Dear white straight cis male fiction writers

I get it. You want to write about white straight cis dudes. You want to write about yourself and the kind of women you have or want to have in your life.

Please just admit it. You are uncomfortable writing about powerful independent women — because it makes your balls shrink in horror — and about LGBTQ characters — because they make your stomach churn — and about people of color — because they have their own entertainment, don’t they?

For the love of all that is holy, STOP trying to blame your misogyny, homophobia and racism on “the difficulty of writing”

Yes, it is more difficult to write a character who shares nothing with you as a person. Clearly, it requires a good deal of compassion, self-awareness and imagination. Three skills that are not required to become a writer — even though they probably should. And the greater the difference between the author and the character, the more of those three things are needed.

But let’s cut the BS for a moment.

You are not better equipped to write about wizards, dragons, kings, super-heroes, aliens or time travelers. Chances are you also are not yourself a spy, an elite soldier, a multi-billionaire, a detective, a tribe leader, a farmer, a doctor, a cowboy or a professional athlete.

And yet I have never heard you complain about the difficulty of writing protagonists like that. For good reason: their difference is also what makes them interesting. If all you wrote about was yourself, we would quickly get sick of reading about writers suffering from writer’s block — though for the record I really like the Shining, so it’s not like it is forbidden to write yourself.

Here’s the message I really get from you

Note that I am not saying it is the message you want to pass on, quite the contrary. I would just like you to know how things get translated to me, whether we like it or not. I admit my interpretation has as much or more to do with me than with you, but well, if you really feel like you have no insight in people like me, here’s your chance to get some. You’re welcome.

You say “But I wouldn’t know how to write from a woman’s perspective” and I hear “I am only comfortable writing women as love interests and sexual objects, the same way I like them in real life”

You say “I’m sure gay people wouldn’t want a straight guy to write about them” and I hear “I really don’t want gay people in my story, same way I don’t mind them as long as they are not in my own family”

You say “It would make no sense for this character to be black” and I hear “I believe God made different races as a signal that they should not mix”

You say “But there is ONE female character, why are you complaining?” and I hear “I only need one woman at a time in my life, same thing with stories”

You say “You can’t really want me to add a badly written gay romance option just to pander to the LGBTQ community!” and I hear “I do not care how underrepresented you are, you’re in a minority so go back to the shadows, pretty please”

You say “Themes like racism are too controversial and political, so I’d rather avoid it” and I hear “It is much easier for me to pretend to be color blind if there are no colors to be blind to”

You say “It doesn’t matter what I do, there will always be haters! If I don’t put in gay sex, the gays are all over me, but if I do, it’s the Christian groups that will give me bad rep!” and I hear “For me, a group fighting for its own existence is the exact equivalent of or even worse than a group fighting to keep others down”

There you have it. You might only be trying not to feel uncomfortable in your own writing, but reading these translations should give you enough insight to understand why your writing is making me uncomfortable.

Obviously, to make every reader comfortable is impossible and it is the duty of absolutely no writer to make me comfortable… But do not expect me to give you my attention, time and money if you make me uncomfortable. Do not hide behind BS excuses, just admit that you do not want me in your audience and that is fine, I’ll stay out of it, no worries.

What’s so hard to understand anyway?

Let’s go back to your BS excuse now. In case you actually believe in it and are not just using it to hide your misogyny, homophobia and racism — at least not consciously.

You say “But I cannot understand women, LGBTQ people and people of color, not the way I understand people who are like me”.

To that, I’ve got three things to say.

Are you sure you understand your own group that well?

Being a white straight cis man does not magically attune you to the feelings of every other white straight cis man on Earth. Sure, you get A LOT more represented in every sense of the word. So we are all exposed to a greater variety of white straight cis men in entertainment — and in parliaments, sigh — than of any other type of human being… but that does not mean we deeply understand every one.

I often hear white straight cis men complaining that they don’t want to be identified as such. That having that combination of labels does not mean much and that I should not presume anything about them based only on that part of their identity… Fair enough.
Maybe you had that exact criticism to level at me from the moment you read the title of this post… Again, that is fair.

But that also means it is not that easy for you to write a character just because he is a white straight cis man. Which means the reason you choose to write mostly characters like that has nothing to do with difficulty. QED

What makes you think we are so alien?

You might think that when you tell women, LGBTQ people or people of color that you don’t feel able to write them at all, it means you acknowledge the differences between you and them…

But you are VASTLY overestimating them.

Sure, there are differences. Marked differences between groups — at the individual level, things get dicey, as there is a lot more diversity in any group than meets the eye.

But they don’t go as deep as you would like to believe. It is not entirely impossible for us to understand each other. I mean, sure, ask me to understand a psychopath and I’ll have problems, but can I put myself in your shoes? Probably more than you’d think.

Anyway, I don’t expect you to write in a way that will make me feel “oh, I bet the author is a woman”. It’s fine if it shows that you are trying to put yourself in shoes that don’t quite fit. I like broken, unbelievable, clichéd gay romances a lot more than I do the absence of homosexuality in the setting. I’d rather play a female protagonist who sounds like a man with boobs than not have the option of gender at all. As for skin color, I promise I will not be outraged if NPCs are all color blind, pinky swear.

About our specific issues…

Now, I’m pretty sure you do not need to have been on the receiving end of misogyny, homophobia and racism to be able to write about them. Ask the allies, the feminist men, the gay-friendly people, the white allies. They will probably tell you that it is not so much a matter of how many people you know from that oppressed group and more about how much attention you give to their stories and issues.

But let me be clear: I do not expect everyone to care about other people’s issues. I completely get that a lot of writers want to write stories without having to worry about thorny issues like misogyny, homophobia and racism.

But here is the thing: the more fictional your setting, the easier it is for you to remove those issues from the setting entirely, specifically by including more diverse characters and making every other character interact with them as if they were completely normal — which, in a sense, they thus become, because you are the creator, so you call the shots.

Sure, in a historical setting, it is a lot harder to get away with pretending that a black, gay or female knight errant would have been treated as nothing to write home about by Middle Age folks… it is also a lot easier to hide and justify your own prejudice behind that of a specific historical setting… Maybe try to present not just the joy with which the oppressor behaved and how happy they were, but make a little space for how terrible the oppressed felt.

But what if you just don’t want to write for or about the likes of me?

That’s fine. I mean, it’s absolutely your right. I am in no way entitled to your attention or understanding.

But I believe that you owe me at least enough respect not to bullshit me. So if the problem is that you don’t want me in your audience, fine, just say so. I obviously do not expect every piece of fiction out there to cater to my taste, that would be stupid… Kind of like entitled whiny white straight cis men complaining about diversity getting into and spoiling their entertainment.

What I am ranting about here is the hypocrisy and disrespect. Don’t lie to me. Don’t try to make me feel bad for feeling unwelcome in an audience I was never meant to be a part of. It is only natural that I don’t feel welcome if you pointedly exclude people like me from your setting and make zero effort to think about how your writing will make me feel. Either you want to target me or you don’t. Do not pretend that your writing is universal because it cannot be — and writing for the majority or the group in power does not make your writing universal, sorry — and please, pretty please with cherry on the top, STOP pretending that it is because you care about the quality of your writing. Nothing to do with it.