Dum-di-dum. No, I wasn't being called in as a moderator, but because I fairly frequently
yell at people lecture on things like 'politics in narratives' on a discord we're both on.
Anyway, so, I notice people here are talking about how 'this isn't RL, this is fictional'. While I could be an ass and just post the below comic in response, I won't.
Instead, I'll talk about how the themes and framing of a work
necessarily take a political stance. You cannot avoid your work commenting on sexism in some way, for example, if you have both male and female characters. Even if you do not intend to, the way you portray them will necessarily portray a certain stance. I had an interesting conversation with
@Maugan Ra about this, and about how in his quest Of Noble Purpose, he'd
completely accidentally portrayed Soul Society as incredibly egalitarian in regards to gender. He did not intend to do this, it didn't really cross his mind, but the work itself still took a stance on the matter.
This, incidentally, is why careful theming and framing is really important. It's not too far a stretch to accidentally write something that espouses some
genuinely awful philosophy, simply because you weren't paying attention and got stuck too far into something. The writer retains sole responsibility for what is portrayed in their work. I suppose the classic example here is Perfect Lionheart, who I don't think
sets out to write about awful people and to be horribly misogynistic, but it can't help but come across in his writing.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. It's fairly simple, really.
You cannot escape political stances in fiction.
Have you got any sort of romantic relationship? You've taken a stance on homosexuality. Just by using
humans as your characters, you are
necessarily taking stances on a number of things, from sexism to classism to all sorts of different ideologies. It's not something you can avoid doing. The excuse 'well it's fiction' isn't actually the cunning defense many people seem to think it is. That's not to say that you can't write about a sexist society without endorsing it, you absolutely can. You just need to be careful and mindful about how you portray things and your framing.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is an excellent example of this, I would recommend reading it.
As to those speaking of 'virtue signaling' and 'white knighting', please forgive me but I'm going to go on a brief tangent for a moment. In communication science, there's a hypothesis called the narrative paradigm - well, it's a theory, not a hypothesis. Anyway, in the narrative paradigm, we view humans as storytelling creatures. On a fundamental level, humans conceptualise the world through narratives - Christianity, socialism, the 9/11 conspiracy theories - all narratives.
A narrative is accepted based on two things, history and background - that is, what narratives the person in question has already internalised. Leading on from this belief, counter-intuitive though it may seem is the idea that it's not actually
possible to convince someone with a narrative that's entirely different to their own. To actually convince people, you have to create something that's acceptable by their narratives.
(Sick of the word narrative yet?)
Anyway, what I was leading up to is that it's basically impossible for the dreaded SJWs to actually convince someone who wasn't at least somewhat inclined to agree in the first place. But what they
can do is create media attention, create charities, protest and make a noise. This makes it look like they're
doing something - which they are! But, people who will never agree will still never agree; the greater benefit of this is that transpeople, homosexuals, those who feel like outcasts can feel like they have something to be proud of.
Like they have a home and someone who accepts them. Which, to social creatures like humanity, is far more important than most think.
This is without even getting into fun concepts like proliferation of ideas and narratives, which increase the chance of people who
do find those narratives acceptable will then internalise them and join their voices with ours.
To summarise - don't dismiss even minor things like pronouns or the ever-present 'TITS OR GTFO' as 'irrelevant'. Attitudes, cultures and communication
matter, even if you think they don't. "It's the internet" is neither an excuse, nor a defence.
/gets off soapbox
