It’s not without some irony that I look around and note that the writers and artists who are the most disdainful of art’s edifying function, the people who seem most openly suspicious of—and threatened by—the idea of politics in fiction, or indeed empathy-building in fiction, are also the people who have historically benefited the most from the universal goodwill and empathy that is afforded someone living in a cis, white, middle-class body. Because what more powerful empathy machine do we have than heteropatriarchal white supremacy?
