I've been relatively quiet on my blog for several months as I work and take care of ill family and prepare for massive projects in the very near future. But something just happened that I feel needs to be made public - especially to the writing community.
Good writers and artists are - inherently - observers. Bad writers and artists exclusively write what they imagine, but audiences need to connect to the work through some shared experience. This can be exaggerated, of course. One doesn't need to be murdered to write about murder, but one does need to have a good working knowledge of the social and practical mechanisms of the event in order to convince the audience that it could really happen. This is one of the reasons why young authors have the most trouble writing and arting. Many have simply not experienced enough.
The most important topics writers need to understand are the relationships people have with each other. This is extremely complex and has countless determinants - so many that one could easily mistake any vocal minority as a majority experience. This is starting to sound kinda vague.
One of my stories included a vicious drunk White man insulting a Black man at a bar to start a fight. One of my Black beta-readers balked and made it very clear that "real racism is quiet" and went on to explain several circumstances she experienced where she was being gaslit by racism in circumstances where, if she bristled or called out her abuser, she would have been considered a "problem" by the public around her. I appreciated her experience and willingness to share with me. However, on the other side, one of my other Black beta-readers, a man, laughed out loud and said: "Yup. That's happened to me. Racist dude say all kind of shit." And when I asked him why my other reader denied that occurring, he said "Maybe because she's a woman. A racist might be willing to make her life miserable, but not actually want to start a physical fight. Men on men violence is a real thing." My solution was to tweak the scene to ensure people with both kinds of experiences would accept that it could really have happened. There is no point in arguing with an audience who doesn't know what you, the creator, knows.
Which leads me into the events of last night. Set up is simple: It's 3am at a family restaurant, and I stopped in to pick up french fires for my child with a sore throat. I parked beside a rusty pick up truck with White man in his early 60s and a large puppy. He wasn't dressed well, but smiled and was quite friendly to both me and someone else in the lot who was driving away. In front of the door, outside, sat a homeless Black man with a shopping cart filled with belongings. I nodded to let him know I recognized him as a fellow human being but with ability to help at this time (no cash and too focused on my child's health). Inside, I placed my order for about $12 of food, and sat to wait. While waiting, the aforementioned White man walked in holding two crisp bills - a $100 bill and a $50 bill. He calmly asked the clerk to break the $50 and asked about the Black homeless man outside. He asked if he was local and if anyone had given him money that night. She said she didn't know and he smiled. He tucked away all of his bills, old and new, except a single $20 and said he was going to give to the man to help him out. Now, up to this point, I had reserved judgement of this White man, who could have easily appeared to have been a racist and ready to call the cops, but here he was ready to help someone with $20 - not a small sum to the homeless. My heart chirped and I smiled. And then another person walked inside the restaurant - a White person also not dressed very well, but acting demure and wearing a rainbow scarf. Before I even noticed those details, the same White man - the one who was praising himself for his own generosity towards the homeless person, suddenly barks out to this new person:
"So, are you a man or a woman? Get it together, buddy!" And then he storms out, hands the $20 to the Black homeless man, gets in his truck.
The trans person flinches from the incident, obviously a common experience for them, and my heart explodes with rage. The very fact that the same person could be kind to one stranger and hateful to another turns inside me like ball of snakes. I hate that man, now. I don't care the good he did for one. He made a conscious choice to HURT someone else, and that negates his value to the world in my eyes. I blurt out, "What an asshole!" and the trans person seems to relax. They now know they have at least one ally in the room, and we end up having a brief conversation about the Cheshire Cat (don't ask). A few minutes later, the restaurant server hands me my meal and tells me it is on the house. They then go to help the trans person pick out their meal. Looks like they had more than one ally there that night.
It's about 15 hours since that incident and I'm finally processing it all.
You see, on the one hand, I take this as an experience for my future story-telling. But I'm not sure how to include it. How many readers would balk at a person so brazen as I just witnessed?
And then I remember that I know many people like this. In fact, there is someone that I otherwise respect, who talks a big game about being a good person and supporting others, and then turns around and openly attacks friends of mine, and then hides behind a host of followers who don't see their bile, or maybe even share in it. And the snakes return in my gut. Their venom boils and rises through me and I want to scream to the heavens that THAT IS NOT OKAY!
I was in particular position to hear a man insult this person for myself. The abuser felt he was in a safe enough space to be direct and loud with his insult. But it isn't always the case. Everyone in the room was too shocked to say anything when it happened - but I was able to add some kind of support after the fact. It wasn't much - but it did help, and was as simple as a conversation where I could treat the abused person as a valuable human being with feelings and a right to exist.
Related to writing, I can absolutely write all of the characters involved in this scene to add realism to my stories. Both quiet and loud prejudice exists.
Outside of writing, I am tired of people pretending to be kind by picking and choosing who they value. And I'm tired of environments pretending kindness by providing environments for abuse. You may not be in a position to witness the abuse of someone else first-hand. You may not be around your family, friends, peers, idols, etc. when they reveal their prejudice and abuse another person. But you should never tolerate it or any system that includes the abusers as if they should enjoy the same privileges as their victims. So-called "politically safe zones" where "divisive topics" are forbidden from being discussed has one purpose and one purpose only: To protect abusers. The TRUTH is that politics is about whether to spend tax dollars on an airport or a highway improvements. Abuse is deciding which person is allowed to live happily ever after. And no "politically safe zone" has ever intended to curb the discussion of the allocation of funds. If one person says "if you do this, I will die" and another person says "I don't care if you die" - that is NOT a political discussion.
As you can see, my mind is wandering around this topic a lot. It's difficult to reign into a single train of thought, with a beginning and end, but all of it is important and all of it is knotted into a twisting ball of snakes.