Just a thought

[catsittingstill]

I just finished reading a post where an author says that we don't need minority (or gay or disabled) protagonists because thinking ourselves into the shoes of people very different from us is what reading is all about.

In that case, it seems to me, minority, or gay or disabled protagonists should be no problem at all for a reader. After all, either they are like us, in which case easy, or they are different from us, in which case identifying with them is what reading is all about.

In fact, it wouldn't matter if there was never another book published with a white, straight, able-bodied protagonist.*

Just sayin'

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*Note that I am not actually pushing for this. Just saying it shouldn't matter.

Comments

[batyatoon]

Good lord. I kind of want to smack the author who wrote that. How can anybody put those words in that order (or the equivalent) and not realize they're annihilating their own argument?

[catsittingstill]

I wonder the same thing. But that surely was what the author in question seemed to be saying.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I'm almost totally in agreement with you, except that "never" is a very long time. But in our lifetimes, you're probably right that there's already plenty of white male straight able-bodies protagonists for people to identify with.

[catsittingstill]

I'm not seriously pushing for it anyway. And I agree that diversity does include white and able-bodied and so on; if that combination was entirely left out, there would be something missing.

But you're also right that we have a lifetime's worth of that particular combination available right now.

[randwolf]

Hee.

Eavesdroppin' on the Sad Puppies again? You sure that's good for your blood pressure?

[catsittingstill]

I feel like I owe it to myself and to them to read what they have to say now and then. It's a very different world view.

When I start rolling my eyes too hard I usually skip the rest.

[randwolf]

LOL!

I do sometimes, too, and it definitely isn't good for my blood pressure. But really, I did most of my time reading the likes of them decades ago. They seem scarcely to have changed at all, except they have become nuttier.

[catsittingstill]

Every now and then I come across a piece that is like reading a report from the House Un-American Activities Committee. If I weren't reading on an LCD screen I would think I'd time-travelled back to the 1950s.

[kay_brooke]

...that argument is even more nonsensical than the others I've seen. I didn't think that was possible.

[catsittingstill]

Me either.

[stardreamer]

That sounds like a spinoff from the "white people stand in for all races in a way that minorities can't" argument.

[catsittingstill]

Yes. Yes it does.

*sigh*