Wow, I just had a massive crysplosion. I literally cried for 45 minutes, it was ridiculous and my eyes hurt a lot now. I think I might be a bit stressed. (Crysplosion was triggered by not being invited to a dinner. Even I don't think it's that big a deal, it was just a rejection on top of my big giant spiky bundle of stress in my tummy.)


Quote Originally Posted by H Birchgrove View Post

What annoys me is when folks complain about prejudice in some writers' books (like those by Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, etc), and claim that make everything they did worthless, even if they did have some literal merit and/or created something original. But they let equally troublesome or worse bigotry pass in other writers (or "authors" ) books (for example by Charles Dickens, Jack London, Émile Zola, etc), claiming that they were "good enough" so we can read that as long as we make some comments on their bigotry.
From my observations, EVERYONE in the past (you know, like, say, pre-1960s) was racist. And by "everyone", I mean, "everyone whose writings we have". Maybe some people weren't. Maybe Jesus was really non-racist and it just didn't come up very often. Anyway, my point is, provided we make it clear that it's not okay anymore, we can't eliminate any literature from "the old days" based on a little institutional racism. I betcha people will look back at the great literature we produce and say "Wow, those people in the past were really transphobic. And also still racist and sexist and stuff, I mean, this stuff is laughably blatant, given how long those movements were around by the turn of the millennium."