Dr. Emily Rath Sparks Controversy On BookTok Over Trump

Queer Hockey romance author Dr. Emily Rath caused a bit of a stir on TikTok recently when she came out and openly stated that her comment sections on any of her Social Media accounts were not safe spaces for people who have voted for Donald Trump. Conservative BookTok girlies immediately spoke out, bitching and moaning about how much they enjoyed queer hockey romance, claiming that Dr. Rath was preventing them from reading her books out of spite and was being “ignorant” of the queer and POC individuals who voted for Trump for reasons that allegedly didn’t include…I dunno…his entire platform of disenfranchisement and oppression?

There is a lot about that which has to be explored in their own personal lives with a licensed therapist, to be honest, but we’ll go ahead and chat about the idea from where we stand. First of all, addressing the ConGirlies, Dr. Rath can’t stop you from reading her novels, it’s not up to her what you take out of the library (oh yeah, you voted to gut funding for libraries too btw), and she’s not going to porch-pirate your Amazon deliveries that have her books in them. You can read whatever you want, but don’t pretend that your fave author is going to agree with you on the installation of a fascist dictatorship in their home country. Dr. Rath has no allegiance to you as readers and doesn’t owe you anything in regards to your feelings. You can choose not to read or buy her books, that’s not really a concern she has; nor is it a concern that most of us Leftists have when it comes to money flowing in from fascists. We don’t want your money. We would rather starve than validate your beliefs.

Dr. Rath put out a six minute video discussing how alarming the cognitive dissonance is with conservatives who claim to have “loved” her books, pointing out that it’s wildly inappropriate for Trump voters to claim love for queer narratives while voting to restrict the rights of queer people in real life. She further discusses how conservatism and specifically Trumpian conservatism functions much like a cult and that perhaps the moment their favorite authors “disinvite” them from their work and their spaces will act as a catalyst to their deprogramming journey. Some authors have come out against this, claiming that it’s “none of their business” who you voted for (they’re not wrong for this, as often I myself adopt a Don’t-Ask, Don’t-Tell approach to Trump voting. Stay in the closet, fuckos) with one author insinuating that Dr. Rath was “insane.” Some commenters pointed out the utter hypocrisy of conservative booktok being angry about feeling left out with TikTokker SageCupCake stating: “what confuses me is that they support a baker choosing their clientele but when they are the unwanted faction they can't believe you would ostracize them.” [sic] alluding to the discourse around queer wedding cakes when gay marriage was first becoming legalized wherein conservative bakers did not want to make cakes for gay weddings.

This issue, of course, can only exist due to the relative accessibility of indie authors to their readership. Conventional authors, like say Stephen King who is known to take a hard stance against intolerance and incompetence especially when it comes to the Trump Regime, have a bit less accessibility as they no longer have to be “out there” to nurture and cultivate their fandom spaces in order to market their own books through likability. Because small-time and indie authors are almost forced in this day and age to put themselves personally into readership spaces in order to effectively market their work, they open themselves up to both validation and abuse through the multitudes of parasocial relationships that can be fostered over social media. Some authors won’t care who reads their books and who interacts with them, and will simply avoid topics that they don’t want to deal with in order to not open too many cans of worms, hoping that their work will do well enough to wear down the biases. Unfortunately, it seems that most of these Trump voters have such an incredible amount of personal unawareness that introspection is all but an impossibility. All that seems to get through to them is being the “Other” and left in the cold from social situations surrounding their interests—but this breeds another risk. Adoption into extremism.

This is a tough little conundrum—ostracization leads to extremism due to groups targeting the lonely and giving them a sense of purpose and family when they’ve been ostensibly abandoned by the “so-called tolerant left.” Because they’re unable to do The Work™, or unwilling to face the fact that they could have been wrong and that redemption is a long, uphill battle, they end up falling into the first place that they can find community. While this does get their bigotry and bullshit out of our hair, it does nothing to rehabilitate their ideology away from hatred and fear and toward compassion and empathy. But…that’s not our job to do that, and though some of us may be willing to do things like that, it’s not always possible and clearly our fiction works aren’t pulling the weight for us enough if these people can claim to love them and still claim to love Donald Trump as well.

Is Dr. Rath wrong to disinvite Trump voters from her readership spaces, or tell them that they’re “not safe” within those spaces? Not for me to say. One of my own rules for my writing Discord sports a list of behaviors that can earn you a ban including “TERF rhetoric” and “MAGA bullshit,” so I suppose I must concede that though I don’t screen for conservatism, I do not allow the rhetoric within my spaces and so my own actions are definitively on Rath’s side. I know for certain that I’ve had Trump voters in my Discord in the past, though I think the days of their Trump voting probably ended on January 6th (I hope), and I don’t hear about it so…what I don’t know won’t kill me…at least in that regard. I mean, the Regime might kill me eventually, but not yet. My advice for those upset about their vote and their ideology elevating a grifter fuckwit fascist like Donald Trump causing ostracism is pulled straight from the mouth of our Lord and Savior David Lynch, may he rest in peace: “Fix your heart or die.”