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Why Aren’t I A Feminist Writer?
People don’t play 12-dimensional chess. They do things because they genuinely want to do them.
To figure out the motivations behind an action, apply Occam’s razor. What does someone care about? Watch their choices. Do those contradict their stated beliefs? Well, their actions are showing you what they actually value. If you’re casually dating someone who says they want to commit but always has some reason why they can’t just yet, they’re stringing you along. If a conservative pastor gets caught sleeping with men but claims he’s still somehow straight, do you believe him? When Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and instituted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it wasn’t some elaborate political triangulation. He truly did just oppose LGBT rights.
Same goes for writing. If a science-fiction author only ever writes male protagonists, he doesn’t have a secret long-game agenda to increase female representation — even if he says he’s not a sexist. And if a nonfiction genre claims to support women, people of color, and LGBT people but centers almost exclusively on graphic stories of them suffering abuse and violence, its readers actually do just want to watch oppressed people in pain.
Contemporary feminist writing is essentially confessional. Even macro-level social analysis has to be couched in terms of the author’s personal history of misery…