Okay, I rarely do this here, because I rarely let my non-fandom and
fandom lives intersect, but in this case, they already do. I posted this originally on my LJ, where I usually post goofy Star Wars crap and my own fan stories. But fandom often gets its knickers in a twist over what litcrit types call meta issues. It seems there are a number of litcrit type people in fandom, especially in slash because of its transgressive appeal. Every so often, someone expresses the opinion that X shouldn't write Y because they're not Y. The latest
round arises from a protest by some gay men about straight women writing male homoerotica and is just . . .
stoopid, as stoopid as such protests always are. I say this as a pro writer, as a
writing teacher, as a teacher and student of literature, and a
straight, female writer of fanfic. I have a number of unpopular
reasons for saying this, reasons that do not pay lip service to popular
critical theory in the Academy, because those theories are mostly
developed by people who do not write fiction, but only dissect it.
Criticism, too, is a form of appropriation, if you like. Whatever,
criticism and fiction writing are two very different heads and rarely
coexist happily.
Am I speaking from the proverbial position of privilege? Why, yes, probably, depending on your point of view (thanks, Obi-Wan), but I have some thoughts on that too. I have some problems with this concept, not because I don't enjoy a certain amount of it as a white, able-bodied, cis-gendered citizen of one of the richest countries in the world, but because I believe at least some of this idea, the way it is being currently expressed, also arises from a sense of not just exclusion, but of desire: desire for something one thinks one does not have and believes others do, i.e., the grass is greener syndrome. I believe, like Eleanor Roosevelt, that "no one can make me inferior without my consent." Now, I am female, and a feminist, so I do have a strong sense of what discrimination and injustice and exclusion mean and what they do to people's lives. I see it every day in the lives of my students, too, and hear it in the stories they tell me. Privileged? Moi? Depends on what you're comparing me to and how you structure your hierarchy. If you want my bio, check it on on Facebook and you decide.
Nonetheless, this is a bullshit issue from any POV.
First of all, this is not about the GLBTQ community. It's about censorship. Here's why:
Writing
fiction is only partially a political act. It is only a political act
if you, the writer, intend to make it one, not if someone interprets it
that way. Nobody gets to say what the ultimate meaning of your piece of
fiction is but you. Other people can interpret it as they like, and see
what they want to see, and do, which is the wonderful thing about
literature, but the only one who really knows What It Means is the
writer. To say otherwise is to believe you, the critic, have a special
mission from the Gods of Literature, and there are good drugs for that
now. If the writer sits down and says, "I am going to write this story
to bring this issue to the attention of the public," that's a political
act; if that writer says, "I wonder what would happen in this situation
with these people under these conditions?" and proceeds to write that
story, that's not a political act, it's an act of imagination and
psychological exploration. Either way, if you insist that writer has no
right to tell that story, FOR WHATEVER REASON, that's censorship.
If
fiction writers were restricted to writing only about their own
experience, literature would be a dull, dull place. Because, yanno,
writers mostly don't get out much, except in their heads, having to
spend hours in front of their keyboards writing and DOING RESEARCH.
Sometimes the DOING RESEARCH entails getting out and experiencing
something new or talking to new people, sometimes not. But DOING
RESEARCH is a lonely business too. The beauty of fiction is that, as a
writer, you get to take on different personae. This does not make you
that persona, or make you an expert, but it allows you to SEE THE WORLD
IN A DIFFERENT WAY. Sometimes, looking from the outside in provides an
interesting perspective. It's not the only perspective, just a
different one.
(Here's where the flame war really starts:) It is absurd
to say someone else is "appropriating" YOUR story. Unless you have a
copyright on that baby, your story is just as free in the world as any
other idea. If what you are calling "your story" has to do with your
culture and upbringing and language, I have news for you, there is no
one story of your culture or language. Even within each culture people
tell different versions of the same story. And here's the thing: those
stories? In all their different versions, they're told everywhere else
on earth with different characters, wearing different clothes, in
different cultures, in different languages in somewhat different
situations. Every story told anywhere, I don't care what it is, boils
down to an archetype and a motif. Every story told anywhere, about
anything, can be boiled down to one of a large number of motifs or
plots, something we'd all be more aware of if folklore studies were
still a viable field. There is no such thing as a culturally unique
story. There is only the human story, in various costumes. Human
behavior is human behavior. Our cultures are just fancy dress. Stripped
down to our cores in extreme situations (which is what fiction does) we
are just human, that's all.
It's also absurd to talk
about the appropriation of something as ephemeral as stories and
culture because appropriation in this context refers to
something akin to theft. I can't steal something that continues to
exist in its original form when I use it. No matter how much
I transform it, the original is still going to be there, as long as
someone is telling that story, or engaging in those activities or
whatever, somewhere else. Anglo Saxon Culture ca. Beowulf no longer
exists, not because someone co-opted it, but because no one speaks Olde
Anguish anymore (except Merlin, on TV). No one speaks Old English any
more because History Happens: The Normans arrived, for one thing. Times
change. Unless you wall yourself off entirely from everyone else in the
world and become completely closed and insular society, outside
influences are going to change your culture. Even if you manage this,
say, the way China has managed it (incompletely but with more success
than elsewhere), your culture will not remain homogeneous and
monolithic. You think your culture has never, will never, is not now
going to change? You are delusional, my friend. It is changing as
I write this, with every breath you take.
I have more news for
you: appropriation under this definition happens all the time, too.
It's not just an act of colonization, though it can be that and
sometimes deliberately is, though suppression of said literature is
an easier and quicker method of assimilation. Any time you retell any story you've heard or read
from someone else, you are "appropriating" it unless you tell it
exactly the way it was told to you, with the exact same tone of voice,
vocabulary, AND INTENT. (See Borges,
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.)
Ever play that game Telephone? It's usually done to make a point: that
we all edit and change everything we're told and that goes for what we
read and write too. Human beings are storytellers, even if it's only of
the "Man, you'll never believe what happened on the bus today!" kind.
At one time, before the advent of copyright, stories were currency. The
cost of a night of hospitality was often a story. During the middle
ages, there were fairs where singers and storytellers met to exchange
stories and learn new ones. The farther afield someone had been, the
more popular their stories were because that was news. Stories are, and
always have been, the way we learn about each other. If you keep other
people from retelling your stories, you close a major highway of
communication and information. One of the early ways we begin to know
the world is through stories about other cultures, no matter who tells
them. By trying to control those stories, you are turning them into
propaganda, and preventing them from being vehicles of cultural
exchange. You are stifling access to your own culture.
Once
you start saying to anyone "Hey, you can't write that, you're not X,"
most of the canon--most literature ever written--goes out the door.
That story about a hunchback? That story about musketeers? That story
about a time traveler? Lady Chatterly's Lover? The Odd Women? Louisa
May Alcott's horror stories? Sherlock Holmes? Edgar Allen Poe? Are you
getting my drift? Literature is an exercise in imagination and in
exploration of what other writers have written. If the storyteller's
imagination does not match yours, tell your own damn story. There's
plenty of room. In addition, books and authors talk to each other, so by
stifling one piece of literature, who's to say what other writers
you're stifling? As an example, let me direct you
here.
Finally,
fiction, while powerful, is still fiction, not fact. While it may shape
one's personal viewpoint, it is not legislation. It does not cause harm
in the same way that, say, the
Ugandan legislation imprisoning people
for being gay will. Fiction is true in a particular way, in that it
portrays the behavior of human beings and the results of certain
situations in a more emotionally powerful and interesting way than mere
fact can, precisely because it is unrestricted by fact. If you think
all human beings act according to your own view of them, you are either
naive, inexperienced, or extremely arrogant. To confine any story to
that preconception is to have a failure of imagination. If your
imagination fails there, you might learn something by reading someone
else's view. If you're not interested in learning anything from someone
else's point of view, then just get out of the way and stop whining. Or
write your own. The best remedy for misrepresentation is not less
writing, but more.