It was just shy of two years ago that the science fiction writer Chuck Wendig was cut from the creative team of a Star Wars comic book because a bunch of “fans” decided they didn’t like his support of progressive causes and Marvel, displaying absolutely no backbone whatsoever, decided, as I wrote at the time, “it was easier to throw Chuck off the back of their sled than it would be to fight off the wolves.”
“This is really quite chilling,” he says of how it all went down. “And it breaks my heart. I am very sad, and worried for the country I live in, and the world, and for creative people all around.”
Of course, in the weeks since then, much worse has happened in the country we live in—for one thing, the bigots and, not to put too fine a point on it, the fascists have escalated from trying to get people who aren’t like them fired to trying to kill those people. And, with increasing frequency, succeeding.
It’s enough to make you wonder whether it’s worth it to keep putting ourselves out there, not just as writers but as human beings. But that’s how the fascists win—by convincing us that we don’t matter, that our voices don’t make a difference.
Well, here we are, nearly two years on, and the fascists have been getting bolder and bolder, and although we’ve kept the pressure up against them, we certainly haven’t managed to dislodge them from power—and, as our formal Election Day draws near, it becomes increasingly clear that they do not intend to be dislodged from power, and have zero qualms about breaking one norm after another in order to stay in power.
Which is more or less what I was afraid would happen: “[Fascists] know that in a world where all stories, all perspectives, are treated with equal consideration, their stories about the world aren’t compelling enough to attract more than a handful of people. A handful that can be moderately profitable, under the right circumstances, but the only way their visions of the world can ever compete against our visions of the world on a widescale basis is by making it so they don’t have to compete with us—by hobbling us or removing us from the playing field outright.”
And here we are, two years later, with Donald Trump declaring Howard Zinn to be an enemy of the state, a decade after his death, and demanding that our schools teach only the most celebratory version of the history of the United States possible. Among so many other things I could mention.
I’m going to take what might feel like a slight detour here, so we can touch upon one of the most prominent groups abetting the fascists, perhaps unwittingly but then again perhaps not, in their efforts to suppress opposing voices. I’m talking about TERFs, or trans-exclusionary “radical feminists,” the last two words of which I put in quotes because there’s nothing particularly radical nor, despite their claims, feminist about any of them.
The most famous TERF these days is the woman who wrote the Harry Potter novels, whose name I don’t particularly feel like investing with any more currency these days, but that’s just me, and you do what you want to do. Anyway, for the last several months, she’s been continually doubling down on her transphobia in public, and now it turns out that her latest crime novel includes the hoary plot device of a perverted serial killer who dresses up in women’s clothing. Congratulations, lady, your representations of your prejudice have made it all the way up to the 1980s. *eyeroll*
I read about one-third of her first crime novel when it came out, and it was mundane and boring, so it’s been absolutely no trouble at all for me to stop reading her. (Honestly, I had already consciously, deliberately stopped reading her a few years back, when she profoundly disrespected Native Americans by appropriating their folklore to expand the backstory of the Harry Potter universe.) And there’s no particular occasion for me to recommend the Harry Potter books to anyone these days, so that’s pretty much the end of it, as far as I’m concerned.
Andrew Liptak runs a great science fiction/fantasy newsletter on Substack, and he invited Lee Mandelo to put together a recommending reading list centered on transgender and non-binary authors, and their selection is fantastic. Each of the books on that list I’ve read I’ve liked, and that makes me excited to dive further into it. I would encourage you to do the same!
These are the sorts of voices that the author of the Harry Potter books things don’t deserve equal footing with her in our culture. These are the voices she’s been actively trying to discredit… oh, she’ll tell you that they should be free to express themselves, just like everybody else does, but she’ll also make it very clear that she considers them “less than” in comparison to her, and she’s very concerned when they come forward, expecting to be treated as equals, as fully human.
I just don’t have the patience for that any more. Not in my reading, not in my politics.
If you give fascists and TERFs an inch, they will attempt to seize a mile. So you can’t. And the longer you put off doing something about them, the harder it will be to get rid of them. Removing Donald Trump from the White House won’t end the scourge of white supremacy that’s been revived here in the United States. Devaluing the author of the Harry Potter books in “the marketplace of ideas” won’t put an end to transphobia.
What we do is flood the world with more, better stories and hope they take hold. I wish I had more specific, writerly advice for you about that today. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, if you can vote early, by mail or in person, I hope you’ll strongly consider it; if you plan on waiting until November 3, be safe, and don’t let them turn you away. As I say, handing Trump a decisive defeat won’t magically make things better, but it’s a good place to start.