PC Encroachments On A Free Field

     I decided many years ago that Pub World – my collective term for the agents and publishers who make up the world of “traditional publishing” – would never be interested in my sort of pro-Christian, pro-freedom fiction. I had to rack up a few disappointments first, but as of 2000 I was firmly convinced that that avenue toward a readership was not for me. So in the late Naughties, when electronic publication matured and well organized channels for eBook retailing and distribution opened their digital doors, I decided to “go indie” and try that method. Despite very modest success, I’ve never looked back.

     Today, indie writers dominate the world of fiction. Support systems have emerged to help us with the various things at which we’re inept: editing and critiquing, formatting, cover design, marketing, and promotion. There is no barrier – apart from the struggles involved in getting noticed, that is – between the indie fiction writer and his readership. There’s no one who can prevent readers from finding him, and no one to tell him what he can and cannot do.

     Freedom! It’s wonderful. I wallow in it. But wait...what’s this? A new “support system” that tells the writer what he must and must not do? That provides censors for hire? What writer with a shred of self-regard would use such a “service?”

     As I happens, I encountered a few yesterday. Perfectly nice people, and no doubt perfectly competent at producing good fiction, several of whom have engaged “sensitivity readers:” persons who tell them what they must, may, and must not write about characters of certain varieties.

     Yep, you guessed it: they counsel their clients about how to depict characters who are “members of oppressed groups.” Negroes. Homosexuals and bisexuals. Amerinds. (I refuse to call them “native Americans.”) Transgenders. Single mothers. And so on. There’s probably one for any variation from the human norm you might care to name, though I doubt there’s one for white men and Christians.

     When the talk in the writers’ group I Zoom-attended turned to such things, it took all my self-control not to burst out with “You give someone else a veto over your characterization decisions? Are you BLEEP!ing serious?” But as I said, they were perfectly nice people, and I had no desire to start a huge row.

     If you were to make an effort, you’d notice all the following patterns in mass-media entertainment:

1. Interracial romances are commonplace;
2. Every series features at least one homosexual couple;
3. The villain is never a Negro, homosexual, or bisexual;
4. The high-tech star of the series is a Negro, a woman, or both;
5. When a man and a woman disagree, the woman is always right;
6. The favored villain-category is white men, especially Christians or Catholic priests.

     Uh, yeah. Right. Just like real life.

     That’s what comes of “sensitivity readers:” an industry that strives to impose the prejudices of noisy, supposedly oppressed identity groups on the creators, publishers, and retailers of fiction. It’s part of what going indie is supposed to make unnecessary.

     These days, the set of persons who prefer video entertainment is almost perfectly disjoint from the set of persons who’d rather read. Members of the former group, having been inundated with the “politically correct” notions enumerated above, have probably internalized the message; that is, they believe they’re seeing relatively authentic depictions of reality. Do readers have the same distorted view of American demographics as TV viewers? And must indies cater to such notions?

     The answer to that last question is rather obviously “No and hell no!” So why hang a “sensitivity reader” around your own neck, Mr. Indie Fiction Writer?

     Some indies probably retain hopes of being picked up by a Pub World publisher. It’s happened to a small number of writers who started out independent. Perhaps they’re all happy about it; I wouldn’t know. As I have no interest in Pub World publication, the fantasies and bigotries being promulgated and enforced by such publishers are of no concern to me. But as the saying goes, that’s just me.

     A personal vignette to close: I once had a critique partner upbraid me for naming a villain “Aaron Loesser.” She was furious about it: “Thou shalt not have a Jewish villain!” Yet nowhere in the tale was the character’s religion mentioned. In fact, he was a practitioner of black magic, which – if my admittedly tenuous grasp of Judaism is correct – is condemned quite as much by Jews as by Christians. But my critique partner was unconcerned with such trivia.

     That incident occurred many years ago. From it, I’d imagine my Gentle Readers can deduce my attitude toward the self-nominated censors who call themselves “sensitivity readers.” Of course, your decisions about such things are your own affair.