried about this issue. When it comes to writing about sensitive subjects, or even just touching on them, such as things like racism, sexism, oppression of one group vs another, how is that done nowadays, or rather, how is it received when read? I understand maybe not to do things such as romanticize the old mid 19th century south, or glorify ideas like that, but part of my story deals with similar issues.
> 
> My story takes place in the distant, dystopian future where society lives vastly different than we do now, and social standards are turned on their heads as compared to today. Before I can bring some kind of solution in for the sufferings and inequalities experienced by characters in the story, I must first establish the existence and acceptance of such a world by most characters within it, and then establish actions to begin rectifying it.
> 
> To clarify without giving my story details away, I am writing about a form of sexism in a world that we don’t currently have, and against people that aren’t people in the sense that we think of them, but yet still of human origins, and I feel that many people who read it may compare and judge it by today’s standards as they read it. The last thing I want to do in my first writing is to cause major offense.



Are you intending on publishing? If so, are you looking at self publishing or publishing via an agent?

It might sound irrelevant but it's not. The publishing industry these days is very sensitive to issues surrounding social justice as are the readership -- but the industry is probably _more _sensitive to it because, ultimately, they have a corporate image to maintain that overrides the artistic priorities of a single book. So, in a nutshell, if you want to engage with racism, sexism, etc you need to do it carefully and well. Otherwise you would be a fool.

If you're self-publishing or not publishing at all, obviously it hardly matters: Write what you want, how you want to write it. As others have mentioned 'somebody is always going to be offended'. I don't actually think that premise is true, but it's probably OK to work according to that expectation if your only concern is 'I want to be free to tell stories however I want'. 

It's always worth bearing in mind: _In order to offend readers, you have to actually have readers in the first place_. If you're in a situation where your book is causing any kind of widespread offense, you're probably doing pretty well, honestly.


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## Cephus (Jul 29, 2020)

I write what I want to write, the way I want to write it. I know what my audience expects. I don't really give a damn if anyone is offended. If you don't like it, don't read it.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jul 29, 2020)

Really, your characters will be the ones handling this issue. The narrator will simply convey their feelings on the topic. 

So you may have some characters who are insensitive, and others who are reluctant to even discuss it. Just like in real life.


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## bdcharles (Jul 30, 2020)

I think if you yourself are concerned about writing about sensitive topics with respect, you probably won't offend many people. But if, say, your story takes place in the antebellum South (or some vague facsimile thereof) and depicts how lovely it all is, you might get some blowback (I saw someone refer to _Gone With the Wind_ as a "horrible, horrible book" the other day. I've not read it so couldn't say) but - I mean, it really all depends on what you are writing. People still churn out medieval-type fantasy with all the protagonists living in nice big castles and never mind all the peasants in the slums or labouring in the fields. People want a degree of escape and massive houses provide that to a point. I think people mostly object when writers exclude a group or tokenise them or otherwise treat them as if they weren't there.


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## Trionix (Jul 30, 2020)

Wow! Lots of feedback! Thanks so much! This gives me a lot to consider. 

To clarify a few things, this will be my first real attempt at writing. I am, of course, writing with the idea in mind that it may eventually be read by someone, maybe even a few “someones”, but as for publishing, I wouldn’t even know where to start. I have honestly only thought about posting it online for free, because, at this point I am just writing for the enjoyment of doing so, without an end goal in mind, and that seemed like the logical way to put out a work for others to enjoy as well. Maybe I should reconsider that? Anyway, I’m a long way off from that point so there’s plenty of time to think on it.


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## indianroads (Jul 30, 2020)

This subject comes up frequently these days, and I usually reply by suggesting that they simply tell the truth about the issue from different point of views and don't editorialize.

I mostly write SciFi, which is a genre that has historically pushed a lot of boundaries. Each character in your book has their own reasons for what they do - even antagonists, and often those reasons have some validity. Tell the story in an even handed way (as much as possible).

These days people insist on debating complex issues on social media via memes - which is idiotic. Your novel is your chance to explore an issue in depth. If you're not even handed though, what you write will lose validity.


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## Sir-KP (Jul 30, 2020)

If it's fiction and you don't say real-life name or 'brand', I say just F it. Go write them without hesitation.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jul 30, 2020)

When you write, even with sensitive issues, swing for the fences. Don't hold back and try to create blameless characters. Say the things you wanna say, regardless of who might read it.

No one reads tame books anymore.
Set those pages on fire or go home.


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## luckyscars (Jul 31, 2020)

Ralph Rotten said:


> No one reads tame books anymore.
> Set those pages on fire or go home.



I broadly agree, but it does entirely depend on the genre, readership and the moment.

Cozy mysteries are, by definition, 'tame' and they're extremely popular. It's actually one genre I have found very difficult to write for that reason -- you have to constantly tone everything down for fear of giving Aunt Mildred heart palpitations. Then you have stuff like spiritual romances that are pretty vanilla. 

These are pretty big markets so, as exceptions, they bear mentioning.


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## CyberWar (Jul 31, 2020)

I generally go with the _softness-of-a-hammer _approach, writing potentially-objectionable things as graphic as I feel they need to be to suit the storyline and general tone of the work. While I will not go out of my way to deliberately offend somebody with my writing, neither do I have the duty to please every self-entitled professionally-offended crybaby out there. People who might take offense at the things I write would be better off reading other stuff like Dr. Seuss or Beatrix Potter rather than my works anyway.


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## Cephus (Jul 31, 2020)

CyberWar said:


> I generally go with the _softness-of-a-hammer _approach, writing potentially-objectionable things as graphic as I feel they need to be to suit the storyline and general tone of the work. While I will not go out of my way to deliberately offend somebody with my writing, neither do I have the duty to please every self-entitled professionally-offended crybaby out there. People who might take offense at the things I write would be better off reading other stuff like Dr. Seuss or Beatrix Potter rather than my works anyway.



That's exactly it. The only reason anyone has even heard of these professional crybabies is because anyone pays them any mind in the first place. Pay attention to what your readers want, not what some self-entitled twit online thinks about a book they haven't stopped to read, and certainly they haven't paid for, in the first place.


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## luckyscars (Jul 31, 2020)

Cephus said:


> Pay attention to what your readers want, not what some self-entitled twit online thinks about a book they haven't stopped to read, and certainly they haven't paid for, in the first place.



How do you know what your readers want if you aren't taking into account societal norms and broad notions of acceptability? I'm always puzzled by this 'argument'. 

It's fine to say you shouldn't go out of your way to appease irrational and reactionary nonsense, we can all agree on that, but the OP's question revolved around their concerns about offending people unnecessarily to a level that hobbles their books effectiveness. 

Since most readers are people, your persistent grunting about 'professional crybabies' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Who are these professional crybabies? They're presumably part of the readership, no?


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## Terry D (Jul 31, 2020)

Trionix said:


> I’m worried about this issue. When it comes to writing about sensitive subjects, or even just touching on them, such as things like racism, sexism, oppression of one group vs another, how is that done nowadays, or rather, how is it received when read? I understand maybe not to do things such as romanticize the old mid 19th century south, or glorify ideas like that, but part of my story deals with similar issues.
> 
> My story takes place in the distant, dystopian future where society lives vastly different than we do now, and social standards are turned on their heads as compared to today. Before I can bring some kind of solution in for the sufferings and inequalities experienced by characters in the story, I must first establish the existence and acceptance of such a world by most characters within it, and then establish actions to begin rectifying it.
> 
> To clarify without giving my story details away, I am writing about a form of sexism in a world that we don’t currently have, and against people that aren’t people in the sense that we think of them, but yet still of human origins, and I feel that many people who read it may compare and judge it by today’s standards as they read it. The last thing I want to do in my first writing is to cause major offense.



How do these topics need to be handled in order for your story to be effective? What do you want to say about them? Are they meant to be parables for today's attitudes and conditions? Are these topics central to your story or peripheral? All these conditions, and more (like style and tone), will affect how you handle them. The purpose of fiction is to make a connection with readers and you can't make that connection if you don't first connect with the story yourself, so write the issues that concern you in a way which makes you feel what you want your readers to feel. For some writers that's going to blunt and brutal, for others more circumspect and subtle. Decide what you would like to read and go for it.


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## Cephus (Jul 31, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> How do you know what your readers want if you aren't taking into account societal norms and broad notions of acceptability? I'm always puzzled by this 'argument'.
> 
> It's fine to say you shouldn't go out of your way to appease irrational and reactionary nonsense, we can all agree on that, but the OP's question revolved around their concerns about offending people unnecessarily to a level that hobbles their books effectiveness.
> 
> Since most readers are people, your persistent grunting about 'professional crybabies' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Who are these professional crybabies? They're presumably part of the readership, no?



Because they keep buying books? If they're going to continue to pay me and they're going to keep reading and they're going to leave me reviews saying they like what I'm writing, I'm going to take them at their word.

Nobody ought to listen to these idiots. You know when Marvel's sales started tanking? When they started paying attention to these people. Why? Because they drove away all of the people who were shelling out money and supporting them, while trying to pander to koolade-haired lunatics who had no interest in the product to begin with. Those people are locusts. They swarm from one media property to the next, making absurd demands and when they've destroyed it utterly, they just move on. They have no intention to buy the product. They never did. They just want to exercise influence over the producer and, once having gotten their way, they get bored and go off to find something else to be offended by.

Your market is a very tiny percentage of the overall number of human beings on the planet. You can't please everyone. The people who are willing to pay you, those are the people that you need to take care of. The rest can take a flying leap.


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## luckyscars (Jul 31, 2020)

Cephus said:


> Because they keep buying books? If they're going to continue to pay me and they're going to keep reading and they're going to leave me reviews saying they like what I'm writing, I'm going to take them at their word.
> 
> Nobody ought to listen to these idiots. You know when Marvel's sales started tanking? When they started paying attention to these people. Why? Because they drove away all of the people who were shelling out money and supporting them, while trying to pander to koolade-haired lunatics who had no interest in the product to begin with. Those people are locusts. They swarm from one media property to the next, making absurd demands and when they've destroyed it utterly, they just move on. They have no intention to buy the product. They never did. They just want to exercise influence over the producer and, once having gotten their way, they get bored and go off to find something else to be offended by.
> 
> Your market is a very tiny percentage of the overall number of human beings on the planet. You can't please everyone. The people who are willing to pay you, those are the people that you need to take care of. The rest can take a flying leap.



It's not the same thing at all. You can't seriously be comparing the creative decisions of a debut writer to something like Marvel.

I have no idea about you, but the OP is clearly a debut writer.

A guy who operates a successful restaurant has very different things to take into consideration when considering changes to a menu than a guy who is starting out a restaurant. The guy who is starting out the restaurant has to take into account the perceived tastes of the town in which they are building just as much as they do their 'vision' of what 'works'. 

You can be the greatest Chinese chef ever, but if you try to open a restaurant cooking your great and authentic Chinese food in the middle of Batfuck, West Virginia, you'll go bust in a week. Why? Because people there want egg rolls and chow mein. Not shark fins and fertilized duck eggs. Your authentic chinese food might work in New York, though. And it will certainly work in Beijing.

 With no established business, the has no sales information, no reviews, and no menu with a proven track record to begin with, it's senseless to talk about 'relying on what your customers say' when you have no customers and it's senseless to talk about 'readers' when you have no readers.

Those with no readers, would be well advised to pay attention to the preferences and, yes, sensitivities of their target market -- including the people who write about that market. Not to the point they are beholden entirely to the 'crybabies' and afraid to write difficult scenes, of course not, but also not to the point they are ignorantly doing whatever. That is, assuming they don't want to just alienate the world before they start.

An example? You can't use the word 'nigger' in a novel. Certainly not as a white author. You simply can't use it and expect it to be published at any mainstream publishing house in America anymore. Nobody will touch that with a ten foot pole and it doesn't matter about intent or context. Sure, that's on the extreme end, but we can use it as a starting point. There are some things that will alienate, regardless of what's 'fair'.


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## Joker (Jul 31, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> It's not the same thing at all. You can't seriously be comparing the creative decisions of a debut writer to something like Marvel.
> 
> An example? You can't use the word 'nigger' in a novel. Certainly not as a white author. You simply can't use it and expect it to be published at any mainstream publishing house in America anymore. Nobody will touch that with a ten foot pole and it doesn't matter about intent or context. Sure, that's on the extreme end, but we can use it as a starting point. There are some things that will alienate, regardless of what's 'fair'.



Er... I think the fact that you just used the n-word, uncensored, disproves your own point. Obviously context _does _matter. You weren't being a bigot, you were making a point, and we're all adult enough to understand that. So why should you be forced to censor yourself? To appease a small minority that isn't mature enough to use their noggins?

(Though, if _you _happen to be black yourself, that kinda changes things...)


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## luckyscars (Jul 31, 2020)

Joker said:


> Er... I think the fact that you just used the n-word, uncensored, disproves your own point.



Nah, I appreciate my posts can be of such length and quality to be easily mistaken for published literature, but I'm talking about commercial fiction. 

I promise you that you simply cannot as a white author use the n-word in books and expect it to go down well. I'm not saying that's _right, _but I am saying that's _how it is__._



> Obviously context _does _matter. You weren't being a bigot, you were making a point, and we're all adult enough to understand that. So why should you be forced to censor yourself? To appease a small minority that isn't mature enough to use their noggins?
> 
> (Though, if _you _happen to be black yourself, that kinda changes things...)



Good question. 

Censorship is complex. Often people want to talk about it being always bad, but we all know _certain _things should be censored, especially in certain places. 

You would be hard pressed to find even the most aggressive libertarian who has a problem with rules about, say, bestiality pornography. You would be _even harder pressed _to find one who is okay with it, say, in a school library.

So, once again, it's all about that old and frankly tedious question as to 'where do we draw the line?' Personally, I don't care about the line much. It takes a lot for me to get agitated about either too much or too little censorship. But, if we agree that the line exists and that where it begins depends on the market and context (nudity is censored in certain movies, embraced in others, etc) then it's Plain Looney to act like flouting the line will have no impact. 

This impact is especially true, and especially important to understand, if you have no clout, no standing by which people might give you the benefit of the doubt. 

So, yeah, as a dispassionate prospective reader, I AM going to possibly judge a book titled "Why I Like To Sodomize Mongooses" by Joker. Possibly that judgement may be unfair but...that's not my problem: I am the customer, you are the seller. 

The latter point is what Cephus is saying, and I don't disagree. My disagreement is that such thinking has any relevance to somebody who has zero customers and zero margin for error when it comes to getting customers. Few writers are in a position to completely disregard 'sensitivity' in all spheres, and we have to be honest about that.


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## luckyscars (Jul 31, 2020)

I think a good example of a career path that has demonstrated varying adherence to sensitive subjects would be somebody like Stephen King. 

If you compare his first novel _Carrie _an the subject matter and word choice with his later books you can see how the increase in King's popularity enabled his ability to take greater degrees of risk. 

Carrie isn't a totally tame read, it is a horror novel, but it's well within the standard norms of horror in the mid seventies and the only people who could have really found it offensive would be people who read zero horror ever, the views of whom are obviously irrelevant. So, it hits the sweet spot for a fledgling horror writer in being sufficiently daring as to provoke a reaction and a degree of buzz (enough to upset a pastor or your parents, maybe) but NOT too daring as to court so much controversy that a reasonable, on-the-fence horror author could dismiss it as pornographic trash. It's solid.

By taking this decision early on, by not pushing the envelope off the desk, within the span of a decade we see an empowered, successful Stephen King writing material featuring preteen orgies, school shootings and numerous other things that would likely land a newbie in the wastepaper basket. That's not to say you can't see success with controversial material as a nobody, you can, but it's so much harder.


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## Cephus (Aug 1, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> An example? You can't use the word 'nigger' in a novel. Certainly not as a white author. You simply can't use it and expect it to be published at any mainstream publishing house in America anymore. Nobody will touch that with a ten foot pole and it doesn't matter about intent or context. Sure, that's on the extreme end, but we can use it as a starting point. There are some things that will alienate, regardless of what's 'fair'.



Sure I can. I can use any word I want to use and I don't give a damn who likes it or not. It's really simple.


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## luckyscars (Aug 1, 2020)

Cephus said:


> Sure I can. I can use any word I want to use and I don't give a damn who likes it or not. It's really simple.



Do you self-publish?


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## BornForBurning (Aug 1, 2020)

> Neo-Nazis in a story getting violent? They die horrifically and the survivors are pulled into a hell dimension.


This is one of those tropes that just deserves to get turned on its head at some point. Like I enjoy _Raiders _as much as the next guy, but I'd like my Nazi villains to start developing some depth and nuance, please. I think if we saw a Nazi walk his ideology to its purest form, we'd find a character who far more people in contemporary America would find sympathetic then some might expect. We might find someone who is no greater sinner than average joe-sixpack. This is why I love stupid games like _Metal Gear Rising. _"He's a crazy genocidal freak who harvests the brains of little children--oh, wait, everything he says actually makes sense within the worldview of the protagonist." _X-men First Class_, weirdly enough, also did this, and quite daringly with a Jewish villain, who essentially says, "Yes, the strong should rule the weak. But you killed my mother, so you must die."  
not that 'the strong should rule the weak' is actual fascist ideology. It isn't. But it worked in the film. 

I guess I want to see wanton finger-pointing and dehumanization subverted. Does the gorgeous Nazi bombshell always have to be hyper-promiscuous? Maybe she (gasp) actually upholds the sexual ideals the _real_ Third Reich believed in. Does Adolf Hitler stand-in number 3781 have to be a genocidal fruitcake who eats Jews for breakfast? Maybe he really _does _desire the genuine good of the German People, but his ideals have been twisted by his own unforgiveness towards those who destroyed his country. 

And your comment regarding pedophiles is absolutely disgusting. Yeah, dehumanize those kids he raped. That'll really stick it to the villain. What. This is why redemption is ultimately the only true form of subversion. 

Regarding 'sensitive' topics. I guess, know your audience. And tell the truth in the way most likely to reach that audience. Don't just write WhAt yOU wAnT. Write what's true. I'm a big fan of the recent movement against racial epithets in fiction. For one, cursing is cheap. More than one talented author has ruined good dialog due to an over-reliance on swearing. For another, absolutely nothing good has come of this controversy over racial epithets in America. Once you get to the 'adopting it as their own' stage of an epithet, that's when you know things have gotten really bad. Because the group has essentially agreed to take this ugly, abusive word on as an identity.


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> Regarding 'sensitive' topics. I guess, know your audience. And tell the truth in the way most likely to reach that audience. Don't just write WhAt yOU wAnT. Write what's true. I'm a big fan of the recent movement against racial epithets in fiction. For one, cursing is cheap. More than one talented author has ruined good dialog due to an over-reliance on swearing. For another, absolutely nothing good has come of this controversy over racial epithets in America. Once you get to the 'adopting it as their own' stage of an epithet, that's when you know things have gotten really bad. Because the group has essentially agreed to take this ugly, abusive word on as an identity.



While I 100% agree that _no one _should be using the n-word to address someone in this day and age... how the hell are you going to write a story set in the American 1800s without that word being used in a historical context? History was ugly, that's just the truth.

I just find it really weird that you want you're okay with humanizing Nazis, but not with using the n-word. I think the Nazis used the n-word plenty...


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## luckyscars (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> While I 100% agree that _no one _should be using the n-word to address someone in this day and age... how the hell are you going to write a story set in the American 1800s without that word being used in a historical context? History was ugly, that's just the truth.
> 
> I just find it really weird that you want you're okay with humanizing Nazis, but not with using the n-word. I think the Nazis used the n-word plenty...



So...this comes up quite often in any writing conversation and I think it comes down to agreeing there is and should be a difference between reality and fiction. There already is, anyway. We don't write about our characters needing to go poop real bad or worrying about their taxes -- at least not often. We know that certain parts of 'reality' just don't form part of good stories. 

Yeah, history was ugly and trying to figure out how to show that ugliness without writing an ugly story is part of the challenge. It's certainly not that difficult, though. 

I have read lots of good historical fiction set in lots of racist eras and yet I don't recall reading much in which the writer deemed it necessary to actually have racist characters screaming the n-word at each other. Super strange!

Conversely, I have read a lot of really terrible historical fiction in which the writer attempted to be gritty by incorporating 'the values of the time' and hurling racism all around gleefully so as to create 'authentic' Nazis and 'authentic' slave owners and - lo! - even with all that _epic __realism_ the book was still shit. 

Point being: If your writing is so delicate that it relies on the relatively small number of words and tropes that are deemed offensive across all contexts to make it work...then it's probably pretty weak all round. I mean, most historical fiction authors manage this just fine. Maybe read some historical fiction and see how they do it? 

ETA: Even if one disputes the moral obligation not to include offensive language in their book, how about approaching this from a purely aesthetic perspective? Ask: Do you think readers *want* to read about racists saying racist stuff? Like, do you think they will get an enjoyable or intellectually stimulating experience out of reading it? Do you *want* to write it? Probably not, right? So maybe just worry less about your 'right' to use the words and more about whether they actually add anything on importance to the actual story.


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Point being: If your historical fiction is so delicate that it relies on the relatively small number of words and tropes that are deemed offensive across all contexts to give it a sense of credibility...then it's probably pretty weak all round. I mean, most historical fiction authors manage this just fine. Maybe read historical fiction and see how they do it?
> 
> ETA: Even if one disputes the moral obligation not to include offensive language in their book, how about approaching this from a purely aesthetic perspective? Ask: Do you think readers *want* to read about racists saying racist stuff? Like, do you think they will get an enjoyable or intellectually stimulating experience out of reading it? Do you *want* to write it? Probably not, right? So maybe just worry less about your 'right' to use the words and more about whether they actually add anything on importance to the actual story.



You're lumping all historical fiction together, dude.

A children's book about cowboys in the Wild West? Yeah, of course kids don't need to be hearing that crap, even if it's historically accurate, because it's for _kids. _

But in a gritty, realistic story set during the Civil War? If the reader is so Charmin Ultra-Soft as to get squeamish if the n-word is used by people *literally fighting to preserve slavery*, they're also not going to be handle the blood and guts and men's toes falling off from gangrene. I mean, how cringy and silly would it be to _not _have the Confederates (and honestly, most of the Union) be eye-wateringly racist? 

Context, dude.


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## BornForBurning (Aug 1, 2020)

> While I 100% agree that _no one should be using the n-word to address someone in this day and age... how the hell are you going to write a story set in the American 1800s without that word being used in a historical context? History was ugly, that's just the truth.
> 
> I just find it really weird that you want you're okay with humanizing Nazis, but not with using the n-word. I think the Nazis used the n-word plenty..._


With regards to historical fiction, there is a tension between unnecessary indulgence in evil and historical honesty. I acknowledge that. I do not know what the ultimate solution is, besides that, like all fiction, we must be determined to honestly address evil without falling into the trap of carnal indulgence. With regards to humanization and cursing, the answer is that humanization is always moral, and cursing is never moral (with perhaps an exception for, again, honest depiction of evil). With regards to the Nazis using the n-word, I suspect you are in deep historical error. 

If humanizing the Nazis makes you uncomfortable, you might as well give up on humanizing the human race. They committed no sin uncommon to mankind. 



> But in a gritty, realistic story set during the Civil War? If the reader is so Charmin Ultra-Soft as to get squeamish if the n-word is used by people *literally fighting to preserve slavery, they're also not going to be handle the blood and guts and men's toes falling off from gangrene. I mean, how cringy and silly would it be to not have the Confederates (and honestly, most of the Union) be eye-wateringly racist?*


It's less about realism and more about depicting evil in such a way that the content is constructive as opposed to obnoxious or indulgent. I know that watching someone's head get bashed in is unpleasant. I don't need to watch a snuff film to learn that, even though a snuff film would certainly be an 'honest' depiction of murder!


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## luckyscars (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> You're lumping all historical fiction together, dude.
> 
> A children's book about cowboys in the Wild West? Yeah, of course kids don't need to be hearing that crap, even if it's historically accurate, because it's for _kids. _
> 
> ...



With regard to heavy usage of racist language that is toxic in 2020: Yes I do lump all books together, because that’s now it is. nobody will publish a white author who throws around the n word “for atmosphere” in a novel written in 2020. I absolutely promise you, it’s a huge mistake. 

I didn’t say you can’t still write about racism. The point is to take into account sensivities and your place. Assuming you’re white you are less equipped to write about racism from anything other than a white perspective. periodendofstory

Again, you just need to read more IMO. This isn’t rocket science, plenty of people have done it well. Try “The Good Lord Bird” or “Cold Mountain”. Both highly regarded modern novels set during and about the Civil War.


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> With regard to heavy usage of racist language that is toxic in 2020: Yes I do lump all books together, because that’s now it is. nobody will publish a white author who throws around the n word “for atmosphere” in a novel written in 2020. I absolutely promise you, it’s a huge mistake.



Nobody? Literally nobody? I find that hard to believe.



> I didn’t say you can’t still write about racism. The point is to take into account sensivities and your place. Assuming you’re white you are less equipped to write about racism from anything other than a white perspective. periodendofstory



Non-sequitur.



> Again, you just need to read more IMO. This isn’t rocket science, plenty of people have done it well. Try “The Good Lord Bird” or “Cold Mountain”. Both highly regarded modern novels set during and about the Civil War.



Besides for this being condescending, I'm going to guess those are intended for younger audiences. I could also point out to you a bunch of recent media (written by white people) that uses context-appropriate racial slurs. So I don't see how these anecdotes show that using racial slurs should _never _happen in _​any context ever._


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2020)

Regarding the OP. Watching Miriam Margalise traveling round Australia on the TV the other night I felt she had it right. "I am a lesbian" she told people. No justifications, no talking round it, no euphemisms; a simple statement of fact.

And as Lucky said early on, if readers get offended at least you know you have readers. I remember when Lolita came out, there was a terrible stink, offended wasn't in it, more like outraged. Terrific publicity, it sold hugely.


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> Regarding the OP. Watching Miriam Margalise traveling round Australia on the TV the other night I felt she had it right. "I am a lesbian" she told people. No justifications, no talking round it, no euphemisms; a simple statement of fact.
> 
> And as Lucky said early on, if readers get offended at least you know you have readers. I remember when Lolita came out, there was a terrible stink, offended wasn't in it, more like outraged. Terrific publicity, it sold hugely.



I wonder how some of the people in this thread would have reacted back in the day to A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, DOOM or anything else that caused a moral panic...


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> I wonder how some of the people in this thread would have reacted back in the day to A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, DOOM or anything else that caused a moral panic...



Didn't know that it was The Holy Grail, I thought it was just The life of Brian. Not surprised though, there are some people who love to be offended, like there are some who love fighting. Is it not our duty as writers to cater for all sorts of readers and make sure they have something to be offended at ?


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> Didn't know that it was The Holy Grail, I thought it was just The life of Brian. Not surprised though, there are some people who love to be offended, like there are some who love fighting. Is it not our duty as writers to cater for all sorts of readers and make sure they have something to be offended at ?



A bunch of ultra-conservative types got their knickers in a twist over The Holy Grail - claimed it was blasphemy and all that. 

What I find funny is when leftists sit and sneer at the Bible thumpers for being easily offended, and then turn around and screech over the Joker movie because the main character is _gasp _an angry straight white man! Oh the humanity!

I'm a libertarian, and that reflects on my views on literature. No one should be burning books, because what follows is the burning of men. Left, right, I don't care. I want open and honest debate.


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## Cephus (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> I'm a libertarian, and that reflects on my views on literature. No one should be burning books, because what follows is the burning of men. Left, right, I don't care. I want open and honest debate.



The only response to free speech is more speech. It is never trying to shut someone up.


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## PiP (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> I wonder how some of the people in this thread would have reacted back in the day to A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, DOOM or anything else that caused a moral panic...



Simple, our generation was not part of the 'easily offended' ... 'politically correct' brigade. I prefer to read books that deal with 'real life' warts and all. I don't want to read sanitized PC bullshit.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2020)

PiP said:


> Simple, our generation was not part of the 'easily offended' ... 'politically correct' brigade. I prefer to read books that deal with 'real life' warts and all. I don't want to read sanitized PC bullshit.



Sanitized anything really, if people want to read Mein Kampf or The little red book, let them have it unexpurgated. What they make of it is up to them, and not necessarily what the author intended. And how about the nineteenth century prescriptive grammarians  who 'corrected' Jane Austen's punctuation, don't get me started! What did Mark Twain say? Something to the effect that "God invented idiots and simpletons for practice and then went on to typesetters and printers"


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## Taylor (Aug 1, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I didn’t say you can’t still write about racism. The point is to take into account sensivities and your place. Assuming you’re white you are less equipped to write about racism from anything other than a white perspective. periodendofstory



To say that an author can only write about something from their own perspective would be pretty limiting. No author should have to asume "your place."  Did Harper Lee assume her place?

Besides, whites can also experience racism.   Ask a person born in germany or of immigrant german parents, if they have had racism directed at them.  There is another "n-word" that may get used. Would they be less equipped to write a story about racism?


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## luckyscars (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> Nobody? Literally nobody? I find that hard to believe.



Literally pretty much nobody, yeah. 

I'm not pulling this out of my ass, either. My first novel was a time travel science fiction that involved time travel back to the 1930's. I had to revise/resubmit several scenes and edit out parts that included graphic racial violence against black people because the publisher did not like the language and the way I was dealing with racism -- specifically because of a white savior issue I wasn't even aware of, and some of the slurs. And this is a small publisher. The big Random House publishers are going to be even more concerned about this stuff.



> Besides for this being condescending, I'm going to guess those are intended for younger audiences. I could also point out to you a bunch of recent media (written by white people) that uses context-appropriate racial slurs. So I don't see how these anecdotes show that using racial slurs should _never _happen in _​any context ever._



You guess wrong -- both of those suggestions are very much adult, commercial bestselling novels. This is why I am suggesting you read more historical fiction, to better understand the best way to depict history in a way that is effective and also sensitive to audience -- that was a question you asked. 

There really is no other way. We can debate endlessly, the proof is in the pudding. It's not intended to be condescending and I apologize if you interpret it that way. There is no better way to understand how to handle [subject] than to look at what has worked. 



Taylor said:


> To say that an author can only write about something from their own perspective would be pretty limiting. No author should have to asume "your place."  Did Harper Lee assume her place?



Yes, she did. As a white person, she wrote about the subject of racism from a white person's perspective. To Kill A Mockingbird verges on autobiographical, which is the definition of 'assuming your place'. 

I said: Assuming you’re white you are less equipped to write about racism _from anything other than a white perspective. _



> Besides, whites can also experience racism.   Ask a person born in germany or of immigrant german parents, if they have had racism directed at them.  There is another "n-word" that may get used. Would they be less equipped to write a story about racism?



I believe a white German being called a Nazi is not the same experience as systemic racism against people of color, so yes I believe they still wouldn't really have the same foundational experience to draw from. This kind of thing has been debunked a lot.

But, even if it was similar, and perhaps that could be argued (people have certainly tried!), I'm not trying to say any of this is optimal. I wrote in an earlier post, *I'm not saying this stuff is right I am saying it is how it is. *

You don't have to take my word for it, and you shouldn't. I find it frustrating too. As a white male, it is frustrating to me to read so many manuscript wish lists that ask for #ownvoices because I cannot change my voice. 

The point is, your hypothetical German writer isn't going to persuade that many people who matter that they suddenly have an open window into writing about all forms of racism because they are German and have been treated rudely on occasion. They do, of course, have a very good window into writing about a specific kind of experience -- that of being German. Likewise, a black writer probably can't accurately write about a German experience as well as a German writer. 

This isn't about demonizing white people, it's about matching writers' personal experiences to fictional ones as closely as possible to obtain the best insight. There will always be exceptions. American Dirt was written about Mexican immigrants by a white author and that was generally considered incredibly good -- the author did her research. But these are exceptions and that is why this stuff gets difficult.

This is supposed to be a writing discussion, so I think the realities of writing matter as much as, if not more than, the I-think-we-should-be-able-to stuff. All too often it becomes a philosophical discussion of ethics. 

Like, the fact somebody on a forum feels maligned or somebody else is 'sick of all this PC crap'...._so fuckin' what_? The 'PC crap' is here, it dominates -- the publishing industry is absolutely _dominated _by tea drinking liberal women who live in New York and who aren't going to change their mind about representation just because some angry white guy like me on a forum thinks it's B.S. It might not be fashionable to say "I acknowledge reality and will do my best to work within its bounds" but that's the world. Want to fight against it? Start a blog or run for office or get on Fox News. Or, better still, do what the writer of American Dirt did and write about it but also take into account the sensitivities and be careful. 

Either way, I wish you the best of luck.


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## Joker (Aug 1, 2020)

Your entire post assumes that you have to get published by tea drinking liberal New York women, or not get published at all.

Someone had to publish Donald Trump Jr.'s book...


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## BornForBurning (Aug 1, 2020)

> The 'PC crap' is here, it dominates -- the publishing industry is absolutely _dominated by tea drinking liberal women who live in New York_


It isn't going to dominate forever, though. The industry is fickle. That doesn't mean opinion is going to lurch back towards Lord Horror-era ideals of absolute artistic freedom. Most likely, something entirely new will emerge, something none of us can quite predict. Though I personally suspect it's going to have something to do with the band Sabaton, and similar forces currently percolating up from the underground...

This is why I believe it's important to identify what truly 'moral' behavior is within the sphere of fiction writing, and abide by that, rather than pragmatically trying to cram our work within whatever appears to be currently expedient. Chasing public opinion is equivalent to chasing after the wind. Quite frankly, I have absolutely no idea what people want, and I'm not sure 'the people' do either. Could anyone have predicted the runaway popularity of something like Minecraft? Of course not. Nobody knows they want the new thing until they have it. Besides, what if what 'the people' want is actually _immoral? _Should we still provide it? This is where my anti-capitalist leanings come out...


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## indianroads (Aug 1, 2020)

It's a struggle sometimes to stay away from editorializing - but it helps to be a libertarian-conservative, so no one ever knows where I'm coming from.


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## luckyscars (Aug 1, 2020)

Joker said:


> Your entire post assumes that you have to get published by tea drinking liberal New York women, or not get published at all.



No I don't. Self-publishing is a good way to go for anybody who wants to be 'free' to write outside of the  establishment and for certain niche genres it absolutely is the best way. I have consistently framed my perspective as only being relevant to what I have learned from traditionally publishing mainstream fiction. 

The fact that self-publishing exists makes the disgruntlement over publishing norms even more hollow, in my opinion. It's not like anybody can claim they don't have options or are being 'silenced' because The Jennifer Spoon Literary Agency didn't want to buy the rights to _Diary Of A Klansman. _

I fail to see how a writer can on the one hand hold that they should be able to write whatever they want 'and if you don't like it, suck it' then complain about people reacting to it however they want, and if those people happen to hold positions of power over editorial, that's the _free market, baby_. So-called libertarians should be totally fine with that.

By all means self-publish and assert your own tastes (and the financial responsibility for those tastes). Otherwise I would not then complain about the mainstream publishing industry for not wanting certain things. You can't have people assume the costs and legwork for writing they do not like.

It's like kids who want their parents to pay for their college then get upset because their parents then want to have some say in where and what they study and we're all going to act hard done by because we are constrained by the people who are funding us, helping us? _"No, Jimmy, you can't do your degree in New Age Herbology at Willie Nelson University, I don't like it and I'm not paying for it!" _



> Someone had to publish Donald Trump Jr.'s book...



Don Jr. already has an audience_. _Having an established market, as I said several posts back, changes things. If you can prove you'll get gainful, financially plentiful employment from studying New Age Herbology at Willie Nelson University, that would change your parents' perspective on that too -- possibly.

If you can round up a million people who will buy your book no matter what it says, you can probably do what you want. The bestselling author Stephen King can include school shootings and child orgies. It doesn't mean the broke-ass-Stephen-King-living-in-his-Bangor-trailer-while-working-at-the-laundry could. 

What's the difference? One had readers, the other didn't. 



BornForBurning said:


> It isn't going to dominate forever, though. The industry is fickle. That doesn't mean opinion is going to lurch back towards Lord Horror-era ideals of absolute artistic freedom. Most likely, something entirely new will emerge, something none of us can quite predict. Though I personally suspect it's going to have something to do with the band Sabaton, and similar forces currently percolating up from the underground...
> 
> This is why I believe it's important to identify what truly 'moral' behavior is within the sphere of fiction writing, and abide by that, rather than pragmatically trying to cram our work within whatever appears to be currently expedient. Chasing public opinion is equivalent to chasing after the wind. Quite frankly, I have absolutely no idea what people want, and I'm not sure 'the people' do either. Could anyone have predicted the runaway popularity of something like Minecraft? Of course not. Nobody knows they want the new thing until they have it. Besides, what if what 'the people' want is actually _immoral? _Should we still provide it? This is where my anti-capitalist leanings come out...



I agree about trends, but I think it's different when we talk about stuff like race.

I don't see the industry as going backward with regard to social justice issues. I just don't. These aren't 'trends' in the same way that minecraft is. These are values that are increasingly embedded with each year. 

Everything points to the movement either staying where it is or becoming more important. Certainly if things are going to change, I doubt it will happen within, say, the next 10-20 years, and I guess I'm not that interested in such timescales. Who's gonna wait for that?

I also don't think this is so much about morality. There are plenty of books that can be pretty 'immoral'. The morality of the stuff I was asked to revise and tone down wasn't really the problem, I don't think. It was the language, the tone, the visual.

A friend of mine who worked as an editor explained it to me like this: Imagine being the only black kid in a Literature class. Imagine if the books you are studying, sometimes being read aloud in front of everybody, are rife with racist language and attitudes because their 21st century authors thought that it was 'gritty' or 'accurate'. Imagine if that suddenly became okay.

 This is where this 'I can do what I want' stuff breaks down. This is where it starts to be a problem that goes beyond a strict author-reader, laissez faire relationship. There are all sorts of situations where such material can go 'beyond the page'.

Granted, most of us will never have our books in a high school or college classroom, but from the publishing world's perspective that is the ultimate destination of any manuscript they read, that's what _they_ want_. _


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## Trionix (Aug 1, 2020)

Wow, I ignited a powder keg! I’m still here, reading everything that is said. As for me, I think I have decided to change just a little of the theme in my story. I’d rather not deal with a huge issue in my first writing, one that could draw focus away from the story itself. I’m not trying to send a message or promote any ideas with this, I just wanted to write it for the enjoyment of doing so.


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## BornForBurning (Aug 2, 2020)

> Everything points to the movement either staying where it is or becoming more important. Certainly if things are going to change, I doubt it will happen within, say, the next 10-20 years, and I guess I'm not that interested in such timescales. Who's gonna wait for that?


I tentatively agree that this movement still has a sizable amount of staying power. However, you forget that culture is not a monolith, and you forget how difficult it is to predict trends. There is a sizable percentage of Americans who feel quite poorly about 'political correctness' (inherently an ill-defined term, especially in America, but whatever) and they _do _buy books. Lauren Southern's book was prominently displayed in Barnes and Nobel just three years ago. Yes, it isn't fiction, but it is a market. There is an even larger percentage of Americans who _don't _buy books, but very well might if some as-yet unknown genre or style was to arise. 

Though I agree that, of all elements of the social justice movement, the one we are least likely to fall back on is race. A sensitivity regarding issues of racism has rightly arisen within the American subconscious. It has arisen with various sociological cancers attached, yes--vestigial liberalism (in particular, pseudo-Marxist class theory), self-righteousness, rebellion. But the thing at its core is good. I am happy to see so many folks abandoning worthless racial tribalism. Hopefully, we will next address a far more prominent form of American tribalism, namely that of politics. But I'm not holding my breath.



> This is where it starts to be a problem that goes beyond a strict author-reader, laissez faire relationship. There are all sorts of situations where such material can go 'beyond the page'.


Oh, yeah. Duh. I don't believe that individualistic stuff for five seconds, it's a false construct. All relationships, even so-called 'laissez faire' ones carry the potential for power abuses. All words carry power, if they didn't, we wouldn't be using them. They conjure emotions, beliefs. When I post this message, I exercise power. I fling my voice into the public sphere, where it may bring peace or wreak havoc. I pray to God, with fear and trembling, that he does not allow me to abuse this power. When I write fiction, I impose either a truth or a lie upon the reader. A moral reader may emerge from a lying work rejecting the lie. But he has still been touched by its evil, an evil that should never have been. 

It's this precise discussion that causes me to say I believe we are moving beyond social justice--we are already nearing a post-liberal style of dialect. We are asking questions that the late-stage liberals of the 1900s--the fascists, the marxists, the anarchists--were asking. Social justice (at least, as conceived within liberalism) cannot survive in a post-liberal environment, as the desires of the individual will no longer be paramount. Though it may still survive. Its roots lie arguably in Catholic theology, not liberalism. 



> Wow, I ignited a powder keg!


Welcome to Writing Discussion.


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## Cephus (Aug 2, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> Sanitized anything really, if people want to read Mein Kampf or The little red book, let them have it unexpurgated. What they make of it is up to them, and not necessarily what the author intended. And how about the nineteenth century prescriptive grammarians  who 'corrected' Jane Austen's punctuation, don't get me started! What did Mark Twain say? Something to the effect that "God invented idiots and simpletons for practice and then went on to typesetters and printers"



Exactly. People need to grow up and learn how to handle the real world as it is, not as they wish it was. Reality isn't up for a vote, but there's a lot of people out there these days that figure if they stuff their fingers in their ears and scream "I can't hear you!" loud enough, then reality will change to accommodate their childish feelings.

And they're wrong.


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> I tentatively agree that this movement still has a sizable amount of staying power. However, you forget that culture is not a monolith, and you forget how difficult it is to predict trends. There is a sizable percentage of Americans who feel quite poorly about 'political correctness' (inherently an ill-defined term, especially in America, but whatever) and they _do _buy books. Lauren Southern's book was prominently displayed in Barnes and Nobel just three years ago. Yes, it isn't fiction, but it is a market. There is an even larger percentage of Americans who _don't _buy books, but very well might if some as-yet unknown genre or style was to arise.



I would say there's an obvious difference between political correctness and avoiding hurting people. It seems to me the problem is figuring out where the line is.

There are people that will argue that nothing that can be written can be harmful because 'duh, it's writing'. That's a simplistic view, in my opinion. Media influences culture as much as the other way round. If people don't agree that books can be dangerous, to me that's a 'flat Earth' type of view: It defies so much known fact.

You are right, though, that at some point the desire not to cause harm _can_ venture into asinine forms of political correctness. That's where we get into stuff like "the next President MUST be a black woman" or "we CANNOT have somebody who isn't [ethnicity] voice the character of [Disney princess]" or "let's count how many non-white people are sitting around the dinner table in this movie scene and make sure it's _exactly _proportionate to how many non-white people exist in society" 

Those are insidious forms of PC primarily because (1) They aren't choices that have any proven affect on progressing race/sex/whatever issues (2) They are invariably born out of cynical marketing rather than principle and (3) They start to get absurd and reductionist -- e.g if we accept the NEXT president MUST be a black woman, does that mean the President after that MUST be [...]?

But...I don't think that sort of thing is hugely common, not nearly as common as people like to claim it is. I _definitely _don't think it's that common in writing. I think the tea sipping liberal ladies just generally want to avoid alienating a wide swathe of readers and avoid having to stomach regressive crap. It's not some conspiracy, you know? 



> Though I agree that, of all elements of the social justice movement, the one we are least likely to fall back on is race. A sensitivity regarding issues of racism has rightly arisen within the American subconscious. It has arisen with various sociological cancers attached, yes--vestigial liberalism (in particular, pseudo-Marxist class theory), self-righteousness, rebellion. But the thing at its core is good. I am happy to see so many folks abandoning worthless racial tribalism. Hopefully, we will next address a far more prominent form of American tribalism, namely that of politics. But I'm not holding my breath.



See this is where I get into the is-this-writing-discussion-or-philosophy thing again, because while I agree with a lot of what you're saying here I question its relevance to the 'real world'.

There are still plenty of books, still the vast majority actually, that cater to more 'traditional' tastes (interpreted as you like) and there's no reason to think that will change, if for no other reason than there are lots of different readers and money is money. 

The only difference now really comes down to relatively minor measures -- avoiding certain words and tropes, managing scenes in a certain way --  to reduce offense. To me, that shouldn't be viewed as censorship so much as a challenge: Write it better... 

...or, more specifically, write it more _inclusively. '_Avoiding offense' by definition means speaking to a broader group of people, reaching more people, touching more people. Surely that is every writer's goal? Not to sit in a box, arms crossed, and snarl "YOU EITHER LIKE IT OR FUCK OFF"?

I'm not suggesting it's possible or even desirable to expect to write well and not upset anybody. But as many as possible? Sure. If Harper Lee, a white woman, can write about racism in 1960 in a way that doesn't piss people off in 2020, then why can't anybody?

I think a pretty good rule for any writing is this: *If you wouldn't feel comfortable standing in front of ten strangers (of mixed demographics and backgrounds) and reading this shit out loud while staring them in the face, then you probably shouldn't write it. *Hiding prejudices behind the veil of 'fiction' is a bad idea.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

Harper Lee used the n-word.


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> Harper Lee used the n-word.



A few times in scenes like this:



> “Do you defend niggers, Atticus?” I asked him that evening.
> “Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.”
> “’s’what everybody at school says.”
> “From now on it’ll be everybody less one—“



A white author (in the 1960's) stating the word as an obvious part of condemning its usage is hugely different than a white author (in the 2020's) using it as a vehicle for 'making it realistic because everyone was racist back then'. The former is necessary, the latter is not. The former has a very small chance of being one of those exceptions I mentioned, the latter has zero chance.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> A white author (in the 1960's) stating the word as an obvious part of condemning its usage is hugely different than a white author (in the 2020's) using it as a vehicle for 'making it realistic because everyone was racist back then'. The former is necessary, the latter is not. The former has a very small chance of being one of those exceptions I mentioned, the latter has zero chance.



So, unless an author beats you over the head with a message of social justice, they can't have _fictional bad people _use the word, while also not approving of it personally?

Full-disclosure, I haven't read any historical fiction written after the 80s, but I can come up with a _lot _of recent movies and video games, written by white people, that use the n-word. Unless you mean to suggest that literature publishers are dramatically more sensitive than ultra-left Hollywood...


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> So, unless an author beats you over the head with a message of social justice, they can't have _fictional bad people _use the word, while also not approving of it personally?
> 
> Full-disclosure, I haven't read any historical fiction written after the 80s, but I can come up with a _lot _of recent movies and video games, written by white people, that use the n-word. Unless you mean to suggest that literature publishers are dramatically more sensitive than ultra-left Hollywood...



I'm not sure which movies you're talking about and don't play video games, but I would again refer back to what I said before that it matters night and day _who _the writer is. 

If you're talking about, say, something like Django Unchained, that's not comparable at all to a debut novelist trying to get somebody to take a chance on his/her work. Quentin Tarantino doesn't need to give a shit about any of this because he already has an established, devoted audience who not only know him to be provocative but expect him to be. 

As a result, he has huge power over whoever is financing him -- he can finance himself if he wants to. He is the chef opening the new restaurant that people will pay top dollar to eat dog shit at...because _it's Quentin Tarantino, stupid!

_What I am saying when I am saying "please don't put a ton of really inflammatory shit in your debut novel you are hoping to have somebody else publish and assume the entirety of the risk for" is that you are ADDING to risk. You are GIVING people a reason to say 'egh, I don't think I can..." Especially with something like race, you have to be damn careful.

The reason you should be damn careful because - guess what! - there's _always _another writer and there's _always_ another book. Decisions are made quickly and often over the smallest thing. Agents and editors will say, have said (I can send you the videos) that when they are reading a submission they are _looking for reasons to say no. _When producers are weighing up a movie director or video game developer who has sold millions, they are _looking for reasons to say yes. _It's an entirely different dynamic.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I'm not sure which movies you're talking about and don't play video games, but I would again refer back to what I said before that it matters night and day _who _the writer is.
> 
> If you're talking about, say, something like Django Unchained, that's not comparable at all to a debut novelist trying to get somebody to take a chance on his/her work. Quentin Tarantino doesn't need to give a shit about any of this because he already has an established, devoted audience who not only expect him to be provocative but expect him to be.
> 
> ...



That's all well and good, and I can't disagree with that. I don't blame the OP for wanting to stay away from a landmine for his early works.

But that's completely different than blanket saying "the n-word should never be said by fictional characters, even by racists". If that's not what you've been saying, _mea culpa_.


----------



## Squalid Glass (Aug 2, 2020)

There are certain people who believe that, Joker. But even to an ultra lefty like me, those people are out of their minds. Context is important. The context of the novel. The context of the industry. The context of the writer. I think Lucky has laid it out pretty well here.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

Squalid Glass said:


> There are certain people who believe that, Joker. But even to an ultra lefty like me, those people are out of their minds. Context is important. The context of the novel. The context of the industry. The context of the writer. I think Lucky has laid it out pretty well here.
> 
> What I can't understand, though, is the insistence people have on being able to say the n-word. It's always the sticking point in so many of these "PC" discussions. I just cannot understand why people make such a fuss about not being able to say it. Honestly, who cares?



Completely different topic.

Honestly, personally, I don't like hearing black people say it. But what do I know, I'm a straight white man who voted for Trump. I'm basically the lowest form of life :devilish:


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## andrewclunn (Aug 2, 2020)

I use "offensive" language in my work. For all the ranting reasons people can give for censorship, a powerful piece that flies in the face of their rules becomea self-evident proof of the staying power of ideas and free expression in art.  And that's without touching on the importance of historical works.  Your feelings are hurt?  Well why the fuck should that cause me or anyone else to self censor?  If my mere words are oppression, then guesa what?  The oppression is self inflicted and its chains are within your mind.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

andrewclunn said:


> I use "offensive" language in my work. For all the ranting reasons people can give for censorship, a powerful piece that flies in the face of their rules becomea self-evident proof of the staying power of ideas and free expression in art.  And that's without touching on the importance of historical works.  Your feelings are hurt?  Well why the fuck should that cause me or anyone else to self censor?  If my mere words are oppression, then guesa what?  The oppression is self inflicted and its chains are within your mind.



As I said earlier - when they start burning books, men are bound to follow.


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## Squalid Glass (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> Completely different topic.
> 
> Honestly, personally, I don't like hearing black people say it. But what do I know, I'm a straight white man who voted for Trump. I'm basically the lowest form of life :devilish:



Yes, different topic, which is why I deleted it after posting. Sorry about that.


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## Cephus (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> As I said earlier - when they start burning books, men are bound to follow.



https://freedomwire.com/leftists-erasing-literature/


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Cephus said:


> https://freedomwire.com/leftists-erasing-literature/



This is why we can't have a reasonable conversation on this topic.

You're citing this as some kind of source but the ONLY fact in this article is one school district in Duluth Minnesota who removed the book. That is the only fact it contains that could be of any relevance to the premise 'leftists erasing literature'. Schools periodically revise and remove content all the time for lots of different reasons. 

But okay, let's give you that one case -- a school removed a book. If you really want a bit more context, maybe try and read something outside of a right wing blog? Like this, maybe. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/04/duluth-schools-mockingbird This clearly explains the reasoning behind the Duluth case. 

It also contains the following *"To Kill a Mockingbird is an iconic book, widely considered a great American novel. Just last year, it was voted "America's best-loved novel" by readers who submitted more than 4 million votes in PBS's Great American Read. President Barack Obama quoted Atticus Finch in his farewell speech at the end of his presidency, calling Finch "one of the great characters in American fiction."

*Now, I thought Barack Obama was supposed to be a 'leftist'? I thought that was the supposed reason to dislike him (as opposed to, say, him being a black guy or Muslim or something). I thought he was part of the brainless left...yet there he is quoting the very book that 'leftists' are supposedly 'erasing'? How can this be?

The obvious answer is that there are lots of people who have lots of different opinions and that different decisions get made over content. We can make generalizations, sure, but generalizing to the point of claiming the 'the left hates this book' is obviously nonsense. Worse than nonsense, it's deeply insulting. Give some facts or knock it off.

I am part of 'the left', I would challenge anybody to be more 'left' than me on just about every issue...and I love To Kill A Mockingbird. Some other people may not love it, that's okay too. But Jesus wept, can't we improve the discourse and be a little less tribal?


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> But okay, let's give you that one case -- a school removed a book. If you really want a bit more context, maybe try and read something outside of a right wing blog? Like this, maybe. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/04/duluth-schools-mockingbird This clearly explains the reasoning behind the Duluth case.



Their reasoning is the demographic checkmarks that a writer can mark off are more important than the content of the books themselves.

Do you agree with that?


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## andrewclunn (Aug 2, 2020)

Most of these arguments can be made without invoking "the left," "Republicans," "marxists," or "Trump."  Not sure why we would engage people's tribalism intentionally in this.  Censorship was wrong when the "moral majority" tried to do it back when I was a child, and it's wrong now when "advocates for social justice" attempt to do the same.  Of course when we go beyond mocking the policy itself to mocking whomever is the source of it (at this particular moment in history) we engage the lizard brain of political tribalism.  Doesn't help to make the point.  Yeah, sure it's "the left" right now, but it wasn't always and I'm sure it won't always be them in the future.  Fighting censorship isn't a bludgeoning tool to try and win points for my tribe.  Freedom of expression is a principal worth defending in and of itself, and if (at some point in the future) the winds of political change mean that it's "the right" pushing for censorship, you can bet that's when a lot of people who previously identified as being "on the right" will switch sides.  Free speech isn't a political platform, it's a foundational idea, and to degrade it as being little more than a partisan issue of the day is to be both short sighted and ignorant of history. /end rant.


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## BornForBurning (Aug 2, 2020)

> If my mere words are oppression, then guesa what? The oppression is self inflicted and its chains are within your mind


The fact that you use the word 'mere' to describe your writing shows just how little you understand of the power you hold. I write the word 'blood.' I _see _blood. That is incredible. Are you seriously arguing the written word can't be oppressive? Have you read Clive Barker, Lovecraft? Or, to get a bit more controversial,  those racial memoir type books that have become popular lately? Crushing stuff, and I can say with confidence, much of it shouldn't have been published. It brings evil and despair into the world. 



> Your feelings are hurt?


The Nazis didn't burn books because their feelings were hurt. They burned books because books have _power_, and some books advocate viewpoints, implicit or explicit, that clash with National Socialist doctrine. The proof is self-evident. The two primary genres destroyed in Nazi book burnings were: 
1) Marxist doctrine. 
2) Pornography. (no tears shed here)  
You think this is coincidence? Far from it. Marxism and sexual liberation were two primary forces competing with National Socialism for the soul of the German nation. 
You think the Allies were any better? Where is all the fascist art, sculpture, theater? _Destroyed. _The Allies absolutely leveled an entire artistic school of thought in less than half a decade, _because ART was one of the primary engines that drove fascism_. In fact, Fascism is an inherently artistic ideology. Artistic revival is one of its explicit goals. It survives in a highly vestigial form, ironically, due to curious Jewish filmmakers. 

My point is only that his hyper-individualistic, hyper-reductionist argument regarding literature is self-evidently _wrong_. How is a cogent worldview or belief articulated, if not through language? Would you seriously make this argument for the _spoken _word? I read the word 'sad.' I feel sadness. A small thing, but a packet of yeast works through the whole of the dough. Once we agree that language can affect us _at all_, we must agree that it can affect us at the deepest levels. 

I AM NOT TRYING TO CONTROL ANYONE'S STREAM OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION. I am trying to argue that we have a _duty _before God to ensure our work speaks truth and not falsehood. We are not 'writers.' We are Wizards. Tolkien understood it best. _Three rings, for Elven Kings... _is not a 'poem,' whatever that is. It is a demonic curse.

EDIT: Reading the mpr article, I realize how utterly divergent my own perspective on this is from the majority of Americans. I don't go on social media, watch the news, read the newspaper or any online journals. I don't even watch YouTube. My influences are pre-WW2 political theory, my local church, my immediate family, Tolkien, Lewis, Hobsbawm and some 80s bands/movies. So when I write the above, I'm not considering 'diverse voices,' 'historical oppression,' or any of that sort of thing. I am merely trying to make an argument for using language to advance goodness, and not evil. I see no issue (based on what I remember) with the racial language used in _To Kill a Mockingbird. _Sorry. I just didn't want my post to be misinterpreted as support for some strange pseudo-marxist system of racial equality.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> The fact that you use the word 'mere' to describe your writing shows just how little you understand of the power you hold. I write the word 'blood.' I _see _blood. That is incredible. Are you seriously arguing the written word can't be oppressive?



Yes. I've never heard of a book bashing someone's skull in and hauling them off to the gulag. Only the people who read those books _and _decided to follow them.



> Have you read Clive Barker, Lovecraft? Or, to get a bit more controversial,  those racial memoir type books that have become popular lately? Crushing stuff, and I can say with confidence, much of it shouldn't have been published. It brings evil and despair into the world.



Today I learned Lovecraft should never have been published.

:joker:




> The Nazis didn't burn books because their feelings were hurt. They burned books because books have _power_, and some books advocate viewpoints, implicit or explicit, that clash with National Socialist doctrine. The proof is self-evident. The two primary genres destroyed in Nazi book burnings were:
> 1) Marxist doctrine.
> 2) Pornography. (no tears shed here)



So you agree with censorship when it's something you find distasteful?




> You think this is coincidence? Far from it. Marxism and sexual liberation were two primary forces competing with National Socialism for the soul of the German nation.
> You think the Allies were any better? Where is all the fascist art, sculpture, theater? _Destroyed._


Huh_. _Wonder where all these copies of Mein Kempf came from, then.




> My point is only that his hyper-individualistic, hyper-reductionist argument regarding literature is self-evidently _wrong_. How is a cogent worldview or belief articulated, if not through language? Would you seriously make this argument for the _spoken _word?



Uh... it's called free _speech_ for a reason, bro...




> I AM NOT TRYING TO CONTROL ANYONE'S STREAM OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION.



Except when it's porn.


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## Cephus (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I am part of 'the left', I would challenge anybody to be more 'left' than me on just about every issue...and I love To Kill A Mockingbird. Some other people may not love it, that's okay too. But Jesus wept, can't we improve the discourse and be a little less tribal?



I'd love to, but nobody else seems to care. I oppose anyone who wants to censor anything. I don't care if they're on the left or the right, the only counter to free speech is more speech. It is never censorship. Yet today, the far-left is well known for things like "cancel culture", anything that doesn't cater specifically to their political ideology, those people get attacked, their books and other writings get removed, and they'll go to any length to ruin their lives, specifically to shut them up.

And it's amazing how few people on "the left" actually speak out against this.

It's one thing for a publishing company to make a business decision not to publish certain books for whatever marketing-related decisions they use. It's their money on the line and they have employees and stockholders to be accountable to. But it's a simple fact that if nobody had ever bought into this absurd "identity politics" crap in the first place, then we wouldn't have to constantly talk about this idiotic "can a white author write about black characters?" crap. It's just stupid.

People can have whatever personal opinions they want, but they are not welcome to put those opinions into action and attempt to harm people. You don't see a lot of people on the right pulling that these days. It's all on the left. Wonder why?


----------



## Cephus (Aug 2, 2020)

andrewclunn said:


> Most of these arguments can be made without invoking "the left," "Republicans," "marxists," or "Trump."  Not sure why we would engage people's tribalism intentionally in this.  Censorship was wrong when the "moral majority" tried to do it back when I was a child, and it's wrong now when "advocates for social justice" attempt to do the same.  Of course when we go beyond mocking the policy itself to mocking whomever is the source of it (at this particular moment in history) we engage the lizard brain of political tribalism.  Doesn't help to make the point.  Yeah, sure it's "the left" right now, but it wasn't always and I'm sure it won't always be them in the future.  Fighting censorship isn't a bludgeoning tool to try and win points for my tribe.  Freedom of expression is a principal worth defending in and of itself, and if (at some point in the future) the winds of political change mean that it's "the right" pushing for censorship, you can bet that's when a lot of people who previously identified as being "on the right" will switch sides.  Free speech isn't a political platform, it's a foundational idea, and to degrade it as being little more than a partisan issue of the day is to be both short sighted and ignorant of history. /end rant.



I absolutely agree with you. It was wrong when Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority did it back in the day and it is every bit as bad today. Yet nobody gets to point at the Moral Majority and say "they did it, we get to too!"

That's just dumb. Wrong is wrong. Can we just stop paying attention to a bunch of immature children on a power trip and get back to writing?


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

Cephus said:


> People can have whatever personal opinions they want, but they are not welcome to put those opinions into action and attempt to harm people. You don't see a lot of people on the right pulling that these days. It's all on the left. Wonder why?



Just ten years ago, JK Rowling was a liberal feminist vanguard and the bane of the conservative Christian right.

Now, she's cancelled for being a "TERF".

The far left has gone insane. It ain't the right trying to cancel DOOM and Mortal Kombat anymore...


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## Taylor (Aug 2, 2020)

I think the left/right conversation is clouding the discussion.  (It seems to cloud a lot in America right now!) 

But, it doesn't really matter who's burning or censoring books, or why they are doing it.  The point is that some people, lots of people think they can control literature by removing books that don't conform to their way of thinking.  That is just a fact, and authors can accept it or fight.  But it is the personal decision of the author.

Lucky, you originally made the argument that certain uncomfortable language would limit your exposure.  Limited by agents, publishers and readers.  That it would be too great a risk as an author looking to get published.  That is the mainstream market.  Again, a choice the author has to consider. 

You also made the argument, if the unsavoury dialogue portrayed a moral message it would be ok, as long as it was for the greater good. But would you have known that before TKAM?  Harper Lee took a risk and broke through a new market at the time. And some people still think it should be banned or removed from the school curriculum. And it is perhaps the most successful book of all time.

It has been said, that Lee’s messages about race and the status quo may be outdated.  Would a new story about current racial tension be more relatable for high school students? If someone were to write a story about racial discrimination in America 2020, it would have it’s own use of current unsavoury language.  I can’t imagine only using comfortable dialogue to make this story realistic.  But it hasn’t been written yet.  We won't know until we read it if it's message contributes to the greater good.  

So my point is don’t limit yourself as an author just to be mainstream. Because you can't completely know what mainstream is in the future.

And I would add -- find a way to write the new generation of TKAM!!


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## andrewclunn (Aug 2, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> I am trying to argue that we have a _duty _before God to ensure our work speaks truth and not falsehood.



If you believe there are not truths about reality that are offensive, you are naive.  How exactly do we know what is true and what isn't?  Even if you have a belief in God and a particular holy scripture that you take as the absolute divinely revealed truth, there are subjects and ideas that it doesn't directly touch on.  How do can we know what the truth even is if we don't explore ideas and appraise them?  I write works often from perspectives I actively disagree with personally, in an attempt to force myself to honestly contend with them by expressing them, not as a straw man, but in such a way as to appeal to and convey the true feelings of people who believe them.  You are not God's arbiter, and believe it or not many of these people expressing ideas you might find offensive ARE expressing the truth as they honestly see it.

I believe in God (I know, I try not to share my own views, but I feel it's somewhat important in the context of this particular conversation), but I didn't for a good period of my life.  My faith gained strength and clarity precisely because it went through the ringer of scrutiny and questioning.  Were I at any point to have been deprived of the works of and freedom to explore and express ideas contrary to what I believed at that moment... then I wouldn't have been free to leave my faith, and then return to belief in God as I continued to learn more.  I do not need protection from ideas.  I am "offended" by the presumption by anyone who declares that they know the truth to such an extend that they can assume that certain ideas are only ever expressed out of dishonesty or an attempt at deception.  You are just wrong on this, unabashedly, clearly, and obviously wrong, and many more of us will treat attempts at censorship as violence than you realize.  But hey, if you want to convince a whole lot of people that your God is too weak to stand up to scrutiny, keep pushing that line.


----------



## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

*disclaimer* Only replying to a couple of snippets, because as expected this thread is veering off the mark into pseudo-philosophical debate. Again*



Joker said:


> Their reasoning is the demographic checkmarks that a writer can mark off are more important than the content of the books themselves.
> 
> Do you agree with that?



I do not agree with it and already said I didn't. But that's not what the article (if I can call it that) is about. 

The article is partisan propaganda hit trying to tar everybody who is 'Left' as fascist book burners with close to zero fact. 

It's non-starter. Might as well post a fifteen year old's journal. Would it interest you to know that, far from eliminating To Kill A Mockingbird, _other_ school boards (of which there are thousands) have started to increase the number of race-flavored reading in the classrooms? For every anecdote about a school board in Buttfuck, Missouri 'canceling' a text there's an anecdote that contradicts the narrative.

I am embarrassed for anybody who posts stuff like this and thinks it remotely proper...and anybody who 'likes' it. 



Cephus said:


> I'd love to, but nobody else seems to care. I oppose anyone who wants to censor anything. I don't care if they're on the left or the right, the only counter to free speech is more speech. It is never censorship. Yet today, the far-left is well known for things like "cancel culture", anything that doesn't cater specifically to their political ideology, those people get attacked, their books and other writings get removed, and they'll go to any length to ruin their lives, specifically to shut them up.
> 
> And it's amazing how few people on "the left" actually speak out against this.



Barack Obama has several times. Meanwhile, you have Trump about to cancel TikTok. 

_Neither _side of the aisle is perfect on this issue. 



> People can have whatever personal opinions they want, but they are not welcome to put those opinions into action and attempt to harm people. You don't see a lot of people on the right pulling that these days. It's all on the left. Wonder why?



I could debunk all of this stuff all day if I cared to, and if I thought it was remotely appropriate. No such thing as right wing terrorism? No such thing as right wing hate groups? No such thing as Christian ring-wingers wanting to ban stuff? It's practically their brand. One of the reason charter schools are so contentious is because they are often there to facilitate right wingers wanting to clamp down on certain things they disagree with. 

Which is the same criticism that you would likely level against a public school.

 Do you see the light on this yet? It's not an ideological problem, it's a tribal one.

 Again, repeat, _no _political persuasion is without sin on this issue. 

You need to get off the partisan drugs. Or at least keep them away from this forum, per rules.


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## BornForBurning (Aug 2, 2020)

> If you believe there are not truths about reality that are offensive, you are naive.


It depends on what you mean by 'offensive.' If you mean there are some truths that some people find offensive, yes, obviously. I think you may be misinterpreting my post. I am not saying there should be no literature that causes offense. I am saying there should be no literature that causes immorality. 
A couple questions, based on the rest of your post. 
1) Do you believe in absolute truth? 
2) Do you believe it is possible to _know _absolute truth? 
3) Do you believe that the current world, in some sense, carries the potential for both truth and falsehood? 
and, 
4) Do you believe that adherence to the absolute truth is a moral act? 
If the answer to all these questions is yes, it follows logically that, as an agent with care for my fellow man, I would attempt to limit my expression to that which brings him closer to the absolute truth. This is in essence the core of my argument. 



> You are not God's arbiter, and believe it or not many of these people expressing ideas you might find offensive ARE expressing the truth as they honestly see it.


And again, this comes back to my main point. There is nothing technically untrue about this statement, except that one may 'honestly' express the truth as he sees it and still be wrong, and thus, no better for it, except that (I suppose) he has been 'honest' to himself, or something he believes to be himself. One of my favorite Lewis quotes: "Most of those in Hell will say they have been 'True to themselves.' " Falsehood absolutely has power. I spent a great part of my life living Falsehood. It was agony. I am happy that God met you where He did, but you should absolutely not assume that he met you _because _of where you were and where you had been.


----------



## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I do not agree with it and already said I didn't. But that's not what the article (if I can call it that) is about.
> 
> The article is partisan propaganda hit trying to tar everybody who is 'Left' as fascist book burners with close to zero fact.
> 
> ...



No, not everyone on the left. But the cultural zeitgeist right now is entirely centered around the radical left. _They _got COPS and Live PD cancelled. _They _demand that black people show up in medieval European fantasy. _They _politicized the NFL. 

Sorry, there's nothing of that magnitude coming from the American Right anymore. Maybe in Reagan's day, as has been established, but not now.



> Barack Obama has several times. Meanwhile, you have Trump about to cancel TikTok.



Because the Chinese are stealing people's information. Nothing to do with him disliking what anyone there has to say.


----------



## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Taylor said:


> Lucky, you originally made the argument that certain uncomfortable language would limit your exposure.  Limited by agents, publishers and readers.  That it would be too great a risk as an author looking to get published.  That is the mainstream market.  Again, a choice the author has to consider.
> 
> You also made the argument, if the unsavoury dialogue portrayed a moral message it would be ok, as long as it was for the greater good. But would you have known that before TKAM?  Harper Lee took a risk and broke through a new market at the time. And some people still think it should be banned or removed from the school curriculum. And it is perhaps the most successful book of all time.
> 
> ...



Okay, so there are 'new generations of TKAM' already. 

The difference now versus Harper Lee's time, is now we have a strong (and growing) community of actual black people to write about racial discrimination. In 1960, it needed a white person to write about it because of Jim Crow. Since black people are now able to access literature -- in no small part _because _of our tea drinking liberal ladies -- the question is not 'Should we write about race?' it's 'Who is the best person to tell the story?'

 Most people (me included) think experiences about racism are better when they come from black people. Sometimes, there will be exceptions to that. I mentioned American Dirt, it's possible. But let's not kid ourselves here, white people do not know more about black experiences than black people (let's say 99% of the time) so if the editor/agent asks you (and this is sometimes part of the submission process, by the way) "Why are you the best person to tell this story?" I don't know how a white author would argue that when there are clearly so many brilliant black authors already writing about race.

I will say there are opportunities here, though. Using racial themes for 'historical accuracy' is a bad move, but if the (white) author is serious about engaging with race, I don't think that's a problem and I don't actually think many people will automatically think it's a problem either. But, it means they have to write about it differently. A good way to start could be to consider race from the 'white perspective'. 

I was recently toying with the idea of writing a story from the perspective of a racist police officer. Partly because I am interested in that sort of view (I often wonder about them) but also because I think as a privileged white man I would actually be well placed to explore the idea of racism from the "other side". A black person probably doesn't understand why white people are racist against them. 

As a white person, I believe I understand the mentality of racists quite well. Because, like all white people (regardless of whether they admit it), there's a little bit of racist in me. There's a crumb of fear, a kind of cultural instinct, that predisposes me to see black people as 'other' -- and I do believe that's true for absolutely everybody, yes. I think if we white people are serious about exploring race in 2020 we can play a big role in that conversation, but it won't be the role of 'writing from a black perspective on the injustices experienced by racism' because there are BLACK writers to do that.


----------



## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> I think you may be misinterpreting my post. I am not saying there should be no literature that causes offense. I am saying there should be no literature that causes immorality.



Yikes.


----------



## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> As a white person, I believe I understand the mentality of racists quite well. Because, like all white people (regardless of whether they admit it), there's a little bit of racist in me. There's a crumb of fear, a kind of cultural instinct, that predisposes me to see black people as 'other' -- and I do believe that's true for absolutely everybody, yes. I think if we white people are serious about exploring race in 2020 we can play a big role in that conversation, but it won't be the role of 'writing from a black perspective' because there are BLACK writers to do that.



Pffffffffft.

Don't project your racial hang-ups onto me, dude.

(Also, your views aren't objective truth, bro. They're just as tribalistic as ours.)


----------



## BornForBurning (Aug 2, 2020)

> Yikes.


Well, at least the cards are on the table!


----------



## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> Well, at least the cards are on the table!



Okay, I'm going to try and unpack this...

Literally everyone _personally _would not like to see what they consider immoral out there in the public sphere. That is normal and okay, and _entirely different _from wanting to see such stuff _banned_, which can only be enforced with violence.

Yes or no: do you think pornography should be _banned_?


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> Pffffffffft.
> 
> Don't project your racial hang-ups onto me, dude.
> 
> (Also, your views aren't objective truth, bro. They're just as tribalistic as ours.)



There have been numerous studies on this. You can believe yourself special as much as you want, doesn’t bother me.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> There have been numerous studies on this. You can believe yourself special as much as you want, doesn’t bother me.



There were also studies back in the day that claimed homosexuality was a mental disorder.

I am not a racist. If you feel the need to call yourself one, work on yourself.


----------



## andrewclunn (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> As a white person, I believe I understand the mentality of racists quite well. Because, like all white people (regardless of whether they admit it), there's a little bit of racist in me.



What's that term called?  You know, the one where you can make universal assumptions about someone's character based on their race?  Got any words of wisdom about traits or views that all Jews, blacks, hispanics, etc... secretly have or hold?  Please, enlighten us.


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

Joker said:


> There were also studies back in the day that claimed homosexuality was a mental disorder.
> 
> I am not a racist. If you feel the need to call yourself one, work on yourself.



I am signing off from this particular detour encouraging you to read more on the subject. “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo is a good place to start.


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## Joker (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I am signing off from this particular detour encouraging you to read more on the subject. _*“White Fragility”*_ by Robin DiAngelo is a good place to start.



Again, speak for yourself.


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## luckyscars (Aug 2, 2020)

andrewclunn said:


> What's that term called?  You know, the one where you can make universal assumptions about someone's character based on their race?  Got any words of wisdom about traits or views that all Jews, blacks, hispanics, etc... secretly have or hold?  Please, enlighten us.



They are equally predisposed to racism: It’s a human trait, born of tribalism, not a white one born of inherent evil.


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## Taylor (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> the question is not 'Should we write about race?' it's 'Who is the best person to tell the story?'
> 
> I was recently toying with the idea of writing a story from the perspective of a racist police officer. Partly because I am interested in that sort of view (I often wonder about them) but also because I think as a privileged white man I would actually be well placed to explore the idea of racism from the "other side". A black person probably doesn't understand why white people are racist against them.
> 
> I think if we white people are serious about exploring race in 2020 we can play a big role in that conversation, but it won't be the role of 'writing from a black perspective on the injustices experienced by racism' because there are BLACK writers to do that.



I'm not sure why you are arguing this so hard.  Because I think you do believe that authors shouldn't limit themselves based on their race.  In fact isn't that the basis of an inclusive society, that we don't tell people what to do, based on race, gender, age, etc.?   

So you would tell a white author that they don't have the right voice to express the frustrations of racial discrimination from a black point of view.   

Would you also then tell a black author that they shouldn't try to see racism from a white point of view?   What if they also had a great idea for a story of a white cop that gets caught up in the police precinct politics.  If you said, "you can't write that from a white person's point of view", that would be discrimination.  

Would you also limit POV to gender, age, and disabilites?

Authors are professionals.  They can write in a POV that is not their own personal POV.   That's the craft of writing.


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## andrewclunn (Aug 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I am signing off from this particular detour encouraging you to read more on the subject. “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo is a good place to start.





luckyscars said:


> They are equally predisposed to racism: It’s a human trait, born of tribalism, not a white one born of inherent evil.



DiAngelo's book is literally the seminal work promoting the notion that "racism is prejudice plus power" and that white people can be racist in ways that others cannot due to institutional authority.  To promote her as an advocate for your world view while simultaneously pushing the notion that there's nothing particularly different about white people and racism, is to either be ignorant of the very work you are suggesting others read to better understand your point, or to be disingenuous in your arguments.  There have been people who have suggested that some level of racism is inescapable, and universal to all people.  They do not agree with your views on censorship:

[video=youtube_share;RovF1zsDoeM]https://youtu.be/RovF1zsDoeM[/video]

EDIT - fixed two typos.


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## Squalid Glass (Aug 2, 2020)

*Okay, this thread is circling the drain at this point, and this board has seen this debate too many times to count. The OP asked about how one should handle sensitive issues in a story. Let’s get back to that and move on.*


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## luckyscars (Aug 3, 2020)

andrewclunn said:


> DiAngelo's book is literally the seminal work promoting the notion that "racism is prejudice plus power" and that white people can be racist in ways that others cannot due to institutional authority. To promote her as an advocate for your world view while simultaneously pushing the notion that there's nothing particularly different about white people and racism, is to either be ignorant of the very work you are suggesting others read to better understand your point, or to be disingenuous in your arguments. There have been people who have suggested that some level of racism is inescapable, and universal to all people. They do not agree with your views on censorship:




My last word on this, which I insist on because my position is misrepresented: I invoked DiAngelo solely in the context of her book being an accessible and interesting perspective on systemic racism and its ubiquity -- not because I believe that other races cannot be racist, or to say that DiAngelo represents my world view, she does not. Certainly you can find racist Jewish people in Israel and racist black people in parts of Africa and racist Chinese people in China and probably, yup, in America too. There are plenty of studies on the evolutionary origins and natural tendencies toward racial discrimination. Jane Elliot's experiments demonstrate this well, too. 

What I actually said was that other races are equally predisposed to being racist. This has nothing to do with whether such racism manifests or not or where/how. The fact that white people are the ones with institutional authority is incidental and basically unique to countries where white people are the majority. In a parallel universe, one where America is 80% black and society had a history of black supremacy, we can 100% assume 'White Lives Matters' would be the issue of the day, because on a psychological level (as distinct from a sociological one) such racial tribalism is a human problem _not _a white problem. 

Nothing further to add -- further continuation of the racism debate will hereafter result in zero. Enjoy your day.




Taylor said:


> I'm not sure why you are arguing this so hard. Because I think you do believe that authors shouldn't limit themselves based on their race. In fact isn't that the basis of an inclusive society, that we don't tell people what to do, based on race, gender, age, etc.?
> 
> 
> So you would tell a white author that they don't have the right voice to express the frustrations of racial discrimination from a black point of view.
> ...




I'm not trying to limit anything. 

Again, I don't know how many times this needs said, this isn't _my _position. I don't _like_ that this is an issue of contention, it _sucks_ that the world isn't colorblind and that the immutable characteristics of human beings often shape the perceptions of the work. It sucks for me, a white male author, and it presumably sucks for female, black, gay, whatever authors as well. We all want, I assume, to be judged on merit, not on tokenism.

But...my position doesn't matter. Once again, we are in the weeds of Should-Be when I only want to talk in terms of What-Is-Right-Now. If we _were_ talking in terms of Should-Be, I would agree with what you and others are saying, no question. There are all kinds of stories I have wanted to write -- and in some cases have written! -- only to figure out that they are simply not publishable due to lack of market (try writing a traditional western and see what happens) or require huge revamping to work in the world of What-Is-Right-Now.

Do me a favor: Go to https://mswishlist.com/ If you are not familiar, this is where agents and editors 'tweet' about the kinds of books they want. It's probably the easiest and best way to get a quick, casual read on what is wanted.

What do you notice? Here's what I see:



> My tweet on an alternative for a Fiddler on the Roof remake got a little bit of traction, so I decided to put some more ideas for new Jewish representation out there because we truly need it. #MSWL





> I would truly love an SFF, YA or Adult, with queerness so baked into the world à la She-Ra that nobody even blinks. There’s danger and end-of-the-world stakes and messy relationships galore, but that particular threat is non-existant. This has been today’s #MSWL





> I'm really looking for Black witches/psychics in contemporary fantasy (adult, YA, or MG), plus size MCs, YA and adult thrillers/suspense, and please keep sending these #ownvoices LGBTQIA+ and disability rep books.





> the project I would most like to find right now is a LatinX graphic novel for MG or YA. #mswl





> Before I close for queries tomorrow, I wanted to get out a #mswl of what I really want to see in my inbox. - Authors of underrepresented communities (POC, LGBTQIA+, body, neuro, disabled) - Fat girl stories where their weight is not the plot. - MG and YA horror.



Now, this is not the entire industry (not all agents tweet) and, sure, there are always exceptions. But let's take this as being a snapshot, because we have to, because we really have nothing better as far as insight in real time. ^That^ is just from the first page (the FIRST page!) and, as you can see, practically every other tweet is either requesting diversity in character or diversity in author and it sure sounds like they're pretty committed to social justice, doesn't it?

None of these requests preclude me -- as a white, straight, male -- so my interpretation from that is not 'I am canceled'. That's silly. However my interpretation is that I have to chart a narrow course between 'writing what we want' and 'writing what other people want'. It seems pretty damn obvious to me that these people are not going to want, say, a gritty Civil War era novel where people chuck around racial slurs for 'historical accuracy'. It seems pretty damn obvious to me they probably _are _going to want or expect any authors to tread very carefully on the subject of race and how it is portrayed. Nobody is asking for 'Nazis who really talk like Nazis'. Nobody is asking for 'whatever so long as it's good'. I don't _think _they will tolerate the word 'nigger' outside of a really narrow context -- do you? They have specific interests and themes in mind, many of them relating to social justice, which will, presumably, affect the success of a submission.

But nevertheless I am not suggesting, have not suggested, that people should not be taking risks or be writing according to the literal prescriptions of what some 'tea drinking liberal' throws out on a tweet or puts on their website/blog. I am suggesting we listen closely to what the customer base is telling us and eliminate minefields where we can. It's really hard to get stuff published as it is and if a market research survey finds 80/100 people saying what their town needs is a McDonalds and we go ahead and build a Pizza Hut ('cause we don't give a damn) we need to accept that is a major risk in an endeavor that was *already risky. *

But, that's the choice. And yes, perhaps it will work, there are always exceptions, but it's plain ignorant to assume the industry will treat our creative choices equally and that 'so long as its good, that's all that matters' and it's _really _dumb to get angry or combative about it and start sounding off on a forum about how these people are 'crybabies'. They don't give a crap, will never give a crap. It's a buyers market. Plenty of well-written books get rejected and plenty of mediocre ones get published purely based on how they are perceived to relate to the issues of the time. That's nothing new, it's always been that way.


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## Joker (Aug 3, 2020)

The woke crowd wouldn't publish me anyways because of my political beliefs.

(Feels good not to care what they think, though.)


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## ironpony (Aug 3, 2020)

I would say it's a case by case basis and it depends on the subject matter particularly of course.

In your plot's case, does the sexism play a large them in the story that you want to explore, or is it just a setup for other plot elements?


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