UPDATED 3/28 to add button to purchase this issue's PDF at bottom of this post; funds raised by single-issue sales support future issues; copies are distributed by way of a link sent by email, so allow up to a day for delivery to your in-box.
This month, we have five terrific entries and a lot pro writers. I am about a week late in presenting them, so I won’t delay things too much further except to say that if you read only five stories this month, you could do a lot worse than reading these five. They are lovely. Of the authors, two have been seen here before. Rick Novy makes his at least sixth (maybe seventh—lost track!) appearance this month with a story that has not previously been printed but which he presented in audio form with music as part of Michelle Welch’s Theme and Variations audio anthology. Rick was also the guest editor of our twelfth issue, and the editor of the M-Brane Press anthology 2020 Visions. Michael Andre-Driussi appears here for a fourth time. His vast project of producing reference works for Gene Wolfe’s fictional universe makes him perhaps one of the coolest people around or one of the hardest-core geeks ever. Either way, we’re glad to see him here again. That we ended up with a great story from J.M. Sidorova forced me to conclude that she had exhausted all other possible publication options because every other editor had either lost his/her mind or perhaps had too many Sidorova items booked elsewhere already. In any case, I’m thrilled. I don’t know if I was intended to find a big “message” in Eric Del Carlo’s story, but I decided that it’s an appropriate item, especially for our American readers, in our present age of Permanent War where no one seems to directly bear the cost of armed conflict save for the soldiers themselves and their immediate families. Before I saw his story, I was not familiar with Gary Budgen, but his entry was one of those items that went directly from the slush folder to the “maybe” folder after I read the first page. When I went back to look at the “maybes,” it quickly went to the “yes” folder. It’s shorter than I usually choose for M-Brane, but it’s lovely.
#
Two items popped up in the last week that crystallized some common sense. The first is this item about Bioware telling a spokesperson for the “straight male gamer” demographic to get over it that there is an option for same-sex romance in the Dragon Age 2 game. The second is from Hollow Trilogy author Jessica Verday on her decision to withdraw a story from a forthcoming YA antho.
The Bioware staffer who responded to a complaint about the possibility of gayness in that game said something that is so obvious when one thinks about it, but said it in a better way than I have seen in recent memory: “And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as ‘political correctness’ if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. [emphasis mine] They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, and everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.”
This makes the point a lot more cogently and reasonably than what my response would have been. I am sick of every time someone tries to be inclusive of a minority in any kind of media, it is blasted as “political correctness” and—even more outrageously—as disrespect to the all-important straight-male demo. Because, you know, they’ve never gotten their way with anything. I applaud Bioware for thinking that romance can be for anyone.
Similarly, listen to this from Jessica Verday:
“You don't choose who you fall in love with and you don't choose to be gay. We're constantly bombarded with messages from sick people who try to tell us that it's a choice or a lifestyle or an agenda. But Wesley and Cameron's story isn't an agenda or an issue. It isn't an ‘I have to prove something to the world’ story. Wesley and Cameron's story is a love story. About one boy who loves another boy so much that when something bad happens to him, he'll do whatever it takes to get him the help he needs.
“Just bittersweet, hopeful, first love. And I think the world needs more of that.
“While I may not have intentionally written an ‘issues’ story, in the real world this issue is very personal to me. I have gay friends, fans, and family and by allowing my story to be changed in that way I would be contributing to a great disservice to them, the entire LGBT community, and to readers in general. You are not wrong or a dirty little secret for being who you are. Love is beautiful and rare. When you find it, you should hold onto it and not let go. You should not be made to feel inferior.”
The editor, Trish Telep, from whose antho Verday’s story was withdrawn, replied thus:
“Oh dear. Might as well give you my two cents. Not that it really matters but... Don't take it out on the publishers, the decision was mine totally. These teen anthologies I do are light on the sex and light on the language. I assumed they'd be light on alternative sexuality, as well. Turns out I was wrong! Just after I had the kerfuffle with jessica, I was told that the publishers would have loved the story to appear in the book! Oh dear. My rashness will be the death of me. It's a great story. Hope jessica publishes it online. (By the way: if you want to see a you tube video of me wrestling a gay man in Glasgow, and losing, please let me know).”
While that’s lovely that Ms. Telep admitted that she made a boneheaded mistake, it’s too bad she did it in such a half-assed and ultimately non-serious way. What’s “wrestling a gay man in Glasgow” got to do with it? Is it supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be a version of “oh, I don’t have a problem with gayness, I have gay friends.”? But here’s what really turns my crank about her response: there is no such thing as “alternative” sexuality. Sexual orientation is not an “alternative,” it’s not a “preference,” it’s not fucking choice, and I don’t propose to spend the rest of my life arguing about it with fools. The fact that Telep seemed to think that Verday’s story would be perfectly fine for the book if she simply (simply!) changed the gender of one of the characters belies a deep misconception and prejudice of which she may be honestly unaware of inside herself. She needs to take a look at that. I don’t think she is probably a homophobe by conscious intent, but she blithely expresses majority privilege nonetheless.
Privilege always lies with the majority. The majority gets pissed off if they ever detect that they’re not being exclusively catered to. And anyone who doesn’t fit into the majority is not just some “alternative” that everyone can set just aside. Love is for everyone. Thanks to these people in very different fields for making these points so cogently.
Buy a PDF of M-Brane SF #26 here.
Related Articles :
Buy a PDF of M-Brane SF #26 here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment