Political satirist. Science fictioneer. Aardvark lover. Latest novel: RANDOM DINGOES, now available ...
I may have done myself a disservice yesterday in quickly dismissing my interest in diverse points of view; as with many things that make artists who they are, this is a complex question.
When I was young, I had few friends. I was the weird kid in school whom even the other weird kids didn’t want to have anything to do with. I can clearly remember sitting on the stoop to the door in the back of my junior high school during recess, reading a book while the other students were playing on the field (or standing around exchanging gossip). Even when I did start making friends, I always had the feeling that they really didn’t care about me, didn’t understand who I was (a point of view born of bitter experience); I still felt as though I didn’t belong, a feeling that hampers my relationships to this day.
In short, despite being a straight white male, surely the most privileged group in modern western society, I have always felt like an outsider. It is, perhaps, this feeling of not belonging that attracts me to characters usually considered “other” as my main characters.
How does somebody become so alienated from who he is? In my case, I believe it was a combination of nature (my genetic inheritance) and nurture (the family life of my youth). I will explore these issues over the next couple of days.
Because I write a lot of satire, I am no stranger to taking positions on political issues. They don’t usually come as close to home as the one I engaged with last week, though.
There was an article in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper) about a move at last weekend’s Fan Expo to promote safe cosplay. The article was a pretty good, if brief, overview of why it happened. I thought the briefness could use a little historical context, so I wrote a letter to the newspaper explaining that science fiction, which was once viewed as a bastion of nerdy white maleness, had been attempting to diversify its fan base over the last decade or two, and this was just one manifestation of that. I ended the letter applauding the diversity of fandom.
The letter was published, more or less in toto, yesterday.
For anybody familiar with my writing, this should come as no surprise. The main character of my first three novels is a black woman (based, loosely, on my Web Goddess). The main character in the novel I am currently working on is a lesbian (as, indeed, are most of the other people who work in her organization). And, of course, the whole premise of Both Sides. NOW! is that all of humanity becomes transgendered, not a group overrepresented in speculative fiction, or, for that matter, fiction generally.
I don’t consider myself a champion of diversity in my fiction, so don’t be casting that medal just yet: to be honest, I’m just sick to death of straight white male protagonists and want to read about a wider range of human experience. Characters of different ethnicities and sexual orientations are also just another manifestation of my desire (for good or ill for my career) to tell stories that other people aren’t telling.
Still, the impulse to celebrate diversity is there in my fiction for those who want to find it. And, it was nice to be able to carry it through, in this small way, into my life.
Icky icky ick
I’m feeling rather sick
Through the aches and pain
I have become a bear of little brain
I hope this won’t cause my followers sorrow
But a more thoughtful update will have to wait til tomorrow!
SATURDAY SHORTS
Here’s a sneak preview of something that will be appearing in one of the Daily Me features on my Web site on Wednesday:
My Wall Trumps Your Rights
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Speaking Spanish the Donald Trump Way, a series of instructional videos to help border guards, immigration officers and anybody interested in the future of the United States learn how to speak to Mexican immigrants.
TRUMP: Job stealing criminal drug dealers and rapists.
ANNOUNCER: We haven’t started yet.
TRUMP: I started the moment I was conceived, and I never stopped! Get on with it.
PAUSE.
ANNOUNCER: Where is the nearest financial institution?
TRUMP: I need to rob a bank to feed my drug habit. Is there one near here?
PAUSE.
ANNOUNCER: You have a beautiful wife.
TRUMP: You so much as look at my wife the wrong way – oh, screw it, even the right way – and I’ll sick immigration officers on you so fast it’ll make your empty head spin! Pervert! Next phrase.
PAUSE.
TRUMP: I said: next phrase!
ANNOUNCER: Do you speak English?
TRUMP: Of course I speak English! Who do you take me for? Jeb Bush? Loser! Or, maybe some other loser who can’t make it in his own country so he comes over here to mess up our country? Listen, pal, the United States is the greatest country the world has ever known, and you don’t get anywhere here speaking frigging Mexican! You wanna live in America? Learn to speak frigging American. You probably won’t be able to speak it so good as me, but as long as you know the basics, you should be able to make yourself understood to a real human being. I mean, come on: how hard is it to say, “Where’s the nearest Welfare office?”
ANNOUNCER: (over him) This has been Speaking Spanish the Donald Trump Way, the first in a series of instructional videos to help border guards, immigration officers and anybody interested in the future of the United States learn how to speak to Mexican immigrants. Order yours today!
SOURCE: Weekends!
[http://www.nobc.com/Weekends/video/play.shtml?mea=227528]more
These are a few things I know about myself:
1. I have low affect, which means I don’t feel highs of emotions. It also means that my emotional reactions to things are not always what “ordinary” people are expected feel.
2. I have difficulty making and maintaining eye contact.
3. I often feel uncomfortable being touched. That is something a friend and a relative, who are huggy people, are trying to cure me of. Still, the longer an embrace lasts, the more likely I am to break it off.
4. I often have obsessive thoughts. As I get older, though, I am becoming better at recognizing when they start and short-circuiting them before they become too debilitating.
5. I have difficulty reading other people’s emotions.
When I was younger, I went through a period when I tried to understand why I was the way I was; I suspected I had some form of autism. When I did some research into the subject, however, I found that I was missing a couple of key symptoms of autism. I have mellowed over the years and no longer feel the need to name how I act; it’s enough for me to know that my interior life is, as best I can make out, much different from that of most other people.
This fed into my feelings of otherness growing up. On the one hand, a lot of people get a weird vibe from me, which leads them to keep their distance. On the other hand, because I can’t read other people, I don’t know when people are offering to be friends (in fact, I have been used by more than one person because I was unable to see that their offers of friendship had ulterior motives); my ability to form relationships has been stunted, at best.
It’s not all bad (although, even if it was, I would have to make the best of it since this is the only life I’m getting). Years ago, I read an article that claimed that a lot of autistic people become great actors. Why? Because people who are different often watch others very closely to try to learn how “normal” people behave, and become very good at mimicking those behaviours. Perhaps this is also true of writers. If nothing else, my single-mindedness, if not outright obsession, has allowed me to spend decades pursuing a career with little reward.