Writing and Activism

A few weeks ago my partner and I were listening to an episode of the podcast Writing Excuses. In the episode, the hosts were talking about social media and they mentioned how activism can hurt an authors book sales. I can see where they are coming from: many of the people I know refuse to buy anything by Orsen Scott Card because of his views on homosexuality. But what about those authors who use their books for the purposes of activism? Tamora Pierce, in an interview, mentioned the role of feminism in her books. 

Personally, I have found that certain social issues help me create the stories that I write. In my first novel, I used a pro-life/pro-choice debate that I had attended as my influence for one of the more important scenes. I used a discussion about the fact that people deny the existence of asexuality as my influence to write an asexual character. I have used my personal experiences and causes that I care about to create my characters. I have gender queer characters, characters who are transgender, questioning characters, and one of my characters is a lesbian (so far). I have written many of my characters as they are because it is how I best identify with them. While most people may identify best with my characters if they were heterosexual and identified with their assigned gender, I find that my characters are more believable if I write someone who I can relate to. Besides, if you walked into any bookstore and picked up a random fiction novel, there’s a good chance the characters i it are heterosexual and cisgender. In fact, it’s quite likely that the protagonist is a white, heterosexual, cisgender male. That sounds very boring to me. I’d rather write characters so that those who normally don’t get to see themselves in literature can identify with a literary figure. That is my activism.

So what do other writers think? Should activism be kept separate from writing?