Fail! Fail everywhere!
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, the author of The Dirty Girls Social Club, discusses how Hollywood turned her Afro-Colombian-American character, a straight-laced and squeaky-clean monogamous lesbian, into a sexed-up cheating bisexual with no noticeable African ancestry. (Her Birkenstocky partner? Nowhere to be seen.) Why?

“We had to make her bisexual because the lesbian story line isn’t fresh anymore,” Lynnette told me. (By that standard, we ought to make all straight characters bisexual too, no?) “And, let’s face it,” she said snarkily, “no one trusts a bisexual.”

Wowwww.

In fact, EVERYBODY in the adaptation has been seriously sexed up regardless of the characters' actual, you know, personalities and beliefs and book-verse behavior. (Except for the overweight character, of course, when she acts sexual it's just a fat joke.) And the diversity of the Hispanic population has been completely bled out of the script.

ETA: The fail is coming from all directions! The author's stance on some of this is pretty slut-shaming, and then there's this, where she comes out as bisexual in an email interview with AfterEllen. And then gets offended when mentioned as bi on her Wikipedia page and retracts it, claiming to identify as straight. (Then there's a weird blog post she made entitled Under Attack By Lesbians, claiming that she only tried to retract her comments because hard-right Cuban exiles were making attempts on her life. But she baleeted it and it's probably lost to us now.) Is she bi? Straight? Questioning? Who knows?

She also did the same thing again, claiming to have bipolar disorder after David Foster Wallace's suicide and then retracting it. The David Shankbone from the AfterEllen interview calls her on her bullshit, to which she, well:

Alisa took such exception to these statements, that in response she wrote this about me (as if I wrote it myself):

You are a tremendous fucking bitch, and I suck donkey dicks with communist straws. I was hired by the Cuban government to “fix” your wiki page, but they asked that I never tell you this. Oopsies! I have to remember not to promise Fidel anything when I’m high on peyote. My bad.

Strange times on Wikipedia, indeed.

I have no idea what's going on anymore. *makes popcorn*

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persona
2010-12-29 01:59 am UTC (link)

Well, this is a giant pile of fail, although it's not surprising (to me, anyway) that the writers/directors would do what they did. If someone screwed up my characters as they have I would be pretty damn pissed to put it mildly, especially given the blatant racism and sexism running wild throughout the changes.

That said, though, some of what the author is saying bothers me, too. WTF with the slut shaming in her second post? While her anger that her character have all been turned into hyperseuxalised stereotypes is extremely justified, it seems to me that the author holds some pretty misogynistic attitudes herself (Use of 'whore' as derogatory? Really?). I'm disappointed.

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ruslan
2010-12-29 02:07 am UTC (link)

I thought about adding a note to the OP that the article might be kinda slut-shamey. (For instance, I wasn't really sure from the context if NBC!Elizabeth is cheating on her girlfriend with said girlfriend's husband or if she's in some kind of poly or otherwise open arrangement. Cheating is bad and shameful behavior, non-monogamy isn't and it would be problematic if the author was implying otherwise.) I figured to give her the benefit of the doubt, though, that her issues weren't with the sexuality in general but that in this context it's wildly out of character and exploitative.

Yeah, "whore" is still a problem, though.

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	re_weird 2010-12-29 02:12 am UTC (link)
	There's also the time when when she stated she was bisexual in an interview with a lesbian site then retracted it and acted offended when people started putting it in her Wikipedia article. No one deserves to have their book mangled this way but I still don't think I'm going to run out and buy it. :/ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ruslan 2010-12-29 02:58 am UTC (link)
	Now what in the Sam Hill is going on there? adds to OP, makes popcorn (Reply to this)(Parent)

bobafeis
2010-12-29 03:24 am UTC (link)

Seriously. I'm sympathetic to anyone who tries to recant a coming out speech when faced with just how extreme homophobia really is (I'm not out to my father's family after watching what my cousin went through, and I'm taking her words at face value here), but she did not handle herself well at all there. I'm also sympathetic to her outrage at the fact that even chaste characters have to be sexualized in order to play to stereotypes, but again, not handling herself well.

Plus, I remember when she quit the Times. Her wankiness has been going on for years.

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	persona 2010-12-29 04:29 am UTC (link)
	I was just reading about that. I... what the hell? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bobafeis 2010-12-29 06:17 am UTC (link)
	Exactly! I didn't remember the name, but I remembered that letter. It taught me and everyone else on my high school paper just how crazy grownup journalists could be. Ten years later, I still remember going "Wow, that's a bit batshit." (Reply to this)(Parent)

	blue_penguin 2010-12-29 02:24 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, while what's been done to her books is horrible, the slut-shaming (plus the whole "I'm monogamous, like normal people!" thing) and the comparing of her opponents to the KKK made me go :\| very much. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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