By insisting on this binary idea of being either fully in or fully out, she's completely missing the fact that you can be in the closet *in some situations* while out of it in others. You can come out to your friends, but not your family; come out to family, but not your boss.
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The idea that you can't speak for the queer community if you're closeted is homophobic, exclusionist garbage, because even in the depths of the fucking closet? THAT IS STILL PART OF THE QUEER EXPERIENCE. You are still part of the community!
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The idea that you can't write an ownvoices coming out story if you're not 100% out to everyone because you haven't had "the full experience," as though there's only one universal way to enter The Community? LITERALLY FUCK OFF INTO THE SUN.
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Setting aside the fact that, for a lot of queer people, writing about the kind of experiences we WISH we got to have, or which we hope to have in the future, is powerful and necessary? ownvoices isn't and was NEVER limited to writing only about exactly your personal experience.
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If that was so, then every ownvoices author would only be allowed to write one ownvoices story, or restrict themselves specifically to Just The Things That Have Happened To Me, instead of uniting experience AND imagination to tell new stories about a collective experience.
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Hell, you might as well go ahead and claim that no SFF books can count as ownvoices, because even if the author has (for example) the experience of being Black, they didn't personally experience being Black during a zombie apocalypse, so it doesn't count. For fuck's SAKE.
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When
#ownvoices first started, it was meant to uplift marginalised authors whose marginalisation/s informed their writing, as a way to combat the fact that non-marginalised authors were (and still are) given way more promo for writing about those same identities/issues.Show this thread -
It was meant to highlight the fact that, often, non-marginalised writers are praised for writing portrayals of marginalisation which were, in fact, wildly fucking inaccurate, if not downright offensive, while those who wrote from experience were cast to the side.
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And instead, now, it's started to be used as a gatekeeping tool, by DMZ and others: a way of policing who is allowed to claim which stories as personal; a way of saying, "sorry, you're not marginalised enough" to actual marginalised writers.
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The strident ignorance of Nalini Haynes about experiences other than her own is galling in every way, as though having one marginalisation therefore allows her to set the rules for every other marginalisation, too. It's some straight white nonsense, frankly.
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As a white person, I do not get to declare, "here is the threshold for a POC to claim ownvoices" - or, well. I can *try* to do that, like Haynes did, but it's an asshole, racist move, and if I did, I wouldn't then get to play victim when I was called on it.
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As an atheist, I do not get to declare, "here is what a Muslim author has to do to be Muslim enough for ownvoices." Same goes for any marginalisation I do not share! Those might be conversations that merit having at certain times, but when it happens? My job is not to speak.
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As a straight woman, Haynes has elected to lay down the law, in her professional capacity, as to what she thinks queer authors do or don't get to write about as ownvoices on the basis of how out (or not) they are. And as a queer person, I get to say back: fuck you, you're wrong.
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UGH. Anyway! We now return you to your regularly scheduled whatever.
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End of conversation
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