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Okay, since I linked to the last iteration of this:
In the case of the authors who spoke of being asked by a literary agent to change a character's sexual orientation as a condition of representing their book, the literary agency in question has come forward to say that they do not believe they did anything of the sort.
Someone on my Facebook reading list posted a link to an excellent and, IMHO, fairly neutral roundup/analysis at YA Highway. Another totally-worth-reading link is a thoughtful and nuanced round-up (that is somewhat more weighted towards the authors' end of things than the above link) posted by![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cleolinda.
My thoughts:
* I don't know any of the people involved (I've been readingrachelmanija's LJ/DW for awhile for the book discussions and she seems like a cool person, but that's about as close as I come to "knowing" anybody in here).
* It is my earnest and honest belief that everyone involved is telling the truth, even when their "truths" are mutually exclusive. Maybe this is just me being ridiculously naive about human beings. But you can't be in fandom very long (or, well, life) without encountering situations in which two or more perfectly well-intentioned people (all of whose friends will vouch for them and back them up) have a conflict, disagreement or communication failure in which their versions of what happened are mutually exclusive, and yet, no one seems to be actually lying or even deliberately misrepresenting the facts. This really strikes me as one of those situations. I don't know what was meant versus what was said, what was said versus what was heard, what was heard or said versus what was remembered months later. But I think it's way more complicated than either "the agent is lying to cover their ass" or "the authors are lying to get attention".
* Regardless of what happened in this case, all the comments and links to the situation have brought up a ton of anecdata on both sides -- lots and lots of YA writers have talked about their experiences, and it looks like a) lots of YA writers have encountered agents and publishers who have been nothing but supportive of LGBT characters in YA fiction, and b) lots of YA authors have encountered agents or publishers who tried, sometimes successfully to get them to change LGBT content for publication. So what does it mean? It means that publishing is the same crapshoot it's always been: you never know what you're going to get, whether you'll sail through or whether you'll encounter nothing but roadblocks.
* Just because you, personally, have had nothing but good experiences doesn't mean that people who have had bad experiences are lying, deluded or represent isolated statistical outliers who can be ignored. (This is one of the hardest things that I, personally, have had to learn: my personal experiences don't necessarily generalize to the whole population! I'm thinking specifically in terms of feminism here. I, personally, have had little but good, supportive experiences with male people. I always brushed off the isolated instances of co-workers or family members who were condescending jerks to me because of my gender, and it was easy for me to do so, because I have a pretty good opinion of myself, and my bosses and the majority of my peers and relatives were always on my side. But what this meant is that I spent a lot of my younger years believing that women who complain of systematic harassment and discrimination are either playing up these isolated incidents or deluding themselves, because I personally have never been in a situation where I have felt that my gender has held me back. It took me a lot of maturing and talking to other people to realize that just because my own personal anecdata follows one pattern, it doesn't mean that other people's experiences are invalid, and frankly, I think I was a bit of a jerk -- maybe a lot of a jerk -- for believing that for all those years.)
* On the other hand, I also sometimes have to stop myself (or, as the case may be, fail to stop myself) from jumping into "righteous crusader mode" at the drop of a hat. In this case, obviously, the situation is more complicated than simply reblogging a link to a straightforward example of editorial bias. And for that matter (again speaking of my own experience here) there are times when posting a link to something gives a deceptively warm fuzzy feeling of "something has been done about this!" Which is totally not to say that I think anyone reblogging/linking to this (including me) acted in bad faith or shouldn't have done it, or shouldn't be doing it now (as I am). But I do think that in the interests of my own ongoing crusade to be a better human being, I need to remember that there are always two sides (at least) to every story, and that it's easy to get stuck at the righteous-indignation response and let my brain shut off. For me at least, it needs to be a stepping stone, not an end in itself.
* To make a long post short: I'm glad that the authors opened a dialogue on this topic, and I'm also glad the agency weighed in with their side of the story. It's been a fascinating peek behind the editorial scenes, and as an aspiring author, I've been really interested to read various authors' accounts of their positive and negative experiences with publishers and agents.
I think this part is sort of tautological, but marketing is a business, and what sells to publishers will be what publishers think their readers will buy. This is always going to discourage risk-taking and encourage publishers (and writers) to stick to generic, middle-of-the-road protagonists. If nothing else, I hope that this whole discussion/debate will encourage more writers to write more diverse protagonists (on whatever axis -- there are not very many characters in YA, or adult genre literature for that matter, who wear their political affiliation or their religion openly, either) and more publishers to pick them up.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/374241.html with
comments.
In the case of the authors who spoke of being asked by a literary agent to change a character's sexual orientation as a condition of representing their book, the literary agency in question has come forward to say that they do not believe they did anything of the sort.
Someone on my Facebook reading list posted a link to an excellent and, IMHO, fairly neutral roundup/analysis at YA Highway. Another totally-worth-reading link is a thoughtful and nuanced round-up (that is somewhat more weighted towards the authors' end of things than the above link) posted by
cleolinda.My thoughts:
* I don't know any of the people involved (I've been reading
rachelmanija's LJ/DW for awhile for the book discussions and she seems like a cool person, but that's about as close as I come to "knowing" anybody in here).* It is my earnest and honest belief that everyone involved is telling the truth, even when their "truths" are mutually exclusive. Maybe this is just me being ridiculously naive about human beings. But you can't be in fandom very long (or, well, life) without encountering situations in which two or more perfectly well-intentioned people (all of whose friends will vouch for them and back them up) have a conflict, disagreement or communication failure in which their versions of what happened are mutually exclusive, and yet, no one seems to be actually lying or even deliberately misrepresenting the facts. This really strikes me as one of those situations. I don't know what was meant versus what was said, what was said versus what was heard, what was heard or said versus what was remembered months later. But I think it's way more complicated than either "the agent is lying to cover their ass" or "the authors are lying to get attention".
* Regardless of what happened in this case, all the comments and links to the situation have brought up a ton of anecdata on both sides -- lots and lots of YA writers have talked about their experiences, and it looks like a) lots of YA writers have encountered agents and publishers who have been nothing but supportive of LGBT characters in YA fiction, and b) lots of YA authors have encountered agents or publishers who tried, sometimes successfully to get them to change LGBT content for publication. So what does it mean? It means that publishing is the same crapshoot it's always been: you never know what you're going to get, whether you'll sail through or whether you'll encounter nothing but roadblocks.
* Just because you, personally, have had nothing but good experiences doesn't mean that people who have had bad experiences are lying, deluded or represent isolated statistical outliers who can be ignored. (This is one of the hardest things that I, personally, have had to learn: my personal experiences don't necessarily generalize to the whole population! I'm thinking specifically in terms of feminism here. I, personally, have had little but good, supportive experiences with male people. I always brushed off the isolated instances of co-workers or family members who were condescending jerks to me because of my gender, and it was easy for me to do so, because I have a pretty good opinion of myself, and my bosses and the majority of my peers and relatives were always on my side. But what this meant is that I spent a lot of my younger years believing that women who complain of systematic harassment and discrimination are either playing up these isolated incidents or deluding themselves, because I personally have never been in a situation where I have felt that my gender has held me back. It took me a lot of maturing and talking to other people to realize that just because my own personal anecdata follows one pattern, it doesn't mean that other people's experiences are invalid, and frankly, I think I was a bit of a jerk -- maybe a lot of a jerk -- for believing that for all those years.)
* On the other hand, I also sometimes have to stop myself (or, as the case may be, fail to stop myself) from jumping into "righteous crusader mode" at the drop of a hat. In this case, obviously, the situation is more complicated than simply reblogging a link to a straightforward example of editorial bias. And for that matter (again speaking of my own experience here) there are times when posting a link to something gives a deceptively warm fuzzy feeling of "something has been done about this!" Which is totally not to say that I think anyone reblogging/linking to this (including me) acted in bad faith or shouldn't have done it, or shouldn't be doing it now (as I am). But I do think that in the interests of my own ongoing crusade to be a better human being, I need to remember that there are always two sides (at least) to every story, and that it's easy to get stuck at the righteous-indignation response and let my brain shut off. For me at least, it needs to be a stepping stone, not an end in itself.
* To make a long post short: I'm glad that the authors opened a dialogue on this topic, and I'm also glad the agency weighed in with their side of the story. It's been a fascinating peek behind the editorial scenes, and as an aspiring author, I've been really interested to read various authors' accounts of their positive and negative experiences with publishers and agents.
I think this part is sort of tautological, but marketing is a business, and what sells to publishers will be what publishers think their readers will buy. This is always going to discourage risk-taking and encourage publishers (and writers) to stick to generic, middle-of-the-road protagonists. If nothing else, I hope that this whole discussion/debate will encourage more writers to write more diverse protagonists (on whatever axis -- there are not very many characters in YA, or adult genre literature for that matter, who wear their political affiliation or their religion openly, either) and more publishers to pick them up.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/374241.html with
no subject
- This is why you do things by email rather than phone. Or send an email summary after the phone call. No, seriously. Because authors and publishers clash on a lot of things for a lot of reasons (I've personally been blogged about very negatively by an author before) and it helps to have the actual exchange in writing. (I'm with you in that I don't think anyone is deliberately lying, and I don't think we can know what actually happened.)
- Publishing is a teensy world. Anonymously pointing the finger at someone isn't anonymous. The authors didn't call out the agency by name, but clearly there was enough info presented not only for the agency to recognize themselves but for their publishing colleagues to recognize them. Not saying that posts about discrimination shouldn't be made, just saying, it's never going to really be anonymous.
- I liked cleolinda's point about the difference between homophobia on the part of editors/agents and structural bias. I've worked at three publishing houses and always had multiple out gay and lesbian coworkers. I would guess that, for a gay person, the industry is probably one of the more supportive to work in. Which doesn't negate the authors' experiences of being told to straightwash characters, just explains why pros get so upset at being called homophobes.
- There were enough authors speaking up that you can't deny that there has been a trend of asking authors to remove gay characters. But in any given case, you don't know if it's because the character was gay that they were asked to be removed or that they were not essential to the narrative or that instead of being progressive, it was preachy. What I'm saying is, an editor saying, I think it would be a better book without this character, doesn't necessarily mean in a specific case that that statement was made because the character was gay, though obviously it still adds to the overall trend against visible gay characters in books. And when rejection is involved and emotions are high, it's very easy for miscommunication to happen.
- And from an editorial standpoint, editors can only publish what people write. Asking readers to support books with gay characters is part of the solution. But so is writers writing good books with gay characters--remembering that a book can't be bought just because it has a gay character, it has to be well-written, too. I worked on mystery books for a time, and you know how often I read a submission that had a gay character in any part of the book? Once. And that book had a gay couple as side characters, mentioned in passing, not main. It sounds like a lot of people have encountered resistance for including gay characters, but I'd still bet that the bulk of books being submitted don't.