The Talented Victim Is Not the Point

Pity the fiction writers trying to make art in the era of social-media mobs. Start with one in particular, “a nonbinary human … who loves to dream and create.” Last week, this young writer asked on Twitter, “You know how there are sensitivity readers, courses, and guidelines for writing outside your own experience? Can there be courses and advice for writing one’s own experience?” This young writer used to believe that “writing about my marginalizations and my own personal experience will be okay”—no more. “I have learned that is not the case!” this young person observed, fretting that, without meaning to do harm, “I might be writing my gender wrong.”

What made this young person fear that honest writing about their own gender identity could be “wrong” and hurtful, rendering it not “okay”? Watching a trans author get dragged for unorthodox art.

Let me back up. Recently, Clarkesworld, a monthly science-fiction and fantasy magazine, published a short story by Isabel Fall titled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” an allusion to a viral meme from 2014 that sought to mock and parody claims about transgender identities. The story attempts to subvert that critique, reclaim the phrase, and explore trans identities.

After experiencing vicious and personal attacks online, Isabel Fall asked that “Attack Helicopter” be taken down. Call it a self-cancellation. “The recent barrage of attacks on Isabel have taken a toll and. “This is not censorship. She needed this to be done for her own personal safety and health.”