Playing At Oppression
Last week, a regularly controversial conservative blogger managed to once again cause an internet fight, this time by calling out the surprising number of faux homophobic hate 'crimes' that have been generating ire among the various social justice warriors of the internet. Although I disagree with the blogger that these hoaxes* and the initial outrage they generated are part of some sort of gay agenda**, he did catch some interesting points. As the blogger pointed out, a distinctive feature of the hoaxes is that they slot perfectly into a pre-defined narrative (it's actually a fairly for faux hate crimes, which are unfortunately a thing).
What these nuggets of Internet Outrage Machine Bait have in common are that they slot right into commonly accepted, easy narratives:
They've got a faceless or stereotypical villain;The incident is about an individual bullying, not broken systems;The act is explicitly aggressive and unambiguously bigotedThe end result is an (alleged) injustice that does not ask us to think. We can feel righteous outrage without having to examine wider problems in our society or question our own prejudices or views.
I bring this up because these acts of fake bigotry bear a striking resemblance to how many writers handle-- or fail to handle-- oppressive societies in Fictionland. Instead of portraying systemic problems, or the society that spawned those inequalities in the first place, they focus on random people being randomly mean, usually to the main character. There is no indication that the society holds deeply ingrained prejudices or enforces harsh double standards that have an impact on the daily lives of the people who inhabit it.
Second, there is no emotional ambiguity here. The villain is faceless, nameless, a walking stereotype calculated to inspire rage, free of complications. In real life, unfortunately, it's often not that simple. Systemic oppression gets everywhere and penetrates many aspects of a society. The bigoted acts can be subtle and hard to prove and constant, wearing. The aggressor can be from another oppressed group. The aggressor can be a supposed friend, an otherwise competent and trusted colleague, a family member. The aggressor might not even be aware they said or did something hurtful because those ideas and behaviours have been ingrained to the point of unthinking acceptance.
If you're going to write a story set in a society with deep-seated problems (which all societies have), you need to portray these problems as wide-reaching, rather than imitating what you think prejudice 'should' look like.
*While many of the sources he cites are correct, there are also some glaring fact-checking failures re: Matthew Shepard.
**As a bisexual, I'm not invited to the gay conspiracy meetings, so I can't actually confirm or deny anything on the subject.
What these nuggets of Internet Outrage Machine Bait have in common are that they slot right into commonly accepted, easy narratives:
They've got a faceless or stereotypical villain;The incident is about an individual bullying, not broken systems;The act is explicitly aggressive and unambiguously bigotedThe end result is an (alleged) injustice that does not ask us to think. We can feel righteous outrage without having to examine wider problems in our society or question our own prejudices or views.
I bring this up because these acts of fake bigotry bear a striking resemblance to how many writers handle-- or fail to handle-- oppressive societies in Fictionland. Instead of portraying systemic problems, or the society that spawned those inequalities in the first place, they focus on random people being randomly mean, usually to the main character. There is no indication that the society holds deeply ingrained prejudices or enforces harsh double standards that have an impact on the daily lives of the people who inhabit it.
Second, there is no emotional ambiguity here. The villain is faceless, nameless, a walking stereotype calculated to inspire rage, free of complications. In real life, unfortunately, it's often not that simple. Systemic oppression gets everywhere and penetrates many aspects of a society. The bigoted acts can be subtle and hard to prove and constant, wearing. The aggressor can be from another oppressed group. The aggressor can be a supposed friend, an otherwise competent and trusted colleague, a family member. The aggressor might not even be aware they said or did something hurtful because those ideas and behaviours have been ingrained to the point of unthinking acceptance.
If you're going to write a story set in a society with deep-seated problems (which all societies have), you need to portray these problems as wide-reaching, rather than imitating what you think prejudice 'should' look like.
*While many of the sources he cites are correct, there are also some glaring fact-checking failures re: Matthew Shepard.
**As a bisexual, I'm not invited to the gay conspiracy meetings, so I can't actually confirm or deny anything on the subject.
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