License to talk
The new know-nothingism.
No one should be writing books on autism, which has to mean also that no one should be doing research on autism, who isn’t autistic? What sense does that make? Is it a rule for all such subjects? No writing or research about blindness if you’re not blind? No writing or research about cancer if you don’t have cancer? No writing or research about chronic depression if you’re not chronically depressed? No writing or research about alcoholism if you’re not an alcoholic?
I suppose this is an offshoot of the idea that white people should shut up about racism and listen to black people instead of doing all the talking. I think there’s some truth to that, but I don’t think it should be taken completely literally – I think white people shouldn’t talk over black people, and I think we should listen as much as possible, but I don’t think we should take a vow of silence on the subject.
Also, how is autism comparable to “ethnicity”? Answers on a postcard.
This is one of those cases where the initial impulse is good–you SHOULD be in a position to speak to certain issues before you do so. If you’ve experienced them yourself, that’s the best plug-in, but from there, you can go back to doing research and talking to people. But taken to the extreme these folks are, it would actually be a disaster for diversity in entertainment, since of course straight white men still dominate both publishing houses and movie/tv studios. Pushing those dudes to write better, rather than telling them not to write at all, is how you get more voices heard–the ones who turn to people outside their own experience to get insight will do a better job than the ones who assume that non-SWMs are just SWMs with brain damage (a phrase used in a Stephen King novel to describe how a lot of men view women whom they admire–“she thinks just like a man would, but with brain fever.”)
Urging publishers to recruit a wider stable of authors, to get better input on characterization is fine. Telling JKR she should consult with both clinical experts on autism, and autistic people, to help her write such a character, would be good advice. Telling her not to write such a character is just…. asinine.
And, of course, it ultimately leads to a universe where all stories are written as single-character authorial self-inserts. Which I suppose would be fine for the ultra-narcissists.
One of my pet peeves: experience is not expertise. All those alcoholics thinking they can counsel other alcoholics. All those therapy converts declaiming, “everyone needs therapy!”
My partner has had Type 1 diabetes for 51 years. Does that make him the expert in diabetes? Hardly.
I’m gay, so does that make me The Expert at homosexuality? Hardly. I’m at odds with just about everyone about alleged “causes” of homosexuality. No one looks for causes to heterosexuality. To me, it’s pretty straightforward: As the animal kingdom is rife with same sex pairings and sexual activities, we should look to Darwin and Wallace. Their discovery: variation is endemic to life. But don’t believe me, I’m just gay.
We’re slicing and dicing away the realms of human experienc we’re allowed to write about, narrowing thingsdown to smaller and smaller demographic groups. At this rate the only books that will be written will be eight billion autobiographies.
I agree that this probably comes from good intentions – male writers tend to write patronising female characters, and white writers have written some true nonsense for black characters. But if men can be gynaecologists and women can be urologists, the idea that being X is a prerequisite to be knowledgeable about X is bunk. This is just gatekeeping, and conflating experience with the ever-growing concept of identity.
As someone who is autistic, I’m probably the last person who should be writing about autism from the scientific point of view of how autistic people differ from those who aren’t autistic.
If you are a research scientist looking into autism, by all means ask me how I experience the world; in fact, please do! Don’t assume my experience and feelings from the fact that I probably don’t have the same facial expressions as the majority! But, just as men who believe themselves to be women are mistaken in thinking that they feel like women, simply because they don’t feel the way society tells them that men should feel, those of us who know what it’s like to be autistic ourselves do not have access to the minds of other autistic people and cannot possibly know how they feel and experience the world.
Has the original tweet been deleted? All I see at the top of the page is the quote with no context as to the book or the author.
Yep it’s been deleted.
And gay white Jewish men dominate theatre at all levels. So I guess we shouldn’t be seeing any plays about anyone not a gay white Jewish male.
As for the original post, I write about plants. I am not a plant. I have not asked plants about their experience of being plants…well, I may have, but I haven’t gotten any coherent answers.
I write a lot that hinges on my own experiences in my fiction, but I also have an active imagination. I wouldn’t write about Hindus without doing research into Hindus and at least talking with some of them. But if I wanted to write about Hindus, there should not be something stopping me, as long as I do that work and am accurate, not patronizing, and not demeaning to a culture.
But what tigger said. I suffer from major depression and from asthma. There are a lot of people who know more about both those conditions than I do, though they suffer from neither of them. If I were the correct person to be writing about them, why am I bothering to go to a doctor who doesn’t have the conditions I do? Other than the laws that require you have some licensing credentials to prescribe medicine, of course.