These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs - screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted - are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.
UM.
Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?
What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?
STOP
GO TO WRITING JAIL
GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
Did no one else notice the second paragraph is about a dog
It’s not, though? That’s what makes it so terrible. Like, he’s literally describing a “native” with “crescent shaped eyebrows,” “oxbow lips” and a “complexion” with a “saffron tint”, someone who doesn’t have “a saccharine voice or retro clothes” - all of which are qualities that dogs can’t possibly have. If the final reference to Labradors is meant to indicate a joke - that he’s been secretly describing a dog the whole time - then not only is he edging into serious bestiality territory (“candy-sweet lips”) while also evoking some very ugly racism (”native”), but he’s using descriptors that literally can’t and don’t apply to dogs in the first place, not even ambiguously, which makes it a terribly constructed joke.
The final line, which has no contextual attachment to anything before it, reads instead like a metaphor comparing himself and the woman to pups in a pound. Even if that line is meant literally, it implies that the narrator himself is also a dog, which - again - makes no fucking sense, given the earlier descriptors. Plus, he explicitly says that he thinks the “nuzzling” is “a custom of her people”, which… at absolute best, he’s describing a fucking werewolf and just hasn’t bothered to make the supernatural element clear, and at worst, regardless of whether he’s describing a dog or a woman, he’s deliberately evoking bestial comparisons between animals and women of colour in order to make it work.
Either way, it’s a burning trashfire paragraph and I want to go BLEACH MY EYES.
This is bad teenage romance fan fiction level and it can fuck eight off.
Listen, I don’t have time to get into all the ways in which the casual assumption that teenage writing, romance writing and fanfic are inherently bad is Not Cool And Actually Pretty Sexist, so I’m just going to link to the last time I discussed that particular issue in relation to men’s writing and leave it at that, k?
Oh there’s so much here worth hating, and most of it is from the post. Most of the shit being complained about is just trying way too hard to be clever. However. It ain’t racist, it ain’t sexist, the only thing it can really be called is bad writing. But, one of the signs of a piece well written is it encourages the readers to discuss what it is they think the writer is getting at and what they meant by certain phrases or paragraphs. And this, this’s is a flat out discussion of the writer’s work and how different people perceived it. So in a way, this guy did a good job. It ain’t really the writer’s fault you perceived this as sexist or racist (and it seems the only reason you said it was sexist was because the describes a very attractive woman (you mentioned “Amazonian figure on a wafer thin frame”) just a heads up, Amazonian doesn’t mean fat or super muscular, it means powerful and aggressive. Which means it does lend itself to being used in that context, I wouldn’t have chose those words but hey. I didn’t write it. Next let’s look at why you insisted it was racist.
There ain’t much here to be honest. The only reason you said it was racist was because he said “she must be a native” which ain’t even racist. Let’s say I was born and raised in Edinburgh, I’d be an Edinburgh native. If I was born and raised in Norway id be a native Norwegian. If I was black, born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, I’d be a Jamaican native. Oh and by the way, I’m like 90% sure he’s describing a Labrador. Why? Cause he fucking said so, oh and 3 out of 4 things you said couldn’t possibly describe a dog….can actually describe a dog. It’s just the retro clothes thing that doesn’t fit, but I get it, he was just aiming for one last bait and switch making you think it was a human. Which, apparently, HE FUCKING DID you think it’s a human, I almost completely think differently and once again, he’s got the discussion open. However. It still ain’t racist.
You’ve just looked at this whole thing and went “grrrrrrr he’s describing an attractive female, that makes me mad, this guy is sexist he has an idea of beauty that’s inline with most of society while describing some of the scientific standards of attraction grrrrr”. The only reason you think it was racist is because of one word. Native. And that’s it, that’s your entire reasoning for getting so recreationally outraged at this whole thing. The writing ain’t that bad, it got you thinking about the writers intent, yeah he was very heavy handed on the describing front but that’s because he was giving an example to people who want to write. So he gave them a shitload of ways to describe someone…or something.
You’re only mad because you have self body issues and you want everyone to conform to “be sexually attracted to everyone and every body type so I don’t feel bad”. And the racism thing, man I don’t know, you needed a stress release.
P.s. Oh man teenage writing. First, yes it is “cool” to assume all teenage writing is bad, especially fan fiction. Why? Because most of the time it’s crap. Pure, straight crap. Especially fan fic and romance. Most teenagers don’t have the experience or depth to write something good, especially involving romance. Cause then they’re writing about teenage romance. Which is just this crazy spill of hormones and angst. It doesn’t make for a compelling read. You think people shouldn’t be able to say or think teenage writing is inherently bad, which in and of itself is “Not Cool” because people are allowed to have their opinions especially when it’s based on solid thinking like this is. Just because you don’t like the generally accepted opinion that teenage writing is bad doesn’t mean it’s not tru-OH MY GOD STOP SAYING EVERYTHING IS SEXIST. You’re an idiot if you genuinely think people saying teenage writing is bad is sexist. It’s not. In anyway. It’s about both sexes. Male or female, both are idiots that are fucking crazy at that age (hell I’m still a little bit at 20). Man, ya dumb. Get over yourself, not everything is a war on you.
Reading comprehension really isn’t your strong suit, is it?
It’s not just the word ‘native’ that makes it racist. I’ve listed multiple other factors and explained how they work in confluence to achieve a horrible effect.
It’s not just that he’s describing an ‘attractive’ woman that makes it sexist. It’s that the descriptions, aside from being literally physically impossible, are laden with needlessly objectifying details and stereotypes. I’ve explained that, too.
Writing something so bad that thousands of people are independently reduced to horrified laughter doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded at writing merely because your work is being discussed. Contrary to the assertion of certain media managers, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Teenage writing isn’t inherently bad. Yes, you get a lot of impassioned crap, but that’s equally true of lots of other people. A teenager who’s been writing for pleasure and aiming to improve their craft since childhood, as many of us once did, is entirely capable of producing better work at sixteen than a first-time writer is at sixty. Age is no guarantee of quality, nor is lack of age a guarantee of failure.
Fanfic and romance are overwhelmingly produced by women. That’s a fact. If your argument is that those genres are both inherently inferior and/or more likely to contain crap work than any other oeuvre, then yes, you are being sexist. The assumed unworthiness of female work is a cultural default rooted in sexism: accepting that default as being obviously true without any examination or awareness of the underlying misogyny doesn’t magically remove the sexism from the argument just because you, personally, didn’t realise what it perpetuates. Note, please, that disliking fanfic and romance as a matter of personal preference isn’t sexist - you’re allowed to have tastes! - but that’s not the same as assuming they’re both inherently lesser genres regardless.