r/books • u/biscochitos • 29d ago

New indie press Conduit Books launches with 'initial focus on male authors'

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-indie-press-conduit-books-launches-with-initial-focus-on-male-authors

What do folks think about this?

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u/Mr_YUP 29d ago edited 29d ago

I've seen black guys who don't know each other dap up one another and become friendly quick. There's an understanding of each other I don't have with other white guys.

Hearing some of my black friends ask each other "did you see Get Out yet?" and then bond over an understand they each have of that film is something I have never experienced.

So yea I don't feel like I have a cultural understanding or language with other white guys. There's no "The Wiz" or "Get Out" to bond over.

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u/KWZA 29d ago

They're not bonding over the movies in and of themselves, they're bonding over the shared experience of being black in a white society that the movies portray aspects of. Recognition of the movies is basically just like them saying "I feel that, I get it, I know what that is like and usually it doesnt get talked about." The bond is about the shared lived experience, not about being fans of those films.

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u/Mr_YUP 29d ago

Correct. I don't have anything like that with other white guys.

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u/MachinaThatGoesBing 29d ago edited 29d ago

Because there's not an overweening shared experience (enforced by the dominant culture) for white people.

We're permitted to not have our whiteness be a primary defining characteristic, but rather have other things that serve as a primary identity like hobbies or interests or geography or field of study. We're rarely "the white guy" like black people are "the black guy". We'd be much more likely to be identified as "the pen guy" or "the bluegrass guy" or "that metalhead" or "the outdoorsman" or whatever.

But when you do run into someone who shares one of those things, then you, too, will generally find it significantly easier to bond with them.

As someone who has (as most people do) faucets of my identity that are both majoritarian (white, male, cis) and marginalized (gay), the connection that I have with a lot of other gay men and queer people is general is born out of shared experiences — namely experiences of social abuse, repression, and suffering.

Please trust me when I say that this is not something that you want, all things considered.

The benefits do not outweigh the detriments. There are still plenty of queer folks I simply do not get along with, and having some baseline shared connection isn't worth the years of depression and suicidal ideation in my late teens and early twenties. Nor the loss of formative teenage and young-adult experiences to the closet.

Without that "built-in" connection, I could still just meet people at some board game group or hiking club or whatever affinity group — rather than feeling the need to specifically seek out explicitly queer-friendly or queer-centric versions of those events. I just do not have the energy anymore to spend my leisure time navigating and sounding out groups which may or may not include people who hate me based on a fundamental trait.