Could do with an Ethics Check
Oct. 23rd, 2014 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonI've spent off-time while up at my folks' working on a short story I plan on submitting to Accessing the Future, the crowdfunded anthology of disability-themed SF.
They note in the submission guidelines that they're looking for intersectionality, I've definitely got that in that I have a disabled female engineer fighting for her job against a plot to unseat her by a patriarchal subordinate with a punishment for sin view of disability.
But.... I realised that just by changing three words I can imply she's non-Caucasian, which adds an additional layer of intersectionality, but not one actually related to the story. If I call her Larsen (x2) and describe her toddler as blonde, then everyone will assume Caucasian, but if I call her Ochoa (or Hernandez or whatever), and simply describe the toddler as gorgeous, then a lot of people will assume she's Hispanic.
Additional intersectionality is good, but this sort of feels like cheating. Thoughts?
(Just to complicate things, I was debating with myself on the train journey home, wondered if I could use the protagonist for any other stories, and realised that she fits a role I have mapped out for a novel concept, and her ethnicity might play a role there),
They note in the submission guidelines that they're looking for intersectionality, I've definitely got that in that I have a disabled female engineer fighting for her job against a plot to unseat her by a patriarchal subordinate with a punishment for sin view of disability.
But.... I realised that just by changing three words I can imply she's non-Caucasian, which adds an additional layer of intersectionality, but not one actually related to the story. If I call her Larsen (x2) and describe her toddler as blonde, then everyone will assume Caucasian, but if I call her Ochoa (or Hernandez or whatever), and simply describe the toddler as gorgeous, then a lot of people will assume she's Hispanic.
Additional intersectionality is good, but this sort of feels like cheating. Thoughts?
(Just to complicate things, I was debating with myself on the train journey home, wondered if I could use the protagonist for any other stories, and realised that she fits a role I have mapped out for a novel concept, and her ethnicity might play a role there),
