Fatihah Iman talks about allies and all the hand-wringing some shitty white person did over how, if you don’t tone-police yourself, you’ll drive away all the Minority Warriors who want to be your allies but constantly dehumanize you or fail to listen to you.
What all of this comes down to is – how should we treat our allies? Here we are, dealing with our ‘corner of oppression’ – how do we interact with people who appoint themselves as our helpers?
And here’s what it comes down to for me: I didn’t ask you to be my ally. I didn’t ask you to pick up my banner and champion my cause; you are doing that off your own initiative. So ask yourself: why are you doing it? Is it because you like the idea of swooping in and saving people? Is it a White Knight Complex? Are you doing it because you want Muslims to give you cookies and awards for being nice to them, so you can feel better about Islamophobia? Or is it because you genuinely, deeply feel that the way Muslims are treated is wrong and appalling, and you really genuinely do want to help out and try to correct that wrong?
Someone reviews a Stephen King book, not the height of literature in the first place, as though it was a videogame. Appropriate.
Roland’s journey is a somewhat linear one. There’s little sense of agency for the reader, no optional footnotes to break up the main storyline and once finished there’s not much incentive to read it through again. While this might have been state-of-the-art storytelling back in 1982, in the days of Choose Your Own Adventure books and modern interactive fiction it’s antiquated and constricting.
Shweta Narayan posted a piece of fiction, Thorns.
She yelled, “GET YOUR GODDAMN SWORD OUT OF MY THIGH, ASSHOLE!”
He sniffed. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to be so mean and rude you won’t have any allies at all will you.” And he stormed off.
The princess sagged against the thorns, worn out and bleeding. Soon afterward a nice white lady came by. “Oh,” she said, “your ritual scars are so cool! I’m going to dress up as a sexy thorn-princess for hallowe’en check out my ketchup blood and oh it’s okay if I do this in brownface right? Because my people are boring and civilized and don’t have a thorn ritual and I want to be accurate.”
“What,” said the princess, “the everlasting fuck.”
The lady replied, “Look, I’m just RESPECTING your culture, you should be flattered!” And she flounced off.
The Hathor Legacy on film schools and the Bechdel Test.
Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors.My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).
At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation from an industry pro: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”
“Not even if it advances the story?” I asked. That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another chunk of the story and keep it moving.
He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”
I Went to Occupy Oakland and All I Got Was This Lousy Character Assassination
One of the things that bothers me most about all the discussions I have had about Occupy is various white peoples’ protests that they feel “abused” and hurt by being called racist, white supremacist, misogynist, etc., as if those critiques were personal attacks and not serious critiques of the efficacy of the Occupy movement. Yes, it is serious to call out someone’s oppressive actions, but rather than being scared to engage or angry, I think it would do white folks some good to step back and think about why People of Color would say those things about them. While being called these names may hurt, there is very little material impact to a white person being called a racist. However, People of Color feeling that many members of the Occupy Oakland movement operate from a place of privilege and regularly act and talk in ways that reveal their covert support for white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and etc. comes from a daily experience of how racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other oppressions regularly, materially impact our lives. It keeps us from trusting many Occupy organizers and therefore keeps us from wanting to work with them.
Koby Itzhak
/ November 8, 2012Thanks for the links, they are quite appreciated, especially Thorns. In return, have you seen this http://wrongquestions.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/the-weeks-films.html and this http://reciperifle.blogspot.sg/2012/11/bond-villain.html ?
Apparently critics are touting Skyfall as ‘less sexist’. I… I just have no idea how to express my rage at that.
aliettedb
/ November 8, 2012Thorns is fantastic–thanks for the link! (and Skyfall is, ugggg. Way more sexist and racist than the previous eps, though of course Bond movies were hardly ever paragons of diversity and gender equality).
tigerpetals
/ November 8, 2012Thank you for linking Thorn, I loved it. This part in particular resonated very much: “But worse yet were the sleepers who still lived, stumbling around in shreds of finery and mumbling things like, “”But don’t you think we’re better off now in some ways?” and “We’d never have a needle business if they hadn’t grown all these bushes for us,” and “How pretty the roses are, so white.” She tried to wake them, but found she couldn’t; and so she tried instead to escape.” I’ve heard this said by other Puerto Ricans in relation the US (in Puerto Rico, since I’ve never been in the Puerto Rican communities in the US.)
It stands out particularly now because I just saw a comment on an article about Puerto Rico possibly becoming a US state, from someone who ‘worried’ that an island nation would be taken over right away if it became independent. It was just funny. The article: http://www.care2.com/causes/puerto-ricans-si-to-statehood.html
saajanpatel
/ November 10, 2012I’m surprised Gunslinger was chosen for the “review books as games”, as the author of the piece seemed to be trying too hard. I couldn’t tell if he thought the book sucked, which would be interesting since I recall it being above the SFF average at minimum…though it has been over a decade.
I think a far better example of book as gaming is Wise Man’s Fear. I don’t even mean that as an insult, I just think the side quest structuring of the plot, the puzzles that seem to have grabbed people’s attention more than the actual story, and the fact that the main character is continually asked to solve problems ranging from defeating the BBEG to helping with relationship problems. Even the sex quests is reminiscent of Sierra Game’s Leisure Suit Larry.
One might compare it to Harry Potter given the school setting, but I’d say HP has more characters doing things for Harry or exercising their own agency. WMF bends reality to accommodate the self-insert in the same way a game would make a world reliant on the player.
saajanpatel
/ November 26, 2012I suspect many readers may have seen this linked on World SF, but I thought it might be worth spreading the word about Arab SF:
5 Questions with SF Author Noura Noman