The role of writers and how to protect them

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Rakuen Growlithe
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The role of writers and how to protect them

#1

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

This is a discussion I wanted to have within the Furry Writer's Guild but which I thought might also generate some interesting thoughts over here.
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I saw two articles very close together which both warned of how the publishing sphere has been tightening around authors and restricting what they are able to write about.

The first one, Writers blocked: Even fantasy fiction is now offensive, recounts the story of Amélie Wen Zhao whose planned book was cancelled after outrage from her fellow authors. Her "crime" was to write about slavery (which her critics called appropriation of black history, despite it being a feature of many old human societies) and to have a world where skin colour did not matter (this was considered a sign of racism). Further along it addresses the ideas of sensitivity readers, how white authors shouldn't write about people of colour and accusations of fantasy stories, like Lord of the Rings, being racist.

Even more recently was an article describing how there has been unrest in Turkey regarding a 2013 collection of short stories by Abdullah Şevki which contains an instance of child rape. Both him and his publisher are now facing legal charges which were pushed for by a social media mob. This can certainly be seen to also mimic some of the controversy in the furry fandom over cub content.

There are of course many overlapping topics contained within such articles but I think there are two which I would most like to discuss.

The first topic is the role of the author. Here I will quote from the second article.
“In my novels I write about difficult subjects, including sexual harassment, rape and incest because these are major problems in Turkey and novelists cannot be silent on these issues,” said Elif Shafak, one of the bestselling novelists whose work has been targeted.
I think the role of an author is to broaden our minds and to explore different topics. Sometimes these topics are offensive but if we prevent authors from writing then we will lose out on valuable introspection and the opportunity to improve our culture. This includes the idea that authors may not write about other people's experiences or cultures. Such a view is extremely limiting and divisive. I find it ironic that those people that decry racism actually further divisions by forcing a separation between races and preventing the merger of human cultures.

I think the second question regards what we can do to support authors that may face these problems. Perhaps it has not yet become a major issue in the furry writing community but it might be good to think about these things as restricts on speech have been growing throughout the world. As a community with a niche interest, which is rather strange to some, we may could perhaps recognise the need to protect author's freedom of expression more than others. It was charges of obscenity against Omaha the Cat Dancer, among others, which led to the formation of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Perhaps a similar initiative may be needed for writers in the future.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
~John Milton~
Leeward
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Re: The role of writers and how to protect them

#2

Post by Leeward »

Sheer stupidity. People assume that just because an author depicts a topic, automatically means they endorse it, which is often far from the case. I'm fairly certain that 1984 was not totalitarian propaganda, and yet if it were published today it may well be seen as such by this logic. Just because you have an opinion on something doesn't mean it's an educated one. That's my biggest gripe about society nowadays: nobody has the humility to say "I don't know enough about this to warrant making a fair judgement on it." Everybody has an opinion on everything and they have to yell it from the rooftops.
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Rakuen Growlithe
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Re: The role of writers and how to protect them

#3

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

Leeward wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2019 1:30 pmPeople assume that just because an author depicts a topic, automatically means they endorse it, which is often far from the case.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Aristotle, Metaphysics
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
~John Milton~
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