Writers, Always Question Your Motives
If you’re going to write a minority character (whether you are or not) it’s a good idea to question your motives.
Some of you may have seen that I made this post:
a few days ago, but it was late and I made my point(?) badly. Quite a few people misconstrued it as me asking why people would make a character with austism/mental illness/who is gay etc but that was only part of my question. To be more accurate:
“Why would you decide to base your character off of a specific label/condition/orientation etc if it isn’t something that applies to you?”
Something that bothers me is when people (who are allistic, in this example) say “I’m going to make this character autistic” without actually considering what they’re doing. Oftentimes writers will fall under the pressure to diversify their writing, and yes, I do mean pressure. I mean the pressure that comes from this site in particular, which urges people to make diverse stories or else they’re bad people. That rhetoric doesn’t lead to happy, well-rounded characters, but to writers deciding that they might win points by making their characters more diverse.
I’m going to go on a little tangent here to tell you about Icarus 1.0, who was a print-and-paper example of this. I set out thinking “I’m going to write a deaf character” and that is all she was. She basically just filled in a function of being a representative, but all she did was represent. That Icarus wasn’t a character, but a token symbol. She was flat and boring and did nothing but occasionally appear and have a signed language conversation with her brother. If I had read that in a book, I’d have been really upset.
“But Art, you’re deaf! How did you make that mistake?”. The answer is a combination of internalized prejudice and what I call the Heroism Fallacy.
So what is the “heroism fallacy?”
You may have heard of the White Saviour trope, wherein a white character becomes somehow a Wonderful Person for saving a character of colour, the point being that the white person becomes good because the person they saved is black. It’s total bull, but I see similar tropes happening over and over. There’s a deaf woman standing in front of a scary monster and the Hero saves her, and the emphasis is placed on the fact that they went back for a deaf person. I’ve also picked up on it with people going back for someone in a wheelchair, on crutches, or who is blind. It’s a bad trope, but I digress. I’m not talking about the trope here.
Heroic fallacy is when a writer believes that they’re being a good person because they’re writing a minority character.
These characters are very rarely good characters. They’re representatives instead of being outlets for positive representation, meaning that their portrayal is flat and too centred on the “othering” point. I say othering here because the writers doing this are mostly writers handling an issue that is other from themselves - a Hearing person writing a Deaf character, a White person writing someone of colour… that sort of other. My first design of Icarus shows that people who are in the position themselves can still fall prey, and that is where the issue lies.
We’re all victims of internalized prejudice. It’s the way that we were raised, and insiduous as it is, we don’t realise when our actions are being influenced by that prejudice. If you feel like you’re “doing a community a favour” or “putting in hard work to feel like a better person” to add diversity amongst your character casts, you’re being guided by the internal result of institutionalised prejudice. If you think that you’re doing something noble or good, you’re being influenced by the same. If you think that you’re making diverse characters to fill a checkbox, you’re doing the same.
Social constructs and our own views have very tenuous, complex relations. And yes, un-learning all of that bull in your head takes time, but you’re not a better person for doing so. You’re not even a good person. You’re just a decent person who educated themselves and did something that, while being right, should also be the status quo. There won’t be any celebrations or fanfares for your diverse characters - and if reading that makes you angry, you’re being led by privilege and internalized prejudice. If you’re respectful and good it isn’t an achievement. The achievement is in making the effort to listen, and to be sensitive, and allow yourself to be educated.
So when making a diverse or minority character, question your motives.
If you’re unsure, here’s a checklist:
Have you decided to do so because you think you’re doing something good for the community and will get praise for it?
Did you decide to do so because you feel obligated to represent a certain group?
Do you feel as if you’re fulfilling a duty or doing this “because you have to”?
Are you trying to tell a story that isn’t yours to tell? (I discuss what that means and my views on the matter here)
Does writing that character’s identity feel forced?
Are you only focusing on that one characteristic to build an identity for them?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you’re not ready to write these characters. That isn’t to say you never will, but you first need to
A) Learn why you’re thinking that way
B) Identify the prejudice behind it
C) Educate yourself and remember that educating yourself doesn’t just mean research. It means talking to real people who are part of the communities, deferring to their experiences and understanding the interplay between who they are as a person and the “othering” characteristic.
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