Hey so uh I just saw someone put Brandon Sanderson in the same list as JKR and Neil Gaiman talking about “problematic authors” and I feel that some people have completely lost the plot for what constitutes as problematic.
An author being part of a religion you don’t like or understand is NOT AT ALL THE SAME as actually sexually assaulting multiple women. To put Gaiman and Sando on the same list is just a bafflingly bad take. BookTok is a weird place.
(Screen-caps of a Brandon interview below if you scroll down)
This is completely insane. Disregarding the comparison of Sando to Neil, even just discrediting Brandon on the basis of his religion is a TERRIBLE take.
Many on the left constantly throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead of seeing Brandon as a human who has taken time to understand and represent the LGBTQ+ community in his books in a positive way, we have these online “activists” who only know how to identify a Mormon – which does not fit into their purity test.
How is there supposed to be progress if people like Brandon (people who listen DESPITE their upbringing) aren’t good enough?
This online vocal minority ruins the social equity of two groups understanding each other, and instead simulates a situation in which one group feels they are putting in effort to understand the other, and the very group they are trying to understand denies them based on their past or current identity.
I’m judgy of Mormons as much as the next person. I have major hang ups with pretty much all religion because of how it’s affected my life. But I have to acknowledge how impressive it is when someone like Brandon very publicly questions his entire upbringing, realizes there are problems with it, and proceeds to be inclusive. At that point, it is his business if he continues to identify as Mormon. In my eyes, it is far more impressive to challenge your own beliefs and grow, than to have fallen luckily into an online echo chamber that happens to have nice views, and then do nothing but criticize others who don’t deserve it.
Brandon has been more of an ally and an activist than these TikTok phonies could ever dream of. But they know bad faith critiques appear to be “based” and easily farm likes from other people in the echo chamber.
Meanwhile, Brandon is actively engaging with the community, and donating to it (in a state that really needs it).
These performative online idiots don’t represent the community. If anything they have the moral compass of elementary school students, who just know how to follow rules set for them by their teacher, without understanding the deeper reasoning and consequences.
The only thing I would add to this is that as a practicing member of the LDS church myself I have come a LONG way in my opinions about the LGBTQ community in the past fifteen years. And Brandon Sanderson is part of the reason that happened. I am now also a supporter of the LGBTQ community. I vote along those lines. I am advocating for them as much as I can in my deeply red Christian conservative area.
We need people like Brandon Sanderson. We need people who are in communities to be brave enough to say unapologetically that this is what I am doing and what I believe. Because that paves a way for others to be more comfortable with it.
I just really like what Stormingtris added to my original post and wanted to build on that with my experiences from inside the culture in question.
amhrancas 