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I'm making this thread as the last few months of my life have been marked by exhaustion with cis "allies". After giving them a second chance I was booted from a @CupanFae compilation for not making edits(which I did, despite repeated gaslighting) - some of which were transphobic.
When I initially left the group due to abusive and condescending messages - which despite me, uncharacteristically, being nothing but apologetic only got more condescending and abusive, I did not initially raise my discomfort with some of the edit requests. Now I am doing so.
These *mandatory* edit requests included:
- Have my trans protag get into a dramatic fight with her father over misgendering, which would have been triggering for me to write due ot personal trauma, and misrepresentative of their nuanced relationship.
- Have my trans protag get into a dramatic fight with her father over misgendering, which would have been triggering for me to write due ot personal trauma, and misrepresentative of their nuanced relationship.
- A further demand that another protag who had a connection with nature magic find the both allegorical and actually trans living doll character initially repulsive and work to get around that, again to generate drama/sensationalism in the plot. I ACTUALLY MADE THIS EDIT. GAG.
- Worst of fucking all, being told that, again, for drama, to FORCIBLY OUT the nature of my transgender doll character in the most terrible display of not getting an allegory the character herself literally pointed out in one draft AGAIN FOR DRAMA. A cis writer told me this.
Same people were absolutely adamant that my level of writing was 10 books behind being ready to be published, despite the fact that I *already had a short story published* and had no issues working with people on it. AND THEY WANTED An ALLEGORICAL PEENER IN THE SHOWER REVEAL.
Some editors(we worked on each others) had helpful suggestions, these were all coming from one person, I should point out, though all three group dictators of the supposedly collaborative group had Very Serious Talks I'm told where they came to this decision. Fuck them.
For what it's worth, I'm not claiming to be a great writer or anything but the sheer condescending tone of the group head not to mention the contradictions were mind blowing. I was told I was ignoring edits when one of her edits LITERALLY REMOVED SOMEONE ELSES SUGGESTION
Similarly, the shorter story with the regular-non-magical trans lead was met with a seal of approval initially, being told it was "well written", then suddenly after challenging her ego and being repeatedly accused of being a lazy bad person who didn't do the work, was also shit.
But that's not the main point here - the point is that @CupanFae are publishing a "Proud and Mighty" queer lit compilation that has stiff AF editorial which flies in the face of how queer lit compilations are actually put together, and were abusive and casually transphobic.
I know this will be seen as giving ammo to the comicsgate, sadpuppies crowd but - in compilations like this, editors need to put their egos on hold and allow for some diversity and expertise of queer writers. Otherwise you're not doing us a favour over traditional publishers.
And no, I'm not the only queer person that worked on this, obviously, but the fact is that i was still being talked down to by a cis woman. There's also something to be said for having a "queer", outsider experience vs. an "LGBT" one. In Ireland, that division has fucked me over.
I'm just doing this as a public thread despite a lack of twitter following so I have something to point people to in future if I need to talk about it. Speaking of which, here are the PMs where things started to get screwy, for reference.
Note that because i have a reputation as a troublemaker, I went super hard in to being nice to everyone in this group and taking part. I though that they had really changed. Even after those abusive PMs, I was constantly apologetic. That got me this. https://pastebin.com/b5AwP7bn
"You cannot imagine how gutted I was to find out you had ignored or rejected the hard work I, and others, had put into helping you be a better writer."
The "Hard work" in this case included sensationalist cis bullshit. Editors & critics can be so fucking entitled like this.
The "Hard work" in this case included sensationalist cis bullshit. Editors & critics can be so fucking entitled like this.
"it wouldn't be fair on the rest of the writers, and on the writing group as a whole, to include stories that aren't up to the standard we have set for ourselves. "
what are these standards? why are they pretending to be professional when they're sending unprofessional messages?
what are these standards? why are they pretending to be professional when they're sending unprofessional messages?
Maybe I'll get 5D chess'd out of this and it turns out one of them is actually non-binary, who knows, but the fact is that this is still a deeply cis attitude. While I left the group I did talk to a couple of other people who said they'd noticed some of this behaviour but lowkey.
Again I can't say enough how bullshit it is to pretend that it's about standards of writing when you have the most lazy bullshit queersploitation suggestions for someone who actually understands trans narratives and has written about them. I'm so fucking exhausted.
Moreover, and no offense to the other writers in this - but editting other people's stories, they were *absolutely fucking not* up to some mystical standard that mine was not. I wouldn't regard any of them as grade A material, save for *maybe* one. there's something else going on
bonus points - it was demanded I remove the entire storybook style intro from one of my stories, up to a subsequent scene that dealt with anti-Rroma bullying, as well as any trace of the character's Rroma identity, so kudos for being casually racist too.
(more specifically I was told to remove "exposition" a large portion of that was exploring the character's background, conveniently. Again, I'm sure it wasn't *consciously* meant to erase it, but just saying this isn't necessary, remove it, is such a mood for Rroma folks I Know)
Anyway, I hate that I gave them another chance after dealing with big egos and aggression last year, and shared characters and stories that were actually quite personal to me. I should mention that the doll character, I created when I first came out as trans as a coping mechanism
I was then told to have a scene forcibly outing that character to make it spicier for the cis readers. That should tell you all you need to know about cis folks gatekeeping trans stories.
