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.1 reply 15 retweets 158 likesShow 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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Replying to @fozmeadows
Further to everything you have said, Haynes is also proscribing “coming out” as the only arbiter of queerness, which erases the multiplicity of cultural experiences of queerness as brilliantly discussed by Sekneh Hammoud-Beckett in this paper. https://dulwichcentre.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Azima-ila-Hayati-Narrative-conversations-about-sexual-identity-by-Sekneh-Hammoud-Beckett.pdf?fbclid=IwAR12wM4AmLZLt1DpW2G8yeJYdaa3x5hZ6c1T-o4E_ehr6WWXjw7kug0uyXs …
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