Unintentional Prejudice in Fiction

[Jo Zebedee]

I have to say in Ireland it's one of the least insults we give each other and rarely picked up on by those with red-hair, which is generally seen as a nice thing. But it's not about the meaning, but about the individual and if it offends Ace then that's enough.

 

[Nerds_feather]

My work involves working with challenging racism and I work almost exclusively with children of Afro-Caribbean heritage in London.

This is a thread in which I would have loved to contribute and enjoyed the interrogation of the initial stimulus in the spirit that I believe Nerds Feather had intended.

However, the hostile and mean-spirited way it is going, along with the disingenuous co-opting of 'this is just my opinion' has scared me off.

Perhaps if it becomes less hostile, I'll voice my take on the subject.

This is a side of Chrons I've not seen until today.

pH

Me neither, Phrye. I hope it's one that ends, I don't like feeling uncomfortable posting on the Chrons, and I never have before. Contrary to my (perhaps?) mouthiness, I'm pretty uncomfortable with confrontation, especially online, and seek to avoid it when I can.

I think we can make it work--I value both of your contributions, and would love to keep the conversation going.

 

[J-Sun]

Yeah, though probably also very localized. (I doubt if anyone in LA has any clue who is Irish or not.)

Yeah, that's a good point. I lived out West for awhile as a kid but I don't really know it that well. It does seem like that sort of thing might not have mattered as much. In the East (at least South, though I understand it's the same - or more so - in the North) there may be more tracing of roots and interest in ancestry/history whereas the West is a little less "rooted". The New New World.

 

[alchemist]

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.

I had all sorts of stuff I was going to say from last night, but things have sort of waddled on in a different direction. Therefore I'll concentrate on the above, which I have something of an issue with.

Were these the only two female characters? If they were, and were both negative, fair enough. But if they were two of many, does this mean we can't write shrill women? Or black people who do magic? Or any of the other oft-derided tropes? Because pretty much any character can be portrayed as a trope -- just as there are a limited number of stories (when you boil it down to elementals), there are probably a limited number of characters as well, if you try to classify them according to their most prominent trait.

Or to put this another way, if we have a character we worry might be seen as a stereotype, is it more acceptable if we write other characters of the same gender/orientation/race/nationality with different characteristics?

 

[alchemist]

Yeah, though probably also very localized. (I doubt if anyone in LA has any clue who is Irish or not.)

Clue: we're usually wearing obscure sports jerseys, often manufactured by a company called O'Neill's

 

[Nerds_feather]

I had all sorts of stuff I was going to say from last night, but things have sort of waddled on in a different direction. Therefore I'll concentrate on the above, which I have something of an issue with.

Were these the only two female characters? If they were, and were both negative, fair enough. But if they were two of many, does this mean we can't write shrill women? Or black people who do magic? Or any of the other oft-derided tropes? Because pretty much any character can be portrayed as a trope -- just as there are a limited number of stories (when you boil it down to elementals), there are probably a limited number of characters as well, if you try to classify them according to their most prominent trait.

Or to put this another way, if we have a character we worry might be seen as a stereotype, is it more acceptable if we write other characters of the same gender/orientation/race/nationality with different characteristics?

The book has six major characters, three male and three female. Two male characters are well-rounded, sympathetic and complex, and the third is EVIL INCARNATE! Of the three female characters are...well...one is awful and the other two are just thoroughly unlikable. And I'm absolutely certain that only one of the three was intended as such.

The problem I have with this is that the female characters obviously were given much less attention than the male characters, despite being integral to the story. And in spite of several moments where the author pauses to point out the injustice of sexism in this world. So I'm sure it's unintentional. But it still detracted from the book IMO.

(And FTR, if the genders were reversed, and only the female characters were sympathetic, I'd have a similar problem (see, for example, the critique towards the end of this review).)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Clue: we're usually wearing obscure sports jerseys, often manufactured by a company called O'Neill's

Good lord! Speak for yourself. *shudders*

But then, I'm a classy Northerner.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Interesting topic.

Personally, I think a lot of if not most prejudices are subconscious, warping our perception of people around us. Our brains use various kinds of shortcuts, which will sometimes play tricks on us.
I am fairly certain (nearly) everyone has them to some extent. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but much as I try to be fair to everyone, my automatic split second emotional response to other people in certain situations would vary a little depending on various physical characteristics such as gender, skin colour etc. Only the severe cases would actually be ragarded as sexism or racism, respectively
I don't think a prejudice even needs to be a clear preference, but it could rather just be a difference in expectations from someone based on, say, gender.
In any case, better to acknowledge one may have prejudices and try to compensate for them. I think it is dangerous to deny one has some amount of prejudice.
However, I don't think any person should be ashamed just because they have a slight difference in split second emotional response to men and women, black or white people. Only if these emotional responses are allowed free rein.

Now that I have established how I believe (a lot of) prejudices work, I can get to one point. Some subconscious ideas (on the part of the author) about how the world works or at least should work is almost bound to slip through into a fictional work. In the worst cases, this would be unintentional prejudices.
With that said, I think some people look much too hard for a hidden messages in fiction. That applies both to messages that agree with their own world view, and the exact opposite, as in messages which they would criticize for being prejudicial. At some point, this often just becomes grasping at straws, really. One cannot read too much into a work of fiction, unless a message is very clear (in which case it is usually intentional, anyway), as its primary purpose is often just entertainment.
As for whether a rational character doing something means the author advocates said action...not necessarily, imo. There may be more one specific type of rational character, and more than one specific action a rational character could take in a given situation.
That said, murder might never be one of them. Of course, a character can be multi-faceted, and it depends a bit on how you define "rational' in this case, and what you put into it, I believe. I have seen the word "rational(ity)" used in ways which do not seem to include any kind of moral goodness.

Just my two cents.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

But as far as I'm concerned, I have not and have no intention of ever seeing the Ender's Game film. I do not to give my money to someone who become a spokesperson, patron and fundraiser for the movement to keep a class of citizens from enjoying the same legal rights as everyone else.

But, see, that's the thing -- many, many people make money off of movies, and you can't possibly know that all of them share your beliefs about everything. Quite the contrary, you can be certain that they don't, because it's simply impossible. From the producers all the way down to the caterers, people have their own beliefs and give their money and their time to those, and no matter what movie you see, somebody's money is going somewhere you wouldn't like. Same as taxes.

It's a bit shorter money trail for books, but there are still a lot of people profiting along the way.

I don't agree with Card's beliefs as they've been put forth (never talked to the man myself), but I like his books, and insofar as they don't involve those beliefs, I will read them. If he wrote a book bashing homosexuals, it would not be a book that I liked, and I would not read it.

 

[Nerds_feather]

But, see, that's the thing -- many, many people make money off of movies, and you can't possibly know that all of them share your beliefs about everything. Quite the contrary, you can be certain that they don't, because it's simply impossible. From the producers all the way down to the caterers, people have their own beliefs and give their money and their time to those, and no matter what movie you see, somebody's money is going somewhere you wouldn't like. Same as taxes.

That's true, and I believe the director has already spoken to that effect. However, the issue isn't that OSC holds views I don't agree with, it's that he's a prominent spokesperson, fundraiser and financial patron of a political cause I am deeply opposed to.

Card is the rights-holder and stands to profit immensely from the film. And he's been using his money in service of a political cause I am deeply opposed to. So I'm going to spend my money elsewhere, for example on one of the many other films not involving OSC.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

If I was to take that attitude I'd be stuck in my village . Brian Souter (Stagecoach) makes OSC look like a pussycat.

 

[End of Time]

There really do seem to be a lot of delicate sensibilities on here tonight.

Tell you what. If three people don't pipe up to the effect that they value my contributions on this board - I'll never post here again. It's no skin off my nose.

I don't have any great expectations of a wave of approval, I'm packing my backs already. No drama. I'm just not prepared to change my style and not that bothered about moving on.

Not a problem.

Massive reply incoming...

This topic gives me the creeps. It gives me the creeps because I've seen what the most politically correct people can end up as.

The reason why I take issue with this topic is because I've seen a specific wave of people (not on this board mind you) go out of their way to actually ruin things for others and scare people off from doing, or trying out, stuff. All the while they are telling the world that they aren't out to ruin anything for anyone.

It's the person who throws out an accusation against someone's work and by doing so implies something about the people who produced said piece of work, who ends up ruining it for the rest of us. Because all of a sudden the discussion is no longer about enjoying something, it's about feeling guilty and making other feel guilty for liking it.

"You enjoyed this book? Well you're free to enjoy a racist, sexist, misogynistic piece of work, I'm not judging you."

There is no going back after that. Once you label something as racist, you label the author, but also the people who read it and enjoyed it. You call something "problematic" and all of a sudden you'll discover that the discussions that could have been had about style and content have ceased and there is only one discussion left, which is about morality. The morality of a novel, the author, and all the people who have enjoyed the story. You might say that you aren't passing judgment, you might say that it's just your opinion, but at the end of the day it's an underhanded technique to pass off a whole bunch of people as endorsing, and even promoting, some very charged terms, like racism and sexism.

Now I've been through these discussions numerous times, I've seen all the buzzwords pop up, seen how it drives communities apart, and I've seen the fall-out. It's not a pretty sight.

All in the name of tolerance and inclusiveness, all from some twisted sense of doing something that is just and good.

These discussions end up dominated by White Knights, people who take offense on behalf of others, who want to be more pious than the pope. People who will find any and every possible offense in even the most innocent piece. Approach everything with extreme confirmation bias and then report your findings to the public, and being a white knight, those findings will always be the same: "this is racist, this is sexist, this is some other ism that pretty much only exists online and on tumblr."

Eventually the people who don't want to play the game, or go to the extremist views expressed by White Knights and professional offense-takers, get driven out, or chased away, and what you're left with is an echo-chamber. An echo-chamber filled with people who get angrier and angrier, and see more and more problems with the world, to the point where they will end up eating each other over minor stuff. People just lose all sense of perspective in their quest to produce -rather demand- something that isn't "problematic", because there is nothing that could possibly meet all the demands set forth.

Which brings me to the next point... the point where I think the author becomes just some poor victim of a mob. These discussions always revolve around something written by an actual human being. A person who is told that what they wrote is problematic, and that the work they produced is morally repugnant to a whole bunch of people. Unfortunately that means that if it is unintentional, the author is accused of being blind to his own prejudice, and that the author is just part of some large nebulous problem that exists for some people.

And all of a sudden an author should start writing stories that are defined by the demands of white knights, hyper-sensitive people, and people perpetually offended. The author gets relegated to the side, the author is part of the problem, the author should stop writing what the author wants to write, the author should throw himself before an altar of moral judgment and flog himself and beg forgiveness for transgressions he wasn't aware of. After the purge, the author should only write stuff that is deemed appropriate by the people who called him out on his supposed racism, or sexism, or every other ism.

And this is why I hate this conversation, because I refuse to play the game where you just end up playing the oppression olympics and call everybody racist or sexist or problematic.

I've seen enough Tumblr echo-chambers that would make an actual nazi seem tame in comparison, that I don't care much to see yet another community get destroyed by hyper-senstivity.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I don't think the topic of conversation was what caused any annoyance, though. We're pretty good at discussing things very nicely here without the usual internet nonsense that goes on elsewhere.

 

[Mouse]

I don't think anybody here is saying YOU MUST BE PC OR DIE! Or, uh, words to that effect. And the only person being rude to anybody has flounced off most wonderfully because they didn't like being disagreed with. So... *shrugs*

 

[Boneman]

Hmmm. I don't really know how to make myself any more clear. I will resist CAPS.

The PoV would present it as the action of a socially responsible mind. The author is not the PoV - the PoV may be all we get.

What I find difficult is that people ignore this statement. Completely. The POV of a character is not the author. And ascribing it to the author without asking him/her if that is true is the worst kind of prejudice, because it can only be interpreted as intentional. In this thread it seems intentional for the sake of argument, rather than intentional to establish a proposition.

So: for the sake of argument... Joe Abercrombie, did you intend that The First Law Trilogy violence and torture were to reflect your views as an author?

Joe: No

End of argument.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What I find difficult is that people ignore this statement. Completely. The POV of a character is not the author. And ascribing it to the author without asking him/her if that is true is the worst kind of prejudice, because it can only be interpreted as intentional. In this thread it seems intentional for the sake of argument, rather than intentional to establish a proposition.

So: for the sake of argument... Joe Abercrombie, did you intend that The First Law Trilogy violence and torture were to reflect your views as an author?

Joe: No

End of argument.

But my comment which sparked that response agreed with that. Heck, with the sort of stuff I write, I'd have to agree or be very, very worried about myself.

What I did say, to quantify it, was that the pov had to convince. Joe's did - there's no question it's the character's pov. It's when a pov doesn't convince that I find the ground a little greyer and when I wonder, frankly, if there's an agenda going on.

 

[The Ace]

I have to say in Ireland it's one of the least insults we give each other and rarely picked up on by those with red-hair, which is generally seen as a nice thing. But it's not about the meaning, but about the individual and if it offends Ace then that's enough.

I'm Scottish, of Norman/Irish extraction. About 13% of the Scottish population are red-headed, one of the highest in the world.

People of a certain mentality need someone to pick on, and with more obvious groups under legal protection.....

An interesting point is that redheads are supposed to have a fiery temper - obviously this has nothing to do with being the victims of baseless prejudice.

 

[Boneman]

But my comment which sparked that response agreed with that. Heck, with the sort of stuff I write, I'd have to agree or be very, very worried about myself.

What I did say, to quantify it, was that the pov had to convince. Joe's did - there's no question it's the character's pov. It's when a pov doesn't convince that I find the ground a little greyer and when I wonder, frankly, if there's an agenda going on.

And if it doesn't convince, we're free to make our own agenda, by assuming what the writer may have intended. But do we as readers have the right to attack the author for our assumptions? Of course we do, it's called free speech, but in today's internet-dominated world, it would be much better to ask the author, surely? That's what we do at comventions, on blogs, (possibly on twitter and FB, but I don't go there) but it doesn't seem to have been what we've done in this thread, unfortunately.

End of Time's posting on this thread sums it up perfectly, for me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

And if it doesn't convince, we're free to make our own agenda, by assuming what the writer may have intended. But do we as readers have the right to attack the author for our assumptions? Of course we do, it's called free speech, but in today's internet-dominated world, it would be much better to ask the author, surely? That's what we do at comventions, on blogs, (possibly on twitter and FB, but I don't go there) but it doesn't seem to have been what we've done in this thread, unfortunately.

End of Time's posting on this thread sums it up perfectly, for me.

Of course we don't get the right to attack the author. But we get the right to question why they presented it the way they did, surely? The same way as we'd question anything else in the story. And by reading interviews about it etc. I've read many of Mark Lawrence's and Joe Abercrombie's thoughts on the subject and certainly don't buy into the 'they wrote a dark book, therefore they're immoral' argument at all.

But, other authors do write to an agenda -L. Ron Hubbard wrote to further/spread his religious beliefs. Don't I have the right to be sceptical about that if I read his books? If I read a viewpoint that is extreme (and in this case we were talking about a rational person carrying out a mass murder, which is fairly extreme) don't I have the right to question what that story's achieving? And that includes what the author is trying to achieve, surely. But I don't, of course, have the right to make an assumption, only ask the question.

In this case, there was no author attacked in the thread, that I noticed, and had there been I'd have been the first to say, 'here, hang on.' What did happen was I, having expressed a fairly mild opinion (that I like a pov to convince me) got turned on pretty agressively and in a manner that made me feel as uncomfortable online as I've ever been, by someone who seemed to be driving their own agenda (over more than one thread) without wanting to engage in a conversation about it. I felt pretty bullied, esp. when that person is a massive selling author with a huge internet presence. I don't think the behaviour in this thread last night (and others prior to this) would have been tolerated from many members without a mod-warning.

 

[Mouse]

Firstly, I agree wholeheartedly with springs.

Secondly, I'm not sure who you mean by 'people,' BM?

What I find difficult is that people ignore this statement. Completely. The POV of a character is not the author.

Because if it's in gerenal, I've not seen much evidence of that, and if it's people from this forum, I said right back on page one of this very thread:

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.

I think there's a little bit of people hearing/reading what they want to hear/read and not hearing/seeing what was actually said/written going on. In general.