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What About Intersectionality and Female Friendships in YA?: Guest Post by Brandy Colbert

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To kick off the second week of “About the Girls” guest posts, Brandy Colbert is here to talk about friendship in YA. More specifically, she’s here to talk about how important it is to see diverse, intersectional friendships in YA between and among girls.

 

 

Brandy Colbert is the author of Pointe, which was named a best book of 2014 by Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, the Chicago Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Her second novel, Little & Lion, is forthcoming from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, and you can find her on Tumblr, Twitter, and brandycolbert.com. 
 
 
 
 
 
When I was in first grade, I was part of a trio of friends that included two girls we’ll call S and K. They were both small and white and blond, and K was born with two fingers on one of her hands. We’d all hold hands as we walked around the school and playground, as little kids do, but I remember the first time I noticed K’s hand. I went home that day and asked my parents about it. At the time, she was one of the first people I’d ever met with a physical disability, and especially who happened to be my age. Without missing a beat, they calmly informed me that K’s hand didn’t define her, that we’re all different in some way, and to never believe I’m better than (or not as good as) anyone else because of those differences.

That talk has stuck with me nearly thirty years later, and it was incredibly timely in my childhood. The next year our family moved across town where as a second-grader, I was one of only a handful of black kids in my entire elementary school. I grew up in a town that was predominantly white and only 3 percent black, but the school I’d attended with K and S was quite racially diverse, all things considered. Suddenly I knew what it was like to be the one who was “different.”

I lost track of K over the years, but I’ve always wondered if she dealt with similar issues I had growing up: Namely, always having to explain myself. For me, it was: Why does your hair look/feel/stick out like that? Can you actually get sunburned? Would I be able to see it if you blushed? And then there were the not-so-subtle looks (and sometimes pointed questions) during the slavery discussions in history class. And let’s not forget the girl who, at my part-time job, pulled me aside to ask if both of my parents were black…and only admitted she broached the topic because of the way I speak after I prompted her.

Despite how exhausting and demoralizing it can be to not only have to explain your differences and feel like the spokesperson for black America before the age of ten, part of me appreciates those questions, looking back. Plenty were mean-spirited, meant only to remind me of how I’d never truly fit in among my peers. But some were thoughtful; some people truly wanted to learn, and if I could help them understand why and how a person different than them might go through a separate set of challenges and experiences in their lives, it was worth my time and effort.

Because of where I grew up, the majority of my friends were white until I moved away from southwest Missouri. Which meant these conversations took place anywhere and any time, but most often with my white female friends. I spent the most time with them, after all—at the dance studio after school and on weekends, at sleepovers, on the dance team in high school, talking on the phone for hours upon hours. I still have several white women friends as an adult, and I was surprised I didn’t know the term intersectional feminism until embarrassingly recently. I can’t remember where I first heard it, but social media came into play. I knew that I didn’t always feel like the feminism my white friends talked about and promoted was totally inclusive, but to hear there was an actual term for it felt so validating. What I’d been thinking and going through all these years wasn’t in my head.

The concept of intersectional feminism has been around and discussed for many decades, but law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a black woman, is credited as being the first person to coin the term in 1989, which is loosely defined as recognizing that women experience different layers of oppression, including race, class, gender, ethnicity, and ability.

So, in other words, the reasons my white female friends didn’t seem to quite get what I was going through was because most of their experiences were colored through the experience of being a white woman. Full stop. Race and ethnicity weren’t an issue for them, and typically class and ability weren’t, either.

I remember sitting in my therapist’s office in Chicago several years ago when she asked, “How do you define yourself?” I looked at her, confused, and she said, “If someone asked you to define all the things you are, what would you say and in what order?” It didn’t take long for me to reply: “Black. Woman. Writer.” To me, I am all of those equally, but I know society doesn’t always see or treat me that way.

My childhood friends and I were avid readers, trading paperbacks and poring over the Scholastic catalog together. Now, even in 2015, children’s publishing has a diversity problem. But this was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and so nearly 100 percent of the books I read were about white, straight, able-bodied kids. I didn’t think to question it; I yearned to read about kids who looked like me, but if I hadn’t read the books that were out there, I wouldn’t have read anything at all. I started writing fiction when I was seven years old, and even my own books at the time featured exclusively white characters because I just assumed people didn’t publish contemporary books about black kids.

One thing I’d like to see more of in children’s literature—particularly young adult fiction—is friendships between girls from different backgrounds. I want to see white, middle-class girls who have friends other than other white, middle-class girls. I want books where marginalized people aren’t presented as token best friends or love interests, but rather fully fleshed-out characters with their own stories and hopes and desires. I want to see books that show microaggressions and how those can build up and eat away at a person over time, how telling someone “It’s just a joke” isn’t helpful when those “jokes” are thrown at them day in and day out. I want to see characters who are black and Latina and Native American and Asian and biracial and white have friends with disabilities, and lesbian and bisexual and transgender friends. I want to see different combinations of those friendships and I’d especially like to see books where girls fit into more than one of these categories themselves.

I want to see these girls supporting and understanding each other’s differences—or listening and trying to understand if they don’t already. Because while I may have felt the time and effort of explaining myself to people in the past was worth it, all that explaining is exhausting the older you get. You still feel like the spokesperson for your group, even if you know you’re relaying a singular experience. And besides that, as an adult, you wonder why other adults aren’t seeking out other sources to educate themselves. Books are a wonderful way into different lives and worlds, so I can’t stress enough how much we need to see more novels published that focus on marginalized characters.

But while I was thinking of this magical wish list, it occurred to me that perhaps I missed an opportunity to delve into intersectional feminism in my own book.

In Pointe, the protagonist, Theo, is black American and grows up in a place not unlike my own hometown, in that it is suburban and almost entirely white. She’s known Ruthie, one of her oldest and closest friends at her dance studio, since they were toddlers, and they are both on the professional ballet track, ready to audition for summer intensives. Throughout the book, Theo and Ruthie speak honestly about their lives, but looking back, I wonder if their friendship could have been even more realistic if I’d included a conversation about the struggles of black ballet dancers. Theo herself acknowledges how difficult the journey could be for her, what with the lack of black dancers in the professional ballet world. And on some level, she is aware that Ruthie likely stands a greater chance of success than her—even though they are equally talented—simply based on her skin color. Would the book have been improved with a scene where they acknowledged these differences? I don’t know. Writers are always thinking, and I don’t believe we’re necessarily ready to write about what we’re currently pondering. But I’d like to think I’ll be more conscious of portraying certain experiences from here on out, and work to include even more examples that are authentic to my main characters’ worlds.

Naturally this whole topic got me thinking about what’s already out there in YA fiction in terms of portraying female best friends with different backgrounds. Not surprisingly, I came up short in what I’ve read that fits the bill. Although, how I loved the friendship in Sarah McCarry’s gorgeous novel Dirty Wings, between Maia, who’s Vietnamese and adopted by a white family, and her best friend, Cass, who is white. In Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You, Emi, the protagonist, is a lesbian; I can’t recall if the sexuality of her best friend, Charlotte, was ever mentioned, and don’t want to assume that she is straight because of that. But this novel was one of the first that I’d read with a lesbian protagonist in which her sexuality was not an issue, yet we still saw Emi’s romantic struggles with girls, and the easy way she was able to confide in Charlotte.

One of the most wonderfully diverse books I’ve read in some time is Maurene Goo’s Since You Asked…, whose main character, Holly, is of Korean-American descent, and whose best girl friends, Elizabeth and Carrie, are Persian and white. Not only was it so refreshing to read about how they celebrate and share in the varying aspects of their cultures, but Goo managed to effortlessly encapsulate the racially and ethnically blended lives of Southern California teens.

I’m very much looking forward to Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee, which was just released in March and features a Chinese girl and a black girl making their way West on the Oregon Trail. And when I asked my lovely host Kelly for more books I might have missed, she suggested Swati Avasthi’s Chasing Shadows and Hannah Moskowitz’s Not Otherwise Specified—neither of which I’ve yet read, but both have been on my radar.

The truth is, it’s really damn hard to be a girl in this world, and I’m grateful for the ones who’ve taken the time to understand me, who listen when I speak about challenges they may never face. I’m thankful to have met someone so early in life, my old friend K, who helped me recognize the struggles someone different from me is dealing with. I’m here for girls of all kind, and I hope young adult fiction starts to reflect more of that idea in the future.

Do you have more suggestions for books that fit my wish list? Leave them in the comments or tweet me @brandycolbert!
 
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Pointe is available now.

Abortion, Girls, Choice, and Agency: Guest Post by Tess Sharpe

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Today’s guest post comes from author Tess Sharpe and it takes a keen look at the messages and insights YA books that explore abortion offer. Where it’s been said abortion is the last taboo of YA fiction, perhaps that’s not really the case. Rather, there’s still a lot of room for exploration.
Born in a backwoods cabin to a pair of punk rockers, Tess Sharpe grew up in rural northern California. She is the author of FAR FROM YOU and SOMEWHERE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG (out Fall 2016). She lives, writes, and bakes near the Oregon border.

When I was a little girl, my father volunteered as an escort at our local abortion clinic. “Escort” is the nice way of saying “bodyguard” or “human shield.” They lead the women into the clinic, putting their bodies between the women and the protestors, just in case. But they can’t block out the garish signs, the accusations of baby killer and whore or the God loves yous. They can’t hide the women from the protestors—who might be friends, family members, neighbors, or fellow church members. 

In the ’90s (and now), my conservative small town was one of the few places you could get an abortion, and escorting—like working or volunteering there—was (and still is) dangerous work. One day, there was a knock at our door, and one of the protestors was standing there on our porch, wanting to “invite” my father and our family to church. The message was clear: we know where you live. 

There was reason to fear: By the time I was a teenager, the clinic had been firebombed five times, and has been destroyed, totally flattened, twice. 

When I was in college, the fear got personal: My only sister now ran that clinic, and would do so for a decade. I once asked her to carry pepper spray. She just shrugged and said pepper spray wasn’t going to help her against a bomb or bullets. 

Fighting for reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy runs in the veins of all the women in my family. Which is why, when Kelly asked me to write a post for Women’s History Month, I latched onto the idea of exploring YA’s abortion narratives. I put out a call for titles and talked with several clinic workers who have heard thousands of women’s stories to learn what they consider the most important factors in an abortion narrative. Armed with this knowledge, I was ready to read and identify any themes or patterns I found—as well as enjoy a bunch of great books. 

Not a lot of YA books mention abortion, and even fewer feature characters who choose to have an abortion or point-of-view characters having an abortion. I compiled a list of around 20 titles, and got my hands on about 15 of them to read. 

After my talk with the clinic workers, I identified three important factors:

Economics: How the books address the financial burden of abortion—from the cost of the actual procedure (around $500, on average) to the many associated costs of actually getting to a clinic—often not an easy feat, especially if you’re a girl or woman living in the U.S., where many states have recently closed down and severely restricted clinic operations under the false pretext of “making them more safe.” 

Because most teenagers aren’t working full-time and aren’t mothers already, I removed the job factor as well as the childcare factor from my analysis. But in reality, with the draconian laws that have been passed, especially in the last few years, many women must travel hundreds of miles, take days off work (often risking their job), and sleep in their car if they can’t afford a motel—if they have a car—all of this just to get a legal medical procedure. Many of these women are already mothers, so child-care is yet another crucial factor.

Accessibility: How accessible is the abortion? Does the character need to travel? Does she need to hide what she’s doing from authority figures? Does she need help to get to the clinic/location where the abortion takes place? Who transports her to and from the abortion provider? 

Support: Who is helping the character getting the abortion? Her boyfriend? Her best friend? Parents? Aunt? (Aunts, it turns out, are kind of big in abortion books. When I discussed this with the clinic workers, they agreed. Often, teen girls will be accompanied by their aunts, best friends, or older sisters). 

What kind of support is being offered? Positive or reluctant? Parental? Monetary? Emotional? 

Overwhelmingly, the books I read did not address the economics of abortion at all: The cost is never mentioned in most, and isn’t a genuine problem in most that do bring it up. For example, in GINGERBREAD, Cyd reconnects with her estranged father to get the money to pay for her abortion, unwilling to tell her mother about it. He’s an affluent man who is easily able to afford it. 

Accessibility is also not deeply discussed or even touched upon in most of the books. In most contemporary YA abortion narratives, it’s assumed that there’s an abortion clinic in town. I did not come across any books that included an actual scene in a clinic, though, through poetry and a few flashbacks, we see hints in AND WE STAY. Emily, the main character, also does travel to Boston with her parents to stay at her aunt’s to get the abortion there, but there are no scenes of the procedure itself—only before and after.

 IN TROUBLE is the exception when it comes to accessibility. It goes deeply into the subject of abortion access, and that’s because it’s set pre–Roe vs. Wade, in the world of back alley abortions. Here, accessibility is discussed constantly because abortion was still illegal at that time. There is talk of women throwing themselves downstairs (something the character tries in desperation) and of downing 7-Up and vodka in a bid to miscarry. There is talk of neighbors who “know someone” who can help a girl “in trouble.” It examines in depth the coded language women had to use with doctors who were willing to risk their licenses to perform abortions. It also describes pregnant women who fake mental illness, hoping to be deemed unfit so that the hospital is forced to give them an abortion. 

Support is an interesting aspect of YA abortion narratives. Almost always, the teenagers tell one or both of their parents, often quite soon after finding out the pregnancy. Interestingly, I found several books featuring divorced parents in which the teen confesses to one parent—who decides not to inform the co-parent. 

Most of the books have a “confession” scene in which the parents are told about the pregnancy. Almost always, the parents react with initial anger but then accept the situation, moving straight to support. Even in AND WE STAY, where Emily’s parents come off as cold in many ways, they immediately get to work on fixing the “problem.” 

In these books, parental awareness of the pregnancy ties directly into the lack of consideration regarding the economics of abortion as well as problems with transportation: If the parents know, it’s assumed they’re paying for it (and providing transport to the clinic), so the cost is never mentioned. 

The difficulties that many girls and women face in reality are rarely addressed in the fictional world of YA abortion narratives. Lying to one’s parents, going without support, finding the money, finding the transportation, and finding the time (many states have waiting periods, and often clinics only perform abortions on one day of the week). 

With the exception of a few, most of the books that have a character getting an abortion feature white, privileged, “good girls”—affluent girls who were virgins and are going to college… girls who aren’t “that kind of girl.” This pattern avoids the stigma and myth of the “slut who uses abortion as birth control” perpetuated by the anti-choice movement, as well as the lit community’s own problem with judging girl characters much more harshly than boys. 

Interested to see how readers perceive characters who had abortions, I read through many positive and negative reviews of the books. Over and over, in both positive and negative comments, the boys who had impregnated the girls were called “sweet” and their pain and heartbreak over the girl’s choice was lauded and focused on. The girls, however, were judged as “cold” and “selfish” and “bitches” for acting, like, well, young women in an incredibly difficult situation. I must admit, it pained me to see these judgments about fictional characters, mostly because I know that much worse is assumed about real girls making the same choice. 

The most prevalent theme I found in most of the books was this: Abortion ruins romantic relationships and leaves you alone. While it’s true that many young couples facing an unplanned pregnancy break up, many others stay together. In I KNOW IT’S OVER, which is fascinating in its exploration of male privilege by way of an abortion narrative, we’re treated to the possible new romance of the boy narrator at the end of the book. This is a boy who is so steeped in his male privilege that he repeatedly reveals his ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy to his friends without her permission. Despite some really questionable treatment of his ex-girlfriend, he gets a potential new romance and keeps his ex-girlfriend as a friend. She, however, does not find a new romance. At the end of the book, she is alone, existing in the periphery of his bright and now unburdened future.

Many feelings come up before, during and after an abortion. But relief is an emotion that is not explored very deeply in the YA abortion narrative. Grief, loneliness, and romantic isolation of girls specifically seems to be the prescription. And although terminating an unplanned pregnancy can be isolating, when there are so few abortion narratives to draw from and even fewer with a point-of-view character who undergoes the procedure, the repeated message of isolation and romantic brokenness can be limiting—especially when 11% of women in the U.S. who get abortions are teenagers, and 21% of all pregnancies in the country end in abortion. 

IN TROUBLE is the only book I read that features another woman sharing her own abortion story with the character who is considering an abortion. It’s a beautiful moment of bonding, and I found myself wishing more of these books had more scenes like this to offset the message of isolation that many perpetuate. 

The girls and women who get abortions are our sisters, our daughters, our friends, our mothers, our readers. It is the stigma of abortion that prevents us from sharing these stories with our fellow women and the world, and it is that same stigma that might make us cautious, as writers, to approach the subject in ways that diverge from the acceptable abortion narrative: the good, unpromiscuous girl whose birth control failed or whose boyfriend convinced her that just this one time without a condom would be OK. This girl usually tells one or both of parents about her pregnancy. She agonizes over her decision. She has a bright future that must be saved through abortion. That kind of abortion is acceptable. It makes sense. She won’t make that mistake again. She learns. She’ll be better at being a good girl in the future. 

But a girl who never even tried to use birth control? Who wasn’t in love or a virgin? Who doesn’t tell her parents? Who slept around? Who might not know who the father is? Who doesn’t agonize over her choice? Who doesn’t have a bright future? Who has to wait until the last minute because she doesn’t have the money? Who hitches a ride to the abortion clinic because she has no other option? Who is getting her second, her third, her fourth abortion? Her story remains largely untold—it isn’t acceptable. This girl, she makes bad decisions. She might not learn a lesson. Her story may be complicated, but it deserves to be told just as widely and boldly. 

YA titles considered in this piece:

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE by Jennifer Mathieu
GINGERBREAD by Rachel Cohn
UNWIND by Neal Shusterman
MY LIFE AS A RHOMBUS by Varian Johnson
GABI A GIRL IN PIECES by Isabel Quintero
EVERY LITTLE THING IN THE WORLD by Nina de Gramont
WHISPER OF DEATH by Christopher Pike
THINGS I CAN’T FORGET by Miranda Kenneally
TENDER MORSELS by Margo Lanagan
LIKE SISTERS ON THE HOMEFRONT by Rita Williams-Garcia
IN TROUBLE by Ellen Levine
LOVE AND HAIGHT by  Susan Carlton
BORROWED LIGHT by Anna Feinberg
NEWES FROM THE DEAD by Mary Hooper
SMALL TOWN SINNERS by Melissa Walker
AND WE STAY by Jenny Hubbard
I KNOW IT’S NOT OVER by C. K. Kelly Martin
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Far From You is available now.

24 Thoughts on Sexism, Feminism, YA, Reading, and The Publishing Industry

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This requires no more introduction than saying it’s a handful of thoughts worth considering and working through after the last week.

1. My feminism isn’t about making you comfortable.

As a feminist, I am not obligated to make you comfortable. As a feminist, what I owe is honesty, integrity, and truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Not liking my feminism is your problem, not mine.

2. Being part of an oppressed class means using subversive means.

Having a conversation in a calm, collective, “professional” manner depends entirely on how we define calm, collective, and “professional.” Those definitions are made through those in positions of power and privilege. And when the powerful class doesn’t want a critical lens turned on them, they will deny the oppressed class those calm, collective, “professional” tools.

So you do things in the way you need to to achieve a desired effect. Satire. Humor. Sarcasm. Protesting.

Those who don’t want to be criticized and don’t want to face the truth won’t listen to you anyway, so you do what you can, how you can, in order for everyone else to hear and understand.

3. Means, methods, tools, and places for criticism vary. 

You can’t use the same critical tools in every situation. Your methods depend entirely upon your goal and on the subject and situation at hand. When talking about an issue of sexism, if talking about the texts at hand won’t do the job, then you pick up the next tool available to you. This includes public commentary and interviews.

Sometimes a blog post is effective. Sometimes Twitter is effective. Sometimes Tumblr. Sometimes the best tool isn’t online at all but in an interview in person. On a panel discussion. During a Q&A.

If one tool doesn’t work, you pick up another.

4. White male allies need to step back. 

Quit patting yourself on the back for “empathy,” “niceness,” or “feminism,” especially if you’re a “nice, empathetic, feminist white guy.”

Use your platforms and your privilege to amplify the voices of the oppressed. You don’t need to interpret it through your perspective. Let others have your stage for a bit and listen.

As Eric Mortenson put so well — and this is hands down one of the best things I read this week: “If you’re really on women’s side, you don’t need to tell them. They’ll know.”

5. We love amplifying the white male ally voice.

Take a hard look at whose voices you’re relating to and sharing. If it looks like a sea of white men, reassess.

Watch who you’re crediting when you’re crediting an internet “kerfluffle.” Watch who you’re crediting when you’re crediting a discussion of sexism in publishing.

Bet it’s not the same people getting credit.

6. When you speak in generalities, people insist on examples. When you provide examples, you’re called a bully. 

When you talk about institutional sexism in a broad sense, people want explicit examples. But when you provide explicit examples, you’re a bully for doing the very thing you were told you needed to do in order to prove your arguments legitimate.

7. “Nice” doesn’t mean above criticism.

Plenty of nice people screw up every day. Plenty of nice people have good intentions.

Your “niceness” doesn’t mean you’re above being critiqued or above being called out for a thing you did that’s not good. Your “niceness” doesn’t absolve you from responsibility. Your “niceness” has zero bearing on what you create and the art or thought you put out in the world.

8. Art and artist are not one in the same. It is HARD to separate art from artists, as well as art from personal taste.

We are complex, challenging creatures. We don’t always know what we’re doing when we’re doing it. We don’t always know what we’ve created until it’s outside of ourselves. Let’s be generous enough to allow artists to live separately from the art they’ve created.

Art and artist are also separate from personal taste. You may find someone’s art distasteful; I may find it enjoyable. That is not a reflection upon the artist or his talent.

9. Girls don’t get points for experimenting. They have to get it right the whole way through. Men are right when they try, even if they fail.

“Trying” to be better isn’t the same as being better. Especially in a world where women can never be right and are never getting better.

“Trying” doesn’t pass for women.

10. We insist we love critics and criticism until the heat is on.

Back in the day, artists used to critique one another and did so harshly. There wasn’t fear that saying something critical about another artist’s work meant doom for your own career.

Now that we rely on outside critics more often than not, in the form of trade reviews and yes, blog reviews, we constantly talk about the important role those criticisms play. Those who take this seriously do so because they care deeply about the art and they care deeply about representation, voice, accuracy, and a whole host of other things.

But as soon as critics start to actually criticize art, suddenly, they’re out for blood. They’re the enemies. They have a vendetta.

11. Criticism isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t fun.

It would be worthwhile to praise those critics who work with the heat is on high as much as it’s worthwhile to continually pat those on the back who praise things generously, with less criticism.

There are people who are absolutely, positively dedicated to change and fair representation. They put their criticisms out there every day in hopes of sparking change.

It’s not easy.

It’s NECESSARY.

It makes us BETTER.

12. You don’t get to determine whether someone’s concerns about sexism, or any other -ism, is correct or incorrect.

Just because it isn’t sexist to you doesn’t mean it’s not sexist to those who are speaking up about it, as well as the legions who are too scared to speak up or don’t have the means to speak up.

13. Nothing is either/or, but/and. Everything is a spectrum. Everything is complex.

Calling out a weakness in an author’s work — or a series of work — doesn’t mean that the rest of the work is done poorly. Badly drawn female characters are not an indictment against how the boys are written.

Suggesting that girls should be fully developed characters doesn’t take away from boys being fully developed or being the absolute center of the story. It’s not saying the books are bad.

It means readers want these stories, where both boys and girls are fully developed.

14. Sometimes people who are “outsiders” have to speak up because insiders are too close to the source.

Outsiders are reading the criticism. They offer a perspective that those too close to the art could never offer without bias.

Critics put their work out into the world for outsiders, not insiders.

It’s your job to help your friends and colleagues. It’s not mine.

15. Being called out sucks. Learn and do better.

We are all problematic. We are not without fault. And when you’re called out on something, it sucks, especially if you were trying everything to not be wrong. Sometimes you still are.

I am not above being called out. You are not above being called out. No one is.

Learn from your mistakes. Listen to those who are offering you insight. Then DO better. When you’re given the chance to learn from your mistakes, take it.

It takes privilege to leave the conversation before it’s over. And certainly, when you decide you’re exiting a conversation, rather than acknowledging it’s even happening — even with a simple “I am busy and can’t talk about this right now but will soon” — you’re not listening.

Listening means sticking around for the hard parts.

16. There aren’t fair levels of scaffolding in this industry. Be aware of yours and what others are.

Critics don’t usually have agents, editors, publicists, publishing houses or any other level of scaffolding behind them. There aren’t other people to step in and do damage control or offer up insight into process.

If there are people on your side with a financial stake in your career when you go up to bat for something, are selling a product, or creating art, you’re damn lucky.

17. You don’t get to invoke someone’s personal life as an excuse or value judgment. That’s theirs and theirs alone.

You aren’t empathetic or understanding when you invoke my mental illness as part of your “being understanding” of what I may be going through when I speak out. You also aren’t entitled to bring someone else’s personal life into the explanation for their creative weaknesses.

Those things are personal and the individual owning them is the only person who gets to invoke them in discussion, even if they’ve been open about it.

18. If you express criticism directly at someone, you’re a bully. If you don’t, you’re subtweeting/talking about them behind their backs.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. See #6. See #12.

19. Criticism isn’t bullying. 

The purest definition of bullying is this: when a person with superior strength or influence uses their their influence to force a person to do what s/he wants.

Speaking up about sexism isn’t bullying.

Being told you should die and never come back or else you’ll be given a reason never to come back is bullying.

20. No one likes being called a cunt, a whore, a bitch, a pain in the ass, and no one deserves to be told they should be given something to be scared about.

Women don’t often engage in conversation about sexism because they are fun and the rewards are high.

21. People go to the ends of the Earth to defend a nice guy. People don’t defend women in the same way.

See: #KeepYAKind, #GrasshopperGate, #AndrewSmith, change your avatars to a Smith cover, buy all of the Smith books, give away all of the Smith books.

The only reason I (and others, all female) knew people cared about me or defended my right to say what I did and how I did it was because I was reached out to.

Privately.

Those who agree with you most are the ones with the most to lose if they speak up. Speaking up without fear of career consequence is a privilege I have that many others in this industry — those who experience the DIRECT CONSEQUENCES OF SEXISM IN THIS INDUSTRY THIS IS DIRECTED TOWARD IN THE FIRST PLACE — do not.

Because that’s how institutionalized sexism and racism work.

22. True feminism isn’t about ideation. It’s about action.


If you don’t put your money where your mouth is, you’re not working toward a solution to the problem. You’re hot air.

You can’t just believe in change. You have to be an active part of doing something about it.

And it’s not only about women. It’s about ALL classes of people that face oppression.

I assure you straight white males are not part of the oppressed. Even if they think they are.

23. These conversations are born from hurt

No one decides overnight to highlight direct examples of sexism.

They are the result of people being hurt over a long time.

24. I have the right to speak. 

The risk of speaking up for women, as a woman, is great and often ends in threats of violence and death. When I told another woman I don’t know how some feminists do this every single day, she said, “If you stay, as a woman in this fight, you end up steel whether you want to or not.”

For further reading:

  • Phoebe North on Why

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews

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I spend a good amount of time on Goodreads. I’ve built up a solid group of friends whose reviews I see first beneath a book, and they generally give me a good idea of whether that book is worth my time.

But sometimes I venture lower, to the reviews from people I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I’ll view only the one star reviews for a book I loved. But usually, it’s out of simple curiosity. I want different perspectives. I want to know what good things people see in a book I thought was terrible. I want to be reminded that a book I love isn’t for everyone, and I want to see why. Most of these reviews actually have good points and help to broaden my own perspective. 

Inevitably, though, I’ll read a review that will irritate me. And I don’t mean the one star reviews of books I loved. I can get over that. I mean the ones that get the facts wrong, or dismiss a book because its characters are unlikeable. You know the kind. Lately, three specific things have jumped out at me, three things that I wish people would stop doing when they write their reviews.

1. “TSTL”

In case you’re unaware, “tstl” means “too stupid to live” and is used in reference to characters whose actions seem, well, stupid. It’s all well and good to call out a stupid action that stems not from character, but from the need to further the plot, but this “tstl” designation is not relegated to those instances. It’s used to describe protagonists – overwhelmingly girls – who do things the reader, personally, would not have done, things that have negative consequences.

There are so many problems with this. Firstly, you as the reader are not the character. We place a lot of importance on characters being “relatable” to us, perhaps too much. But the author’s job is not to create a character that would act the same way you would in a particular situation. Her actions don’t have to be relatable. In fact, they should be strange to us sometimes, because humans are strange and don’t act sensibly. They don’t act in the ways we would all the time. That’s why we have conflict, and conflict is why we have stories.

Secondly, teenagers do stupid things. I’m a smart person and I did tons of stupid shit as a teenager. Be honest: so did you. Heck, a lot of them were probably over someone you had a crush on. You probably still do stupid things as an adult. A character behaving in a way that is stupid does not make a book bad, nor does it make that character inherently stupid. It just means the book is about a human being.

2. “Selfish” characters

In multiple reviews of Mary E. Pearson’s The Kiss of Deception, Lia is called out for being selfish. She’s the princess of a kingdom and her parents are about to marry her off to a prince from another kingdom whom she has never met. She decides she’d rather not, and she runs away. 

Let’s just set aside the fact that teens (and grown ups) often do things that are selfish, just like they often do things that are stupid. There is a larger problem at work here, and it’s one I see as very gendered. In a lot of our social discourse, women and girls are expected to sacrifice for others, and the lack of sacrifice is framed as selfishness. Women who choose not to have children or who uproot their families for a lucrative job are often called selfish. Girls who turn down a date with a “nice” guy they’re not attracted to are often called selfish. Women and girls who want to choose the way they live their lives are called selfish over and over again.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that Lia – one of my favorite fictional characters this year – was subjected to this as well, but it did. I read so many fantasy novels when I myself was a teenager that featured girls escaping unwanted arranged marriages. There wasn’t even a question in my mind of the girl’s selfishness or selflessness. Why would she marry someone she didn’t love? Of course she’d want to escape! I was so floored reading these reviews from all these readers who apparently expected Lia to marry someone she had never met, sleep with him, have babies, and so on, to facilitate a political treaty. She’s selfish because she doesn’t want her entire life, literally her entire existence, to be one giant sacrifice? Because she dares to choose her own life? Would you choose this for yourself or your daughter? What are we teaching our kids when we say that Lia’s actions are selfish? That girls should be meek and accept their parents’ directives, even if they know it will make them unhappy? That the only life worth living is the one where all your own wants and desires are subservient to someone else’s?

So no, Lia’s decision to flee this marriage, one that she knows is predicated on a lie (she can’t do what her parents say she can do, remember!) is not selfish. It’s normal. It’s brave. It’s feminist. It’s what draws so many teen girls to fantasy fiction – girls standing up and saying to others, through their words or actions, that their lives belong to them. What’s selfish is the continued demand that girls continually give away pieces of themselves to make others happy. Lia refuses to do this. It’s not easy for her to do. It’s hard. It’s painful. It takes immense courage. But it’s empowering to say “no.” It’s empowering to realize that you can demand the right to your own decisions, especially for teenagers. That you can demand the right to own your life and you don’t have to apologize for it.

3. “I have never read a successful book about _______.”

Fill in the blank with whatever topic you like, and you will probably have a sentence I object to. In this case, it was time travel, but it could easily be shapeshifters or romance or anything else under the sun. There are successful books about every topic. The fact that you haven’t read a successful one is due to one of two factors: 1. You haven’t read very many of them; or 2. You just plain don’t like that topic. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to assume that most of the time, it’s the second reason.

I say this as a huge fan of time travel who didn’t care for this particular book that was being reviewed. I have read lots of successful time travel books. They probably wouldn’t work for someone who doesn’t like paradoxes and plots that can make your head hurt. They probably wouldn’t work for someone who wants their science fiction to be completely plausible, because time travel is inherently implausible. (If time travel existed, wouldn’t we have time travelers in our midst right now?) That’s the fun of it. It’s likely that someone who doesn’t think any time travel books she’s read are successful can’t get past these things, and that’s fine. You don’t have to like books about time travel. That doesn’t mean they’re not successful; it just means they’re not for you.

Are there any other trends in book reviews that bug you (or enrage you)? Let me know in the comments, and please weigh in on the ones I’ve pointed out here. I’d like to know I’m not alone.

Let’s Move Beyond the Gender Binary: Guest Post by I. W. Gregorio

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Since gender has been a topic through some of the posts this week — and a topic we talk about frequently here at STACKED — let’s round out this week of contemporary YA with another post about gender. . . and about sex. Welcome to upcoming debut author I. W. Gregorio. 







I. W. Gregorio is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. After getting her MD, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above (Balzer & Bray / HarperCollins, 4/28/15). She is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books™ and serves as its VP of Development. A recovering ice hockey player, she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Find her online at www.iwgregorio.com, and on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram at @iwgregorio.












Anyone who’s ever walked down the aisles of a toy store knows that the gender binary is a monolith that is almost impossible to topple, and I admit freely to being someone who’s tried and failed. For the first two years of my daughter’s life, I clothed her preferentially in non-pink clothing. I gave away onesies and bibs that had the word “princess” on it (once, I even took scissors to cut them out). Instead of dolls, I got her Thomas the Tank Engine trains and Legos.

Then she started preschool, and she’s now a princess-loving, pink-wearing girlie girl who is begging for an American Girl doll for Christmas. Which is fine, except that I fear that her internalization of stereotyped “girliness” won’t stop at toys and clothes.


The gender binary is insidious, impacting our everyday lives in countless ways. I struggle against its restrictions every day in both of my professions. As a female surgeon, I encounter it when my colleague makes an offhand comment about how he prefers it when I don’t wear scrubs (as they’re “so unflattering”). As an author, I see it on the shelves: books are divided into “girl books” and “boy books.”


Binary thinking does harm to both women and men. The stereotype of women as submissive, nurturing caretakers has caused generations of girls to grow up thinking that to be assertive is to be bossy, and that their education and employment is less important than that of their male counterparts. Likewise, damage is done to men who go through life being called “sissies” for showing emotion, or daring to like musicals or art or literature. The gender binary also contributes to homophobia, by dictating who people “should” love, and transphobia, by failing to recognize that one’s biological sex doesn’t always correlate to gender identity.


The truth is that men should be allowed to wear pink, and women shouldn’t have to fear being labeled “butch” for wanting to play football. Pigeonholing certain traits as masculine or feminine is self-defeating, and prevents all of us from being our truest and best selves.


Some people defend the gender binary by saying that it’s based on biology. If gender stereotypes were restricted to the fact that men need jockstraps and women require bras, I’d be fine with that. But there is no biological reason, for example, why girls should prefer the color pink or books with skinny girls wearing dresses on the cover. Indeed, studies have shown that the presence of personality traits like assertiveness, empathy, and interest in science don’t significantly differ between men and women.


The dagger to the heart of the gender binary, however, is the fact that most men and women have physical traits specific to one sex only, but not all. There’s an exception to every rule, and in this case it’s the existence of intersex conditions in which people are born with sexual characteristics that are neither wholly male or wholly female (PSA: In the old days, people used the term “hermaphrodite,” which is inaccurate and considered offensive by most of the intersex community). For a great primer on intersex, please read this FAQ from the Intersex Society of North America.
For a long time, intersex has been invisible in popular culture because of the fear and stigma surrounding it (one exception is Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex). But things are changing – MTV recently revealed that one of its main characters is intersex, and just last week the press reported on an intersex woman with a connection to Michael Phelps. I have conflicting feelings about the press coverage of the Phelps case, for reasons well articulated here, but I am encouraged by the increased visibility of intersex and transgender people in the media overall.  


The gender binary isn’t going to disappear overnight. It can only be dismantled and undermined slowly, story by story. That’s where we have the responsibility as authors and readers to seek out literature that shows us that gender isn’t a binary – it’s a spectrum. Not everyone who is born with XX chromosomes is attracted to men, identifies as a woman, or has a uterus. To assume otherwise ignores the biological diversity of the human race.  


In an essay for PEN/American, I wrote that the first gay person I ever met was in a book (Mercedes Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn). The same is true for the first intersex person (Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex), and the first gender-fluid person (Kristin Elizabeth Clark’s Freakboy). I am so grateful to all of these books for opening my mind to the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation. But the binary-busting books don’t stop there – they include novels about girl football players, like Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen, and picture books about little boys who love wearing dresses like Sara and Ian Hoffman’s Jacob’s New Dress.


To read about others is to know them. To know them is to expand your world. Here’s to reading books that show a world beyond the gender binary. Here’s to showing our kids that girls can have masculine traits and that boys can be feminine, too.

By the way: Recently my daughter started Tae Kwon Do lessons. Her favorite color is now black.