Queering Shakespeare: reflections on damaging tropes, and some positive alternatives September 9, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , 15commentsThis is a hard post to write. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get it wrong, and I’m sorry about that. I want to say going in that I speak for me, not for others, and that every opinion quoted and linked here is the expressed opinion of an individual. The Outer Alliance is not one person. We’re a widely varied group of people with a large range of opinions. We band together with a set of common goals (to support each other and promote speculative fiction with LGBTQI content), but we don’t always agree on how to handle every situation.
We have yet another controversy rocking the queer specfic community this week. It’s one I have reservations talking about, but I know it’s deeply important to a lot of our membership that the OA addresses it, and I do understand and support that sentiment, so here I am.
Three years ago, Tor published a collection of novellas, which included one by Orson Scott Card. He retold Hamlet. I didn’t hear about it at the time. By then I’d already stopped buying books by Card, or submitting work to his publication, because I knew that our fundamental values were at odds. He’s publicly said many times things that indicate that he doesn’t support LGBTQI rights, and believes a lot of things I find offensive and damaging. Now, my personal response to that has been to ignore him. He has the right to say what he wishes, because we both live in a time and place where freedom of speech is a protected right. I have the right to speak out against him if I choose, but to date I’ve always felt that exercising that right would give his damaging viewpoint more attention, and I didn’t really want to do that.
People talk about honest reviews being good, and I agree. People have said that negative reviews can help boost sales, and I agree with that, too. I’ve bought books before because I read a review that made me sure I’d like them even though the reviewer didn’t. More than anything, reviews give books attention. I wouldn’t have known about this book if it hadn’t been for a review. I’m guessing a lot of other people wouldn’t have either. I worry that the fervor over it will lead to results other than what the protesters would hope. I know that I’m potentially fueling that unwanted attention by adding my voice to the conversation, and that unsettles me.
I’ve said before that it’s important not to attack people personally. I don’t wish to do that, and I won’t be doing that today. I’ve also said that it’s important to speak out against injustice, and important to educate people when we can. It is my hope that I will accomplish these things, and also that this post will serve as a part of an extended open dialogue with the specfic community at large.
Now, the review in question was in response to a reprint of Card’s Hamlet retelling, not the original Tor collection. The standalone novella came out this Spring from Subterranean Press. I was especially dismayed to hear that news, and to hear, in the first cries of outrage, people calling for a boycott of Subterranean. That particular press has often published great books and stories with queer content, and by queer authors. I’ve bought some of them, and always felt good about supporting an open-minded small press with really nice production values. Seriously, if you’ve ever bought a book from them, you’ll know that they use highest quality materials. Their art is usually great, and every time I receive one of their books, I feel a sense of tactile joy, because they understand about texture at Subterranean. Their books are a pleasure to hold.
When this all erupted in a flurry of passionate e-mails on the OA google group, I said that if I boycotted every publisher who ever put out something I found offensive, I’d severely limit my reading choices. Others asked why people hadn’t called for a boycott of Tor. Still others pointed out that this was a troubling reprint because it was specifically chosen by a small press, and we ought to demand to know Bill Schafer’s reasoning. Along with boycotting, demands for various other concessions floated about, but none seemed to unite everyone in agreement.
Then someone pointed out that it was in fact possible that Bill Schafer and others hadn’t realized how and why this story was offensive. People who have the privilege of not being targeted by these damaging tropes are often unaware of them. Indeed, Bill Schafer’s response to the whole thing indicates that this might have been the case for him. He asks for people to share their thoughts, and says that he’s listening. If all of this results in a publisher learning a little more about how and why works he publishes might actively hurt people, then I suppose it’s worth the risk of giving attention to an author I’d rather ignore. Here is a collection of accounts by OA members of their experiences with this particular controversy, followed by some recommendations of queer-positive Shakespeare stories.
Rose Fox summed up the whole sordid saga in a concise and comprehensive manner over on the Genreville blog.
[T]his is the thing about offensiveness grenades: they may look entirely inert for so long that you forget they’re dangerous, but sooner or later, they explode.
On the google group, Rose added the following:
I am really sad and disappointed that Subterranean Press and Tor Books, which publish many books by queer and trans authors and with queer themes, also published a novella that vilifies queer people and equates us with child molesters. I call on those publishers–and on all SF/F publishers, imprints, and magazines both large and small–to refrain from publishing books and stories that vilify any group of people in such a fashion.
Cheryl Morgan said much the same thing to me, and explained why this particular reprint is so upsetting:
There is, I think, a difference between publishing the story as part of a retrospective of Card’s work, which can put it in context, and publishing it has a high-priced collectors’ edition, which suggests it is something special and of extra value.
Elizabeth Schechter posted about her personal reaction on her blog:
To be honest, right now, I’m more at the stage of sputter…sputter… whiskey tango FOXTROT???
And my reaction isn’t because Card wrote this. Anyone who is following along and playing Homophobic Bingo: the Home Game just maxed out their score. This is no surprise.
The surprise is that Subterranean Press published it.
River Willow Fagan posted an extremely brave and heartfelt open letter to Bill Schafer, explaining how and why this kind of thing damages people:
One of the most painful aspects of being a queer survivor has been the doubts: what if all those hateful voices were right? What if I am attracted to men because my father abused me? What if I really am sick, what if my soul really is twisted and broken like all those conservative Christians say?
Sunny Moraine called for people to demand better stories, and posited that small-mindedness leads to bad writing:
I think that it’s important to recognize that art can be really offensive and still have a huge amount of value. But I also think that believing stupid, hateful things – more often than not – makes you a bad artist. As it cripples and stunts your mind and heart and spirit, it cripples and stunts the things that your mind and heart and spirit produce.
Brandon Bell, talking of the demands for more good queer stories, noted:
I’m certainly happy to see queer-themed Shakespearean works at Fantastique Unfettered.
Angela Korra’ti expressed a hope that people would not buy the book now that it has received more attention, and offfered a few alternatives for people who want good queer retellings of old stories:
So to all of you who never knew about this work, I’m a bit sorry to have brought it to your attention, and can only hope you will continue to not only not buy it, but will specifically not buy it because bigotry is not okay. To those of you who already knew about it and elected not to buy it on that basis, I thank you.
To counter its existence, I’d like to commend to your attention the Lethe Press anthology Time Well Bent, in which Catherine Lundoff has a story in which Shakespeare isn’t queer, but his sister Judith is–and so is his friend Kit Marlowe. Hayden Thorne has Arabesque, a dark m/m adaptation of Snow White. And I’ve mentioned this one already, but it’s worth mentioning again in a post whose theme is “adaptations of classic stories”: i.e., Ash by Malinda Lo.
Several people recommended Elizabeth Bear’s Spectrum Award winning Stratford Man duology. Warren Rochelle, one of the judges for the award, shared his thoughts about the books alongside some quotes from the official Spectrum Award writeup:
Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, the two volumes in Elizabeth Bear’s duology, “were far and away the work most deserving of our award for the year.” I was quite taken by this universe in which Shakespeare and his rival and teacher and sometime lover, Marlowe, move back and forth between the worlds of Elizabethan England and Faerie and even Hell, a universe in which “the worlds of a great writer can shape the world as a form of magic … {Y]ou’ll find yourself believing that this magic of words is more than a fantasy story.” All three worlds are masterfully done and I was more than willing to suspend disbelief. I was caught up in the ongoing crises, crises “that only a handful of individuals, including Shakespeare, can overcome . . . Both Shakespeare and Marlowe . . . must face their own demons, their own mortality, and their own desires if they are find immortality for their own work, and the two kingdoms they come to love.”
And, finally, Hal Duncan offered his own playfully modernized screenplay retelling of As You Like it, free of charge. You can read his explanation of how it came to be, and the first scene in this blog entry, and you can download the whole thing at this site.
That wraps things up for this harrowing monster of a blog post. As I said earlier, I hope that it will be a part of an extended open dialogue. I’d love to hear more from anyone who wants to share their thoughts about this, and I’m especially interested in ideas about how we can use this situation to make our community better and stronger. Please leave a comment here, talk to us on the google group, or email me directly at julia@juliarios.com.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #90: OA Podcast #11 September 7, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast, reviews , 8commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #90. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Today we’ve got the eleventh Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
This month our guests are Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond of The Writer and the Critic.
This episode has an explicit tag! You are warned! Unlike the last time we used an explicit tag, when Amal El-Mohtar said one swear word, and Mike Allen read one bit of story which referenced male anatomy, this explicit tag means serious business. We all use salty language and touch on mature content (by which I mean the sorts of things that are sure to titillate all of our inner twelve-year-olds). So. Keep that in mind before turning this on at work, or around your young kids or sensitive friends.
I’ve cut an hour’s worth of stuff from our original conversation, but this podcast episode still runs just shy of two hours. Because it’s a long one, and in case you don’t want to be spoiled for any of the stories we discuss, here are some time cues for you:
We have general interview chat until the 43 minute mark. At around 43 minutes in we begin to discuss Peter M. Ball’s Horn and Bleed (as recommended by Ian). At about 1:09, we begin to discuss Hal Duncan’s “The Behold of the Eye” (as recommended by me), and at about 1:26, we begin to discuss Kim Westwood’s “Nighship” (as recommended by Kirstyn).
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
Kirstyn and Ian’s Projects Mentioned in this Episode
*Madigan Mine is Kirstyn’s novel (which has won all the Aurealis and Chronos awards, and which is available on Kindle in the US). We didn’t get the chance to discuss the book, but if you’d like to hear Kirstyn speak more about it, you can listen to her interview on Galactichat.
*Last Short Story is the short story review project Ian’s taking part in.
*Ian wrote several stories for Big Finish Audio’s Doctor Who Short Trips series.
*Ian’s other podcast is Shooting the Poo.
*Kirstyn and Ian co-edited the first issue of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association.
*Bloodsongs was another magazine with which they both had some affiliation back in the day.
Writers/Projects/Pieces We Mentioned
*Peter M. Ball (Author of Horn and Bleed–e-books at Smashwords).
*Hal Duncan (author of “The Behold of the Eye”).
*Kim Westwood (author of “Nightship”).
*Felicity Dowker (guest on Writer and Critic Episode #4, Australian Horror Writer, and undeserving victim of Ian’s rumor-spreading impulse).
*Trent Jamieson (nice guy of Australian specfic).
*John Richards (part of the Boxcutters podcast team, and TV writer who created Outland, the series about a group of queer fans–he’ll be a guest on The Writer and the Critic in November).
*Tansy Rayner Roberts (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and writer of a trilogy, the first two books of which Kirstyn is hoarding unread until such time as the third one comes out).
*Alisa Krasnostein (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and the World Fantasy Award nominated person behind Twelfth Planet Press).
*Catherynne M. Valente (Writer, past Writer and Critic guest, and person who is not responsible for Ian’s guilt).
*Caitlín R. Kiernan (Author of The Red Tree, a book with queer content, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Kathe Koja (author of Under the Poppy, another queer content heavy story, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Rose Fox’s Genreville Post calling for honest reviews.
*Jennifer Pelland (author of some Nebula nominated stories, and person whose reading provided me with a safe place to hide during my first traumatic con experience).
*Nicole Kornher-Stace (whose stories, like Kim Westwood’s, are beautiful and hard to categorize).
*Wilde Stories ( 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011–the best gay stories collected each year by Steve Berman).
*Icarus (the magazine of gay speculative fiction)
*Poppy Z. Brite (author of many horror books with gay content, which Kirstyn’s ex used to imagine didn’t exist).
*Charles Tan and Cheryl Morgan (who Ian rightly called out as awesome specfic news resources).
*Mary Robinette Kowal (who put out her Hugo winning short story as an e-book with the first draft and commentary on the story’s evolution).
*Fran Drescher on Wikipedia.
*Coode Street Podcast (whose beginning we took for our ending).
If you have feedback, please leave a comment, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me directly at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #56: Make It Better November 19, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : events, links, news , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #56. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week brings us The International Transgender Day of Remembrance, and some more updates on the anti-bullying projects floating around the internet.
The 20th of November, 2010 is the twelfth annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day, people all over the world come together to remember people who were killed because of anti-transgender bias. If you are interested in attending one of these vigils, transgenderdor.org has a list of events and locations.
This brings us to a sticky point that’s come up recently on the Outer Alliance Google group. We’ve talked about the It Gets Better Project and the We Got Your Back Project before (here and here, respectively), both of which are projects intended to give hope to teens in rough situations. The problem is, for some people, it doesn’t get better. For too many people, being part of the LGBTQI spectrum means facing violence, verbal abuse, and despair. There’s a list of people being memorialized this year–people who were killed in the last twelve months because other people didn’t like the idea of transgender people existing–and it’s horribly long. It would be too long if it were one person, but it’s much worse than that. Faced with cold hard truths like that, some Outer Alliance members wonder how we can say It Gets Better? They worry that urging kids to wait out the rough times isn’t enough. And they’ve got a point. That’s why our next two items for this week explore other messages.
*Hal Duncan made a spectacularly sincere (and sweary) It Gets Better video. On the Google group, a lot of the positive reactions to this video commend Hal for acknowledging that 1) things really suck and being told to hang in there doesn’t always help a whole lot when you’re in the middle of that suck, and 2) the reason it can get better is not just because the world will change while we sit in quiet misery, but because we can make it better. By waiting, maybe, but also by refusing to accept things as they are. Click here to watch, but be advised that we’re not kidding about the swear quotient. It’s massive.
*The Make It Better Project encourages people to work toward fostering acceptance. They have suggestions for ways that teens and adults can take action to protect LGBTQI kids in school and out, including a YouTube campaign, and a letters to school principals campaign.
Thanks for reading. Join us again next Friday for more queer speculative fiction related goodness. We’d love to see more ideas for how to make things better, and more videos from Outer Alliance members. If you’ve got any of those, please let us know!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #51: We Got Your Back October 8, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : links, publications, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #51. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction.
We Got your Back:
Another excellent project to give hope and support to LGBTQI teens popped up this week. The We Got Your Back Project wants your written or video stories, whether you are part of the LGBTQI spectrum, or a supportive ally. Their site is full of great resources for people who are considering suicide, or people who know others in that position. If you submit something to this project, please let us know and we’ll link to your story.
New Releases:
Sandra McDonald’s story, “Seven Sexy Robot Cowboys” is up at Strange Horizons. It’s got queer content and there’s a link to a video of sexy ice-skating cowboys at the bottom in case sexy ice-skating cowboys are your thing.
Salon Futura’s latest issue features a podcast discussion in which Nicola Griffith, Hal Duncan, Cheryl Morgan, and Catherynne M. Valente talk about writing LGBTQ characters.
Lee Benoit’s novel, Moonspun is out as part of Loose Id’s special Coming Out Day 2010 collection.
Angelia Sparrow’s erotic steampunk romance novella, Sky Rat is available from Pink Petal Books.
JoSelle Vanderhooft announced the table of contents for an anthology she’s editing, Steam Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories. The book should arrive in January of 2011, but you can pre-order or request review copies now by contacting JoSelle.
Calls for Submissions:
Circlet Press has four anthologies open right now. Like an Iron Fist: Dystopian Erotica and Like a Moonrise (erotic coming of age stories about animal shapeshifters) both close on the 15th of October. Sense and Sensuality (paranormal Jane Austen inspired stories) is open until the 1st of November, and Like a Cunning Plan: Erotic Trickster Tales is open until the 15th of December.
The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Short Fiction Contest is open until the 1st of November. They’re looking for 5,000-7,000 word LGBT stories in all genres. There’s a $15 entry fee, and the top winners will receive $250 for first place and $50 for second and third place as well as publication in n anthology, which will be launched at the literary festival in May of 2011.
That’s all for this time. Join us again next week, and please share any news you might have (or links to your We Got Your Back Project contributions!) here in the comments, on the Outer Alliance google group, or via Twitter (mention either @omgjulia, or @outeralliance).
Hal Duncan @ BSCreview on the Outer Alliance October 1, 2009
Posted by Natania in : announcements, links, The Outer Alliance , add a commentSince the Outer Alliance came into existence last month, we’ve grown rather large rather fast, and we’ve already seen some surprising controversy and discussion. Outer Alliance member Hal Duncan recently wrote an article for BSCreview entitled “Notes from New Sodom: To the Water Fountains” which contains within a rather remarkable reflection on some of what we’ve been able to achieve in the last month and change. I was particularly taken with his reflections on the FFO issue and its aftermath.
But in place of another fucking FailFail, what we ended up with was not just a host of impassioned but level-headed criticism and statements of support, but tangible positive outcomes, with the rejected ad being displayed on scores of blogs and journals and free advertising space being offered by at least one major site. No shitstorm. No FailFail. This was a Win.
You might well agree; I sincerely hope you do. Or if you disagree, I hope it’s because you’re a bolshie motherfucker yourself, and think that shitstorms are exactly what’s called for in the face of prejudice. That’s fair enough. Still, even amongst those who agree, I’m kind of curious, to be honest, as to how much these sort of issues hit others in the gut and how much this sort of result just gives… a warm glow of affirmation that, yes, we can all be nice to each other and make the world a nicer place.
When I first sent out the call for members for the Outer Alliance, this is exactly the sort of justice I hoped we’d achieve. Did I think it would happen so swiftly and within our first few weeks of being? Well, no. But that it did just brought us together and affirmed that yes, this group is needed and is absolutely essential in the speculative writing community.
Thank you, Hal! And thank you all for being part of the Outer Alliance.