Representation or No Representation?

Welcome to a double post about representation and the arguments some people will give you against it. This first post is more about the arguments against it. The second post will be more about the over-the-top demands some people make when you’re choosing not to go with the standard hero.

Let’s start with the standard hero, then. The standard hero, even today, still is the straight, white man. This is understandable historically, but still not the way it should stay.

A short historical discourse here. The ‘white’ standard across the globe (which leads to African and African-American people straightening their hair and bleaching their skin or Asian people spending money on getting their eyes reshaped) was introduced during the Age of Colonisation. White people, dissatisfied with neighbours who possessed the same weapons as them and ruling houses interbred all across Europe and tired of centuries of feuding about the same few square miles of ground, hopped their ships and started to explore the world - naturally assuming that everywhere no European had landed (as far as they knew - see North America, Columbus, and Vikings) was ‘undiscovered country’ and they could just take it. For them, people who were not Europeans were no real people. They could be killed, enslaved, raped, stolen from … you name it, the explorers and conquerors from Europe definitely did it. Their first venture was Africa and they expanded into parts of Asia as well. Then they expanded westwards, after Columbus had found the Caribbean while looking for India. They crawled across the globe like cockroaches. And just like them, they proved a little less easy to kill than most of the people they met. That is why African borders look that very linear way today - they were actually drawn with ruler and pen when the Colonial Powers came together to discuss who would keep which part of Africa. And basically all European powers, from Portugal and Spain to Russia, from Scandinavia and Britain to Italy, were in that game.

The colonies have won their freedom, but the world has been imprinted with the ‘white’ ideal. With the ideal of looking like a European person. With the ideal of dressing like a European person (even in climates unsuited for suits - sorry, not sorry). With the ideal of pretending to be a European person, if you can.

And that, friends, is why the straight, white man is white. More about the other two parts further down.

Especially in Fantasy novels or novels which claim historical sources, people often argue against a more diverse cast on the grounds of ‘that’s not how it was.’ If you listen to them, you’re led to believe that Medieval Europe (upon which a staggering number of fantasy worlds is based) was not only devoid of people with a slightly darker skin tone, but also of women, people with disabilities, or people who actually liked their own sex more than the opposite one. Despite the fact that women always made up about fifty percent of the populace and there were more people with physical disabilities around before surgery got to the level we have today. I’m not even going into what centuries of inbreeding did to the mental health of the ruling class. All of that is slightly … odd.

It’s not, of course. It’s build upon the premise of heroes being physically attractive and male - because we all know women faint at the sight of blood (we women do a lot of that once a month, yeah). The physically attractive part, which does exclude everyone with a physical disability or visible physical flaw, comes from fairy tales, where the good are beautiful and the evil are either ugly or vain. The male part comes from the strict definition of gender roles which excluded women from fighting and from being self-controlled (a definition which didn’t even exist then).

And, look, I can see why you don’t want a person from Asia in your story about Vikings. And while there are historically approved ways of constructing a situation in which to include someone like that, it’s not even necessary. The whole ‘those people didn’t exist in Medieval Europe’ just about (but not quite) works for Non-Europeans. Yes, there was no large number of Africans, Arabians, Asian, or Indigenous people from all over the globe in Europe then. There were some, though, at least of the first three. The Ottoman Empire, made up of a lot of Arabians, at its widest expanse reached through most of Spain and well into Eastern Southern Europe. At one point, they had reached Vienna, which is pretty central in Europe. It’s not unlikely they left their genes everywhere over the continent (genetic research shows a lot of European men share specific genes with men from Northern Africa). And during medieval times, there were Non-European traders and workers in Europe, even though more commonly in the cities than in small villages and hamlets. Silk was already imported from China, too, just as spices were imported from India. Since the Asian and the European continent actually form one big mega-continent together - and Africa is connected to them by the Arabian Peninsula - trade between those continents is easily possible, it’s just a question of time. Not ideal for stuff which goes bad quickly, but spices, silk, and other goods were not troubled by that. With trades also come traders, which means people from outside Europe. So, no, Europe wasn’t completely ‘white’ during the Middle Ages. Predominantly so, certainly, but not completely.

And even if we presume your quasi-European village has nobody in it whose great-great-grandparents weren’t already born there, there’s still diversity to be had.

Chances are about half the people in your village are women. And while male warriors are more common, history knows female ones as well. Several graves of female Viking warriors have been found, the Romans also trained female gladiators for a while, and women generally also took up arms and even took up leadership in times of need. So you can add a woman to your ‘straight white dude squad.’ Give her a ranged weapon, perhaps, or make her the group’s healer.

Chances are also that some people in that village have some kind of disability. What about a guy with only one eye? Odin thought that was cool enough to sacrifice one eye for wisdom, so, surely, you can have a warrior or advisor with a missing eye.

Not to mention that there’s no reason whatsoever for not having some LGBT+ representation in your group. Pre-Christianity, a lot of societies were lenient towards very different sexual behaviours and same-sex relationships happened. They weren’t necessarily the norm, but they were there. Hell, even the Roman-Catholic church ‘married’ monks to each other - supposedly platonic, but can you guarantee nothing ever happened there?

That means your ‘straight white dude squad’ does now include a woman, a man with a missing eye, a guy who is into other guys, and a straight white dude. Voila, you have reached diversity!

If you want bonus points, tell a story of a man from Asia Minor who was sold north as a slave, saved the one-eyed man’s life, was freed for that, and has now joined the team. That could have happened - the Vikings traded in the Mediterranean, took slaves, and valued courage. Wow, you’ve even eradicated the ‘completely white’ problem!

Diversity means having a greater range of characters from different backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. It doesn’t mean you need to do everything every time you write a story. It just means breaking the winning streak of the ‘straight, white man.’