I wrote a thread about ownvoices last night, but I was unclear on a point and so I want to redo it here.

To be clear: I don't think anyone should be obligated to write only ownvoices stories, I'm not sure how that would even work, and I'm talking about it as an opt-in label.

I've seen a lot of people ask why readers might feel safer with OV work, given that it can still have problematic elements. This has been phrased to me as: "Why does it matter to you if the author is OV? Just criticize the problems, if there are any!"

The thing is, readers who actively seek out ownvoices may be trying to avoid or minimize harm. "Just criticize the problems once you find them" inherently means that the reader has to first... be harmed.

In those cases, the harm has already been done and all the "criticism" can do is warn others.

For free.

While affixing a target to yourself: you get to be accused of "attacking" the book, and told "if you don't like it, just don't read it!"

As a reviewer you will be accused of ugly motives: You are trying to "destroy" the author or hurt their career. You have the wrong identity to be criticizing that book--either too much privilege or not enough. You're a mean bully. Why are you reading it if you don't like it? Etc.

Again, none of this means that OV should be required or mandatory (??), but is an example of why it makes no sense to say "Why care about the author's identity? Just criticize the text!"

The latter clause involves a lot of work and risk and harm, and isn't easy or effortless.

Readers who care about an author's identity, and who seek out self-identified OV works, may be looking to reduce harm (even if it can't be minimized to a guaranteed zero) because they know their own limitations.

"Just criticize the work" isn't a harm-reduction strategy.

And when we talk about "just criticize the work", we need to talk about how the community treats the critics. How little support we receive for the time we spend, the education we give, and the harm we tank. How our threads are often ignored entirely once the book is out/done.

In the last 5 years, I've done at least three deep-dives on books which seriously harmed me in the process. Two were "gender plague" books that were profoundly transphobic, and one was a fatphobic book that triggered my eating disorder.

These things can both be true:

(1) That these delicate topics, even in the hands of an ownvoice author, may contain material that harms the reader.

(2) That an OV author probably would have done better than the actual books we ended up with.

That doesn't mean that I think all writing should now mandatorily be OV, or that only OV work should be published from here on out. But it is an example of why a reader might prefer to seek out an OV author rather than "just read the book and criticize any problems you find!"

"Just read" as a position asks us to swallow down whatever harm comes our way off the publishing presses, and that's a big ask for a lot of us. "Just criticize" asks us to come out here and display that harm, only to tank more harm and neglect from a community who is angry at us.

Because I promise the vast majority of the reading community *does* get very angry with us indeed when we criticize the latest release or author. We're told to go away, to write our own, to not read what we don't like, to shut up, to stop bothering people.

A lot of us seek out OV work to avoid that harm, and because many of us don't actually *enjoy* doing deep-dive criticisms of harmful books.

That's my answer to "why would you even care about the author's identity when you can just read the book and criticize what's there?"

Again, I don't suggest that all books should be ownvoice or that authors should be harassed into displaying all their identities.

I merely support OV as an *opt-in* label that some authors find useful to self-label and some readers find useful in guiding their reading decisions.

And I do ask that when readers come out here to warn about harmful content in books, we treat them with kindness and attention rather than telling them to go away.