it's transmisogynist of you to assume you can say something is or isn't "TERF rhetoric" when neither of you are transfem.
come at the problem from a different angle
Since the beginning of this project, I have made a point not to discuss my own life in depth. You have no way of knowing my gender, whether I am cisgender, transgender, genderfluid, or nonbinary. You also know almost nothing about the gender of Dean, the editor of this project. This assumption that both of us are cisgender is not harmless.
Remember Becky Abertalli? She is the author of Simon VS. The Homo sapiens Agenda, well I want to quote something she wrote:
"Having your book adapted to a film brings a lot of notoriety and attention, especially online, and itâs not always the fun kind. Unsurprisingly, there was quite a bit of discourse about my identity â how could there not be? Love, Simon was the first gay teen rom com to be released widely by a major film studio, and it was based on a book written by an allocishet woman. Yes, the filmâs director was openly gay. No, not everyone cared (frankly, a lot of people still donât know Love, Simon was based on a book). But in many online spaces, my straightness was a springboard for some â legitimately important â conversations about representation, authenticity, and ownership of stories. And for some people, my straightness was enough to boycott the film entirely.
Then Leah on the Offbeat came out about a month later, and the discourse exploded all over again. There were thinkpieces based on the premise that I, a straight woman, clearly knew nothing about being a bi girl. There were tweets and threads and blog posts, and just about every single one I came across mentioned my straightness. And when Leah debuted on the NYT list, authors I admired and respected tweeted their disappointment that this âfirstâ had been taken by a straight woman. Of course, Leah wasnât the first f/f YA book to hit the New York Times list. And maybe people were wrong about the other stuff too. But the attention and scrutiny were so overwhelming, and it all hurt so badly, I slammed the lid down on that box and forgot Iâd ever cracked it open.
At least I didnât remember I remembered.
I deleted the sexuality labels from my website. I declined to answer certain questions in interviews. Iâd get quietly, passionately indignant when people made assumptions about other authorsâ gender identities and sexualities. And Iâd feel uncomfortable, anxious, almost sick with nerves every time they discussed mine.
And holy shit, did people discuss. To me, it felt like there was never a break in the discourse, and it was often searingly personal. I was frequently mentioned by name, held up again and again as the quintessential example of allocishet inauthenticity. I was a straight woman writing shitty queer books for the straights, profiting off of communities I had no connection to.
Because the thing is, I called myself straight in a bunch of early interviews.
But labels change sometimes. Thatâs what everyone always says, right? Itâs okay if youâre not out. Itâs okay if youâre not ready. Itâs okay if you donât fully understand your identity yet. Thereâs no time limit, no age limit, no one right way to be queer.
And yet a whole lot of these very same people seemed to know with absolute certainty that I was allocishet. And the less certain I was, the more emphatically strangers felt the need to declare it. Apparently it was obvious from my writing. Simonâs fine, but it was clearly written by a het. You can just tell. Her books arenât really for queer people.
You know whatâs a mindfuck? Questioning your sexual identity in your thirties when every self-appointed literary expert on Twitter has to share their hot take on the matter. Imagine hundreds of people claiming to know every nuance of your sexuality just from reading your novels. Imagine trying to make space for your own uncertainty. Imagine if you had a Greek chorus of internet strangers propping up your imposter syndrome at every stage of the process.
The thing is, I really do believe in the value of critically discussing books, particularly when it comes to issues of representation. And I believe in the vital importance of Ownvoices stories. Most of the identities represented in my books are Ownvoices. But I donât think we, as a community, have ever given these discussions the care and nuance they deserve.
Consider the origin of the Ownvoices hashtag. It was created in 2015 by author Corinne Duyvis, with the purpose of highlighting stories written by authors who share the same marginalized identities as their characters. But Corinne has always emphasized caution when it comes to using Ownvoices to determine which authors can tell which stories. And sheâs been incredibly clear and emphatic about not weaponizing the term to pressure authors to disclose private aspects of their identities.
So why do we keep doing this? Why do we, again and again, cross the line between critiquing books and making assumptions about author identities? How are we so aware of invisible marginalization as a hypothetical concept, but so utterly incapable of making space for it in our community?
Let me be perfectly clear: this isnât how I wanted to come out. This doesnât feel good or empowering, or even particularly safe. Honestly, Iâm doing this because Iâve been scrutinized, subtweeted, mocked, lectured, and invalidated just about every single day for years, and Iâm exhausted. And if you think Iâm the only closeted or semi-closeted queer author feeling this pressure, you havenât been paying attention.
And Iâm one of the lucky ones! Iâm a financially independent adult. I canât be disowned. I come from a liberal family, I have an enormous network of queer friends and acquaintances, and my livelihood isnât even remotely at risk. Iâm hugely privileged in more ways than I can count. And this was still brutally hard for me. I canât even imagine what itâs like for other closeted writers, and how unwelcome they must feel in this community.
Even as I write this, Iâm bracing for the inevitable discourse â I could draft the twitter threads myself if I wanted to. But Iâd rather just make a few things really clear. First, this isnât an attempt to neutralize criticism of my books, and youâre certainly entitled to any reactions you might have had to their content. Second, Iâm not asking you to validate my decision to write Simon (or What If Itâs Us, or mlm books in general).
But if I can ask for something, itâs this: will you sit for a minute with the discomfort of knowing you may have been wrong about me? And if your immediate impulse is to scrutinize my personal life, my marriage, or my romantic history, can you try to check yourself?
Or how about this: can we all be a bit more careful when we engage in queer Ownvoices discourse? Can we remember that our carelessness in these discussions has caused real harm? And that the people weâre hurting rarely have my degree of privilege or industry power? Can we make space for those of us who are still discovering ourselves? Can we be a little more compassionate? Can we make this a little less awful for the next person?"
Hello, I am the next person. I am the author who isn't lucky enough to disclose every single one of their marginalizations on social media, and I deserve better than this.
If you have a problem with any of the points I made, feel free to share that, but you do not get to assign me an identity just so you can attack me for it.
