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

[Nailed to the Perch]

they're not even close to the same.

i get you dont see they are, but they are.

to claim he should have done otherwise is to implying he is racist in his storytelling

The author used the context of the war of the roses as his background. you know
lannisters = lancasters
starks = yorks
there were no mutombo's in the north.

He does not have to write one in too appease political correctness.

No one is saying he does.

The problem that tends to happen in a lot of these threads about broad social trends is that the conversation goes like this:

"This is a broad social trend that is a problem."
"Give me an example of someone conforming to this trend."
"Okay, here is one example."
"So you're saying that THIS PARTICULAR EXAMPLE is bad and racist and sexist and has to be done differently?"
"No? I'm saying it's an example of a broader trend that is a problem."
"Then why did you specify it?"
"Because people wanted an example!"
"So you DO think it's bad and racist and sexist etc. etc.!"

Think of it this way: is it racist for a business to hire a white guy for a job?

Is it racist for every business in the world ONLY to hire white guys for jobs?

No one thinks that George R. R. Martin, personally, is a horrible racist who should have been obligated to make the Lannisters a family of black disabled lesbians. People may think that his series is an example of how the fantasy genre tends to default to "white people and dragons." The problem is not any single author or any single book. I haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire yet, and I'm perfectly willing to believe it's great (and I fully intend to read it once the series is complete). The problem is that it's really, really, really easy for me to pick up any random fantasy or sci-fi book and find a bunch of straight white male characters, and disproportionately hard to find gay or non-white or female characters in non-token roles. That can't be fixed by any one author; it can be fixed by a whole lot of authors individually making a point of thinking, "Did I make this character a straight white dude for a reason, or just by default? And if it's the latter, could I make them female or gay or non-white and still have a story that's just as good or maybe even better?"

[Gravlen]

I would just like to throw out there that I've imagined several Game of Thrones characters to be of a darker skin color than what the author (and TV series) apparently imagined them to have.

Thoros of Myr was a black man, damnit!

Does imagining the entire cast as penguins really count, though?

Of course, anything else would be mispheniscidry! And everything is better with penguins -_-

[Nailed to the Perch]

Does imagining the entire cast as penguins really count, though?

Of course, anything else would be mispheniscidry! And everything is better with penguins -_-

...how do you even FIND these things?

[Dakini]

...because you don't even understand what she's saying? Or apparently the point of this thread?

I'm sorry, maybe you're not bad at reading, maybe you're just really bad at explaining what you mean and coming out as confrontational with people who essentially agree with you (if that is the point you're making).

"Making it all about them." by watching a show not targetted at them and making it a gender neutral demographic Is a bad thing.
VS
We need to make all the demographics gender neutral.

"Making it all about them" could also mean stuff like what went down at the My Little Pony convention when small girls and their parents were surrounded by loud boisterous men who hijacked the fuck out of it. It could also mean that the general brony culture on the internet has a habit of acting like the shows were just for them and that they're the largest audience for it. I mean, maybe they're the largest audience with an online presence, but that's because most parents don't let their 3-6 year olds on the internet without supervision.

It doesn't mean "these people cannot watch the show", it just means that it's a kid's show and it shouldn't cease to be a kid's show.

[United Dependencies]

I agree with the writer of this blog post. I just wonder if this will allow us to get different stories now. Straight white farm boy defeats evil and saves princess being replaced with gay black farm girl defeats evil and saves princess just doesn't seem that interesting.

[United Dependencies]

snip

did you make that?

[Nimilia]

i get you dont see they are, but they are.

to claim he should have done otherwise is to implying he is racist in his storytelling

The author used the context of the war of the roses as his background. you know
lannisters = lancasters
starks = yorks
there were no mutombo's in the north.

He does not have to write one in too appease political correctness.

No one is saying he does.

The problem that tends to happen in a lot of these threads about broad social trends is that the conversation goes like this:

"This is a broad social trend that is a problem."
"Give me an example of someone conforming to this trend."
"Okay, here is one example."
"So you're saying that THIS PARTICULAR EXAMPLE is bad and racist and sexist and has to be done differently?"
"No? I'm saying it's an example of a broader trend that is a problem."
"Then why did you specify it?"
"Because people wanted an example!"
"So you DO think it's bad and racist and sexist etc. etc.!"

Think of it this way: is it racist for a business to hire a white guy for a job?

Is it racist for every business in the world ONLY to hire white guys for jobs?

No one thinks that George R. R. Martin, personally, is a horrible racist who should have been obligated to make the Lannisters a family of black disabled lesbians. People may think that his series is an example of how the fantasy genre tends to default to "white people and dragons." The problem is not any single author or any single book. I haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire yet, and I'm perfectly willing to believe it's great (and I fully intend to read it once the series is complete). The problem is that it's really, really, really easy for me to pick up any random fantasy or sci-fi book and find a bunch of straight white male characters, and disproportionately hard to find gay or non-white or female characters in non-token roles. That can't be fixed by any one author; it can be fixed by a whole lot of authors individually making a point of thinking, "Did I make this character a straight white dude for a reason, or just by default? And if it's the latter, could I make them female or gay or non-white and still have a story that's just as good or maybe even better?"

Actually A Song of Ice and Fire was brought into the discussion as an example of a series that sports a wide variety of characters, genders, sexualities etc and is definitely to be lauded for the way it handles these themes.

That's why it's extra weird EM thinks we're saying GRRM is being racist...

But other than that you're correct!

[Ostroeuropa]

"Making it all about them." by watching a show not targetted at them and making it a gender neutral demographic Is a bad thing.
VS
We need to make all the demographics gender neutral.

"Making it all about them" could also mean stuff like what went down at the My Little Pony convention when small girls and their parents were surrounded by loud boisterous men who hijacked the fuck out of it. It could also mean that the general brony culture on the internet has a habit of acting like the shows were just for them and that they're the largest audience for it. I mean, maybe they're the largest audience with an online presence, but that's because most parents don't let their 3-6 year olds on the internet without supervision.

It doesn't mean "these people cannot watch the show", it just means that it's a kid's show and it shouldn't cease to be a kid's show.

Which convention?
Loud and boisterous men? At a brony con? Sure. Sure.
You mean the brony conventions? Cos as far as i'm aware, there are not MLP cons.
We may well be the largest show demographic in real life too. Nobody is sure.
But your answer betrays exactly what i'm talking about. If women turned up to a transformers convention and were the majority of the participants, would that be a bad thing?

[Forsher]

"Making it all about them." by watching a show not targetted at them and making it a gender neutral demographic Is a bad thing.
VS
We need to make all the demographics gender neutral.

"Making it all about them" could also mean stuff like what went down at the My Little Pony convention when small girls and their parents were surrounded by loud boisterous men who hijacked the fuck out of it. It could also mean that the general brony culture on the internet has a habit of acting like the shows were just for them and that they're the largest audience for it. I mean, maybe they're the largest audience with an online presence, but that's because most parents don't let their 3-6 year olds on the internet without supervision.

It doesn't mean "these people cannot watch the show", it just means that it's a kid's show and it shouldn't cease to be a kid's show.

This is what I took the statement as being. It's why I mentioned the target demographic denial... it's the consequence of getting an inflated sense of self-importance in relationship to a thing.

The easiest way to remember why My Little Pony exists is watch Spongebob on TV2 in NZ. You'll quickly notice the toys and how they're advertised.

[Nimilia]

I agree with the writer of this blog post. I just wonder if this will allow us to get different stories now. Straight white farm boy defeats evil and saves princess being replaced with gay black farm girl defeats evil and saves princess just doesn't seem that interesting.

I don't know, the first version of that story doesn't sound very good either...

[Dakini]

Oh, poor you. Why does this idea trouble you? Do you think that you'll get treated as poorly as minorities are currently treated?

Shouldn't it? The prospect of being treated badly should be a relatively scary thing to any sane individual.

*shrug* I don't think it will happen. Like I said, the entire idea is racist fearmongering.

[Cannot think of a name]

Except this isn't about how much of the author's personalities leak into characters but rather normative assumptions made about lead characters in SFF.

That's become debatable given that this started off as "write what you know," remember?

No, this started off as challenging the notion of straight white male as default, remember? It's right there in the thread title. I'm not interested in getting into the minutia of your process, only in how it relates to the topic at hand. If your writing is one step removed from Doug wearing a belt on his head and his underwear on the outside, that's you, not what the thread is about.

If you're making up the world, you're making up their experiences to. Quit pussing out.

I'm not sure who you think you're talking to at this point because, below, you committed the Cardian Sin and confused to vaguely superficial names. This quote: Forster Keys, Australian, at university.

What the monkey fuck are you talking about?

That's why Mogli is a little white guy, right? Or Rikki Tikki Tavi for that matter. You're twisting yourself in pretzels in order to say that while we can imagine all kinds of different shit, imagining a protagonist that isn't the author is the step too far. That would make for a shitty role-player, never mind author.

This quote: Forsher, Not Australian, not at university.

Kipling was an Anglo-Indian (ish). Mowgli? Just plain old Indian, as far as I can tell.

Oh good lord.

What I am saying is that elements of ourselves get put into our stories. So, when we don't specify a skin colour or anything we kind of look at it and (if we think of it at all, which I maintain is unlikely unless prompted... look at Neo Art's story that he was telling us about, without any plot details... grr; to clarify, what I am saying is that he didn't notice the point he's telling us about until prompted) we find that we've got a lot of white characters. I'm pretty certain that an author who isn't a white person (and particularly one who isn't in what I am going to label, in full knowledge of the terms dodginess, the white world) is going to find that a lot of their stories have non-specified (i.e. the defaults) who aren't white (let alone SWMs).

I am also saying that we're going to write ourselves in somehow. We're going to find a character and just subconsciously start writing our personality into them. Unless we're doing that deliberately.

Holy shit, this is like trying to unpack a Rubic's Cube. For fuck's sake, dude.

Are you really just trying to find out why this has happened? Because we established that in the fucking OP. We know why it's happened. Neo Art talked about how it happened to him, I talked about how it's happened to me. We know why it happens.

The point is it doesn't have to. It is not actually integral to the process. As an artist, as someone who nominally makes shit up for a living can in fact take a basic assumption they may not have been aware of and challenge it. Authors check assumptions in their stories all the fucking time to see if that's where the story really should go, if they are telling a story that's already been told or just repeating themselves.

The only thing this discussion is meant to do is point out an area that hasn't been examined, the assumption of the white straight male as the default setting.

It is not the unbreakable bond between the author and the character. It just isn't. In the same way that Paul Auster didn't have to be a dog to write a book from a dog's point of view, or Kipling did not have to be a mongoose to write Riki Tiki Tavi, or an Indian boy raised by wolves to write a story about an Indian boy raised by wolves.

[The UK in Exile]

"Making it all about them" could also mean stuff like what went down at the My Little Pony convention when small girls and their parents were surrounded by loud boisterous men who hijacked the fuck out of it. It could also mean that the general brony culture on the internet has a habit of acting like the shows were just for them and that they're the largest audience for it. I mean, maybe they're the largest audience with an online presence, but that's because most parents don't let their 3-6 year olds on the internet without supervision.

It doesn't mean "these people cannot watch the show", it just means that it's a kid's show and it shouldn't cease to be a kid's show.

Which convention?
Loud and boisterous men? At a brony con? Sure. Sure.
You mean the brony conventions? Cos as far as i'm aware, there are not MLP cons.
We may well be the largest show demographic in real lie too. Nobody is sure.
But your answer betrays exactly what i'm talking about. If women turned up to a transformers convention and were the majority of the participants, would that be a bad thing?

maybe....

[Nailed to the Perch]

I wouldn't be surprised in a few years from now if people intentionally make important characters in novels very diverse in race and sexuality just to please the liberals and anti-racists.

...and this would be a problem why, exactly?

I've had a very very vague idea for an urban fantasy novel for a while now, and the main character is pretty much an amorphous blob in my head. I long ago decided that if I ever actually turn my very very vague idea into a book, I would make the amorphous blob a woman of color, for the sole reason that there are very few fantasy novels with non-white female protagonists, and I think the world could use more of them. Why is that somehow a BAD thing compared to just going, "well, I guess I'll make that character a white dude by default"?

[Ostroeuropa]

Which convention?
Loud and boisterous men? At a brony con? Sure. Sure.
You mean the brony conventions? Cos as far as i'm aware, there are not MLP cons.
We may well be the largest show demographic in real lie too. Nobody is sure.
But your answer betrays exactly what i'm talking about. If women turned up to a transformers convention and were the majority of the participants, would that be a bad thing?

maybe....

I can't see why.

[Nimilia]

I agree with the writer of this blog post. I just wonder if this will allow us to get different stories now. Straight white farm boy defeats evil and saves princess being replaced with gay black farm girl defeats evil and saves princess just doesn't seem that interesting.

I don't know, the first version of that story doesn't sound very good either...

Actually, the second version seems considerably MORE interesting...

But we can still probably do better.. Right?

[The UK in Exile]

maybe....

I can't see why.

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

[Ostroeuropa]

I can't see why.

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

But why would it be bad?
All it shows is that the marketting department fucked up it's job and didn't identify the proper natural demographic.
Especially if Transsisters (lol) were organizing the convention themselves, for themselves.

[Southern Patriots]

I don't know, the first version of that story doesn't sound very good either...

Actually, the second version seems considerably MORE interesting...

But we can still probably do better.. Right?

How about unprivileged trans-genital overweight otherkin multi-ethnic goths of color saving CIS scum from their SWM privilege?

[Purpelia]

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

Actually I see nothing bad in that. Yes they will newer enjoy such a convention as it is indeed not meant to cater for them. But as long as they accept this and behave and do NOT attempt to force the convention to cater to them instead of the target demographic it's all fine and well.

[Ostroeuropa]

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

Actually I see nothing bad in that. Yes they will newer enjoy such a convention as it is indeed not meant to cater for them. But as long as they accept this and behave and do NOT attempt to force the convention to cater to them instead of the target demographic it's all fine and well.

That's why bronies run their OWN conventions.

[Dakini]

"Making it all about them" could also mean stuff like what went down at the My Little Pony convention when small girls and their parents were surrounded by loud boisterous men who hijacked the fuck out of it. It could also mean that the general brony culture on the internet has a habit of acting like the shows were just for them and that they're the largest audience for it. I mean, maybe they're the largest audience with an online presence, but that's because most parents don't let their 3-6 year olds on the internet without supervision.

It doesn't mean "these people cannot watch the show", it just means that it's a kid's show and it shouldn't cease to be a kid's show.

Which convention?
Loud and boisterous men? At a brony con? Sure. Sure.
You mean the brony conventions? Cos as far as i'm aware, there are not MLP cons.

Oh, you might be right. I was reading about what someone was expecting from the movie when it comes out...

We may well be the largest show demographic in real lie too. Nobody is sure.

Probably not. There are a lot of little girls in the world. Fuck, I watched My Little Ponies before the new series, probably at a time when most of the bronies would have been deriding it as a show that's "too girly" (if they were born).

But your answer betrays exactly what i'm talking about. If women turned up to a transformers convention and were the majority of the participants, would that be a bad thing?

If they showed up and acted like jackasses so the small boys in the room couldn't participate in the convention, yes. Adults should act like adults, which includes not screaming at children and declaring that they are the most important part of a fandom.

[The UK in Exile]

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

But why would it be bad?
All it shows is that the marketting department fucked up it's job and didn't identify the proper natural demographic.

because, to switch back the the MLP example, there's really no chance the marketing department was mistaken in its decision to market magicial talking ponies to pre-pubescent girls. thats something even advertising execs would realise is a "no-brainer".

[Nailed to the Perch]

It's the same thing with homosexuals or Asians or even being a white male. If a character does not need one of those things to be his defining trait than you might as well not mention it at all.

You know, it's possible to write characters who aren't Smurfette. A character can be Asian without their Asianness being a "defining trait." (See, for example, the previously mentioned Joan Watson on Elementary.) Bob can have "just married and very much in love" be a defining trait (or "cheating on his spouse," or "widowed," or "missing his spouse back home" or whatever) exactly the same way when his spouse is named Roger as when his spouse is named Lisa. The perception of "not a straight white male" as a "defining trait" is exactly the sort of thing those of us advocating against a "default" sort of character are trying to address.

[The UK in Exile]

if its a kids show about robots fighting with a moral lesson gratuitiously shoe-horned in, thats admired by a female demographic who are well above the target age and insist on reading in subtext thats both absent and inappropriate for the actual target demographic, that would be bad. because its not possible for them both to enjoy such a convention and its not meant to cater for them.

Actually I see nothing bad in that. Yes they will newer enjoy such a convention as it is indeed not meant to cater for them. But as long as they accept this and behave and do NOT attempt to force the convention to cater to them instead of the target demographic it's all fine and well.

well obviously if people don't act like assholes, its fine. I mean, thats a theoretical solution to every problem.