Seems that these talks were never resolved
If itâs done well, you have to do it with some humor.
Like:
âYou need to have the right to work as much as men, for the same pay!â
âNo indeed! I need to be able to own my own property so I donât have to work at all!â
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The rise of anti-work might be problematic towards the feminist movementâs goals, I realize
Remember elitists didnât work, especially those with titles, unless they were eccentric, at certain points in time.
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Oh Absolutely me too, which is why this is something that I think of often (especially when I end up in that headspace where I end up thinking 'why am i even wasting my time writing stupid little stories on the internet) Because my main reason for writing is for representation, I personally find almost impossible to separate the two.
Thatâs true, Iâm not arguing that everything that a writer creates is aligned with their values/ or that they support it. But even your exampleâ depending on the way that it plays out, the situations that the characters find themselves in it may reveal something about your own views.
For example, I was working on a trilogy that featured a heavily sexist/patriarchal society. So much so that I ended up getting a lot of hate and people accusing me of supporting this kind of society and toxic masculinity. The male lead is a product of his environment in that he follows this status quo, but the main female in her upbringing has face conditioning that makes her the opposite. The result is that she often points out where his thinking is flawed etc.
So even though both characters are products of their own environments, the events that they face, and the result that they will inevitably reach to (reforming the sexist society) is really a result of MY biases/beliefs.
Iâm not sure if I really explained that very well. ( Then again, Iâm never sure if anything I say is a good explanation to be fair, I find it very difficult to articulate my thoughts.)
Yes this is what I mean! And when I think of stories that really âspoke toâ an audience, or that got turned into films etc, they are about big conflicts that often involve very real political matters that we would see in our very societies. E.g. Hunger games, Divergent, The handmaids tale etc.
And actually, I think when it comes to stories, this is what makes them powerful. We can relate to them because we see a reflection of something that we are familiar with in them.
If a story was really so far removed from what we know it is to be human, or tackling human issues then I donât think we would be so enchanted by them because there would be a divide in understanding that we would never be able to bridge.
Let me just add to this; I donât think that writing characters who might look like me/ or share my cultural background IS actually âpoliticalâ, but just by the very act of doing it I know there are people who think that it is.
Perhaps for that reason I cannot afford to separate art from politics, because just by existing in this space I am already political to many. I have had to fight my corner that what Iâm doing is valid, and important, and that it should exist. It is something I experience less so as a writer, but it is most definitely something that I experienced as an actor (people saying I shouldnât be cause in certain roles etc) and that is something that has stuck with me/ shaped the way that approach art now.
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No, I understood it.
Whatâs fun is that Iâm from the younger end of the age that remembers who Twisted Sister is. The lyrics here, specifically 9ne line, is me:
âYouâre all worthless and weakâ
Itâs not quite this, and I do a ton to reign this back in, but it sticks out whenever we talk about âthe patriarchyâ or anything with underdogs. What I mean by this is that the paradigm that any given group is shoring their belief in being better than anyone else in generally stems from " worthless and weak" behaviors, and not from strength. So, Iâll get calls for âthis is misogyny or misandryâ when my real thoughts on the group in control (often being accused) and the group that is name-calling (thinking they are really from a strong standpoint but clearly shackled in ways that those in power havenât even tried) is that every typical viewpoint has plain missed out on their platform and are crippling themselves.
This one isn't hidden at all, from Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023:
(âŚ)it would become the final home of all the USâ nuclear waste. No one could reach it to use the waste to harm others. The core was already presumably radioactive. But there was no way to account for what happened to the waste, which was all sorts of environmental health violations, illegal in any nation. The US got away with it, without much repercussions outside a halfhearted sanction via the UN.
(Break)
After the excitement wore off from having someone finally return from the sinkhole, people started jumping into the abyss. At first it was 1 or 2 a week, but soon it became a torrent of thrill seekers who were tired of life. Perhaps it was a bad policy, but anyone who fell into the hole was not labeled a death at all, just a missing person.
(break)
Still, no one officially blocked off the site until the day a worker was attacked by a known environmentalist, and both fell. It took the idea of someone who didnât want to fall to get a reaction out the jaded public. Vigils, protests, riots, all the things that dumping nuclear waste should have triggered finally raised itâs hoary head for the image of a man in a yellow reflective vest and a handlebar moustache. He was probably one of those men who got online to taunt environmentalists and vegans alike, so it was strange for the world to mourn him. He joined an ever-growing list of false martyrs: people who were the absolute worst, yet their death made the world change for the better.
Almost always, people are further back in camps trying to figure out why this rubs them the wrong way. It rubbed me the wrong way, first. Lol