Editor’s Note: Our good friend, Moira Greyland shared some thoughts with us and suggested that we pass them along to our readers. We agreed, and offer up her ideas. Take them and run with them.
It is getting harder and harder to find good new books via tradpub.
One solution: let us form an agency of Insensitivity Readers to help writers get over the current fads.
Why?
Political correctness is defined by what you CANNOT do, or say, or think, and by extension, what your characters cannot do, or say, or think.
Politically correct writing is stuck by the “need” to pretend that 1.6% of the population, which is the entire numbers of gay and trans, are actually 50% of the population, which means every single modern writer is forced to pretend they can write a compelling, interesting gay love story, which must also be idealized, lest they offend someone.
The result is a clunky mess which does not read as credible to gay people OR to straights!
Politically correct writing requires the writer to pretend that all physical demographics are equally present in all cases, and that any typical traits associated with a particular demographic, such as lung cancer in smokers (an extrapolated example) is automatically bigoted.
This means EVERYONE has to be idealized, and all life choices must be idealized, and the options for flaws in people are narrowed to an absurd degree.
There are only a few acceptable villains. Naturally the palefaced Caucasian males are demonized in outsize numbers, while being reduced in variety to inhuman caricatures.
You DID know that absolutely every palefaced Caucasian male on earth is a rednecked Republican gun-owning bigoted business owner who lives to oppress women and all other shades of human beings, while lacking any traits beyond their craven evilness.
Sheesh. While we are at it, shall we create sock puppets of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
Screw it.
The only solution is to write the truth and to excise the political correctness. If you know fat, abusive lesbians who hate men and hurt women (as I do) by all means write them.
If you know decent white men (or black men, or purple men) who love their families and would do literally ANYTHING for them, write them.
If you know a heroic gay man who has left gayness and married a woman, but still has flashbacks about his abusers, write that.
Above all, tell the truth, even if you hang the truth on a bug-eyed monster wearing a kimono!
Anyone want to become a dedicated INSENSITIVITY reader??
