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A new moralism is gripping the literary world

persuasion.community

211–220 of 293 posts

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#211
post #66

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. On the other hand, literature should be inclusive. That means including minorities, and not just as peripheral characters. We don't need more My Magical Gay Friend stories. I haven't heard a go…

> I haven't heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction.

Both arguments are pushed by the woke on purpose, to both be able to complain if no minorities are in a story and to complain if there are.

The way to reconcile it is that no one should feel forced to be inclusive (this is how you get forced token characters) and "write what you know" is not a rule set in stone. Plus it's a terrible argument because minorities are not some hivemind. For example, I'm trans and just a trans person wrote a book, stars in a movie, etc, doesn't mean I'll agree with them and how they portray trans people. In fact in the current political climate we are far more likely to disagree (I don't believe in a hundred genders, I believe you need dysphoria to be trans, etc), and I often feel any representation is making a complete mockery of my condition.

And as someone else has already pointed out, both types of books can co-exist. Lets take the extreme case that someone writes a shitty portrayal of some minority, it's bad, filled with cliches (or my reality where I feel these are actually hurtful to how we're represented, etc). So what? I'd rather have the right to critique and ridicule them then not, while also retaining my right to write whatever the hell I want. The other side's argument against my views are after all, very similar, that my view is hurtful. Who's right? Who's to judge? Currently it's only the side complaining the loudest.

And let's go further. I'm not out except to close family. I'm also bi and not out due to the culture where I live. To anyone on the street/internet I look like a "straight white man". Were I to write a book with a character modeled after me probably no one would want to publish it because it's not pc, and if it was published many would try to cancel me. Another example, I might write something historically accurate with a minority character, but history is not pretty, it's racist and cruel, and whatever I wrote would probably have the same problem because context no longer matters. Is this really the world we want to live in?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#212
post #183
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scans are widely available online, which is what most people have been using to discuss the works. It also turns out that used bookstores still exist and that eBay is not the only site on the internet where you can buy things.

The online scans are illegal. The fact that your first recommendation is to advocate breaking the law just so you can discuss a book , shows quite how totalitarian the situation has become.

That’d be an interesting fair-use case: criticism is a very solid exemption (i.e. I’d be very surprised if showing the offending images for review wasn’t upheld by the courts) but even if you look at the whole book the other factors are things like whether your use is educational, non-profit, or impacts commercial prospects for the rights holder. That last point seems especially relevant since they’ve very clearly told the world that they do not intend to sell these books any more.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#213
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is doing stuff like that. I kept getting a bunch of podcast recommendations for things like "stop asian hate" and "navigating the workplace as a person of color". Over the summer I was getting recommendations for albums and songs called "Black Lives Matter" by no name artists. I ended up cancelling my subscription and switching to amazon music because the amount of space used to push woke political podcasts a…

Is it that, or are people suddenly becoming aware of these specific podcasts/groups due to current events? Which is more likely: spotify pushing specific agendas, or spotify employing a recommendation engine that recommends things that see a surge in listening activity? Regarding your example of "stop asian hate"- the asian instagram community has been talking about it a lot in wake of current events. It is entirely…

It is spotify pushing an agenda. These aren't algorithmic pseudo randomness, because they're clearly labeled in manually described groups. Much of the black content was for black history month, and labeled as such, which isn't too different from google putting up a black history search page, imo. I would rate it as mildly annoying. I'm 100% for black lives matter, but I don't have much of an interest in mainstream black music channels that they were trying to promote.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#214
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Black, Asian, or Latin aren't cultures either? The wright brothers, carl benz, charles babbage, invented flight, automobiles, and computers respectively. All very white dudes.

"Black" was a label applied to persons of many different cultures in the context of colonialism and slavery. In some places, such as the USA, Black became a cultural identity because it was a legal one; these people and their offspring were governed by a separate set of laws and only legally allowed to raise families with each other. "Asian" is too broad a term to be much use outside of geography. "Latin" is a little…

I’m not even sure there is a single “white” culture within the US. I mainly see the idea promoted by people who want to absorb some credit for the accomplishments of others. See some of the other comments here, about computers being invented by “my people”.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#215
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. The best way to reconcile it is to stop engaging in the fallacy of division. Literature should be inclusive. Not every individual work of literature needs to be inclusive of every identity. Yes, a cis-het-male-Euro-American writer writing about unique experiences of cis-het-male-Euro-Americans (where characters of other backgrounds are seen o…

Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? Not the publishing industry as a whole that has been rightly lambasted as being too homogeneous historically. What do you tell a single writer? Should they contribute to the problem by telling more stories about white guys? Exclusively focus on their own experiences? Or should they try to learn from people around them and include those people in their stories to cre…

> Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer?

“Do what thou wilt”

I'm not really into telling artists how to art, and the problem is not one that straight white artists are particularly poised to meaningfully contribute to solving through their art in any case.

> Or should they try to learn from people around them

I think this is a good thing for people to do as people, and if they happen to be artists it will inevitably have some effect on their art, but the solution to the problem of the world of any particular art being insufficiently inclusive of marginalized viewpoints isn't for artists from nonmarginalized communities to get to know marginalized communities so that the nonmarginalized artists art can speak for the marginalized communities.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#216
post #2

If anything, such controversies make me want to get a copy of said literature and read it at the first possible instance. Can I call it the Streisand effect? Maybe. I have an unsubstantiated theory that this moral compassing at the institutional level (like the article mentions) has gathered more steam after the internet went into our phones and thus became highly accessible to the general public.

Social media being in everyone's pocket certainly fueled the fire.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#217
post #66

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. On the other hand, literature should be inclusive. That means including minorities, and not just as peripheral characters. We don't need more My Magical Gay Friend stories. I haven't heard a go…

I wouldn’t be surprised if Le Guin is tolerated because so many people assume, on the basis of other female authors from mid-century who wrote similar gender-questioning books, that Le Guin was a lesbian. As both a woman and a member of the LGBT community, she would therefore represent intersectionality, and in the current climate much can be forgiven such a person. (In actual fact, Le Guin was happily married to a m…

AFAICT Le Guin was criticized by feminists of her day for her decisions to be a home maker and - until later in her career - telling mostly stories of young men doing heroic things. She was "tolerated," lauded even, by the greater SciFi and Fantasy community _because_ she told stories that matched the tastes of young men back in the 60s and 70s.

It was only later that she reconciled with feminism and began writing from the feminine perspective, and received a lot of criticism from her life long fans for it!

There are valid criticisms of Left Hand of Darkness from an LGBTQ perspective, but it's also viewed as revolutionary for its time. Today, she's viewed as a complex person who contributed greatly to feminist literature - despite not being perfect - based on her merits, not because of some mistaken identity.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#218
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t heard a good discussion on how to reconcile this contradiction. The best way to reconcile it is to stop engaging in the fallacy of division. Literature should be inclusive. Not every individual work of literature needs to be inclusive of every identity. Yes, a cis-het-male-Euro-American writer writing about unique experiences of cis-het-male-Euro-Americans (where characters of other backgrounds are seen o…

Yes, but what do you tell a straight, white writer? Not the publishing industry as a whole that has been rightly lambasted as being too homogeneous historically. What do you tell a single writer? Should they contribute to the problem by telling more stories about white guys? Exclusively focus on their own experiences? Or should they try to learn from people around them and include those people in their stories to cre…

Or mind your own business and let other people write whatever they well please. It's fiction not science. Don't let the intellectual midgets bully you about what you can or can't write about.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| if one of them does happen to be available, the prices are astronomical Yes, they're out of print and the only people who want them are collectors, so the prices for collectibles are high. That's not unusual. What are you proposing be done? Force the Seuss Foundation to publish books it doesn't want to publish?

> Yes, they're out of print because the only people who want them are collectors What now? That's not what's going on here at all.

Typo on my part, should read

| Yes, they're out of print and the only people who want them are collectors

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