Monday, July 8, 2013

Being Unintentionally Offensive is Bad Writing

Carrie Cuinn put up a blog post today reviewing the last three months' of flash fictions from Nature Magazine's Futures feature. My story "An Alien Named Tim" was one of the stories reviewed. Carrie gave it a rating of 3 out of 5, saying it was "funny" and that she "Would have rated it higher except for the space hookers."
[Edited 7/9/13 to add] Carrie wrote to me on twitter saying: "By quoting only part of that sentence, you put the focus on 'women' instead of 'aliens', when it was the alien part I objected to. Either you didn't understand what I was saying, or misrepresented it--but the issues wasn't women, or even hookers in space. It was the specific trope of 'alien space hookers'/the racism of classic examples; your 'look I've learned' statement ignores that." I had not intended to misrepresent and apologize for doing so. The full sentence from the review was:
"Would have rated it higher except for the space hookers; suggesting one catches diseases from sex with alien women is based on the classic SF method of hiding racism by attaching negative stereotypes to 'aliens' instead."
The reference in question came near the beginning of the story in what was essentially a throwaway joke as the reference isn't in any way relevant to the rest of the action.
"We weren't armed; the trade routes had been peaceful for decades. The biggest risk to cargo haulers was catching something from one of the alien women at the waystations. A raygun wasn't much good against that sort of trouble."
I'm a bit embarrassed to say that my initial reaction was "But I didn't saaaaaaay they were hookers!" Which, if I'd been foolish enough to actually say that should've earned me a "not impressed" look and a "Really?" 'Cause... Yeah... That was pretty clearly the inference I was going for there. Fortunately, I didn't stop at that first reaction, and I also didn't linger around "But I didn't mean for it to be offensive" either.


Because whatever my intentions were, the fact was that it had bothered her and, presumably, some other readers as well. When she and I discussed the review on Twitter, she noted that her initial reaction had been harsher. What I took that to suggest was that when she read that paragraph in the story, she experienced at least a somewhat visceral negative reaction.

Which wasn't at all what I was going for in this story. It was meant to be an amusing story, not one that upset readers -- even if only momentarily. And it was completely needless. I could've written any of a thousand other jokes in that spot, most of which wouldn't have offended anyone. If I had done that, people who read the story as it was and liked it just fine would've still liked it just fine. And those who were troubled by the space hookers would have ended up being able to enjoy the story more.

If I'd come up with a different, non-offensive joke there, the net enjoyment of my story would have been increased and no one's enjoyment would've been notably decreased. This is no less an egregious error than getting the science blatantly wrong in a story; in fact, it's worse because it led to the possibility of people not only being pulled out of the story and frustrated but of feeling harmed.

There are going to be times when even a writer who is trying to take care to avoid slips like these errs. In fact, the rationale that Carrie noted for finding the space hookers offensive is one that wouldn't have occurred to me, no matter how many times I thought about it. I could see it once it had been pointed out to me, but I would have missed it on my own. (Though the combination of it having potentially-misogynistic connotations and also just being an old, worn idea in and of itself should have steered me away from that joke if I'd given it more thought.)

I've got more thoughts on this topic, particularly on the word "unintentionally", but I'll save those for a second post.

12 comments:

  1. See, now I think the joke was hilarious and it would be a shame without it in there.

    If you worry to much about what people could find offensive, you're pretty much limiting yourself from writing anything interesting, 'cause the smallest things will always offend someone...

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    1. Thanks for your comment.

      The thing as I see it is, with another equally-funny joke in there, no one would have missed the original joke's presence. (No, I haven't come up with said equally-funny joke yet, but I'm positive that I can do so.)

      I'd agree that there are good reasons to not restrict writing to only that which no one could find offensive. (That's part of what I plan to write about in my second post on this topic.) But here, I fell down on the job by not even thinking about the fact that it /could/ be offensive. So I couldn't even make a rational decision about whether or not to go ahead and stick with it or replace it.

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  2. Carrie and I had a discussion about space hookers, and I hadn't read the original story. Now that I have, I think I probably would have scanned the story without taking much notice of the line. For me, it wouldn't have added or taken away from the story. However, the fact that space hookers, or alien women near ports, or what have you, are throwaway punchlines that even I don't pay attention to is what bothers me. It might just be me, but these "throwaway" characters are the ones I want to know most about.

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    1. Thanks for your comment.

      That's an interesting point. One possible replacement joke I've considered (for any reprint submissions, collections, etc.) would be something relating to unhealthy food served at the waystations. (Space "truck stop" food...)

      But that food is presumably being prepared by some people and maybe they have interesting stories to tell too. The Crossed Genres anthology "Menial" aimed to touch on some of these characters that are usually confined to the background of other stories.

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  3. Okay, so I have a question -- possibly a stupid one. I read the excerpt and couldn't see how space hookers were offensive? Hookers exist, it's logical to think they will exist in space as well. The ONLY thing I could see that might be someone offensive is the fact that they're called alien "women" (where you could've gone for men and women hookers).

    So my question, I guess is, what's the explanation behind why it's offensive? I'm asking because I truly want to learn, to know this for myself. My eyes have been opened a lot in the past year on the subject of misogyny, and I want to know more. Hope this comment/question won't offend anyone. Can't learn without asking! :)

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    1. Hey there. I don't think it's a stupid question at all. I don't think acknowledging that prostitution might occur in space is inherently problematic. I think the bigger issue here was that it was used for a throwaway joke when any other joke could have just as easily been put in its place.

      Besides the specific rationale pointed on in Carrie's review, there was also a discussion on Twitter (which I suspect was provoked by my story) where she said: "The problem with writing future space whores is that it's based on so much sexism/othering that it's very difficult to do well, and almost always done for laughs, which doesn't unpack its past/problems." (The "othering" aspect which is what she touched on in her review wouldn't have been helped by making the space whores both male and female.)

      There was also the aspect of this particular usage where that was the only reference to female characters at all, which I can imagine could make the reference further irritating.

      Ultimately, I used something which many people have been made to do against their will and to their detriment (prostitution) to make an easy joke. In the scale of offensiveness, it's far from the worst thing I could have done. But it did hurt the story for some percentage of its readership and to no good purpose since a substitute joke could have been used.

      I hope that helps clarify what I took away from the review and the discussion.

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    2. Thanks for the explanation! It definitely does help. As others have said, I'm impressed with the way you handled this whole thing. :)

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    3. You're quite welcome and I'm glad you found it helpful.

      I can't say that I worked with it all "well" since the person who wrote the initial review was very unhappy with how things turned out. I feel bad about that; all I can do now is try to do better the next time.

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  4. Can I just say "thank you" for this? Not just for the post, but for not dismissing the reviewer's reasons for taking exception to that joke, and for taking the time to find out why it bothered her so much.

    Many other people would have ignored it, but you went back and spoke with her (reasonably) about it, and learned something more that you're sharing with us.

    Thanks for doing such a good job of explaining it in your post and in the comments. It's something I'll keep in mind, and hopefully be more aware of in my own writing. :-)

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    1. Thanks for your comment and "you're welcome." It's always nice to hear that something I've written felt useful to someone.

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  5. I can see that it being a throwaway joke it's not something that most people would readily notice. However I can completely see where the reviewer is coming from. I think what I get from the context of the quote, it throws me from establishing these characters and their journey to that point as mundane and lackluster. Space hookers, even crappy truck stop ones, are a point of excitement, and I think you're right, some joke about unhealthy food might do more to establishing their character even just that slight bit more.

    Regardless, I'm impressed with your response to the criticism and especially to your desire to improve your writing and learn from the criticism given to you. It will help you more than putting up a wall between you and your audience.

    Overall, fun story! Keep writing!

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Eric! I appreciate you stopping by.

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