Dear Readers of every race, gender, sexuality, body type, religious background – you will NEVER get this from me. Ever. It will always be my endeavor to represent people as truthfully as I can.
The maps and keys to the kingdom are safe with me, never through me shall ye be overcome – Edna St. Vincent Millay “Conscientious Objector”
The subject of fetishization has come up again- I absolutely refuse to post the link of the blog or the person who wrote it.
This is my personal worldview. Take it or leave it.
Fetishizing isn’t good whichever way you look at it. Ask women, people of color, so on and so forth. The issue at the center of this is pure capitalism. There is a market for the fetishization of people in all sorts of platforms and until there is no demand left, there will always be someone willing to offer the supply. I don’t care who they are. Some things stop being about right and wrong at a certain point and start to become about power, who has it, and who doesn’t. *I * don’t like it. I won’t buy it. I won’t support it. I think it’s reductive. That’s my choice and my right as an author but also as a reader. I quit watching television shows over stuff like this (i.e. The Magicians) for using harmful tropes (kill your gays) etc. and being a gamer, I won’t play unless there’s a way to make my character like me. Representation is key and the narrative better be damn good otherwise like the shows, books, etc. Bye-bye.
As a writer, it’s my primary focus first and foremost that if I am going to write about people who are not me, to not do so in a way that hurts someone or uses old stereotypes or demeans them in any sort of way. I won’t do it. I will not fetishize anyone for the sake of a buck. I have to live with that and with me and I can’t do it. Money isn’t more important to me than the truth and in today’s world, as has always been the case I’m sure, the truth gets obfuscated for whatever political reason you can imagine and if a person believes fiction is a-political is a fool. There’s always someone willing and able (intellectually or otherwise) to utilize anything and everything you put out in the marketplace as to why a person should or shouldn’t be accepted into society. And what sucks is when conservative MM writers (and they’re out there) use their platform to further hurtful and harmful stereotypes or make bad people in the world (I.E. pastors who run pray-away camps) “well-intentioned” so they can live with their own religions/political/social outlooks on life and not have to leave their cognitive dissonance behind.
Furthermore, these blog posts that show up every now and then are nothing more than virtue signaling a group of people who want to start an argument, win “them” over to your ‘side’, so you can be the preferred pet this season – Good for you. Love your hair, hope it wins. It worked once for ‘that guy’ and maybe you can end up with a book deal if you plagiarize a little bit, too. But I’m not going to Candace Owens or Milo whatever his name is myself any more than I did before. I’m just gonna be over here doing my own thing writing books for you, by me, for us.
Thanks,
F.E.