Tag: lgbt

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lgbt video game writing advice

The Shitty Trans Take of Remothered: An Analysis

One of my social activities is playing horror video games with my friends. Which is to say, my housemate does the hard part of actually driving, and me and my best friend sit and watch and offer helpful advice like “oh god, run away!” because we are both giant weenies who forget how to use a PS4 controller when we’re startled. The most recent game we all played together was Remothered: Tormented Fathers. Which we were super excited to play because it’s won a ton of awards.

Remothered is a Clocktower-style game, where you’re basically trapped in a limited map (here it’s three floors of a massive mansion) with an effectively immortal monster that can kill you if they catch you. You have to hide, sneak, use distracting items, and spend a lot of time running in the hopes that you’ll get far enough ahead of your pursuer to dive into a closet–and remain calm when they come hunting past your hiding place. In that mechanical sense, it’s a really good game because all of that is incredibly scary. At the beginning of the game, you’re being pursued by the owner of the house, Richard Felton.

On October 11, we played through several chapters and got to one of the game’s big reveals, which I will spoil here because I think it’s a shitty reveal: Richard Felton is actually the mysterious Jennifer who is mentioned throughout the first several chapters of the game! Shock, horror: the sickle-wielding man who has been chasing you through his house–while wearing only an apron and a pair of rubber farm boots–is actually a woman!

When the reveal came, the three of us actually groaned. For me, I’d had a feeling this was coming, and had kind of braced myself for another shitty “trans person as monster” horror moment–and I was sadly not wrong. As one of my friends eloquently put it, this has been done and done again since Psycho. It’s nothing new or particularly creative–though I will say that Remothered is the first one I’ve personally encountered where the reveal wasn’t transfeminine. Regarding the really damaging trans narratives that are particularly endemic to horror movies (and which to a one center around the shock of the reveal, clearly intended for the titillation of cis audiences), I suggest reading:

So anyway, back to Remothered. I typed out my disappointment on Twitter and forgot about it… until, bizarrely, the creator of the game responded.

I have some thoughts about this as a writer, but let’s set those aside for later. First, all right. Let’s analyze why I feel the way I do about Remothered.

The relevant story related to the reveal can be partially summarized as: Jennifer’s father, upon returning home from Ethiopia, decided that he wanted a son rather than a daughter. He forcibly transitioned Jennifer over into a male identity; how much physical alteration was involved is not explicitly stated, but we know there was at least drugs and mesmerism happening to suppress Jennifer’s female identity. “Richard” then grew up as a rather tortured and unhealthy person with “hormonal imbalances” who refused to undergo examinations when being treated for ill health. “Richard” had an arranged marriage that was quite rocky until the couple adopted a girl named Celeste as their daughter; but as Celeste grew up into a young woman, “Richard” began to remember being Jennifer more and more and thus became a threat to Celeste’s safety, thinking that killing Celeste would at last exorcise Jennifer. (This led to Celeste’s disappearance, which is the initial reason the player character comes to the Felton house. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s beyond the scope of what I want to talk about.)

In the following discussion of the gender narrative, I’m going to use the name Jennifer and the she/her pronoun set to refer to the character we start off knowing as “Richard,” because it’s pretty plain that Jennifer is a cis woman who was forced by her father to take on a male identity and characteristics. I will also note here that while I view Remothered as another brick in the transphobic horror genre wall, I don’t know if it’s entirely correct to address Jennifer as a trans person. She’s a cis woman who is forced to “become” trans by the alteration of her body and identity, which is a horror subgenre that’s not exactly rare. Since the entire storyline is evocative of trans bodies, I will refer to her as trans, but understand that I get this is a murky topic.

NOTE: “The character isn’t really trans” isn’t a defense when the shock/horror of the reveal hinges on the character troubling conservative societal boundaries of gender, which trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming people do by our very existence. There has been a long conflation in popular media between trans people and cis people who crossdress, for example, because the entire point in comedy or horror is the challenge the character presents to strict heteronormative society. Whether the character is “really” trans or not, these images and characterizations can feed into incredibly damaging tropes.

First of all, we cannot ignore the “surprise, trans!” reveal, which is a staple of horror and a thoroughly shitty, harmful device. It serves to reinforce the “deceptive trans person” trope, which gets used in the real world as a justification for violence against us (e.g. it’s the foundation of the “trans panic” defense). Narratively, it is also a device that serves to distance the audience from the trans character; the audience is removed from the trans person’s perspective by the necessity of secrecy for the “shocking” reveal, and the reveal itself pushes them further by forcing them to reconsider their understanding of the character. In Remothered, the reveal comes on the heels of having spent several chapters with Jennifer, in her “Richard” persona, chasing the player character, Rosemary, around and trying to kill her; the reveal certainly is not an invitation to reach out toward her in empathy. Rather, it’s one of the game’s call backs to The Silence of the Lambs–and while there are many ways in which that movie is absolutely brilliant, it’s also incredibly transphobic.

Stories in which a cis character’s gender is swapped, often against their will, are common in a lot of genres. I don’t think this plot device must be inherently damaging to trans people. Often, it’s a way for gender to be explored, troubled, and questioned. Some of these stories might come from a place of cis people trying to wrap their heads around what it means to be trans and how it might really feel to know you are one gender when society violently insists you are another. Unfortunately, forced transition narratives are often done in a way that damages trans people and only serve to reinforce the violently conservative nature of binary gender in dominant culture.

This is particularly true of stories about a violent, coercive transition–but even that doesn’t have to be transphobic in its execution. For example, I think Lynn Flewilling’s The Bone Doll’s Twin is absolutely masterful. But you also get movies like The Assignment, in which a mad doctor conducts forcible gender reassignment surgery on a hit man, thus turning him into, oh the horror, a hit woman. The “gender reassignment as horror” trope can be incredibly damaging because it shows gender affirming care (particularly surgery) as a destructive, coercive, and terrifying process that removes cis people from their rightful bodies–which is literally the opposite of what it is. It also often serves to reinforce the essentialist and wrong idea that genital configuration and hormones define gender.

I give Remothered credit that it’s clear Jennifer’s transition also came with what is effectively extreme psychological programming via drugs and mesmerism. In this way it can be seen to lightly touch on the practices such as “conversion therapy” that have harmed and killed real LGBT people throughout the world. However, making a young cis girl–who is presumably straight, though this is admittedly never defined in the game–the subject of such coersion that makes her “trans” is a mirror view of the reality and erases its victims.

When Jennifer is forced to take on her male persona, she develops a plethora of mental issues due to the suppression of her identity. This leads her to become violent and murderous. She kills her own wife. She might have killed Celeste–that’s unclear. Jennifer does have an unhealthy obsession with her own daughter prior to Celeste’s disappearance, which depending on your reading of the lines, can seem pedophiliac. “Trans/gender non-conforming character as insane and violent because of their tortured relationship with gender” goes hand-in-hand with pretty much every other shitty, transphobic horror trope. (e.g.: The Silence of the Lambs and Insidious 2.) That in Remothered, this “insanity”-driven, murderous violence is linked with Jennifer’s struggle to reassert her gender feels like a particular punch at trans people, many of whom do suffer from mental health problems like depression and anxiety because of the way society treats us. I have personally gallows-humor joked that being closeted at my previous job made me feel like I was two different people in a very discordant way.

Jennifer’s creepy obsession with Celeste, and the reveal that her father forced her to “become male” as a child also don’t get to be divorced from modern contexts, for all that the game takes place in the 1970s. Trans rights have become the next frontier on the culture war, since the right wing’s been forced to cede some ground to basic rights for cis gay/lesbian/bisexual people. And lately right wingers and TERFs have joined forces to spread scare stories about how the “transgender agenda” is coming after children–either as predators (see the bigotted funtimes of bathroom bills) or as demonic influences trying to “convince” children that they are trans and handing out puberty blockers like poisoned candy. As Jennifer reacts with increasing violence toward proxies for the femininity that she believes lost to her, that arguably plays into TERF and right-wing scare stories about trans people “recanting” when it’s too late or regretting their transitions. The [coercive] female-to-male transition of Jennifer by her father–literally a patriarch who brainwashes her–and the inescapable reality of Jennifer’s long-denied feminine identity also, intentionally or not, come across as particularly TERF-y in light of how rad fems treat trans men. I’m not going to link to examples of any of the aforementioned absolute trash. It’s easily googleable; just be ready to scrub your internet connection with bleach after going on National Review or the Federalist or Quillette. 

As Remothered continues and Jennifer goes from her appearance as “Richard” to wearing a dress, the visual narrative becomes extremely troubling–a transphobic gaze to go with the in-game eyeball stabbing. To begin with, proximal to the big trans reveal, we get a shot of Jennifer putting on lipstick while her blonde wig hangs in her face. To me, it immediately evoked a very standard kind of image we get in both overtly transphobic movies and Very Serious Movies About Trans People That Are Really For Cis Audiences: the moment that a trans woman (invariably played by a cis male actor) sits in front of a mirror and puts makeup on, depicting how pitiably (or disturbingly, in horror) she longs to be feminine but will never truly attain that state due to her physical differences. It may seem odd for me to have immediately grasped that feeling when Jennifer, a cis woman, is performing this action, but the facial features she has as “Richard” remain clear; she wears her hair dangling in front of her face to hide them. Jennifer’s attic hideaway, too, with its creepy collection of female-form manequins and dresses, implies an obsession with the unreachable feminine by a person socially constructed as male. By the coercive actions of her father, Jennifer has been made into someone that cannot comfortably exist as either gender allowed by heteronormative society, an underpinning that the game has little interest in examining.

Instead, we get a woman with “masculine” features that evoke the monstrous horror-movie nightmare of a trans woman, chasing a cis woman (Rosemary) through a dark and claustrophobic space and trying to murder her by filling her face full of ten penny nails. (And I doubt the players have forgotten Jennifer, as “Richard,” screaming at Rosemary that she is a “bitch,” a “cocksucker,” and a “cunt.”) So I suppose it’s an accomplishment that this game has managed to evoke terrible tropes about both trans women and trans men… because again, it’s not about whether a character is de facto a trans person, it’s about how the depiction will be conflated with and reinforce damaging cultural images of trans people.

As the game draws to a close, the last we see of Jennifer is her torture at the hands of and her death directed by another cis woman, Gloria. As Jennifer attempts to articulate what was done to her by her father, Gloria graphically cuts off her tongue with a pair of scissors; while the blood sprays and Rosemary screams at Gloria to stop, Jennifer becomes curiously silent. With her wig removed–another device that is often used in transphobic media to forcibly unmask trans women characters–Jennifer begins to cover herself with some sort of flammable liquid at Gloria’s orders, stumbling nightmarishly toward the captive Rosemary, who has become another proxy for the lost femininity she wants to violently extinguish. Rosemary sets Jennifer on fire with a lighter; the rest of the house is curiously non-flammable. The last we see of Jennifer is a burnt corpse, her lips bright red–lipstick or blood, it’s not clear–as Rosemary moves toward her final battle with Gloria.

Jennifer’s death is not a scene of particular empathy in its moment of occurence. Later, after Gloria has been defeated and lays dying, she and Rosemary do take some time in their curiously long conversation to talk about Jennifer. While at times Rosemary refers to her by her name and proper pronouns, there isn’t any consistency toward it; neither of the characters seem to grasp how they should talk about her. Gloria speaks of Jennifer as an object of disgust, a deviant. Rosemary brings her around to more empathy; at the end, even if they can’t stop misgendering her, they can at least agree that she was her father’s victim, now conveniently dead so that she can be safely pitied. She’s absent from the story of her own trauma, first rendered mute by Gloria’s scissors, then by death.

Jennifer fulfills in this way not only trans-person-as-monster, but also trans-person-as-victim. Her body became an instrument that others used to break her mind, making her into a creature incapable of existing outside of the darkened halls of her own home, a prisoner in the mansion as sure as a prisoner in the “masculine” body she did not want to have. Gloria and Rosemary pityingly speak of how Jennifer was forced to live as a man by her father… while often referring to her as a man. She is granted victimhood by acknowledgement of how terrible it must have been, to be forced to be someone she wasn’t. Yet this is the literal lived experience of countless trans, gender non-conforming, and other queer people throughout the world–none of whom spend their days chasing around cis women while wielding a nail gun, I dare say. Jennifer is ultimately a cis person’s image of the horror of “becoming” trans, and she’s equally obviously intended for a cis audience. She does not exist to challenge heteronormative culture, but rather serve as a warning of the madness that comes when someone is “forced” from their place in the binary. 

Taken by itself, I think an argument could be made that Remothered doesn’t deserve some of the criticism that I’m leveling at it. But this game doesn’t exist within a cultural or temporal vacuum. The main problem with “trans person as [pitiable] monster” is that it’s done so frequently, with any positive or even neutral depictions of trans people to balance it out nearly nonexistent. In horror, the lack of trans final girls and trans surviving heroes is incredibly pronounced. I am beyond tired of trans people only being the deviants that horror tells audiences they should fear.

Then there’s this:

I’m well aware that American cultural chauvanism is a thing, and I do want to be cautious about it. After reading that tweet, I spent about two hours trying different google search strings to figure out what the hell Mr. Darril was talking about, and I came up with nothing. I do want to be sensitive to cultural differences… however, this isn’t a case of me stomping into Italy, playing this game in its original language, and throwing an American temper tantrum that this doesn’t perfectly fit my experience. What my friends and I played is the official English-language localization of the game. At this point, if there is a cultural context or history that is fundamental to understanding the game that isn’t also readily available or internationally known, it behooves the creator to figure out how to communicate that–or risk being honestly misunderstood.

Which brings me back to those thoughts I mentioned I had as a writer. Envision me taking off my Video Game Player hat and replacing it with my Writer hat, which is rainbow-colored and dotted with cookie- and middle-finger-shaped LEDs.

When I saw Chris Darril’s tweets, my first reaction wasn’t anger or shock. It was a sort of laughing, “Does this man not have any friends?”

Maybe things are different in the video game world. But a conversation that constantly moves through the SFF writer world, and a thing that older writers always try to communicate to younger writers is: you don’t talk back when readers leave negative reviews. Except in vanishingly rare circumstances (e.g.: pushing back on some transphobic asshole is willfully misgendering your characters) you will end up showing your entire ass on the internet and it will not cover you in glory. Don’t be like Anne Rice. There’s nothing quite like a property creator, who is generally in a much higher position of power than a lowly reader (or in this case video game player) coming down on someone and effectively telling them that “you don’t know how to eat!” It’s just not a good look, ever.

And when the reader/player is saying, “Hey, I felt hurt by this”?

You as a creator do not get to control how someone will react to what you’ve made. It’s incredibly frustrating, I know. I’ve had a few moments like that myself, and the urge to argue can be strong… but thankfully I have friends who will materialize out of the ether and slap my phone out of my hands. As artists, once we’ve sent something we’ve made out into the world, it’s no longer ours. It’s in the hands of a multitude of other people, none of whom are us, and all of whom will experience it differently through the unique prism of their lives. If we did a really great job communicating what we’re trying to say, most people will get it. But sometimes that’s not the case. And because we don’t have universal experience, we might have made something that a person will find hurtful because we weren’t able to see it from their perspective. It’s a feature, not a bug, I swear.

And this is the important thing, here, the part where the empathy of being a writer has to extend beyond the characters we create and out to the readers (or players, in this case): When someone says they felt hurt by something you wrote, you don’t get to tell them they’re wrong. You listen. You say, “Hey, I really didn’t mean it that way, and I’m sorry.” (None of that, “sorry you feel that way” non-pology crap.) Then you’ve learned something for next time.

I get it. It sucks to realize something you made isn’t being received the way you wanted it to be, but that’s part of the responsibility of creating art and putting it out in the world. It’s tough. But that’s the job.

So Chris, if you’re reading this, I hope you’ve found it educational. I’m really not interested in getting in some kind of Twitter feud with you over it. I’m not the one who will come out looking like an asshole.

Categories
lgbt personal

Let this be my act of defiance.

Let me start with a geology story. I promise, there’s a point to this.

When I was a geologist at the research company, I had a core come in. There was a ten foot section of it that I didn’t know how to describe. It was fine-grained, filled with burrows. So far so good. But the mineralogy was… puzzling. Not enough dolomite to be described as a dolostone, not enough clay to be described as a mudrock, not enough quartz sand and silt to be described as some kind of sandstone or siltstone. It sat basically at the nexus of all possible rock types for that environment and was definitively none of them. In absolute frustration, I dubbed it “shit rock” and wrote all my reports and captions accordingly.

Of course, this is a business. I couldn’t actually turn in reports to the client with the term “shit rock” used. So I had a long talk with my boss. The problem with geology, he explained, is that everything we work on is a continuum. So there will always be something that falls in that liminal state where you’re not quite sure what it is, and even if you wanted to do battle with the rest of the community to coin a new term, you’d just be replacing one borderland with two. You can write definitions all day that will define 99.999% of all the rocks out there, but then some son of a bitch is going to come in with the 0.001% case because there are a lot of rocks on Earth, and one in a million things happen more often then any of us can grasp.

There will always be rocks that defy easy classification. You eventually just have to dip your toe into the art rather than science and describe it how you feel fits best – and then be ready to defend your decision.

Which comes to me. A little while ago on Twitter, I said:

And then while I was taking a shower, because all my most important thinking happens in the shower or when I’m supposed to be trying to fall asleep, I realized that it was an empty thing to say without the rest of this post.

I’ve been nibbling at the edges of this for a while, trying to figure things out. But maybe it’s the scientist in me, I don’t like committing to anything unless I’m absolutely certain – and the thing about life is that absolute certainty is in shorter supply than most people would like to believe. Because what if I’m wrong? How do I defend something that I’m still figuring out? But I don’t feel like I have the luxury of wibbling quietly into the night any more.

Because you see, in this way, gender’s got something in common with geology. Everything works on a continuum. You will always find cases that defy classification, and no matter how frustrating that is, they don’t go away. And that is part of the beauty of the world, trust me.

So how do I define myself? Queer, for certain. Sometimes it’s easier to tell people what a rock – or yourself – isn’t than what it is. I’m not female. I don’t quite think I’m male either, but I’d have to give it a good few years try out before I could say for certain. Fuck knows, it’s taken me something like 34 years to figure out the “not female” bit, but GOD it has been a relief since I reached that conclusion. So my big request here is to please use a gender-neutral pronoun (they) if possible. Or if you just can’t make that work in your brain, because I know the verb conjugation gives people mental cramp at times, masculine (he).

And please, call me Alex. It started out as… not a joke, precisely, when I came up with my pen name. But it’s grown on me, like a much more comfortable skin.

But there’s a point to this, and it’s not just me sitting at my keyboard and crying. I’ve been doing that too often in the last forty-eight hours.

When I was a baby queer growing up surrounded by kids and adults who thought “smear the queer” was a perfectly acceptable name for a game that involved throwing balls at other people so hard it gave them bruises (and I was one of those kids, because at the time I didn’t know better), it was invaluable to me when I started seeing LGBT people openly be themselves. It told me that there were more options that I knew, that maybe I didn’t have to keep trying to jam myself into a mold I didn’t fit, and I could be happy.

Since the election yesterday, there’s already been countless stories of racism, sexism, and homophobia being flung at people with renewed abandon. I live in a place where it’s relatively safe – swing state turned pretty reliably blue state Colorado, in the Denver-Boulder area – to be out. So I think that I need to be as out as possible even if I’m not entirely happy with my R-squared values, because now more than ever it’s important to make it known that we exist. That we will not go away. That people who are like me, who live in environments where they are not safe, are not alone even if they can only hold that truth silently in their heart.

Sometimes, merely living, existing, is an act of defiance, denying the narrative that we are fictional, or merely confused, or unhappy, or intrinsically broken.

Let this be my act of defiance. Let this be the first of many.

– Alex

Categories
lgbt tv

Schrodingersexuality

So apparently the new Constantine isn’t going to be bisexual or a total fiend for cigarettes, but hey at least they managed to make him blond this time? That’s a brave creative choice there, guys. There is so much about this article that just gets on my pecs that I already ranted about it on Twitter, but I still have more than enough froth to lay it all out in long form too.

I really don’t give that much of a shit if Constantine smokes. Yes, there’s been some plot connected to it. And yes it’s part of the character’s image, but considering smoking is bad for you and there’s a concerted effort to make it less glamorous in the media, fine. I can buy that. But the bisexuality thing? I mean, I get that bisexuality has a long history of being portrayed as glamorous in the media and that there is a definite public health concern Oh wait, no. Wrong paper. Here’s right right one. It reads: fuck you.

When asked about this at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour Sunday, executive producer Daniel Cerone ran down the various editions of the character that have existed since the demon fighter was introduced in 1985 to suggest his sexuality is not a crucial aspect of the character (nearly all of the character’s relationships in the comics have been with women). “In those comic books, John Constantine aged in real time,” he said. “Within this tome of three decades [of comics] there might have been one or two issues where he’s seen getting out of bed with a man. So [maybe] 20 years from now? But there are no immediate plans.”

So let me get this straight:

  1. Being bisexual totally isn’t important to the character.
  2. In fact, it’s so unimportant that we are making a conscious choice to leave it out.
  3. I mean, he mostly bangs women anyway, and that’s all that matters. He’s barely bisexual at all. You wouldn’t even know to look at him.
  4. Sexuality is so unimportant and he screws so few men, he’s basically heterosexual, amirite?
  5. And maybe we’ll make him bisexual in twenty years, so quit your whining.

Am I missing any part of this absolutely scintillating argument? (Also, double bonus fuck you points to EW for spending almost the entire piece on the issue of the cigarettes because that’s totally more important than representation.)

What really chaps my ass is the way this just reiterates and promulgates the idea that bisexuality is something that is defined by outside observation, instead of something we get to define from within ourselves. It’s not math. You’re not bisexual just because you you’ve crossed some magical ratio threshold and they take away your straight or gay card and replace it with a license for wanton promiscuity, confusion, or other bullshit stereotype of your choice. I’d still be bisexual even if I died without ever having a girlfriend. Why? Because I fucking said so.

It’s hurtful. It’s insulting. How can it be anything but hurtful and insulting (and goddamn frustrating) when we basically get told over and over again that we’re lying, mistaken, or just plain wrong about one of the most intimate, personal matters of our own goddamn lives?

Look, I totally get that it’s not easy to viscerally understand how someone can be attracted to something you’re not. But unless you’re a giant asshole, we’re way past the point where matters like love and attraction get discussed as a matter of choice. And here’s the thing: you don’t have to understand how we can be attracted to both men and women. You just have to accept that we know better than you how our own thoughts and emotions work since we’re the ones thinking and feeling and shut the fuck up.

Our sexuality is not defined by interaction with our environment or by your observation thereof. We’re not fucking Schrodingersexual. This is not rocket science. This is basic respect.

Categories
writing

Things of Mine Wot You Should Read in May

I have two new short stories out, because I am living the dream!

First off, go to Scigentasy and read What Purpose a Heart. Because it is painfully obvious that your morning doesn’t contain nearly enough space opera, ship to ship battles, or lesbians. I’m even more excited because the artwork Scigentasy put with this story is absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. So go! Read it! Why haven’t you read it yet?

Also, the second piece of flash I’ve ever managed to write, List of Items Found in Valise on Welby Crescent is out in Shimmer #19. This story has had three different incarnations and gone through over 10 drafts, which is pretty impressive (or potentially depressing) considering it’s less than 500 words long. But it’s an odd little story I wanted to see if I could tell in a strange way, and I’m really pleased with it. The story will be available online in June, but I think you definitely want to read it so much right now that you should buy a copy of Shimmer #19. And as a bonus you’ll get some other awesome fiction too.

Patricia Ash at GearHearts has reviewed The Ugly Tin Orrery and gave it 4/5 gears. If you’ve been missing out on pirates and murder and steam engines designed to jump the tracks, you should really remedy that. Just sayin.

Other exciting things are in the works, which has involved me being in editing hell for the last two weeks. Super exciting things. Unfortunately if I told you, a squadron of ninja would then have to show up at your house and kill you to preserve my honor, so it’s probably for the best that I’m just going to be mysterious and annoying about it.

Categories
free read writing

I wrote a story! The Heart-Beat Escapement (and a little bonus)

I have a new story out today from Crossed Genres: The Heart-Beat Escapement

Please read and enjoy!

This story is one that went through a lot of drafts–nine in total. It started out about 1500 words longer than it is now.

Something about the way Greensmith says but grates. “I already know that,” Owen snaps. The baby, abandoned in an alleyway and dying; the doctor and the engineer who found him and replaced his malformed heart with one crafted of delicate gears. It was his favorite fairy tale, growing up.

Most of those 1500 words I ended up cutting out of the story were the fairy tale Owen refers to here. Bits of it were interspersed throughout the story to act as section breaks. It ultimately didn’t work right and slowed the story down way too much, which is why I cut it, but I’m still pretty fond of those words. So I thought I’d share those sections (plus a bit extra to make them more coherent) with you as a little bonus–Owen’s bedtime story.

Continue reading “I wrote a story! The Heart-Beat Escapement (and a little bonus)”
Categories
lgbt movie

More on the Ender’s Game Thing

Lionsgate has apparently copped to just how many people are pissed off about OSC being a giant homophobe. They’re hosting a benefit premiere of the movie for LGBT groups.

To a certain extent, I feel for them. Ender’s Game is a novel that’s been screaming for a movie for years. It has everything you could want. Except for the part that the author is a giant homophobe and people don’t want to support him because he gives money to anti-gay organizations. (Unsurprisingly, I am one of those people.) They picked up a good story with a giant lead weight attached to it, and they’ve been fighting against that ever since. That… really sucks. Honestly, Ender’s Game was a very special novel to me when I was growing up, and I wish I could feel good about going to watch the movie.

But then again, this should not have come as a surprise to them. It’s not like OSC waited until the movie was in production and then came out of the closet (hur hur hur) as a homophobe. He’s been saying that for years. In fact, I used to read his blogs and regular articles until the homophobia came up, at which point I had to stop because it was too upsetting. This happened over ten years ago, so yeah. It’s not a surprise.

Lionsgate trying to offer the olive branch with the benefit premiere just gives me even more conflicted feelings. Because it does make me happy that they’re trying to do something. But they’re the ones that stepped into the middle of this mess to begin with–did they think people wouldn’t notice? And would the amount of money coming in from such a benefit premiere outweigh the support given to the author? I have no idea.

I want there to be more good science fiction movies. I really do. I’d hope this would be one of them. But… but. I’m glad Lionsgate has stepped up, but why didn’t they see this coming from the beginning? It feels like a response to a PR nightmare, not necessarily a real acknowledgment of the fundamental problem.

Lionsgate would like us to separate the art from the artist. I wish I could. But not today, I’m afraid, and I don’t see that changing when the movie comes out. I wish things were different. I really do.

Categories
lgbt movie things that are hard to write

Still Not Going to See Ender’s Game: Separating the Art From the Artist

Orson Scott Card would like us to be tolerant of his anti-gay marriage views, now that we’ve won. The point is, apparently “moot.” I call bullshit on that one.  DOMA may be dead, and the language of that decision may be what will make the rest of the dominoes fall, so to speak. But the point is not moot. Gay and lesbian citizens still can’t get married in the majority of states in this country, many of which have enshrined homophobia in their constitutions. Transgendered Americans are still even further behind when it comes to having full rights to be who they are. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that there are rights beyond marriage.

So no, the issue is not  moot. The issue will not be moot until every one of us is equal under the law. Telling ourselves that we have already won and stopping the fight before the finish line would be foolish indeed.

And even if victory is inevitable (oh how I hope that it is), OSC is still in prime position to fund the foot dragging and last tantrums of a lost conservative cause. So no, I don’t think it’s time to forget that yet, not when he hasn’t backed down, hasn’t changed his mind. He’s just been overruled.

What about separating the art from the artist? You don’t have to like someone and their views to like their art, to consume and support it you know.

I’ve had this argument with friends before, specifically in regards to Orson Scott Card. It’s an uncomfortable subject, and I have conflicted feelings about it. Not in the least of which is the fact that when I met OSC in person years ago, I thought he was a pretty nice guy, and he gave me some of the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten. He’s very likeable in person.

Then I remind myself that, as a bisexual woman, he thinks there’s something wrong with me and would want me to be a shamed, second-class citizen if I had fallen in love with a woman instead of a man.

But separate the art from the artist. It feels like a horrible twist on “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

There is a reason, for the most part, that I don’t actively seek out the opinions of artists. Sometimes knowing too much ruins it. Sometimes knowing too much means you can no longer read or watch or listen to a piece of art you enjoyed without thinking about how the artist has harmed something about which you care deeply. Sometimes you wish you just didn’t know.

But artists are people just like the rest of us, and they have opinions, and they have a right to express those opinions. Wil Wheaton points this out eloquently and often whenever someone complains about him daring to have politics out loud where people can see them. And like for everyone else, the freedom of an artist to express an opinion is not the same as the freedom to have no consequences because of it. When we’re talking about artists like OSC, his voice is louder than that of many others because of his art. He has a platform. We, his fans, built that platform for him with our support.

If we do not like what he is doing with that platform, I don’t think we are in any way obligated to continue that support.

But separate the art from the artist. Why can’t you do that? Shouldn’t you do that?

Does art happen in a vacuum? Is it truly a thing separate from the artist? This isn’t just an academic question for me, when it comes to Orson Scott Card. I read Ender’s Game as a teenager. I literally finished the book in twelve hours, unwilling to put it down. It had a lot of meaning to me.

And yet.

At the reading where I met OSC, someone in the audience asked him a question: As a Mormon, did he try to put his religion into his work? And OSC gave what I thought was a very true and important answer that has stuck with me—he doesn’t try to do that. Preaching at your audience never turns out well. But he said that his religion is fundamental to who he is, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out into his art in subtle ways.

Because as artists, even when we are imagining ourselves as other people, we are the ones doing the creating. I am a white, bisexual woman, and I’m sure that no matter how hard I try, my experiences will always subtly reflect in how I create. Because it is my art.

Can you truly separate art from the artist? How do you deal with, say, Chris Brown and Roman Polanski if you like their art but cannot support them as human beings?

Art does not occur in a vacuum. And while you can appreciate art as good or bad without knowing the person behind it, regardless of the person behind it, consuming that art does in fact mean you are supporting its creator. And by supporting them, you are complicit in their causes. I have joined in boycotts of companies when it was revealed they were donating money anti-gay groups. Why should an artist be any different? Because he wrote some books I like? I’ve eaten Chik-fil-A sandwiches and nuggets more often than I’ve re-read Ender’s Game.

If you can separate the art from the artist, maybe that makes you a better person than me. Feel that way if you like. But I cannot support someone who believes that me and many of the people I love and esteem are not full human beings. Orson Scott Card chose to use his platform to denigrate LGBT people. I can damn well choose to take a tiny sliver of his platform, a platform I joined with countless others to help build, away.

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Uncategorized

Gay marriage at the supreme court – the smell of desperation

I’m sure getting a whiff off of this:

Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

So let me get this straight… one of the strongest arguments the opponents of gay marriage think they have at this point is that only heterosexual couples can have “oops” babies? Seriously? And gay people don’t need marriage because they have to plan their babies? I just. I can’t even.

First, I’m sure given the glorious spectrum of human sexuality, this line of argument is not true anyway. For example, John Scalzi pointed out on Twitter that:

Polyamorous bisexuals in same-sex open marriages might wish to dispute this line of “reasoning”

And of course, infertile couples, childfree couples, etc etc etc. But I don’t think we even have to go that far. We should just take a step back and gaze in wonder at the utter, majestic stupidity of that line of argument. We’re boiling the supposedly inviolate and super special institution of state-sanctioned marriage down to trying to get people to legally hitch themselves together because of accidental pregnancy? Because accidental pregnancies out of wedlock place a burden on society but ones within a marriage can’t? (…how’s the weather on your planet?)

Instead, they argue that it is reasonable for the law to steer opposite-sex couples toward marriage, including by giving them extra benefits. “It was rational for Congress to draw the line where it did,” Clement said, “because the institution of marriage arose in large measure in response to the unique social difficulty that opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex couples, posed.”

I just… what? I’m guessing they’re still hammering the oops baby point here, which doesn’t really paint marriage in such a great light. Oh look, marriage is an easy solution to unintended pregnancy – how about rape as well? This is something that still happens in the world and is horrifying. Or maybe I just missed the bit in world history where they told us about how same-sex couples have always had it easy and opposite-sex couples faced unique social difficulties of other sorts.

If all you can come up with once you’ve stripped way the overt homophobia is something that brain-lockingly dumb, maybe it’s time to just quietly pack up the briefcase and go home.

In another part of their brief, they argue for the high court to stand back and to let the “democratic process” resolve the dispute over gay marriage. Both note that voters in several states recently approved same-sex marriage, and opinion polls report that most Americans now favor it.

So basically “please let the dinosaurs draw it out in a lingering, painful state-by-state extinction.”

History called. You’re on the wrong side.

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lgbt marriage

Congratulations, Maine

Same-sex marriage was legal in Maine as of midnight tonight, with couples lining up to receive their marriage licenses first thing in the morning. Maine was one of the three states that approved same-sex marriage by popular vote this year; the other states that have legal same-sex marriage were all made so by the legislature or judicial decision.

I’m really happy for the loving couples in Maine that will now be able to marry. Seeing pictures from Maine, from Washington have just put me in joy overload. When you see other people who are that happy, there is no way to avoid feeling happy yourself, and maybe getting a little teary-eyed because your heart just overflows.

And feel the tide turning.

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lgbt sigh

Little Boy Wears Awesome Shoes, Adults Freak the Fuck Out

Just a quick break from thesis hell to link to this: Photograph Of Little Boy Wearing Pink Shoes To Preschool Sparks Heated Blogosphere Debate

Which really reminds me of this: 5 year old boy dresses up as Daphne for Hallowe’en, other moms have gender panic

The little son of one of my kung fu buddies has an amazing pair of bright pink crocs with sparkly jewels on them. The kid loves those things, it’s adorable, and they keep him from getting glass in his feet, so it’s win/win, right?

Something just really bugs the shit out of me about the “but if you let your boy wear pink shoes, he’ll get bullied” argument. Because beyond letting bullies win, wouldn’t that just reinforce the stupid cultural more that the bullies use to excuse their shitty behavior? And frankly, if there are bullies, they will find a way to be an asshole to your kid no matter what. They make fun of your clothes and you change your clothes, so next they make fun of your hair, or that you wear glasses, or that you’re smart, or whatever. Living life because you’re afraid someone’s going to say something mean to you is no way to live.

And I would think that’s no way to force your kid to live. But I’m not a parent, so I can’t really speak authoritatively on that. Parents? What say you?

Also, I feel like the “but bullies!” argument is just lipstick on the pig of “but pink will make him gay” argument. Because it’s still about fear that a little boy will be perceived as gay – not that there’s anything wrong with it, there are just mean people who obviously aren’t me, say the concern trolls. It really feels like a more subtle take on the the same old shit, just spoken in a concerned voice to make it less ugly because people have finally realized that we’re fucking done with accepting overt homophobia.

She explained to him in the store that they were really made for girls. Sam then told her that he didn’t care and that ‘ninjas can wear pink shoes too.’

Rock your shoes, kiddo. Haters gonna hate, life is short, get out there and make it work.