Straight White Males as default: How it's wrong.

[Constaniana]

Being Dutch isn't a career?

Depends, will people pay me for it?

We love throwing money at you people, as compensation for having to wear those funny wooden shoes all the time.

[Greater Amerigo]

In all technicality, all the protagonists I write are straight white males. This isn't due to prejudice though, I just find it easier to write a straight white male since that is what I am. I feel like I'm posing if I write as anything else because even when I'm not, I feel like I tap into preconceptions and generalizations with any other kind.

I'm sure the same thing applies to a great many writers.

It applies to a great many writers, but it doesn't apply to many great writers.

A bit of a low-blow there; don't you think so?

[The Blaatschapen]

It applies to a great many writers, but it doesn't apply to many great writers.

A bit of a low-blow there; don't you think so?

Oh, it wasn't meant to be personal.

[Cannot think of a name]

It applies to a great many writers, but it doesn't apply to many great writers.

A bit of a low-blow there; don't you think so?

Who doesn't like a well turned out phrase...?

[Nadkor]

It applies to a great many writers, but it doesn't apply to many great writers.

A bit of a low-blow there; don't you think so?

No? It's a perfectly fair point put well.

If, when writing fiction, you genuinely can't write main characters that are any different to you then you should probably stop writing fiction.

Because you'll make a terrible writer with unbearably dull stories.

[Nailed to the Perch]

Oh god, don't get me started. I have, at this point, almost a fixed, stand-up comedy-esque rant about how, as someone who is a singer by profession and who has occasionally made money/won prizes and stuff on the side by writing, I somehow managed to find the two best professions in the world for everyone in the universe to think they can do my job without even trying. "Training? Practice? Research? Serious work?" says the universe. "Don't be silly! I do your job in my SHOWER and it's TOTALLY THE SAME THING!"

*grumble grumble grumble*

You can come hang out with me (playwright/filmmaker), my brother (professional musician guitar player), and his girlfriend (masters in choral conducting and extremely disciplined singer) while we shake our fists at the world.

*shakes fist in solidarity*

(And I've actually been doing some semi-serious looking into choral conducting MFA programs myself of late...I think I may be a glutton for punishment.)

[Cannot think of a name]

You can come hang out with me (playwright/filmmaker), my brother (professional musician guitar player), and his girlfriend (masters in choral conducting and extremely disciplined singer) while we shake our fists at the world.

*shakes fist in solidarity*

(And I've actually been doing some semi-serious looking into choral conducting MFA programs myself of late...I think I may be a glutton for punishment.)

She's from your neck of the woods (in that I'm a Californian and she's from 'the East' so I think it's all one big blob in the same way people not from California think San Francisco is an hour drive to LA), I can ask her about the program she went to if you'd like.

[Nailed to the Perch]

*shakes fist in solidarity*

(And I've actually been doing some semi-serious looking into choral conducting MFA programs myself of late...I think I may be a glutton for punishment.)

She's from your neck of the woods (in that I'm a Californian and she's from 'the East' so I think it's all one big blob in the same way people not from California think San Francisco is an hour drive to LA), I can ask her about the program she went to if you'd like.

Sure! That'd be awesome - more information is never a bad thing. (And my neck of the woods is in a state of flux at the moment, anyway, so I'm pretty open to considering grad programs anywhere.)

[Tahar Joblis]

You've got the whole argument backwards.

The point about them being 'default' is that many authors don't consider the possibilities of another gender, race or sexuality for their important characters and 'default' to straight white males far too often.

What something being the "default" means is, in fact, is that it is picked if you do not have a reason to do otherwise. The title of the blog is "PSA: Your Default Narrative Settings Are Not Apolitical."

Sounds to me like the very idea someone might have a default setting of "SWM characters" is under attack; not simply using your default setting too often.

The blog in the OP outlines the position: "It is bad that most major characters in historical-style settings are straight white males, because there were people who were not straight white males who did the same sorts of things as those characters."

This argument runs across the problem that SF&F literature actually overrepresents female heads of state, female soldiers, female political leaders, female scientists, et cetera, compared to the historical settings they are borrowing from / leaning on. It's not at all clear that straights are overrepresented; there are a number of authors who include no non-straight characters, a number of authors who include lots of non-straight characters, and a number of characters whose actual sexuality is not necessarily immediately revealed - Dumbledore, anyone?

The blog author is:

1. Angry that some fans don't think that certain minority characters' minority status is adequately justified, and therefore feel a jarring sense of unrealism. For example, Lancelot being black without an explanation for why Lancelot is black, something that would be relatively unusual in, say, 6th century Briton.

2. Responding to this anger by adopting the other extreme position and lashing out at other authors in the genre, saying that everybody who isn't making characters things other than straight white males without offering a reason for it is doing it wrong and being unrealistic.

3. The reality is that it hasn't been controversial within SF&F to have a protagonist who isn't a straight white male since before the blog author was born, and the degree to which the genre fails to represent a historical ratio of men in male professions or whites in Pseudo-Europe [or actual Europe] historical settings is in fact an error in the "politically correct" direction of higher diversity than historical evidence suggests.

[NERVUN]

Sure! I mean, you're writing now. What's to know!? I mean look at how many self proclaimed writers there are in this very thread!*

It's like singing, if you can physically do it, you must be the next American Idol and those judges are just meanie poopy heads for not seeing that.

Oh god, don't get me started. I have, at this point, almost a fixed, stand-up comedy-esque rant about how, as someone who is a singer by profession and who has occasionally made money/won prizes and stuff on the side by writing, I somehow managed to find the two best professions in the world for everyone in the universe to think they can do my job without even trying. "Training? Practice? Research? Serious work?" says the universe. "Don't be silly! I do your job in my SHOWER and it's TOTALLY THE SAME THING!"

*grumble grumble grumble*

I'm a teacher. 'nough said.

[Nailed to the Perch]

Oh god, don't get me started. I have, at this point, almost a fixed, stand-up comedy-esque rant about how, as someone who is a singer by profession and who has occasionally made money/won prizes and stuff on the side by writing, I somehow managed to find the two best professions in the world for everyone in the universe to think they can do my job without even trying. "Training? Practice? Research? Serious work?" says the universe. "Don't be silly! I do your job in my SHOWER and it's TOTALLY THE SAME THING!"

*grumble grumble grumble*

I'm a teacher. 'nough said.

Heh. The super-funny part is that the OTHER thing I'm seriously looking into besides choral conducting is getting my teaching certification. Every now and then my parents are like, "You should be a doctor! You should be a lawyer! You should go into accounting or business or research!" Apparently, on some level, my response is, "No! I need a job where I'll work just as hard, get paid much, much less, and be told on a regular basis that my job is so easy any idiot could do it! Because that just sounds so FUN!"

(On the bright side, at least people generally seem to believe that teaching requires a TINY bit of training, even if it's only "you probably have to read the book before you teach it," which still puts it ahead of singing/writing/etc. by a smidge in the public perception.)

[NERVUN]

You've got the whole argument backwards.

The point about them being 'default' is that many authors don't consider the possibilities of another gender, race or sexuality for their important characters and 'default' to straight white males far too often.

What something being the "default" means is, in fact, is that it is picked if you do not have a reason to do otherwise. The title of the blog is "PSA: Your Default Narrative Settings Are Not Apolitical."

Sounds to me like the very idea someone might have a default setting of "SWM characters" is under attack; not simply using your default setting too often.

The blog in the OP outlines the position: "It is bad that most major characters in historical-style settings are straight white males, because there were people who were not straight white males who did the same sorts of things as those characters."

This argument runs across the problem that SF&F literature actually overrepresents female heads of state, female soldiers, female political leaders, female scientists, et cetera, compared to the historical settings they are borrowing from / leaning on. It's not at all clear that straights are overrepresented; there are a number of authors who include no non-straight characters, a number of authors who include lots of non-straight characters, and a number of characters whose actual sexuality is not necessarily immediately revealed - Dumbledore, anyone?

The blog author is:

1. Angry that some fans don't think that certain minority characters' minority status is adequately justified, and therefore feel a jarring sense of unrealism. For example, Lancelot being black without an explanation for why Lancelot is black, something that would be relatively unusual in, say, 6th century Briton.

2. Responding to this anger by adopting the other extreme position and lashing out at other authors in the genre, saying that everybody who isn't making characters things other than straight white males without offering a reason for it is doing it wrong and being unrealistic.

3. The reality is that it hasn't been controversial within SF&F to have a protagonist who isn't a straight white male since before the blog author was born, and the degree to which the genre fails to represent a historical ratio of men in male professions or whites in Pseudo-Europe [or actual Europe] historical settings is in fact an error in the "politically correct" direction of higher diversity than historical evidence suggests.

Got sauce for any of that?

I admit that I'm on the tail end of book (at least in English) distribution over here, but I do seem to recall that the last time I made it to an actual English bookstore that the book covers on my favorite section (SF&F) hadn't changed all that much before I left, meaning that the default is indeed a white guy and given the scantily dressed girl he was in the process of saving/ogling, he's probably straight.

[Greater Amerigo]

A bit of a low-blow there; don't you think so?

No? It's a perfectly fair point put well.

If, when writing fiction, you genuinely can't write main characters that are any different to you then you should probably stop writing fiction.

Because you'll make a terrible writer with unbearably dull stories.

I can write characters that aren't me; however, I get this dangerous urge to use a handy generalization about a gender, or a race, or a sexual leaning because I don't personally have experience with it. You want to form a protagonist that is capable of existing in your world, so generalizations are dangerous little buggers. Worse yet, they can totally rip parts of the audience away from the story if it seems like you used one.

I've haven't quite found myself able to write characters like homosexuals with a truly believable personality. They work quite well as secondary characters, but they don't work well when you dive into the specifics. At the exact same time, throwing these kinds of characters into the story to satisfy some quantitative need for non-SWM works contrary to what writing is about. I add enough of the characters to express that this is a real world with very different people; but you shouldn't add these characters for the sake of adding them. There should be a literary reason to have a homosexual character in the room (or to hang a lantern on this fact in the first place), or perhaps a different colored dwarf in the room. For example, that last one can lead the character off on a mental segue into dwarven culture.

Having them there to be there isn't a good reason. I suppose that's my problem. I shouldn't make my protagonist or my major characters be homosexual or something unless I want to explore that side of human (or elf, or dwarven, or... oh hell lets get on with it) nature. Furthermore, I don't want to write characters like I do now and just reskin them as homosexual or an Asian. This feeds back to the "I want them to have a purpose as a character" mentality. I simply do not know enough about these types of people yet to draw out a complex mental state for the character or some kind of contemporary issue they have to deal with. Anything I do seems hamfisted.

Call me a bad writer for this, but I like to believe I have a semblance of sense going here.

[Cannot think of a name]

I'm a teacher. 'nough said.

Heh. The super-funny part is that the OTHER thing I'm seriously looking into besides choral conducting is getting my teaching certification. Every now and then my parents are like, "You should be a doctor! You should be a lawyer! You should go into accounting or business or research!" Apparently, on some level, my response is, "No! I need a job where I'll work just as hard, get paid much, much less, and be told on a regular basis that my job is so easy any idiot could do it! Because that just sounds so FUN!"

(On the bright side, at least people generally seem to believe that teaching requires a TINY bit of training, even if it's only "you probably have to read the book before you teach it," which still puts it ahead of singing/writing/etc. by a smidge in the public perception.)

My parents are like they heard someone on a radio once sort of describe the importance of being supportive so they make crazy off the wall suggestions that are in no way grounded in what I'm doing or am capable of and then throw out 'back ups' they see in now hiring listings.

"You should do stand up." "I am in no way that kind of funny and am completely awkward on stage, nor is it what I have studied, been recognized in, gotten scholarships for, or awards for." "Oh. They're hiring truck drivers." "I'm going to go work on my car." "Is it broken?" "Give it time..."

[Cannot think of a name]

I've haven't quite found myself able to write characters like homosexuals with a truly believable personality. They work quite well as secondary characters, but they don't work well when you dive into the specifics.

Are you writing porn?

[Hathradic States]

No? It's a perfectly fair point put well.

If, when writing fiction, you genuinely can't write main characters that are any different to you then you should probably stop writing fiction.

Because you'll make a terrible writer with unbearably dull stories.

I can write characters that aren't me; however, I get this dangerous urge to use a handy generalization about a gender, or a race, or a sexual leaning because I don't personally have experience with it. You want to form a protagonist that is capable of existing in your world, so generalizations are dangerous little buggers. Worse yet, they can totally rip parts of the audience away from the story if it seems like you used one.

I've haven't quite found myself able to write characters like homosexuals with a truly believable personality. They work quite well as secondary characters, but they don't work well when you dive into the specifics. At the exact same time, throwing these kinds of characters into the story to satisfy some quantitative need for non-SWM works contrary to what writing is about. I add enough of the characters to express that this is a real world with very different people; but you shouldn't add these characters for the sake of adding them. There should be a literary reason to have a homosexual character in the room (or to hang a lantern on this fact in the first place), or perhaps a different colored dwarf in the room. For example, that last one can lead the character off on a mental segue into dwarven culture.

Having them there to be there isn't a good reason. I suppose that's my problem. I shouldn't make my protagonist or my major characters be homosexual or something unless I want to explore that side of human (or elf, or dwarven, or... oh hell lets get on with it) nature. Furthermore, I don't want to write characters like I do now and just reskin them as homosexual or an Asian. This feeds back to the "I want them to have a purpose as a character" mentality. I simply do not know enough about these types of people yet to draw out a complex mental state for the character or some kind of contemporary issue they have to deal with. Anything I do seems hamfisted.

Call me a bad writer for this, but I like to believe I have a semblance of sense going here.

I find that a bit of a BS excuse, especially when writing fantasy. Very much especially when you have a non-human as a main character.

[Cannot think of a name]

I can write characters that aren't me; however, I get this dangerous urge to use a handy generalization about a gender, or a race, or a sexual leaning because I don't personally have experience with it. You want to form a protagonist that is capable of existing in your world, so generalizations are dangerous little buggers. Worse yet, they can totally rip parts of the audience away from the story if it seems like you used one.

I've haven't quite found myself able to write characters like homosexuals with a truly believable personality. They work quite well as secondary characters, but they don't work well when you dive into the specifics. At the exact same time, throwing these kinds of characters into the story to satisfy some quantitative need for non-SWM works contrary to what writing is about. I add enough of the characters to express that this is a real world with very different people; but you shouldn't add these characters for the sake of adding them. There should be a literary reason to have a homosexual character in the room (or to hang a lantern on this fact in the first place), or perhaps a different colored dwarf in the room. For example, that last one can lead the character off on a mental segue into dwarven culture.

Having them there to be there isn't a good reason. I suppose that's my problem. I shouldn't make my protagonist or my major characters be homosexual or something unless I want to explore that side of human (or elf, or dwarven, or... oh hell lets get on with it) nature. Furthermore, I don't want to write characters like I do now and just reskin them as homosexual or an Asian. This feeds back to the "I want them to have a purpose as a character" mentality. I simply do not know enough about these types of people yet to draw out a complex mental state for the character or some kind of contemporary issue they have to deal with. Anything I do seems hamfisted.

Call me a bad writer for this, but I like to believe I have a semblance of sense going here.

I find that a bit of a BS excuse, especially when writing fantasy. Very much especially when you have a non-human as a main character.

It's the same one people have been trotting out since page three, it hasn't gotten any better.

[Greater Amerigo]

I've haven't quite found myself able to write characters like homosexuals with a truly believable personality. They work quite well as secondary characters, but they don't work well when you dive into the specifics.

Are you writing porn?

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

[Hathradic States]

Are you writing porn?

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

Not really. You can have a gay character without gay being the defining attribute of his character. For example, I have, as of now, two in my fantasy series. One's defining attribute is that he is incompetent and a bit of a douche bag, the other's is that he great cavalryman and a former drunk with addiction problems.

[Cannot think of a name]

Are you writing porn?

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

Are you? If a character has a spouse are you writing a straight romance? If it's a character who is involved with someone who trots off to slay a dragon is it a story about relationships? If a character finds someone attractive in the course of storming the castle is a romantic story? If they have a night at the inn so to speak, are you dooming your entire story to a romance?

You're looking at these things as 'otherness', which is exactly problem, that anything other than being a straight white male has to be a story point. (I feel like we've said this before) Things that you'd otherwise consider just part of what makes up a character becomes a plot point when it breaks from the narrative norm.

It's a challenge to your writing to examine these tendencies in your perception and how they cloud and ultimately limit your writing. If you have any pride in your proposed craft, you should embrace it.

[Nailed to the Perch]

Heh. The super-funny part is that the OTHER thing I'm seriously looking into besides choral conducting is getting my teaching certification. Every now and then my parents are like, "You should be a doctor! You should be a lawyer! You should go into accounting or business or research!" Apparently, on some level, my response is, "No! I need a job where I'll work just as hard, get paid much, much less, and be told on a regular basis that my job is so easy any idiot could do it! Because that just sounds so FUN!"

(On the bright side, at least people generally seem to believe that teaching requires a TINY bit of training, even if it's only "you probably have to read the book before you teach it," which still puts it ahead of singing/writing/etc. by a smidge in the public perception.)

My parents are like they heard someone on a radio once sort of describe the importance of being supportive so they make crazy off the wall suggestions that are in no way grounded in what I'm doing or am capable of and then throw out 'back ups' they see in now hiring listings.

"You should do stand up." "I am in no way that kind of funny and am completely awkward on stage, nor is it what I have studied, been recognized in, gotten scholarships for, or awards for." "Oh. They're hiring truck drivers." "I'm going to go work on my car." "Is it broken?" "Give it time..."

....do we secretly have the same mom?

My dad is better about this, but my mother is constantly trying to point me down career paths that make no freaking sense. It is a constant barrage of "You're good at arguing, you could be a lawyer!" "You like science, you could work in a research lab!" "I saw this commercial about becoming a radiology technician - you could do that!" "You should go to med school!" (Possibly my favorite one, insofar as it takes about two minutes of knowing me to figure out that I would be a TERRIBLE doctor. I hate blood, hate needles, hate touching strangers, and am hyper-empathetic to the point where seeing people in pain puts me in real, physical pain. I can't watch freaking medical shows without covering my eyes every time they show surgery or needles or basically anything besides the parts where the characters just talk to each other, and she wants me to be a doctor. ) The fact that both of her children went into "artsy" professions that don't pay well pretty clearly drives her absolutely crazy.

[The Steel Magnolia]

Um.

That's really, really not true. You may as well say that being black is nothing more than having darker skin.

Experiences are the things that define social groups. Not their immutable differences, and the experiences of gay characters in any society are different than the experiences of straight cis characters, just as it is in real life.



That doesn't mean you can't write outside your identity, but it does mean that you have to make an effort about it. Unless you're doing some far flung utopian society, then there's going to be sexism, there's going to be homophobia, there's going to be racism. And that has an impact on people.

someone's sexuality, someone's gender identity, someone's race; these things matter, you can't just get away with putting in female characters by writing about "Wilma" instead of "Will", and "she" instead of "he."

Or rather, you can, but it's going to be shitty writing. There's a balance, between making a character's identity their entire character and making that identity meaningless. It's not meaningless, and if you think it is, you're not going to write good characters.

Well, yes and no. I'm not saying sexuality, race, or gender don't matter, but rather that they only matter to the extent the author dictates that they matter. If I am writing a story about, I dunno, space pirates fighting aliens on Mars, there is no reason why the fact that space pirate #7 happens to be married to a dude back on Earth rather than a woman back on Earth has to have any particular effect on his personality or characterization. It is not a matter of "well, if he were straight, obviously he would like space-football and go around punching aliens in a manly fashion, but since he's gay, obviously he only likes space-musicals and slapping the aliens across their betentacled faces while shrieking, 'Oh, STAAAAAAHP!'" There isn't any quality all gay people have in common besides "attracted to members of the same gender," and so writing a gay character, in itself, should not present any challenge that writing a straight character does not.

Essentially, it goes back to the whole Smurfette thing. It's not that a character being gay or black or female shouldn't inform their characterization or affect the plot. It's that it should inform their characterization or affect the plot exactly as much as their being straight or white or male should, without one of those being seen as a default status that requires no explanation and one of them necessarily being an Issue that must be addressed and justified.

Precisely - it's a balance that needs to be addressed, though I admit I was thinking of more character driven pieces than something more actiony.

Either way, the Smurfette thing is obviously bad, but so is the inverse, where a character's identity has no meaningful impact on them at all. That isn't particularly realistic either.

[Nailed to the Perch]

Are you writing porn?

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

I've said this about ten previous times in this thread: straight is a sexuality, just like white is a race and male is a gender. Making a character gay does not "introduce sexuality into the story" any more than making a character straight does. The fact that you view straightness as a default state and homosexuality as a special exception that requires a justification is precisely the problem.

[Greater Amerigo]

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

Not really. You can have a gay character without gay being the defining attribute of his character. For example, I have, as of now, two in my fantasy series. One's defining attribute is that he is incompetent and a bit of a douche bag, the other's is that he great cavalryman and a former drunk with addiction problems.

I won't argue on this point. I have secondary characters (and a single major one) that are marked like this. If the major character is homosexual (or another coloured skin for that matter) though, I feel the urge to use that defining characteristic as a piece of the conflict to make it meaningful. I avoid that trope and prefer to leave characters open to interpretation most of the time with secondaries.

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

I've said this about ten previous times in this thread: straight is a sexuality, just like white is a race and male is a gender. Making a character gay does not "introduce sexuality into the story" any more than making a character straight does. The fact that you view straightness as a default state and homosexuality as a special exception that requires a justification is precisely the problem.

I can't argue much here. I do view straight as the default. Sad as it is to some, it is my nature. My writing does incorporate women in reasonable frequency, so I'm excluding that category.

Again though, as I said above, I avoid labeling characters and leave it up to interpretation in most cases. It's more democratic in that sense, but it also isn't doing what this thread is asking for.

[Individuality-ness]

Funny.

Of course this is part of why I'm weary of writing in homosexual characters. If you introduce sexuality into the story it is for one of two reasons: firstly, a conflict over the the sexuality; or second, a romantic subplot. I've explained that the first is difficult for me. The second falls under my "I am doing this for a reason" point.

I've said this about ten previous times in this thread: straight is a sexuality, just like white is a race and male is a gender. Making a character gay does not "introduce sexuality into the story" any more than making a character straight does. The fact that you view straightness as a default state and homosexuality as a special exception that requires a justification is precisely the problem.

Is it even that hard to use LGBT characters?