She Wrote a Dystopian Novel. What Happened Next Was Pretty Dystopian.
New York Times | Pamela Paul
Author Sandra Newman wrote a science fiction book about the sudden disappearance of all men from the planet. As Pamela Paul documents, the activists responded swiftly: “[Asserting] the salience of biological sex…was enough to upset a vocal number of transgender activists online. They would argue that ‘men’ is a cultural category to which anyone can choose to belong…” Months before the book’s scheduled release, it was attacked online as a “transphobic, racist, ableist, misogynist nightmare of a book” with a goal to de-platform the book and its author.
“A fiction writer ought to be free to imagine her own universe, whether as utopian ideal, dystopian horror or some complicated vision in between… Fiction wasn’t meant to be run through some kind of moral purity test,” argues journalist Paul. “For all the outlandishness of its conceits, science fiction can allow writers and readers access to deeper truths about very real aspects of society, politics and power in creative ways. But apparently Newman got too creative — or too real — for some.”
Even Newman’s defenders got canceled. Lauren Hough’s prize nomination for her memoir was rescinded after she stood up for Newman online. “People seem to want books to be good or evil, rather than exploring a question,” Hough explained to Paul. “Now no one can play this thought experiment again.” Asked whether she has regrets for defending Newman, Hough asked, rhetorically, “If you’re not going to defend literature, then what’s the point?”
As Paul explains the intolerant zeitgeist, “Small but determined interest groups can gather gale force online and unleash scurrilous attacks on ideas they disapprove of or fear, and condemn as too dangerous even to explore.” Ironically, Newman describes her work as, “a book about ‘othering,’ the human tendency to divide people into categories or groups and to think of our group as the real people and other groups as threats to the real people.”
As for what we can do? As Paul says, “There’s an answer to attacks like these: Read the book.”
