Bias is a loaded word anywhere, but especially for writers. No matter what we write, our job is to create an entire world for our characters. We don’t want to repeat patterns in our fiction that we dislike in real life. But doing so seems prohibitive.
My journey with bias
This article may or may not be helpful to you. I tried to write this out the way I do my other articles—in bite-sized pieces with actionable steps because I prefer advice that I can immediately put into practice—but it just wasn’t working. I have some of what I wrote near the end of this, but I decided the best thing to do is to write about my journey first identifying, then understanding, and finally coming to terms with bias.
I entered the writing world just as the OwnVoices conversation started. I wanted to learn as much as everyone else because, even though I’m a POC and disabled plus some other things, I didn’t know how to write good characters. I eagerly listened and read, but I slowly realized that the answers I was getting weren’t satisfying me. Not in the least. And because I’m a POC and disabled, plus other things, I knew people would be asking me these questions if I got anywhere in my career which meant I needed to come up with something halfway useful.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t think anyone ever will. But over the years, as I studied history and took theatre classes and began my journey with therapy, I discovered some things that I don’t hear talked about in the writing community and thought I’d share them.
Acknowledge your Bias
This might seem straightforward; you might think you’re already doing it. I certainly did. But what I was really doing was trying to throw them out the window before I can actually examine them.
Back to Theatre Class
In this
I talked about how I learned dialogue techniques from taking theatre classes. An even bigger lesson I learned was to notice my practiced habits (my biases). As humans, we tend to respond, not to what is currently happening, but to how we think it should happen. If you know someone who keeps returning to a previous topic even though the conversation has moved on, or someone who has only a handful of reactions no matter the situation, then you can identify the extreme version of this. But we all do this subconsciously.
The first several weeks of theatre class is spent doing simple exercises with the professor asking you multiple times why you decided to respond the way you did. The purpose is to break you from doing things by rote and to actually notice what’s happening in the moment. What did your scene partner actually say? What emotions do you actually feel?
Thinking about bias, I began to ask myself the same question. Why? Why do I assume wearing a skirt makes a woman suppressed? Why is winning that award, getting that promotion, or appearing competent 100% of the time so important to win? Why, for that matter, do we all need to graduate high school by eighteen?
I didn’t come up with answers right away. Honestly, I might have come up with the wrong answers (maybe U.S. culture isn’t born and bred on competition), but simply asking why helped me get comfortable with not knowing the answers all the time.
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Bias and Emotion
One of my favorite YouTube channels,
, says this often (paraphrased): Emotions aren’t bad. They’re there to tell you something.
Sometimes, a bias is really easy to let go of: once you’ve acknowledged it to yourself, you’re able to put it aside. Other times, though, that bias sticks no matter how logical you are with yourself. The latter happens because, at some point in your life, you had an emotionally loaded experience. These can be good memories or they can be painful, but with both they are deeply rooted and make it difficult to fully comprehend what’s right in front of you.
Another saying from Mended Light: Shame keeps you stuck. Shame was what kept me from truly examining my biases. It doesn’t matter who you are in this conversation—I have multiple minority labels—and it doesn’t matter that our intentions are honorable. We must work our way out of the grip of shame to truly overcome bias.
But even without the shame, dealing with bias is not easy.
The Key to Dealing with Bias: Self-Evaluation
Before I elaborate on this, I want to take the judgment out of the term “self-evaluation.” In our Western achievements-based system, “evaluation” equals “I did something wrong and someone needs to correct me.” Or on the flip side, it means that we must discover our privileges and feel guilty about them.
But most of the time, there’s nothing wrong with the way you do things.
Repeat this to yourself: There’s nothing wrong with the way I do things.
If you do discover something you want to fix, then you can start on that journey, but most things in the world are neither negative nor positive. They just are. You can repeat that to yourself as you go through process too.
It’s not a bad thing. It just is.
Here are some exercises you can try.
Exercise 1: Become Aware
Make a list of the stereotypes that you feel apply to your life.
Take a few days to think about each one and ask yourself: How does my experience differ?
What did you discover? How closely does your real-world experience align with the stereotypes?
Exercise 2: Emotions
Any time you get a gut reaction to something that you can’t explain, take a moment. For a while, your job is just to recognize when it happens.
After a while, you might start recognizing patterns. You can start asking yourself where the emotion comes from.
Remember, you are not judging yourself on this, only recognizing your own emotions.
Exercise 3: Worldbuilding
You’ve visited different places throughout the years. Even if you didn’t attend university, you’ve gone to friends’ houses and visited relatives in different towns. Whatever your life circumstances, you have experiences to analyze and compare.
What seems to be the general vibe of each location?
List the unique traditions, habits, etc. of each location.
What seems to come easily in one place that feels difficult in others?
How do different families approach different aspects of life?
These are only starting points for exploring your biases. If you discover something that works better for you, definitely use that.
What has been your experience of dealing with bias? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.