Another $%^ing one, what are they, breeding?

I posted last week in solidarity with the Outer Alliance, a spanking-new group of GLBTQI writers and straight/cisgendered allies. Lo and behold, within a week of its formation the OA has encountered its first incidence of homophobic discrimination. More on this there.

It’s hard, sometimes, being a writer with a conscience. I mean, how much do you let conscience dictate business? As a writer, I’m engaged in the act of selling my creativity and dreams — little bits of my soul, quite frankly — for approbation and money. If that kind of spiritual prostitution doesn’t bother me (and sometimes it does, but a woman’s gotta eat), what should? I’ve made the decision to draw the line at issues of injustice toward groups of people — especially those who’ve been historically treated in an unjust way. If a fiction market shows a pattern of racism, sexism, homophobia, or other bias, and on being confronted with this pattern shows no attempt or commitment to change, I don’t submit my work to them. If I find out after the fact that the market has this problem, I will — and have done, in the past — withdraw my work. Because I’ll sell bits of my soul for money, fine, but I sure as hell won’t sell them for crap.

But every time I turn around, it seems, there’s another market I’ve got to avoid. It’s pretty damn depressing. My only consolation is that for every one of these things I discover, a new market appears which (at least AFAICT) lacks these flaws. This is what leads me to believe SF isn’t dying; it’s renewing itself. Shedding old diseased scales in order to reveal the shiny healthy new ones underneath. A messy process, unfortunately, and an unending one. But the future, at least, will be better.

6 thoughts on “Another $%^ing one, what are they, breeding?”

  1. Howdy! I’m collecting commentary here, and am linking to this (if you want me to remove your link, just respond to this comment and tell me so).

  2. This is what leads me to believe SF isn’t dying; it’s renewing itself. Shedding old diseased scales in order to reveal the shiny healthy new ones underneath. A messy process, unfortunately, and an unending one. But the future, at least, will be better.

    Thank you for this wonderful image.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top