To those who haven't been published, who write the same damn shit: No you don't get a pass because you have less power. If you actually believed in equality you'd put it in your fucking books. No, getting published ISN'T more important than being an ethical storyteller. No, it isn't acceptable for you to write books exclusively about the exploits of white straight men just because 'that is what will sell.' If you write what will sell, you're not creating art, you are creating advertizing. MAYBE if you had a plan for a series that began with a default dude and moved on to focus on other people I might believe your excuse that you want to write what will sell, but you never move on, do you; I've seen the endless white-dude series that happens when you do get published. The publishing industry is problematic but if they had no colonialist white supremacist patriarchal bullshit to publish they'd have to accept other options. Stop giving them what they want, or rather, what you say they want because it is what you want. Compromising the story so that the publisher can have a self-insert is blasphemous to art; the world doesn't need artists who reproduce bullshit instead of creating art. If that's what you are actually doing it's horrible, but I bet what you're really doing is not even realizing what you are reproducing, and how very terrestrial and boring and commonplace your "other world" is. I bet what you really are is someone who hasn't yet realized that it is not inevitable, sensible, common (in a universal sense), or positive for the world to revolve around your kind.
NOTE: this is NOT a call for recommendations for books by straight white males. Part of the problem is that the market is deeply skewed toward inclusion of default dudes writing default stories. If you respond to this with a recommendation, the main character better not be a default dude and it better fucking pass the Bechdel test for both race and sex. If the author of said book happens to be a white straight man, I won't hold it against them.
*a default dude is white, male, straight, cisgender, non-disabled, neurotypical, and usually USian.
