I meant to post this yesterday, but work things got in the way. Then the ever-wonderful Cleolinda posted the long, long post I was going to write and said everything I was going to say. So I’ll keep mine short. I suggest you click over to Cleolinda’s blog for the full story. Seriously.
A few days ago Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith wrote a guest post for the Genreville blog over at Publisher’s Weekly about their experience with an unnamed agent who asked them to make changes to their YA manuscript to erase the fact that a main POV character was gay. At least for the first book in the series. The pair went on to say that they’d heard that this thing with erasing gay characters in YA was something other authors experienced and thus they felt the need to write about it and bring the overall issue to light.
They did not name the agent or agency. They moved on from their specific example to the broader issue. They pointed out that this seemed to come from a concern over market forces rather than labeling anyone Homophobic or Gay Hating. If you don’t believe me, go read the original.
The post sparked a big conversation about the issue and I saw in the comments and on blogs and social networks that several other authors, published and not, talk their stories of having agents and/or editors tell them to remove gay characters from their YA.
Then Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, an agent with Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation, posted on Colleen Lindsay’s blog, The Swivet, outing her agency as the one in question (though claims she is not the specific agent in question) and essentially called Rachel and Sherwood liars. Under the guest post part, Colleen added this:
FACT: Both these writers already have their own agents. At least one of those agents reps YA books. So what does it say when the respective agents for both these well-established writers advise them to find a different agent for the book in question because neither of them wanted to rep it themselves?
It tells me that homophobia was most likely not the reason that this book has thus far not found representation.
And that made me see red because that just looks like a personal attack and an attempt to dismiss what Rachel and Sherwood said by saying that their book is no good. Further, on my Facebook page, Colleen claimed that she knew other agents who turned the book down because it had structural issues.
I like and respect Colleen a lot, but I’m calling bullshit on this. Though she says she didn’t mean for the above words to be an attack, that’s what it looks like. And, even if other agents passed on the book for structural reasons, that does not mean that the conversation as represented by Rachel and Sherwood didn’t happen. One does not preclude the other.
Putting that aside, at this point we’ve reached He Said/She Said, and it comes down to which side you believe. Stampfel-Volpe said that at no time did they say they wanted make the character not gay or take away references that he was gay in the book in question1. Rachel and Sherwood maintain that this is indeed what was said.
For my part, I believe Rachel and Sherwood. My main criteria being that my interactions with Rachel online and the interactions and friendships she has with people I know and trust do not lead me to believe she would lie in this way. I don’t know Sherwood well, but nothing I have ever heard from her good friends leads me to believe she would perpetuate a hoax for publicity or lie for profit.
Rose Fox of Genreville apparently felt the same way. Colleen mentions something about how the piece wasn’t fact checked, but how was that supposed to happen? The agency wasn’t named. And even though there are claims that the gossip identified the agency, the majority of us wouldn’t know without their self-outing. These are not the kind of “facts” that can be easily checked because the other party can say “That didn’t happen” and they could be lying just as easily as the authors. Rose used her judgment based on what she knows about the two women and, so far, I haven’t seen any reason for her to have doubted that.
Additionally, Stampfel-Volpe’s post is filled with the kind of red flags I see every day as an anti-prejudice activist. The tone is too defensive2 and unconvincing. Plus, what exactly do you expect the agency to say? “Yes, we did that”? No. Hell no.
Think about it. If they did request the changes Rachel and Sherwood claim and did so because of market forces and such, they wouldn’t admit to it especially if they aren’t homophobic themselves. It’s just like the whole cover controversy with Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. I’m sure that her publishers are not racist people, but they put a non-black person on the cover of her book at first because they assumed that systemic racist attitudes would hurt sales. That is not something you want to admit in public, because it’s gross. It happens, though. We all know it happens. And thanks to #YesGayYA we know that the erasure of gay characters in YA happens, too. And it’s still gross.
No one wants to admit when they give in to prejudiced bullshit.
The other reason I just don’t believe Stampfel-Volpe is that she made this whole thing personal:
One of our agents is being used as a springboard for these authors to gain attention for their project. She is being exploited. But even worse, by basing their entire article on untruths, these authors have exploited the topic.
Someone explain to me how the agent in question is being exploited when he/she wasn’t named. Also, bringing a topic to light is not exploitative. The kind of people I see using language like that are the folks who try to tell me that by bringing up racism or “inventing” it when it’s not there, I am the one being racist. This is a classic defense. It may even be on the BINGO card. When I see people using this kind of language, I immediately distrust what they have to say. I’ve been on the receiving end of this too often to not recognize it.
I suggest you read the original Genreville post and the other excellent links at Cleolinda’s blog before you come down on one side or the other, especially if you don’t know any of the people involved. The readiness of some people to immediate jump to HOAX! based on absolutely nothing but one person’s word would astonish me if I didn’t already have plenty of experience watching people readily dismiss real prejudice that exists right in front of them as not-prejudice. It’s so much more comforting to think that someone is just a lying liar than that there’s a serious problem to tackle.
Tackling problems requires thought, effort, and often sacrifice. Who wants to deal with that?
Footnotes
- Edited to make things clearer. I didn’t read my original sentence a second time and should have. Thanks Helen. [⇧]
- Especially the parts added by Colleen, who emphatically claims that the agent is a good friend and not homophobic, even though Rachel and Sherwood didn’t say he/she was. A person might not be personally homophobic, but still perpetuate the idea that mainstream readers are too homophobic to deal with gay charcaters. It’s a systemic problem, and one need not be personally prejudiced in order to bow to the system. [⇧]
I was also going to write a post, and then saw cleolinda had posted what I wanted to say. And now I see that you’ve posted most of the rest of what I wanted to say. Good job.
(oh, jeez, sorry for the typos!)
Offline a friend and I discussed the possibility that both sides of the story could be in some sense true that it was misunderstanding, that the agent said one thing and Rachel and Sherwood heard another. But I’d like to point out that BOTH Rachel and Sherwood understood it to mean the same thing. And it is not he said/she said, but in fact he said/THEY said.
Also, there’s the question of who has the most to lose. Prior to the agent/agency being outed, I would argue Rachel and Sherwood gain little and lose more from talking about this openly. And so I’m generally inclined to believe them, just based on what was said, and not on any personal knowledge of the parties involved.
I don’t have to stretch my imagination much to picture a conversation with any number of people sitting around a table agreeing that it would be better to cut a gay POV from a story “for structural reasons” and that it might fare better in a market without any romance while privately thinking, “Great, I’m glad someone pointed this out because now I don’t have to bring up how it would hurt sales and look like I’m a homophobic jackass or something.”
Gah. That should be “willing” not “will.”
Sherwood has since posted that their current agents were both will to rep the novel, but Sherwood and Rachel wanted to find a new agent for their team projects.
I heartily agree about being unimpressed with the rebuttal. I posted a (vastly overlong) response in my LJ, but yes. And aside from the “making the character straight” request, the agency actually confirms that they asked for the other changes, albeit with a difference of emphasis.
That sound you hear is me over in Brooklyn clapping.
Excellent summary!
Stampfel-Volpe said that at no time did they say they wanted to eliminate the character because of the gayness. Rachel and Sherwood maintain that this is indeed what was said.
Rachel and Sherwood maintain (and I believe them as well) that Stampfel-Volpe wanted to cut the character’s POV and make the character straight, or at least not reveal his sexuality in this book. This is not _quite_ the same as cutting the character, although it is at best a severe, fundamentally character-altering and book-altering change. I am puzzled that Stampfel-Volpe’s response harped on about not eliminating the character, when as far as I can see in the original post, Rachel and Sherwood make it quite clear they balked over the straight-washing of the character, NOT removal.
… huh. Going back to Stampfel-Volpe’s post just to check my facts, I see that they DO say:
Also, we never asked that the authors change any LGBTQ character to a straight character.
I can construct several possible conversations in which the agent thinks that they’re ‘just’ asking for the character to be closeted, but what the authors hear is a request for straightening, and respond to that appropriately (Rachel’s reported comment about that being a line in the sand that she will not cross). If that’s what occurred, then I am seriously unimpressed by the agency’s rebuttal, which appears to try to make it seem as if the topic was never discussed at all.
I edited that sentence, thanks :)