I’ve re-tweeted a link to this, but I think it is worth a blog post as well. Here Foz Meadows takes on the fairly common view that because a book portrays the world the way it is, then it is portraying the world the only way it can be. Naturally that idea is promulgated mainly by straight cis white men.

The problem is that if you try to challenge them then your ideas are dismissed as escapist fantasy. It is a seductive argument. But it is wrong, and we know it is wrong. The work that my colleagues and I at Out Stories Bristol have been doing to mark LGBT History Month prove conclusively that the world can, and does change. It will change again, hopefully for the better.

Of course there is no happy ending. We won’t suddenly arrive at Utopia. There may be happy endings for exceptional individuals (like in the story I have just written), but they will never be for everyone. The point about happy endings is that they give hope. They let people know that they don’t have to accept that darkness and oppression are the natural state of the world. If the world can change for one person, it can change for others too. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not matter how white, straight, cis male and cynical they might be.