A short time after going vegan, I came up with several ideas for animal-rights themed fiction projects, and wrote large chunks of two of them in a feverish burst of creativity. One is a comic book script that I may actually draw someday. The working title is "Free Range: A Bird's Eye View of Christmas," and it's about a group of supposedly free range turkeys who escape from a slaughterhouse and make a cross country journey in the dead of winter. It's sort of like Watership Down meets The Incredible Journey, but with turkeys. And a slaughterhouse.
There are many things I love about my rough story idea, including the main turkey character, who is literally guided by the voice of the Great Mother Turkey Goddess who whispers to her of a mysterious place called Sanctuary. What holds me back from committing myself to it is that I don't know how to incorporate a truly vegan, abolitionist message into a story like that. I can imagine that it might win some sympathy for turkeys, but I'm not sure how to incorporate the notion that it's not just wrong to murder turkeys for Christmas dinner, but that it's wrong to kill and exploit animals, period.
One of the other ideas I had, one which will never see the light of day, was a dark fantasy set in a dystopian near-future where all the cows have vanished from the face of the earth and the dairy industry, rather than giving up on itself, begins using disadvantaged women as milk machines instead. The main character in the story is the head of an ad agency who gets to design the marketing campaign to sell the wondrous health benefits of "human dairy." And, because he's good at his job, he of course succeeds in convincing the public to buy it.
I had written large chunks of that story before I realized that simply role-reversing human and animal victims doesn't actually challenge the paradigm. People always talk about how it's terrible for human beings to be treated "like cattle," but that doesn't even come close to questioning why cows should be treated like cattle. So that one got shelved, too.
That's when I realized that incorporating an animal rights message into a story that isn't necessarily about animal rights, per se, might be a more powerful approach. That's what I'm working on now, and I'll talk about some of those ideas in the next blog.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Why it Matters
I'll admit it, I'm into some fairly obscure things.
For instance, I write fanfiction. This is not a mainstream activity in the first place, but I've moved it even farther from the mainstream by writing slash fanfic, which is, for folks who don't know, fanfiction that explores potential same-sex relationships between characters in a TV series, book, film, etc. My current writing obsession is for an anime/manga series that is well past the height of its popularity, and was never that well known in the first place.
I read romances, which would be a solidly mainstream activity if only I had an interest in romance of the heterosexual variety--which I don't. Of course as a lesbian, one might reasonably expect that I'd be interested in lesbian fiction, but nope. It's the boys for me, all the way. What can I say? I'm weird.
And... I'm vegan.
Because while it's mainstream and popular to love animals, it's not mainstream or popular to love them so much that you refuse to participate in their murder and exploitation. Hopefully that will change. More than anything, I want veganism to become normal. As normal, say, as being opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia or child abuse. Because in the end, it's all violence. And it's all wrong. Equally wrong.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. I can imagine that someone looking at this would consider it so odd, so personal and idiosyncratic that it doesn't make sense to write a blog about these things.
But here's the deal: Art is powerful.
Art matters. Even the pouplar forms that most people don't think of as art, such as prime-time television shows or romance novels. Why? Because they are a reflection of our culture, our beliefs and values. And more importantly, because they create our culture. Artists have a huge responsibility in the things we create, becaue the messages we send are going to shape the way people think.
The growing popularity of gay romance doesn't just reflect a shift in cultural attitudes, it is also contributing to that shift. It is changing the way people see gays, how they look at love and sexuality, even their attitudes about gender. Just by presenting same-sex love as something to be celebrated, these stories send a strong message of equality and acceptance.
As an aspiring writer of this genre who happens to be vegan, then, I'm keenly aware of the message I'm sending when one of my characters sits down to a meal of animal products, or puts on a leather jacket, or takes his boyfriend to the zoo for a date. If I present these things as morally unproblematic, I'm sending a subtle but powerful message that these things are okay, that there is nothing wrong with enslaving animals for purposes of pleasure, convenience and entertainment. And since I think there is something wrong with it, something very wrong, I consider it part of my job as a writer to find ways to place these activities in a moral context.
For instance, I write fanfiction. This is not a mainstream activity in the first place, but I've moved it even farther from the mainstream by writing slash fanfic, which is, for folks who don't know, fanfiction that explores potential same-sex relationships between characters in a TV series, book, film, etc. My current writing obsession is for an anime/manga series that is well past the height of its popularity, and was never that well known in the first place.
I read romances, which would be a solidly mainstream activity if only I had an interest in romance of the heterosexual variety--which I don't. Of course as a lesbian, one might reasonably expect that I'd be interested in lesbian fiction, but nope. It's the boys for me, all the way. What can I say? I'm weird.
And... I'm vegan.
Because while it's mainstream and popular to love animals, it's not mainstream or popular to love them so much that you refuse to participate in their murder and exploitation. Hopefully that will change. More than anything, I want veganism to become normal. As normal, say, as being opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia or child abuse. Because in the end, it's all violence. And it's all wrong. Equally wrong.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. I can imagine that someone looking at this would consider it so odd, so personal and idiosyncratic that it doesn't make sense to write a blog about these things.
But here's the deal: Art is powerful.
Art matters. Even the pouplar forms that most people don't think of as art, such as prime-time television shows or romance novels. Why? Because they are a reflection of our culture, our beliefs and values. And more importantly, because they create our culture. Artists have a huge responsibility in the things we create, becaue the messages we send are going to shape the way people think.
The growing popularity of gay romance doesn't just reflect a shift in cultural attitudes, it is also contributing to that shift. It is changing the way people see gays, how they look at love and sexuality, even their attitudes about gender. Just by presenting same-sex love as something to be celebrated, these stories send a strong message of equality and acceptance.
As an aspiring writer of this genre who happens to be vegan, then, I'm keenly aware of the message I'm sending when one of my characters sits down to a meal of animal products, or puts on a leather jacket, or takes his boyfriend to the zoo for a date. If I present these things as morally unproblematic, I'm sending a subtle but powerful message that these things are okay, that there is nothing wrong with enslaving animals for purposes of pleasure, convenience and entertainment. And since I think there is something wrong with it, something very wrong, I consider it part of my job as a writer to find ways to place these activities in a moral context.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Introduction
So my idea for this blog is that it will be a place where I can bring together the topics I'm most passionate about, namely veganism, writing and queerness and talk about how the three things intersect, and how they conflict. I will probably talk about them seperately from time to time as well. As a writer who dreams of writing and publishing gay male erotic romances (also known as M/M), I am particularly interested in ways in which a consciousness of the personhood of animals can be woven into mainstream literature without necessarily producing "animal rights" literature per se.
I believe that in the future this will be considered as simply part of a writer's moral responsibility to his or her audience. Just as writers today are generally expected to present rape, murder, sexism, torture, racism, homophobia, child abuse etc. as issues of moral concern, I hope that one day it will also be seen as a matter of moral concern when two characters sit down to feast on the flesh or bodily secretions of a tortured animal. Part of what I seek to do as a writer is to present our commonplace torture and killing of animals as a morally significant issue, and to provoke readers to think about it, but to do so without preaching at them or at the expense of telling a good story.
A part of me wonders if this is even possible in a society where exploting animals is as "normal" to most people as breathing air or drinking water, but I feel a moral duty to try. And really where it comes down to it, that's the main gist of what I want this blog to be about.
I believe that in the future this will be considered as simply part of a writer's moral responsibility to his or her audience. Just as writers today are generally expected to present rape, murder, sexism, torture, racism, homophobia, child abuse etc. as issues of moral concern, I hope that one day it will also be seen as a matter of moral concern when two characters sit down to feast on the flesh or bodily secretions of a tortured animal. Part of what I seek to do as a writer is to present our commonplace torture and killing of animals as a morally significant issue, and to provoke readers to think about it, but to do so without preaching at them or at the expense of telling a good story.
A part of me wonders if this is even possible in a society where exploting animals is as "normal" to most people as breathing air or drinking water, but I feel a moral duty to try. And really where it comes down to it, that's the main gist of what I want this blog to be about.