ladybusiness | (Reply)

From:

It misses the fundamental thrust of his argument. In oppressive societies and situations, there can still be personal happiness and success for people who are in these groups. Cultural situations and systems that seek to hold us down impact our personal happiness, but we are varied people with excellent abilities to compartmentalize and live our lives reaching ever upwards for a better way to be. People can be victimized without losing their other qualities. People can victimized and be happy in their personal lives. People can be victimized and still be fully realized people. Pretending that happy people aren't victims of a system as insidious as the one Bacigalupi mentions is to pretend the system doesn't exist; that's more dangerous than the system itself.

I don't entirely agree. I mean, the comment is problematic for exactly the reasons you mention, but I found Bacigalupi's essay horrifying for some of the same reasons the commenter did -- it suggests that the only reason to write about gay people is for the education of straight people. Moreover, its arguments about the exclusion of gay people from the present dystopian trend is factually wrong, both because it neglects to mention any publishing or social pressure preventing the presence of gay characters, and because there is a long, long history of feminist dystopias written by women in oppressive societies.