Last Thursday, October 26th, was not a good day for AAR. By the day’s end, many on Twitter—romance authors among them—had tweeted and retweeted accusations that AAR and its readers are racist, sexist, and ablest.
The stated reason for this outpouring of loathing for AAR was the [email protected] column we ran on Friday, October 18th, which asked “Does historical romance have a quality problem?” In response, readers/commenters suggested that historical romance is suffering from the use of tired tropes and stale prose. Others decried the lack of accuracy from titles to terminology, and that HR had become too message-y. Many bemoaned the plethora of dukes and earls. Readers argued with one another and name checked authors they thought did the genre well and those they felt, at times, did not.
At some point, almost a week after it went up, the column and its responses caught the eye of someone on Twitter who was offended by both the question and the comments. This individual posted about the blog and the anger quickly spread like wildfire on social media. This fury seems to be about two different things.
First, there are many on Twitter who found the comments readers posted offensive and who believed it was AAR’s job—I think that means mostly me, the publisher, but it may also mean reviewers who posted on the thread—to either (and I’m not sure about this) not publish those comments or to reprimand the posters of those comments. Second, there were a few comments I didn’t publish because they involved personal attacks. (“You are disgusting,” read two. Another accused all on the thread of only wishing to read “super white and right” books.) Those Twitterers upset at AAR called that censorship.
Were some of the comments offensive? Well, they did offend others. Does that mean they shouldn’t be published or that they should have been argued against by me or other AAR staff? I don’t think so.
The [email protected] is a question we post each Friday. We started this for two reasons. One, we’re publishing so many reviews and blogs—552 reviews and 68 blogs thus far this year—we think our readers are hearing A LOT from us and we’d like to hear more from them. Second, we are committed to creating community and a weekly discussion seems like a good way to accomplish this. And that discussion is reader driven not staff/reviewer driven.
But wait, you say, isn’t AAR committed to an inclusive community? Yes. Yes, we are. And we feel that’s reflected in our reviews and in our Steals and Deals picks—in the content we create and curate.
Thus far in 2019, 15% of the books we’ve reviewed feature leads of color. 15% are by authors of color. 10% feature queer protagonists. In 2020, those numbers will increase.
According to an oft-cited 2018 study by The Ripped Bodice, 7.7% of romance books published by major houses are by authors of color. If you accept those numbers, that gives our number of 15% of our reviews by AoCs some context. We are nearly doubling the big names of the industry in terms of putting characters and authors of color before readers.
Additionally, some of our most popular blogs this year have been our AAR Loves lists. In these, AAR reviewers recommend books we love. Here’s what a few of our AAR loves lists look like in terms of inclusion:
Marriages in trouble: 19% by authors of color 19% non-hetero characters
Disability: 14% by authors of color 31% non-hetero characters
Seasoned romances: 20% by authors of color, 25% non-hetero characters
Musicians: 21% by authors of color, 25% non-hetero characters
Again, is it enough? Of course not. The obstacles to authors of color and to non-heteronormative stories are such that it will take more than any blog to turn the ship. But we are trying to do our part.
Well, OK, you say, but some of the comments made people of color feel erased. That’s a harder thing to deal with. I hate—HATE—that anyone who read the comments at AAR felt personally invalidated. But, as the publisher of a daily blog, I believe it is important to listen to the speech of others until that speech crosses the line into direct personal attacks. I also believe that having difficult conversations makes us more likely to better understand those with whom we disagree.
As for the accusations of censorship—I ultimately published all but the aforementioned comments—it’s clear to me I haven’t done a good job of stating what the rules are for commenting at AAR and that’s on me. I will not publish personal attacks but I haven’t stated that and I will this week.
Many of the people on Twitter who were part of this discussion and who believe AAR and its readers are racist believe this, in part, because of the tweets of Tessa Dare and other romance authors–several of whom were criticized in the thread and many whom we have reviewed.
On Thursday and Friday, Tessa took AAR and its readers—I’m assuming she meant the readers in the comments although other tweets seem to encompass AAR and its readers writ large—to task for being racist. Tessa has 35K followers so many people saw her tweets and retweeted them. Authors, other bloggers, and readers retweeted the Tweets stating AAR is racist and exclusionary—AAR’s missteps around our Readers Top 100 Romances poll were mentioned many times but so were things that are simply false. Many tweeted that we should be shut down, ignored, and shunned. Tessa suggested that authors deny us ARCs (advanced review copies).
I’m not interested in getting in a battle on Twitter–has anyone ever “won” one there? Nor do I wish to attack anyone, including Tessa Dare. But I will defend AAR, its staff, and its readers. I am fine with being personally attacked. I write the [email protected] column, I am the publisher, nothing is published at AAR that I don’t OK. I am not happy however with authors attacking our readers or the AAR staff.
Who are AAR’s readers? They come from all over the world and they come to AAR because they love romance. If you read the comments they make at AAR, they are overwhelmingly measured, interested in better understanding the genre and its concerns. Do people occasionally say things that give me pause? Sure. But romance itself is a narrative of overcoming differences and finding connection. It routinely champions forgiveness and redemption. To be all about romance is to be here for all of you, those whose beliefs I share and those I don’t. I ask you to be kind but honest, true to yourselves but open to the perceptions of others. We can do this.
And the staff? AAR reviewers and staff are diverse. We are women of color, white women, straight women, queer women, married women, divorced women, widowed women, and disabled women. Few of us are wealthy and several of us live paycheck to paycheck. Almost all of us work. Some of us are parents and some are not. We live in Canada, in Europe, and in the US. Some of us are religious, others are not. The one thing we all are is willing, week in and week out, to share our love of reading romance without any compensation other than review books.
Lastly, this has felt to me like an argument that mostly white people are having about mostly people of color. That’s not where I want to spend my time. I’d rather spend my energy supporting those who feel excluded. If you are an author of color and you would like your book considered for review at AAR, please email me a blurb at [email protected] If you are a reader of color and you have suggestions on how I can make AAR a more inclusive welcoming place, please email me the suggestions or put them in the comments below. If you identify as part of any marginalized group, I ask the same things of you too.
Thanks,
Dabney Grinnan
Publisher at AAR
This sounds familiar.
https://jezebel.com/how-to-use-the-fictional-teenage-girl-1839863520
Wait, so she DOESN’T uplift AoC on her Twitter? People were wrong about that? Amazing.
Given that Tessa Dare has not bothered to engage whatsoever with the cogent, explanatory, detailed post and comments here that show AAR’s perspective and those of its readers tells on her so much, that she was simply creating a conflagration to get ally cookies and attention. She is a cishet white woman who primarily writes cishet white characters. I have rarely seen her uplift any marginalized authors’ books on Twitter. She no leg to stand on as a true ally. She was simply burnishing her image on Twitter–a performance for her 35k followers.
I used to enjoy Tessa Dare’s books, but the last few I’ve tried have disappointed me and I’ve ended up giving them away. This makes me want to not even try anymore of her books.
AAR has long been my fav site for reviews, and I’ve recently started looking at the blog part, as well. I think you do great work, and will continue to visit.
Thank you. That’s kind.
So this is interesting, and timely: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261
“Mr Obama told the audience: “I get a sense among certain young people on social media that the way of making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people.
“If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because ‘Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out!'”
“That’s enough,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you are probably not going to get that far.”
Mr Obama added that “people who do really good stuff have flaws”.
Ha! I was just reading a CNN article about this. I liked this quote by Obama:
“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly. The world is messy, there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids. And share certain things with you.”
And, this by the author of the article:
“To be clear: What Obama is advocating for isn’t that people change their beliefs. Instead, he is reminding us all of our common humanity, that we have much more in common than politicians and partisans would like us to believe. Seeing people as less like cardboard cutouts and more like, well, people, would do us (and our politics) a world of good.”
Building upon what Obama said and the topic of intersectionality, I think this quote is a valid criticism (yes, I know Wiki isn’t always accurate, but as a starting point it is useful):
“Writer and political pro-Israel activist Chloé Valdary considers intersectionality “a rigid system for determining who is virtuous and who is not, based on traits like skin color, gender, and financial status”. Valdary also states:
Intersectionality’s greatest flaw is in reducing human beings to political abstractions, which is never a tendency that turns out well—in part because it so severely flattens our complex human experience, and therefore fails to adequately describe reality. As it turns out, one can be personally successful and still come from a historically oppressed community—or vice versa. The human experience is complex and multifaceted and deeper than the superficial ways in which intersectionalists describe it.[79]”
In addition to listening to own voices stories, I think finding commonalities is important and does far more good than those things that divide and create resentments on all sides. By the way, Valdary is black.
From a Guardian article about the meaning and uses of intersectionality:
“Intersectionality is the buzzword to end all buzzwords, the term that launched a thousand hot-takes, a discursive sinkhole where political disputes go to die. Depending on who you ask, it’s the most important theoretical innovation in feminist history; the cancer that’s killing the left; a critical tool in on-the-ground organising; or a totally meaningless liberal shibboleth. I am not overly invested in trying to claw back some kind of clarity on what intersectionality “means”. Like much of the work done by feminists and queer theorists around the same time, there is a certain ambiguity to intersectionality, if only because many of the people interpreting it come from this poststructuralist milieu.
Rather, I see these disciplinary attempts as one in a large series of objects grouped together under the “tag” of intersectionality. It is vague enough to function as a Rorschach test, but specific enough for an outside observer to consider those who choose to use the word, whether to celebrate or disparage, as politically separated by only a few degrees.”
“Depending on who you ask” seems to be the key phrase here. Intersectionality, or intersectional feminism. examines the overlap of **multiple forms of diversity** and thus, multiple forms of oppression. You know, the issue that largely defined the conflict on the “historical quality” forum, for instance, the hand-wringing notion that a Muslim female character in a romance novel can’t also be in a wheelchair because the diversity is too much for a reader (presumably white, Christian, and able-bodied) to handle and historically inaccurate. Intersectionality is distinctly different from “white feminism” because it disputes whiteness as a norm from which we can adequately understand women’s oppression. The word “overdetermined” was often used years ago to explain the extra burdens a woman of color faced in a racist and patriarchal society.
I can give a great example of intersectionality, though a personally fraught one. I volunteered to work on the organizing committee for the Portland, Ore. Women’s March in Jan. 2017. We expected and hoped and planned for 5,000 and got 20,000 women marching on the actual day in our city. During the planning though women of color felt excluded from leadership on the organizing committee and anyone who studies or has studied women’s movements probably knows that there is a long history of exclusion of women of color from feminist activism. Rather than accept the criticism and engage in some self-reflection, the debates got ugly, many white women walked away in anger, and many women of color were reported to Facebook and banned for using words like “racist,” since we had our own FB organizing group. LGBTQ women of color also though felt that their specific concerns were overlooked. So, yes, it’s a messy concept and we live messy and complicated existences.
It also made me as aware as I’ve ever been that existing as a white woman myself in white spaces is not a place I can ever feel comfortable again. I will take intersectionality any day over white bubbles.
Thank you for this explanation; and for all the time you’ve taken over the last couple of weeks to comment. I’ve truly appreciated your recommendations and comments over the last few years as well. I haven’t always agreed, but you always give me something to think about. :-)
Gah . . . wish we could edit these! Should have written I usually agree – but even when I don’t, you always give me something to think about!
Chloe Valdary, the anti-black lives matter, pro-Israel conservative writer for the Wall Street Journal is critical of intersectionality? Big surprise!
Perhaps I should not have quoted her, since I don’t know more than what is on Wikipedia about her, but I found the quote interesting since I like exploring all sides of an issue.
There are so many non-fictional books putting intersectionality into practice, but one of the best ones, in my opinion, is Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. She’s a Haitian-American writer and is funny and brilliant and makes the concepts clear and very accessible, partly by using contemporary examples found in movies, shows, and American culture. I’ve had much success incorporating her writings in classes and students seem to enjoy reading her.
“We don’t all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us.”
Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays
Yes, that’s a great quote, and Gay works at reaching out to create collaboration so that feminism is wide reaching and can include women from many cultural backgrounds. The quote supports pluralism (i.e. “multiple diversities”) as well as “respect,” the foundations of intersectioality, a term for which she is always wonderful at demonstrating how uncomplicated it actually is. Thanks for posting this!
Did the authors on Twitter respect different feminisms of people at AAR? Or does many different cultural backgrounds only work for some people?
I think these questions almost completely miss the point of intersectional feminism. It’s not that ALL women are embraced and welcome just because they are women, even though all women benefit from the hard-fought gains of feminism. Instead, it’s “pluralistic,” intersectional feminism that welcomes *feminists* willing to work collaboratively from a perspective of engaging with multiple diversities. I’ve written this up-thread but I’ll state it again here, there are plenty of women who support and bolster patriarchy, just like there are plenty of white feminists who undercut women of color, even within feminism. If you read the Intro. to Gay’s book from which the quote you posted appeared, then you would have read that she goes over this in great detail. For instance, see the passage a paragraph up from where you quoted:
“Women of color, queer women, and transgender women need to be better included in the feminist project. Women from these groups have been shamefully abandoned by Capital-F Feminism, time and again. This is a hard, painful truth. This is where a lot of people run into resisting feminism, trying to create distance between the movement and where they stand. Believe me, I understand, For years, I decided feminism wasn’t for me as a black woman, as a woman who has been queer identified, at varying points in her life, because feminism has, historically, been far more invested in improving the lives of heterosexual white women to the detriment of others.”
There may (or may not) be feminists at AAR, and that’s a whole different issue, but the authors on Twitter who protested the racially insensitive posts on AAR’s blog were largely rejecting the dismissal of women and fictional characters like themselves who identify as more than one type of diversity.
I should add too though that Gay wants women to listen intently to each other’s different versions of feminism because feminism has been viewed as something white women have claimed, which is exclusionary. The collaboration Gay articulates in the quote you provided is needed to offset the many different forms of discrimination women often face. It’s a great quote!
You do know that the WSJ is actually a centrist paper, do you not?
https://www.adfontesmedia.com/intro-to-the-media-bias-chart/
I have, duh, been thinking a lot about the role of freedom of expression in spaces like AAR. I liked this article from Better Angels a lot. This paragraph especially jumped out at me.
“Freedom of expression. Were it not for the space for people to say what’s on their minds freely and openly, without fear of immediate or eventual reprisal, the workshop format would not work. We live in an age where this kind of radical free expression is under attack in certain quarters: on some college campuses, in some sections of the internet, on some streets by groups such as Antifa. There are those who would have people believe that some opinions are dangerous and tantamount to violence, and that these opinions should be curbed or forcefully pressured out of existence.
Better Angels should fight this sentiment wherever it occurs, and advocate for the right of people to speak their minds—most especially for the freedom to be wrong or offensive. We should take a stand that words are not violence, except for the rare instances in which they’re explicitly and specifically calling for it. This principle, this unqualified support for the First Amendment, would further ground our advocacy, and give us a more coherent and tangible intellectual and moral framework.”
The writer grounds this in the notion that it isn’t fair to ask Americans–this is an American political advocacy group–to all agree on ideas or even be unified. He points out that asking people to come together when they can’t agree is profoundly unAmerican.
I’ll always try and bring people together–we are stronger together–but I get that there are many who don’t want to bond with those they think are in the wrong and I must support that impulse as well.
Food for thought.
Very well stated, Ms. Grinnan. Thank you for quoting from that article. Sometimes people forget that the First Amendment isn’t in place to protect *nice* speech, or speech we want to hear. It is there specifically to guarantee the freedom to express dissenting viewpoints. And yes, even troubling or hateful ones. (Not that people shouldn’t exercise manners, but that is a separate issue.)
Obviously, private websites, enterprises, etc., have the right to decide which kinds of speech they will or will not allow. But what worries me is how a lot of people calling for censorship really want there to be legal punishment for those who express controversial opinions. I read somewhere yesterday that according to some poll or another, 51% of Americans want to be able to make some speech ILLEGAL. And I’m not talking about the kind of speech that already is like yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater, libel/slander, or inciting violence. I mean the kind of unpleasant speech that the First Amendment is designed to protect. It’s really scary, because a time will come when someone will want to silence those now calling for silence from others.
As an example, I can’t remember where I read it, but some city wants to make the use of the word “b***h” illegal in public, punishable by a fine. (If the story is true. You never know.) Now, I agree it’s not a nice word by any means, but proposing that uttering a rude word should be a legally PUNISHABLE OFFENSE? Dare I say that Lenny Bruce is rolling in his grave right now?
I know bringing up a deceased, politically incorrect comedian feels odd for a romance site, but the man set a lot of precedents that allow us greater freedom of expression today than he and his contemporaries enjoyed. It sounds prudish now to think he was arrested on stage just for using the word “c********r,” but are today’s cries for censorship really any different? Sure, I doubt a comedian or author is going to get arrested in the 21st for “indecency” merely for using foul language. But will there come a time where expressing a thought that doesn’t toe a specific party line be declared a crime? Let’s hope not.
Well said my friend, makes you think of that famous quote by Voltaires friend.Ms E B Hall
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
Your right to say it””
One thing I have learned from many painful Thanksgiving dinners with my very conservative family members is you’re never going to change anyone’s mind when they feel passionately about something.
If I can’t “talk sense” into my parents who I love with all of my heart, a vindictive twitter thread or a faceless internet comment sure isn’t going to do anything to change a person’s mind. It’s very self-serving to assume otherwise.
I’ve really appreciated that I’m face of all this negative attention, you’ve managed to keep your side of the conversation civil. I haven’t been a Tessa Dare fan for while, and I don’t think I’m even going to be able to stomach any re-reads of “a week to be wicked” now.
What somebody reads and how they process information is so subjective. There is no reason to expect that everybody will appreciate the same stories and details. Just because I have an opinion on a book doesn’t mean someone else’s different opinion to invalidated.
I just want to find books that i like and that give me that warm and fuzzy “wow! this book really worked for me” feeling. I really look forward to finding more recommendation on this site and Goodreads — my go tos. And I really hope you post more of these discussions.
I grew up in a very conservative and prejudiced family. I never, even as a young child, agreed with their opinions. But I was never able to change them. Mom finally kind of began to see people as individuals, but barely. She wouldn’t let my gay cousin, whom she loved, rent an apartment in her home because of the ‘things he might do there’. Never mind that he would have looked after her and her home in her final years as if he were her own son.
All of my family are gone now, but if I couldn’t make a dent in 60+ years of trying, a Twitter post sure won’t do it either. Social media is just bullies rallying bullies, imo, and I ignore it. A place like this where you can actually write complete sentences is much more comfortable for me, and I enjoy the differing perspectives as long as we are all civil. I’m a work in progress, as are we all, and I want to learn about (and from) others and the realities of their lives.
Even if I strongly disagree with a comment, I try very hard to be objective and really hear what’s being said. I still may disagree, but I respect your right to say it.
Reading these responses, I wanted to reflect on the role AAR played for me over about a decade and a half of reading,
WoCs and LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented groups frequently call for white cis women (I know that’s not all of AAR but it’s kind of the vibe) to “do the work.” That black women can’t always have to carry the burden of educating white women. That trans people don’t need the extra labor of being someone’s teachable moment.
But people who are just stretching out – just beginning to branch into more diverse reading – are more likely to do that through a relationship. When a web site they’ve been reading for decades tells them “This M/M mystery series is AMAZING,” they’re more likely to say, well, what the heck, I’ve never read gay men before but I’ll try it. And yes, I’m speaking personally here, because this was my journey. The wonderful, diverse book review sites like WOC in Romance are awesome, and I use them often now, but I know that getting myself to the point where that site was a fit for me as a reader involved a journey through a more centrist site first.
And one reason for needing that transition site? Exploring, largely cis-white readers are going to make mistakes (say, in using dated terminology) or still hold attitudes that can be hurtful. I’ve said some dumb things. I try to say fewer of them now. I’m still, often, dumb. I didn’t want to hurt people with that dumbness, and I also didn’t want to be the target of a pile-on for a mistake I didn’t even see coming.
So when PoCs say “I don’t feel safe here, and I’m going somewhere else,” that may be… well, ok? Not that they felt hurt, but that they’re making the choice to be on another site where they won’t be subjected to it and burdened with addressing it. And the queer and PoC reviewers and readers here at AAR who choose to do the work of reaching out? Well, bless you, and thank you, because I don’t want to live in a society where this work doesn’t get done. I’m a better person, and I’m hopefully paying that forward, because people did it for me.
I think there’s a role for a site – which is, for me, was, AAR – that helps people who are curious about learning about more people and perspectives. Someone needs to be introducing white readers to Asian authors. Someone needs to be sharing F/F stories with heterosexual (and maybe even somewhat homophobic) readers. People who are tired of doing the labor of that process, and who don’t want the strain of seeing people saying problematic things, shouldn’t feel obligated to be on that site doing that work.
Maybe everybody here won’t go on to have reading lists that are 60% diverse. But if they just go on to throw a few more book purchases at diverse authors and stories, and maybe to treat someone in their life a little better because a character brought that story to life… well, that would be a good thing.
Thank you, yes.
You describe a journey similar to mine, beautifully.
I would not have discovered K.J. Charles, Cat Sebastian, Alyssa Cole, Alisha Rai without this site. And many more.
Great post, Nana. I think AAR tries to be a “centrist” site where everyone can come together and post their ideas, if not in harmony, then at least in courteous discourse. In theory, minority groups and feminists are welcome here to embrace diversity and progressive changes for women in fiction, while culturally conservative and traditionalist readers are also welcome to share nostalgia for romances of the past and longing for tales that promote escapism. However, ideas like intersectionality clash with ideas expressing discontent with “checklists” and multiple types of diversity taking place in a single book. There is not a middle ground in this debate because these ideas are by definition antithetical to each other. AAR tries to support “both side-ism,” but I doubt that mission will succeed in the long run because my sense is that the emerging authors today are highly activated by their political leanings. I don’t post on Twitter but I do follow romance authors there and I am aware that many, especially a large number of up-and-coming authors, see their writing as a contribution to necessary cultural changes. In fact, it seems as if many of the most vibrant and exciting new authors today are doing this writing in their novels. AAR on the surface seems to want to review and interview and support these authors and their readers, but the site itself is not succeeding. I keep seeing the “all about racism” moniker on Twitter accounts, and that’s not a good look. Maybe in the end, as Nana states, that’s okay though; diverse authors and their readership move on to other sites. I can’t help thinking though about the words “the wrong side of history” and wonder how long the status quo can hold on. But I think about this issue all the time in other contexts as well :)
AAR is on the wrong side of history? How?
?
Have you been reading the threads here on diversity?
Yes. I don’t see AAR being on the wrong side of history. Have you read the above article? Isn’t Dare on Avon? That published less than 5% diverse romance last year? How is AAR on the wrong side? For someone who spends so much time here, you don’t like them, do you?