I had slight qualms with the idea that inaccuracies regarding western cultures don't ever matter
Well, I wouldn't say that. I'd just say that because there are so many representations of the dominant culture available, inaccuracies are more likely to be only one example of many, as opposed to a minority culture, where there are less representations available.
But that doesn't mean there'll never be innaccuracies of a dominant culture, as your own experience shows. It just happens less often.
Unfortunately, I pretty much consider everything I write in the aforementioned fantasy world to be permanently unpublishable because of issues like this.
I think that's too bad. I'd really appreciate there being more fantasy out there that wasn't based on European culture, even if it's not perfect. It's like... okay, this is a weird metaphor, but have you heard of the white privilege list? It's not fair that when a white person enters a store, they're not likely to be followed by a security guard, while people of other races are. That sucks. But the solution is not to say, "Hey! Follow us too!" because then everyone is getting tailed by security guards, and that's just no fun. The solution is to stop the security guards from following anyone (or, well, to get them to choose people to follow based on something other than race).
So, what I'm trying to say is that some people are in positions of power and some people aren't, and that can make our choices more loaded than we intend them to be. But nothing gets solved by giving up the power you have; instead we want to try and make sure everyone can share in the power. Using things from other cultures is good, it's just very hard to do right, because we don't live in a perfect world.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-06-03 08:05 am (UTC)Well, I wouldn't say that. I'd just say that because there are so many representations of the dominant culture available, inaccuracies are more likely to be only one example of many, as opposed to a minority culture, where there are less representations available.
But that doesn't mean there'll never be innaccuracies of a dominant culture, as your own experience shows. It just happens less often.
Unfortunately, I pretty much consider everything I write in the aforementioned fantasy world to be permanently unpublishable because of issues like this.
I think that's too bad. I'd really appreciate there being more fantasy out there that wasn't based on European culture, even if it's not perfect. It's like... okay, this is a weird metaphor, but have you heard of the white privilege list? It's not fair that when a white person enters a store, they're not likely to be followed by a security guard, while people of other races are. That sucks. But the solution is not to say, "Hey! Follow us too!" because then everyone is getting tailed by security guards, and that's just no fun. The solution is to stop the security guards from following anyone (or, well, to get them to choose people to follow based on something other than race).
So, what I'm trying to say is that some people are in positions of power and some people aren't, and that can make our choices more loaded than we intend them to be. But nothing gets solved by giving up the power you have; instead we want to try and make sure everyone can share in the power. Using things from other cultures is good, it's just very hard to do right, because we don't live in a perfect world.