does my voice matter?
personal log // entry 0012
sol 441
Growing up, I was never confronted with the fact that I have white privilege. This is itself a feature of white privilege: rarely, if ever, being forced to confront your own whiteness. As a publicly closeted trans woman, I still experience a certain degree of male privilege as well, though this will, with any luck, soon start to shrink. But in the past ten years or so, as I’ve learned more about the real world outside the bubble I grew up in, and as my political views have shifted further and further to the left, I’ve come to terms with the fact that in the grand scheme of things, I’ve had it pretty good.
Sure, I grew up “middle-class” (a bourgeois invention) in a wealthy country, but my parents didn’t have much. I still had a childhood diet consisting mostly of cheap, processed carbohydrates and canned food, and more than once I can recall not having any food in the house at all. My parents had to yell at us for messing with the thermostat, and much like most working-class folks, any kind of car trouble was an all-consuming stressor that threw our entire life into chaos. I’m still a wage slave, even if it is in the glamorous world of space research. I’m largely self-educated and I have no college degree. I’ve only been called a racial slur a handful of times, and despite what bad-faith actors will tell you, we all know that “cracker” or “whitebread” hits different than the N-word, and to conflate one with the other is ridiculous. I will most certainly have to deal with transphobic nonsense in the future, once I’m back on Earth and actually out to everyone. But overall, I don’t have it too bad.
I’ve wanted to be an author for many years now, and despite my current career trajectory, that’s still my end goal. But another dream has appeared in the past few years; inspired by all the wonderful people on YouTube who have provided me with so much entertainment and wonder, as well as kickstarted my general and political education in ways my homeschooled background couldn't have, I now want to start a channel of my own. I’ve been publishing my logs for a few months now, and they’ve reached a few sets of eyeballs in that time, but on a regular basis, I’m still left with the question: does the world need another white American voice adding to the already swollen sea of voices out there, especially in the realms of literature and online video content?
I’ve been on the hunt for a literary agent for my first novel off and on since 2019, and in that time, I’ve read enough agent profiles to know that most folks working in the publishing industry are actively looking for non-white, non-Western, female, queer, trans, and GNC voices. This is, to be clear, a very good thing. White cishet men have been overrepresented in print since the days of Gutenberg. This isn’t controversial or conjectural but a statistical fact, and it’s wonderful to see an entire industry shift away from such a hegemony. It’s vital, in fact, if we wish to overthrow capitalism, that we no longer listen to the ruling elite, who have been historically rich white men, and start listening to voices of women, people of color, and GSRM folks who have historically gotten the short end of the stick. Of course the publishing industry at large still bends to the interests of Capital, so there’s not much allowance for radical thought, but #OwnVoices is overall a nice change of pace and a step in the right direction.
But I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t occurred to me: does anyone even want to hear what I, a white, and until recently, ostensibly cishet male, have to say? I realize this is the type of self-doubt that many women, people of color, and GSRM folks have had to deal with over the centuries in a system that privileges others over them, but there have been times when I wonder if I shouldn’t just bow out of the conversation altogether. Leftist YouTube is famously full of white faces, and while I don’t plan to show my face on my channel, I still wonder if I won’t be taking up valuable attention from those who could share a more diverse range of perspectives.
It hasn't stopped me from taking steps towards launching said channel; I expect to have some videos up in the next few months, eventually covering a range of topics, from leftist politics and economics to science and skepticism to pop culture analysis and mental health coverage — much as I’ve sprinkled throughout my personal log entries. Those doubts about my place in the discourse still remain, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is something I need to do. I have too much I want to share with the world to not start this project.
That said, I need to ensure that I’m promoting voices different than mine on my channel, as I’ve tried to do with care and consideration in my as-of-yet-unpublished fiction. I need to make sure I’m not saying something that could be said better by someone else, and I want to ally myself and collaborate with other content creators with different backgrounds and even beliefs than my own. The internet is enough of an echo chamber (get it?) for shitty pockets of people, and I want to do everything in my power to not fall into that trap.
As a white person in the U.S., I’ve rarely been confronted with the notion that my voice may not matter (except in the electoral sphere, where no one’s does without money). I need to internalize that and make it the driving force in my work. Privileged voices must use their power to platform and promote those less privileged than themselves. Otherwise, they serve only to help the powers that be, or at least, hinder those who would work against those unjust powers.
Anyways, that’s me on my soapbox for this week. Until next time, Echo out.
