I really only check in to dK from time to time, and I've been quite busy of late, so I missed OllieGarkey's diary Boycott Orson Scott Card from a few weeks ago. However, yesterday I found the diary after browsing a series of links, and am still reading all the way through the comments.
Several people in the thread wrongly compared a call to boycott a book to censorship of the book. I don't understand why this fallacy gets any traction on a Democratic site. Censorship, in American legal terms, is something done by the government. There is also the legal de facto censorship of not owning a press, or a big-enough press in the age of the internet, to get one's ideas out.
However, refusing to buy someone's book, and encouraging others not to buy it as well, is neither kind of censorship. It's exercising one's right to free speech and one's right to spend one's money as one wishes.
I'd also like to address the insistence by some that we must separate the art from the artist in all cases. In my experience, the people who make this assertion are the people who are least affected by the more problematic content of the art.
In other words, societal privilege and the lack thereof affects how we perceive art. Which is not a surprise, because they also affect how we perceive many aspects of everyday life. I could list countless examples, but why? If you know what I'm talking about, you could list countless examples yourself. If you deny that privilege affects how we view things, you'll have "good reasons," doubtless based in "logic" and lacking "emotion," why in every single instance the affected people are "overreacting" and "looking to be offended" (and, of course, you'll insist on sharing them at length).
I'm not GLBT. I'm a straight cisgendered woman. However, as a feminist, I'm acutely aware how GLBT issues and feminist issues go hand in hand. Right-wingers believe in rigidly different roles for men and women. GLBT people confound their assumptions about "nature" and, therefore, are seen as threats to the social order.
Gender bigotries therefore tend to cluster in individuals. There are certainly exceptions. I've seen any number of misogynist gay men, transphobic GLBs, transphobic feminists, and even homophobic feminists ("lavender menace," anyone?). Being oppressed on one axis, as the terminology goes, doesn't mean you can't be a bigoted asshole along another axis.
That said, Orson Scott Card's gender bigotries are inseparable from one another, as they're all part of the mainstream Mormon belief system. (Yes, there are some Mormons who are not bigoted in that way, but please let us not pretend that they constitute any sort of political power comparable to that of the overall church.)
Here is my question to the "the art isn't the artist" folks:
Why, precisely, should I subject myself, in my spare time, possibly using my hard-earned money to do so, to books that subject me to the same kind of bigoted assumptions, the same kind of wishes that "my kind" (women) could be put in "our place," that I have to deal with in real life?
This question has been raised before. I first saw it raised in RaceFail 2009, which, as the Feminist SF Wiki says, "is a term used to refer to an extended discussion of race and racism in science fiction books, culture, fandom, and criticism that began in January 2009." Much of the discussion went on at LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, which (especially the latter) are heavily female, fannish, and progressive; however, it wasn't limited to those two sites.
Frequently, fans with privilege who didn't want to deal with "all these boring issues in MY books/TV shows/movies/etc." — as if those issues were new, or as if those fans were the only "true" fans of those books or shows or movies — accused fans without privilege of "harshing my squee." Though Google isn't turning up any examples thereof, a few fans of color replied, "Well, stop squeeing my harsh!"
I'd also like to address the assertion, which I don't believe I saw raised verbatim in that thread but which I've seen raised elsewhere, that anyone with an interest in sf/f must consume the "classics" — Heinlein, Clarke, Dick, whomever else you want to include.
And that, as was charmingly put to me at one point, I can't expect someone like Heinlein to have "the sensibilities of a 27-year-old feminist" — as if feminist ideas are new in society, rather than quite old but omitted from most accounts of history; and as if writing fully fleshed-out and imperfect female characters, rather than idealized ones whose ultimate happiness depends on male desire, marriage, and children, is some kind of ultramodern idea cooked up by idealistic young Ivy League (cough) "co-eds."
To be honest, I'm not into "hard" s/f or space adventures, so a lot of the classics don't really hold that much appeal for me in general. That said, I'd like to know why, again, I should read certain books, in my leisure time, spending my hard-earned money to do so, when I know from having looked into them extensively that they will be full of the kind of annoying at best, marginalizing at worst, bullshit I shouldn't have to pay to deal with?
Despite the sneering often done at sf/f as "genre fiction," not up to the standards of "serious" fiction, I think that the harping on "the classics" by some fans is not unlike the insistence by the self-anointed "gatekeepers of Western civilization" that everyone must read The Canon™.
Now, yes, Westerners should probably have at least a Cliff's Notes–level acquaintance with the books of The Canon™. And some of those books are indeed be quite good. Shakespeare, for instance, earns his reputation and more.
But others, like Wuthering Heights or Ulysses, leave me absolutely cold. So do some of the modern literary giants, like Norman Mailer, because of his vile misogyny and his amoral adoration of a murderer, whom he got released from prison to kill again. Because, to Mailer, the art was more important than the man who created it.
Orson Scott Card hasn't murdered anyone, as Mailer attempted to do to his wife Adele; nor has he enabled other people to murder. However, he is active and vocal in the movement to strip GLBT people of their hard-earned rights, relegating them to second-class citizenship. Not only do I oppose his agenda on principle, I oppose it because it hurts people I love. And, while I have not read his books, GLBT people who have, including some in OllieGarkey's thread, state that he is not able to keep these views out of his writing.
I will happily read more of the stunningly plotted and researched fantasy novels of, say, Tim Powers; though he is a conservative Catholic whose novels do not violate his theological beliefs, he's pretty scrupulous about not using them as tracts or political soapboxes. (Note: I have not read Declare yet, so I can't comment on that novel, which is apparently "more Catholic" than his other work.)
I will not, however, read the likes of Orson Scott Card, or other writers whose writing or political activism marginalizes me or my loved ones.
Fortunately, we live in an age when nobody, absolutely nobody, can read all the good books out there, regardless of the genre. My own favorites — imperfect on various levels though some of them are — include Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, R.A. MacAvoy's The Grey Horse, James Morrow's religious-satire fantasy Only Begotten Daughter, Connie Willis' heartbreaking Doomsday Book, and Guy Gavriel Kay's absolutely stunning Tigana.
For those looking for sf/f written by women, people of color, and/or GLBT folks, there are lots of resources out there. Feminist SF, The Carl Brandon Society, 50Books PoC on LJ ("science fiction" tag, "fantasy tag"), QueerLit50 on LJ, and this blogpost from Tor, with more recs in the comments.
And, finally, before anyone asks the question, "Why are you looking for books to read by women or GLBT people or people of color, rather than looking for good books?", let me ask you, Why are you assuming these are non-overlapping categories? And, Why should we not seek out these books in particular, when there remains no shortage of readers who will only ever seek out books by straight white men? Why do you not chide and concern-troll them, instead?