Ethical Dilemmas

The decision to publish our first book, ‘The Sheliand’, was not an easy one to take:

• a book that re-imagines the gospel stories but with their religious valences stripped away

• a poem that replaces the Christ-figure with Xe, (pronounced ‘Zee’), someone undergoing a male-to-female transition

• written by a self-avowed atheist who identifies as cis/het.

Was this really the best way for Dithering Chaps to announce itself to the world?

Yet there was so much to admire about the poetics of the work: the inventive use of an Anglo-Saxon-style alliteration; the fizz and verve of the words on the page; the formal use of symmetries and repetition. All ticks in the box as far we were concerned. Indeed, one of our readers said she was “knocked sideways by the multiple references and allusions” adding, “The verse was as rich as fruitcake.” And this was how we felt too.

We could also see that here was a poem that took a consistent and firm moral stance. It wasn’t polemic for polemic’s sake. ‘The Sheliand’ has something to say.

Perhaps, we thought, we could make the argument that the poem’s use of sacred texts and male-to-female transition was a purely poetic device and frame ‘The Sheliand’ as a secular allegory.

“Not so fast…” the writer, David (D G Herring), told us. “Not if what you mean by allegory is that, at the literal level, the poem is to be read as mere fiction. I want readers to feel Xe is a real, flesh-and-blood human being, someone they might meet walking our streets today. Xe is out there! If readers then choose to treat Xe’s [i] story as an allegory, for example, by comparing Xer steps towards transition to the struggles they face in their own life or thinking more deeply about ‘what it all means’, well, of course, that would be great. But, at heart, it is set in a purely secular world, its take-home being ‘Our time on earth is all we’ve got…’ ” (At this point, David likes to get a little didactic about being inspired by Dante’s approach to allegory: see the end-note, if you want to follow him there!) [ii]

All in all, then, we realised, publishing ‘The Sheliand’, a poem featuring a trans Jesus-figure in an anti-Christian text… well, this could be a challenging read for some.

So when we were invited by the Bournemouth Writing Festival [iii] to chair a panel discussion, the topic that naturally suggested itself was ‘Ethical Dilemmas for Writers’. We thought about how we’d approached the poem and the steps we’d taken to reach out to communities affected (people of faith, those in the trans community). We considered a writer’s duty both to their own moral compass and to the ethical frameworks within which the wider writing community operates.

And ultimately, we took solace in what Oscar Wilde wrote, in the preface to ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

We are confident ‘The Sheliand’ is a well-written book. We invite you buy a copy and let us know your thoughts…

David and Gena will be appearing at the Bournemouth Literary Festival panel discussion entitled “Ethical Dilemmas for Writers – where to draw the line. Five steps to an ethical writing practice with a case-study in how to be a trans ally.”

[i] In ‘The Sheliand’, Xe (pronounced ‘zee’) is the protagonist’s name, hence the use here of ‘Xe’s story’. In the story arc, Xe’s pronouns go from He/Him to She/Her to Xe/Xer (capitalised to mark the parallel to the X used as an abbreviation for Christ). So you will see ‘Xer steps’ etc when a pronoun is required. The idea here is, firstly, to help track the progress of Xe’s male-to-female transition but, secondly, to indicate that Xe ultimately achieves a level of transcendence that moves beyond the binary opposition of genders.

[ii] “Dante distinguished between the allegory of poets and the allegory of theologians,” says David. “In the former, poets invent each element of their poem and use them to point to truths about the world. We don’t have to believe that Hamlet, (perhaps the archetypical dithering chap, by the way), is a real historical person, in order for us to be invested in the dilemmas he faces. We know we’re experiencing what Dante calls a ‘beautiful lie’.  On Dante’s account, then, poems are literally untrue. With theological truth, however, the literal story is presented as truth. The Exodus, for example, is held to be a historical fact. Biblical exegeses work upwards from this literal truth to give us further levels of meaning: exodus as a figural allegory for Jesus leading humankind from bondage; or exodus as the moral choices facing each individual today; or, finally, exodus as a picture of the ultimate destination of all saved souls in Heaven. Dante’s own poetry seemed to use the allegory of theologians. We are asked to believe, for example, that Beatrice was first and foremost a real woman from thirteenth-century Florence. She is not a fiction. And thus we can add in allegorical, moral and anagogical layers as we read. In the same way, I am asking you to read ‘The Sheliand’ as a truth, an attempt to depict some of what it means to be a real trans woman. The layers of meaning that you add to her story are then up to you…”

[iii] The Bournemouth Writing Festival is taking place between 21-23 April 2023 and is a first for the city, with over sixty events each offering advice and ideas to writers in all fields: from comics to sci-fi, screenplays to romance writing, non-fiction prose and poetry.