Unintentional Prejudice in Fiction

[Nerds_feather]

A tangent from the big thread that just got shut down. I'm amending a post from there that I thought might stimulate quality discussion.

I see two kinds of prejudice: intentional and unintentional. However, when we talk about racism, sexism or similar things, there's often an assumption that we're talking about the intentional--i.e. outright, purposive prejudice, like you'd find among KKK members or neo-nazis.

However, a lot of stuff can be offensive to some people, yet not at all intended as such. Some people, it's true, are basically seeking things to be offended by. But more often, I think, if we are in the majority and/or the privileged/dominant group, we might just not think about how something looks to another set of eyes until that person points it out to us.

To cite an example, the average white person in the US probably won't notice as much unintentional prejudice as, say, the average black person--who may have to deal with it everyday.

So the general question is, how do we deal with unintentional prejudice in SF/F--as authors, critics and readers/fans? And what other sorts of meaningful distinctions can or should we draw, e.g. the difference between an author's POV and a character's?

 

[Extollager]

It's fine to ask these questions, Nerds, but have you ever participated in such a discussion that was genuinely interesting? So often it seems to be a matter of fluffing out one's plumage in some kind of ritual display. Me, I'd rather read a book.

 

[Nerds_feather]

It's fine to ask these questions, Nerds, but have you ever participated in such a discussion that was genuinely interesting?

Many times, including several times here.

Me, I'd rather read a book.

That's fine, and your prerogative--no one is going to force you to participate.

I would, however, like to discuss these kinds of important issues with other intelligent, thoughtful SF/F fans, and do so in a civil and open manner--and the Chrons is one of the few places that is possible. Surely that's a good thing?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm with Extollager. Too much time can be soent asking questions that extract meanings that were never there. Too often, for my liking, this then detracts from the story and becomes criticism for its own sake.

 

[svalbard]

The world is full of people looking for things to be insulted by. You can tie yourself up in knots attempting to second guess the high horse brigade and in that process possibly destroying your own story. Write and be damned I say.

 

[Mouse]

Ok, well this is kinda regarding the 'unintentional prejudice.' I was reading an interview with a transwoman and she was asked if she noticed any loss of 'male privilege.' She replied that yes, she did, and she was quite shocked that men and women are treated so differently.

My point is that a lot of guys don't realise that women are treated, however unintentionally/subtley/whatever, differently - they don't realise there's still inequality, even with things that seem trivial. A lot of women don't realise it, because we're just used to it.

So yeah, someone might write some sexist arsehattery unintentionally. And yeah, I think it should be pointed out and said, actually what you've written (not you yourself) is a bit sexist/homophobic/racist. It is important.

With intentional stuff, obviously it's important to make it clear it's the VP of the character and not the author. Unless it is the VP of the author. In which case, the author's probably not a very nice person.

 

[Mark_Lawrence]

With intentional stuff, obviously it's important to make it clear it's the VP of the character and not the author. Unless it is the VP of the author. In which case, the author's probably not a very nice person.

Would this not be the default assumption? We generally see events in a book unfold through a character. It seems a sensible default that the commentary that each character makes belong to ... that character ... rather than assume that Stephen King really does want to murder everyone in the building, or think that women need to be punished because his mother abused him, or [fill in views/opinions/feelings of the next Stephen King character].

To me, making this sort of thing clear falls under the 'treating your readers as idiots' heading.

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/murders-bad-mkay.html

 

[AnyaKimlin]

We all have prejudices whether we like it or not and they will come out in the stories. I don't think it is avoidable. How we treat someone despite our prejudices is the test of the person.

I had a gay character who one gay man had a hissy fit about because he was a stereotype. His argument might have gone better if he hadn't included a wrist flick as he was giving it. Most of my friends were happy with the character and had no issue with him.

 

[Mouse]

To me, making this sort of thing clear falls under the 'treating your readers as idiots' heading.

That's not what I meant. I pretty much presume, and I also presume it's the same for most people, that VPs used in stories are those of the characters and not the author. But sometimes you do get a sense that it's coming from the author.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Ok, well this is kinda regarding the 'unintentional prejudice.' I was reading an interview with a transwoman and she was asked if she noticed any loss of 'male privilege.' She replied that yes, she did, and she was quite shocked that men and women are treated so differently.

My point is that a lot of guys don't realise that women are treated, however unintentionally/subtley/whatever, differently - they don't realise there's still inequality, even with things that seem trivial. A lot of women don't realise it, because we're just used to it.

So yeah, someone might write some sexist arsehattery unintentionally. And yeah, I think it should be pointed out and said, actually what you've written (not you yourself) is a bit sexist/homophobic/racist. It is important.

This is what I was getting at, and I think it is what's at the heart of many confrontations where, say, author and critic are at cross-purposes:

"This is sexist."
"How can you say it's sexist? I'm not a sexist!"

Something can be sexist, or have sexist connotations, even when the person who produced it isn't at all sexist.

Hell, I recently read a fantasy book written by a woman and in which characters several times talk about sexism in the world negatively, yet the two main female characters are very problematic (and grating) renditions of the "shrill shrew" character trope.

With intentional stuff, obviously it's important to make it clear it's the VP of the character and not the author. Unless it is the VP of the author. In which case, the author's probably not a very nice person.

Yeah...and I think it's quite important for authors not to shy away from portraying characters who are racists/sexists/homophoboes/etc., because these things do exist in the world. And there are plenty of examples where it's done well. But there are times when it's clear that a character is just a vehicle for the author's worldview or axe to grind.

I guess I'd say that I see multiple fine lines to be tread, not just in making sure it's clear that it's the VP of the character, but also in how the character and his/her biases are treated. I don't usually care for overt moralizing in fiction, but what I do like to see--here as elsewhere--is problematizing of the problematic.

I always go back to Iain M. Banks' culture books in these discussions, but I think he does this best.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Yeah...and I think it's quite important for authors not to shy away from portraying characters who are racists/sexists/homophoboes/etc.

Actually, slightly off-tangent - but I would be interested to see more characters like this - and not simply villains.

For the basic reason that most cultures through history can be accused to have been institutionally sexist, racist, homophobic etc. Yet most fantasy worlds are populated by liberal humanists!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What if I said as a writer, I don't care. That I'm happy for my characters to be what they are, and send whatever message they do? That people will examine it and make their own minds up anyway? Is that the wrong answer? Must we all be pc?

 

[Mouse]

Actually, slightly off-tangent - but I would be interested to see more characters like this - and not simply villains.

[plug]My novel 'Shuttered' due for release in December has a homophobic character in it who's not a villain. He's the MC's granddad.[/plug]

What if I said as a writer, I don't care. That I'm happy for my characters to be what they are, and send whatever message they do? That people will examine it and make their own minds up anyway? Is that the wrong answer? Must we all be pc?

I don't think anybody's said you must write PC characters.

 

[Ursa major]

I don't think anybody's said you must write PC characters.

Unless one is writing a UK police procedural....


I'm not sure where the drama would be in a book where the characters all shared a point of view (or two points of view, that of the "goodies" and that of the "baddies"). Where would the tension in their conversations be? Where would the epiphanies be (except from external sources)? How would characters grow** (apart from interacting with things outside their normal experience)? Most important of all: how can one truly write three dimensional characters whose world view is fundamentally the same?


** - To be honest -- and it isn't the subject of this thread -- I'm not sure all people in real life "grow", not in a way one would notice. And some do the opposite of "growing".

 

[Nerds_feather]

Actually, slightly off-tangent - but I would be interested to see more characters like this - and not simply villains.

For the basic reason that most cultures through history can be accused to have been institutionally sexist, racist, homophobic etc. Yet most fantasy worlds are populated by liberal humanists!

I don't quite agree with your assessment of fantasy characters (what "liberal humanists"). But I agree generally that these these kinds of things (in one form or another) have ways existed.

Speaking personally, I want to see authors grapple with these kinds of characters and issues in meaningful ways. Sometimes that can just entail posing questions but not providing easy answers. Actually I quite like that approach.

 

[Randy M.]

What if I said as a writer, I don't care. That I'm happy for my characters to be what they are, and send whatever message they do? That people will examine it and make their own minds up anyway? Is that the wrong answer? Must we all be pc?

I have two answers for this:
1) I expect as a writer, this is pretty much what you have to do in order to finish what you're working on;
2) But as a writer, don't you want to be as aware of what your work is doing as you possibly can be? You are its first reader. How aware are you as a reader? How aware do you want to be? What message does your work carry to the reader? Is it really a message you want to convey?

Disclaimer: I don't buy the whole author-as-God notion. I don't think any writer can know everything his/her work is conveying, and sometimes reactions to a given work will surprise the author because the thing that rankles some readers wasn't intentionally put in or wasn't intended in the way it's being read. And sometimes that's a happy accident, not a cause for recrimination, since the unconscious mind plays some pretty nifty games with us.

One thing I think gets lost in these discussions is that you can't really call a writer any "-ist" unless you can trace it across a fair amount of her/his work. If an "-ism" appears in a work or two, as others have noted, an "-ist" moment doesn't really define an "-ist" person. But if that "-ism" consistently appears across a bulk of the writer's work, there is cause to wonder and any cause to wonder is a cause for discussion.

And that's when reviews, criticism, critique, whatever you want to call the discussion of literature comes into play. It also spurs the creation of threads like this one.


Randy M.

 

[Ursa major]

Racism is modern, NF? That'll be why the Greeks and Persians so admired each other in classical times and why we've only recently discovered the concept of the barbarian. I'll accept the concept of race, as opposed to "the other" may be new, and that it's only in recent centuries that "scientific racism" emerged. But don't confuse a new approach to something to the non-existence of that something before that new approach emerged.

But I liked your pun: "race was a foreign concept".


(I ought to explain that I'm a person who believes race is a cultural concept -- and so is similar to nationality -- not really a genetic one.)

 

[Nerds_feather]

Racism is modern...? That'll be why the Greeks and Persians so admired each other in classical times and why we've only recently discovered the concept of the barbarian.

Yes. Social theorists describe that as "ethnocentrism" and/or "xenophobia," the latter of which term is of course rooted in the Greek/Persian wars!

But the notion of systematic prejudice based on phenotypical differences is indeed modern. (Distinctions prior were typically ethnic or religious or both, though phenotype does and did provide a simple way of noting difference. And it wasn't until the colonial period that Europeans began thinking that biological/phenotypical differences conveyed superiority, rather than cultural or religious differences.)

(This is of course highly pedantic for our purposes. I think we can just accept that some sort of group/geographic/cultural prejudice is found in all time periods.)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Not really in medieval times they were complaining about too many coloured people in England.

 

[Boneman]

I do like the respondent to your blog, Mark, who quoted this:

"There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot.'" --Larry Niven.

So the general question is, how do we deal with unintentional prejudice in SF/F--as authors, critics and readers/fans? And what other sorts of meaningful distinctions can or should we draw, e.g. the difference between an author's POV and a character's?

You can only discern an author's pov by asking him. Inferring them from his/her writing is a foolish task, unless you've asked them why they wrote that. If it's unintentional prejudice, who's to say it is? Only the reader, and he/she chooses, entirely of their own volition, to say 'this is unintentional prejudice'. 50% of the readers may say that, and the other 50% may say it isn't. It's entirely subjective, nothing more.

Here's a short lecture on thatI do apologise for this, but better minds than ours have been debating this for centuries, and I thought it fair to bring them into the argument).

Kafka's The Burrow has been seized upon by thousands of readers/psychologists/professors/intellectuals and deconstructed in thousands of different ways, with thousands of different interpretations.

‘Every reader of “The Burrow” who is even moderately familiar with Kafka’s life and work cannot fail to be struck by the realisation that there is an intimate relation, often amounting to identity, between the author and the persona of his story.’ Weigand JH Franz Kafka’s “The Burrow” (“Der Bau”): An Analytic Essay in PMLA Vol 87 No2 (Modern Language Association March 1972) pp152


But very few actually asked him...

‘many of Kafka’s narrative elements, these vocal creatures are something of a literary Rorschach test; how one interprets them is a much a comment upon the reader’s orientation as it is a statement of the author’s original intent.’ Snyder VP Kafka’s “Burrow”: A Speculative Analysis in Twentieth Century Literature Vol 27 No 2 (Hofstra University 1981)pp 116

Kafka wrote The Burrow while in the terminal stages of TB, and this has been seized on by countless writers as a reflection of Kafka's view of life and death - the struggle of a writer combating the enemies who surround him, and would seek to destroy him, the inherent violence the narrator has against those who do threaten him:

‘If he were actually to arrive now, if in his obscene lust he were to discover the entrance and set about working at it, lifting the moss; if he were actually to succeed , if he were actually to wriggle his way in my stead, until only his hind-quarters showed... I might in my blind rage leap upon him, maul him, tear the flesh from his bones, destroy him, drink his blood... and I would want to rest for all the remainder of my life.’

Sounds like a damned blood-thirsty writer indeed, and using the unintentional (or even intentional) prejudice meter, many have interpreted this as Kafka's Oedipal fixation, the phallocentricity of Freud's child who wants to kill the father. The Burrow itself represents death; the derivation of the word ‘1325–75; Middle English borow, earlier burh, apparently gradational variant of late Middle English beri burrow, variant of earlier berg refuge, Old English gebeorg, derivative of beorgan to protect; akin to Old English burgen grave, i.e., place of protection for a body.’ SIZE="1"]http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/burrow[/SIZE]

But, nobody actually asked him if this were true. Admittedly, he was terminally ill, and it wasn't published until after his death, which gave free rein to any interpretation anyone fancied. But, funnily enough, his voice was heard from a diary entry:

‘I shall lie very contentedly on my deathbed. The best things I have written have their basis in this capacity of mine to meet death with contentment. All these very fine and very convincing passages always deal with the fact that someone is dying, that it is hard for him to do, that it seems unjust to him, or at least harsh, and the reader is moved by this, or at least he should be. But for me, who believes that I shall be able to lie contentedly on my deathbed, such scenes are secretly a game; indeed, in the death enacted I rejoice in my own death.’ http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/topic/1551-some-preliminary-thoughts-on-kafkas-the-burrow/


So all the passages he wrote concerning death were 'secretly a game'. He did have an agenda in his writing. But if you want to find out if an author has an agenda within their writing, you have to ask, not make assertions based upon your own interpretation of their fiction. Failing that, just enjoy (or don't) the book, and leave it at that. We are talking fiction here, aren't we? We - as critics/readers simply cannot 'deal' with prejudices in writing, because our interpretation can only be a reflection of our own making. Asking the author to come into line with our interpretation is beyond arrogance. As writers, the responsibility is to do the best we can.