In my childhood, there were a few jobs I wanted when I grew up. When I was seven, an FBI agent (I didn’t know that wasn’t a thing in Canada) or homicide detective. A cryptozoologist when I was nine. But I’d always written stories, and by the time I was 12-13 and winning poetry contests, I wanted to be a writer.
Specifically, a horror writer.
I carried The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe around in my backpack. I wrote slasher novels. My teacher read one of my monster horror stories to the class (it was called The Claw, about some teens who didn’t believe the urban legend about a monster in this neighbourhood tunnel and then all get killed). I genuinely thought I would be a horror writer.
I was told flat-out then, quite seriously, by both adults in my life and from experts in pro writer magazines I was reading, that I would have to use a pen name. That I should write under S.D. Cameron to obscure the fact that I was a girl, because people wouldn’t read horror by a woman.
People wouldn’t read horror by a woman.
This was in 1994.
I bring this up apropos of two conversations I’ve seen over the past two days.
One is on Twitter, reminding anyone under thirty that they have no idea precisely how bad things used to be for the queer community (specifically in North America). With more LGBTQ+ characters in our media and as public figures, it’s easy to forget how fucking hard the battles to reach that level of representation actually were. Young people now might find more acceptance coming out, but were literally, routinely, beaten to death for being even perceived as gay or trans back in the day (and a reminder that trans women in particular, but also trans people in general, are still at a very high risk of being victims of hate crimes that the general public doesn’t seem to care about). Those lucky to have grownup where same-sex marriage is the norm might not realize how fucking recent it is.
The second is part of a conversation on a post a friend started on Reddit and how someone brought up “culture wars” online as if it was something new. Like this fight over who is and isn’t human suddenly began in the past five years. My friend pointed out she grew up with the phrase “glass ceiling” and she’s forty-seven–like, no, none of this is new.
1994. 1994. I was told, as a child, to use a pen name that obscured my gender.
Not “You can be anything you want to be, Skyla”. It was “You will not be successful if readers know you’re a woman.”
1994.
And you know what? It’s still true.
I know my name is a detriment with what I write. It’s obviously girly. It’s literally been called too fancy by readers. It’s why my books are immediately slotted into PNR instead of UF (or into YA), so I’m in this ridiculous cycle of the folks who would like my books not picking them up and the folks who do pick them up often not liking them. To this day, I am still told I should be publishing under S.D. Cameron, because people won’t read my books under my “fancy” name.
When I was a child, in 1994, with dreams of being a horror writer, and I was told I’d have to use a pen name, I considered it. I tried putting S.D. Cameron on things. This is what the adults in my life, the authorities on the subject, said was necessary.
But it felt wrong. It felt wrong then, when I couldn’t articulate why, and it feels wrong now when I’m asked if I’ll use a pen for the other genres I plan to write in.
We sacrifice pieces of ourselves to live in a world with huge systemic problems out of our control. We shave off our edges and curves to fit in spaces where we’re told we don’t belong. We do this because to not fit in somehow we risk not being able to survive in this late-stage capitalist hellscape.
But my name, though…my name. I was made fun of a lot as a kid for it. It became a part of me, a marker of who I am, something I cannot divorce myself from. I am Skyla Dawn Cameron–take me or leave me, but do not ask me to change who I am.
My name–my obvious feminine name, that apparently made it clear I would never be welcome in certain writing spaces among certain readers–seems like it should be the easiest thing to change. But even trying to use S.D. Cameron as a child, it felt like a betrayal. It felt like one too many sharp edges I was trying to file away, to fit in spaces that didn’t want me anyway.
So I started using Skyla Dawn Cameron. And I have always used Skyla Dawn Cameron.
Because I am not the one who needs to change.
1994.
“Culture Wars” are not new for those marginalized due to their gender, their sexuality, their ethnicity, their religion. There have always been people recognizing they are not wanted in certain spaces but refusing to shrink themselves to fit, like there have always been people getting vocal the moment there’s someone at the table who doesn’t look like them. I had a lot of experiences at a very young age that taught me this, and by comparison my name seems like such in inconsequential thing to get bent out of shape over. But I held onto it–I hold onto it, still–as symbolic of something bigger.
For everything that challenges the white supremacist patriarchy that you see accepted now, there are literally bodies that paved the way. None of the current “wars” over human rights is new, but twenty years from now there will be a new generation who feels like theirs is the first one to experience the fights over who does and doesn’t deserve a seat at the table.
What we fight for now has been fought for before, again and again, twenty years ago, thirty, sixty, one hundred, one thousand.
1994.
2022.
It will never be won in my lifetime, but still…I will never file myself down to S.D. Cameron to make myself fit into the spaces that never wanted me anyway.
Writer of urban fantasy, thrillers/mysteries, and horror.
Holla!