Followup on "Say Yes to Gay YA"

[swan_tower]

A few days ago, I linked to a piece by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith about an agent's request that they remove or straighten a gay protagonist from their book.

Their article didn't name the agent or the agency, but today Joanna Stampfel-Volpe at Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation came forward (on a site hosted by agent Colleen Lindsay [edit: former agent]) to say that she is the one in question, and furthermore, that "there is nothing in that article concerning our response to their manuscript that is true."

[Another edit: Joanna Stampfel-Volpe is speaking on behalf of the agency, but herself is not the agent involved in the incident. I apologize for the misreading, which managed to persist through me reading not only her post, but a vast number of comments on both rachelmanija and sartorias's journals. Ironically, I'd have less editing to do if I'd stuck with my original draft, where I started out referring to "the agent," without a name. But then I decided that if I was doing the authors the courtesy of calling them by name, I should do the same for the agent. My error, and I am editing the remainder of this entry to fix it.]

Brown and Smith stand by their original article.

So this has just turned into a case of "they said, she said." Which has, naturally, made many people leap to conclusions on one side or the other: "Oh, I knew that story sounded fishy from the start; clearly the agent is telling the truth" or "the agent is a lying homophobic liar." Since it's doubtful anybody has a recording of the phone call where all of this went down, actual proof is hard to come by. I do think, however, that it's possible to apply logic and draw at least a few tentative conclusions.

First of all, Brown and Smith didn't name the agent or agency, and specifically said they didn't want this to be a witch-hunt against one person; lots of other people have come forward with stories of similar things happening to them, and the statistics on queer representation in YA support the idea that publishing has a problem with non-straight characters (and non-"mainstream" characters in other respects, too: non-white, disabled, etc). The overwhelming focus of their post was to call out for agents, editors, readers, and writers to try and reduce the barriers against diversity in the genre.

Stampfel-Volpe chose -- presumably with the permission of The Agent In Question (hereafter TAIQ) -- to identify the agency publicly, and both she and Lindsay spend most of their focus on TAIQ and the writers, rather than the larger issue; they accuse Brown and Smith of "exploiting" her. They do call for general diversity as well, but in the end, you can kind of play bingo with that post; for example, Lindsay says TAIQ is a friend of hers, and not a homophobe. Note that the post on Genreville explicitly said TAIQ may or may not entertain personal feelings of homophobia; Brown and Smith don't have any basis for judging that. You don't have to hate gay people to contribute to the ways in which they get silenced. It can happen even if you like them, because that's how institutionalized prejudice works.

Second, there's the question of why the agency responded publicly. Apparently rumours have been flying behind the scenes, people asking whether TAIQ was the one. There was nothing in the original post, or any public follow-up that I've seen, which could possibly have produced those rumours. This creates two immediate possibilities: first, either Brown or Smith gossiped privately before Stampfel-Volpe took it public, or second, that other people have had similar experiences with TAIQ, and speculated based on those experiences.

We can't answer this one; tracing those rumours to their origin is a lost cause. But as a data point, I offer up this: nowhere, publicly or privately, have I seen Brown and Smith provide a single detail, other than that it was a female agent at an agency that has repped a bestselling YA dystopia, that could have given away TAIQ's identity. (And yes, I have plenty of evidence to back up both those claims.) This doesn't disprove the gossip theory, but it does give a data point against it. As for the other, I have no evidence either way. I'm open to other possibilities as well.

Finally -- as some people have noted on Stampfel-Volpe's post -- there may be a middle ground here. As I said before, institutionalized prejudice works in less-than-obvious ways. It's possible the conversation could have been phrased in a way that TAIQ did not see as reinforcing homophobia, which nevertheless could be heard that way. Without the exact words, we can't judge for ourselves. But I will say, for my own part, that I have a hard time believing this was, from the agent's side, purely an issue of craft, and not of the marketability of queerness. If the pov in question "didn’t contribute to the actual plot" (Stampfel-Volpe's words), then how could that be solved by making him straight? If she didn't actually suggest making him straight -- if that's a misinterpretation -- then how could Brown and Smith have subsequently heard anything that could be misconstrued as "if this turns into a series, later on you can show that he's gay"? And how could the misunderstanding have persisted past Brown saying his sexuality was a moral issue she would not back down from?

Looking at it logically . . . the only thing I can conclude is that either Brown and Smith are outright lying -- maybe as a publicity stunt, because they haven't yet found representation for the book (as various people have begun to accuse them of, over on the agent's rebuttal post) -- or the agency is trying to do very inept damage control for an incident that was, in its outlines if not every detail, more or less like the Genreville post describes. As you can probably guess from my analysis above, my money is on the latter. Is that based partly on personal knowledge of one side and not the other? Sure. I know the authors; I don't know the agent. I judge them to both be experienced professionals unlikely to manufacture a hissy fit because one particular book hasn't sold yet. But even without the evidence I've seen and you haven't: one side was careful not to make this personal, and the other side was not. One side offered summaries of what both parties said in the conversation; the other omitted the authors' responses from their summary. Heck, one side had two people involved, and the other had only one. I know people's opinions can reinforce each other, but there had to have been a moment where Brown and Smith spoke to each other after the phone call to share their opinions. I've heard nothing to suggest either of them started off by saying "I'm not sure that's what she meant," and was eventually talked around to the other's interpretation. If their interpretations matched up from the start, that's at least a minor form of fact-checking.

When all's said and done, though, my real conclusion: go read the Genreville post again. Skip the parts about the agent; read the parts about the difficulty in getting non-straight, non-white, non-"mainstream" characters through the filter of authors' brains, agents' judgement calls, editors' purchasing power, bookstores' support, and readers' inclinations, all the way to the public eye. That, more than any one book or agent or incident, is the part that matters.


Due to ridiculous amounts of spam (months after and unrelated to this incident), I have locked comments on this post.

Comments

[elizaeffect.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just...I don't know anyone involved, but the way to do damage control for an incident like this is not "we said nothing of the sort and also here are some personal attacks on the people who made the allegations, with a belated call for diversity stapled on at the end". Objective-observer takeaway is thus:

1) WORLD NEEDS MORE GAY YA BOOKS. 2) Agent is an asshat. End of story, except not, because see 1). This has spawned a lot of good conversation, anyway, when it's not busy devolving into gossip.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing the whole incident up and breaking it down that way so I didn't have to.

Malinda Lo's stats post really made me sit up and take notice; while I'm sure that the statistics for adult SFF are probably better, the ~0.4% representation there is really appalling, and gives me a much clearer appreciation for why certain of my friends latched on to Ash so strongly.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

September 16, 2011 Links and Plugs

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User charlesatan referenced to your post from September 16, 2011 Links and Plugs (http://charlesatan.livejournal.com/784073.html) saying: [...] Marie Brennan on Followup on "Say Yes to Gay YA" [...]

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

Kudos to you for calling attention to this mess, and for writing a very mature, even-handed commentary on it.

[shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this.

[elsmi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this; that agent's post and its comments made me so furious.

If Brown and Smith did make all this up as a publicity stunt, then wouldn't the easiest response just be for them to announce that they're shocked to hear such vile rumors about an agency whose interactions with them were always perfectly unobjectionable, and it was some other agency that they were talking about in the first place? That would have made the agent's post look silly, defused the whole issue, and let them get on with their publicity stunt. Instead, they confirmed that this is the agency in question, which is what created the they-said-she-said mess that's dragging their own reputations through the mud. Not that I think there's the slightest chance that they were lying, knowing Rachel and Sherwood. But my point is that cynical explanation suggested by the world-weary logicaler-than-thou folks who are calling out this "hoax" doesn't even make sense on its own terms. It's almost like their decision to attack these people talking about institutionalized homophobia is based on something other than pure logic after all.

[rosefox]

on a site hosted by agent Colleen Lindsay

Former agent, FYI.

Yes to queer YA, no to defensive derailing, darnit

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User shweta_narayan referenced to your post from Yes to queer YA, no to defensive derailing, darnit (http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/157525.html) saying: [...] This is just to say has posted an excellent analysis [...]

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

(btw, I posted linking here, because your analysis is made of win.)

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

You pretty much said everything I'd been thinking, but much more elegantly. I honestly can't think of a reason for the agent to come forward at all, since as far as I could tell there was very little speculation on the identity of the agent in question, and as you said Smith and Brown left absolutely no clues as to her identity. They tried very hard (and are continuing to try, IMO) to keep the focus of the discussion away from the personal and on the larger issue at hand.

Do you mind if I link to this post?

Clarification

[lagringa.livejournal.com]

To clarify: Joanna Stampfel-Volpe is not the agent in question, although she chose to write the rebuttal on behalf of her colleague and the agency as a whole, as their integrity is under fire. They chose to come forward because although the name of the agent was not mentioned in the PW post, it was certainly bandied about privately among the kidlit writer community.

Best,

Colleen

Regarding the Gay YA Mess...

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User bookblather referenced to your post from Regarding the Gay YA Mess... (http://bookblather.livejournal.com/41991.html) saying: [...] I stand by my original comments. Swan_tower lays out her reasoning for the same conclusion here [...]

A brief comment on "Say Yes to Gay YA"

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User kirizal referenced to your post from A brief comment on "Say Yes to Gay YA" (http://kirizal.livejournal.com/51513.html) saying: [...] I am angry. I recommend 's post for context, http://swan-tower.livejournal.com/489896.html [...]

[fjm.livejournal.com]

THis whole issue is not about individual feelings towards a group, it's about individual and corporate feelings to *marketing* that group. Gollancz is a classic: full of feisty and femiinst women and a dreadful record of publishing female sf writers and then of marketing them well enough to keep them in print. The latest "vote for our best writers from our back list" was deeply revealing.

[marthawells.livejournal.com]

Excellent post.

No title

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User marthawells referenced to your post from No title (http://marthawells.livejournal.com/434756.html) saying: [...] bed. "Jade? Flower says she found something." link: Marie Brennan: Followup on "Say Yes to Gay YA" [...]

What's going on with #yesGayYA

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User cleolinda referenced to your post from What's going on with #yesGayYA (http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/993710.html) saying: [...] adult fiction"). Also, Stampfel-Volpe is not the agent who was in discussions with Smith and Brown. [...]

The TOO MANY TABS! linkfest

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User fantasyecho referenced to your post from The TOO MANY TABS! linkfest (http://fantasyecho.livejournal.com/415018.html) saying: [...] by megwrites (a rant) Followup on "Say Yes to Gay YA" [...]

[rydra_wong]

This is excellent. Thank you.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with all of this post, but it is the most well-reasoned statement I've seen on this incident to date, and I appreciated reading it--and I agree completely with your conclusion that "the difficulty in getting non-straight, non-white, non-"mainstream" characters through the filter of authors' brains, agents' judgement calls, editors' purchasing power, bookstores' support, and readers' inclinations, all the way to the public eye" is the part that really matters.

[boojum42.livejournal.com]

(Here, as a thought exercise, I'm considering the consequences of the matter if the conversation had gone exactly as presented by Stampfel-Volpe. I have no idea whether that is the case, obviously.)

Reading Stampfel-Volpe's response, the claim is that TAIQ asked for the authors to:
1) cut all the romance plots, gay and straight and
2) cut the POVs of several characters, including the gay one.
By saying "you can say he's gay in later books, maybe", TAIQ might have meant something like "you can introduce romance plots in the later books", including the gay one. I can see how the agent might have said the one thing and the authors might interpret this as meaning: get rid of the gay. Here's why: it has roughly the same effect.

TAIQ got a manuscript with a gay pov character and said... cut the romance. Honestly I think it works out to the same thing as saying "cut the homosexuality". If agents are more likely to say "cut the romance" when they get gay characters than when they get only straight ones, then representation-wise, this really works out to the same thing as turning gay characters straight. (It's not like _straight_ romances fail to be represented in YA lit.) Probably TAIQ did not see her recommendations as being against representation of gay people in literature, but they actually work out to that in the end-- even taking Stampfel-Volpe's account as being a perfect representation of what happened.

I mean, the issue is muddy if you only look at one example; there may have been unobjectionable reasons for cutting the romance plots. Thus, picking on the one agent in isolation may be unwarranted. As part of a larger trend, though, it is worrisome. It's a bit like, say, job hires. For any given job search, the employer might have had good reason to hire a particular white person instead of a particular minority. But the overall trend is a bad one. And the insidious thing is you can rarely tell by looking at just one case whether it's prejudice or not!