In Response to a Bad Argument About SF/F, Racism, etc.
If you haven’t seen Damien Walter’s piece on diversity and vocal opposition to it in SF/F, you’ll probably want to read it for context. One of the loudest voices in the comments section is a fellow who calls himself Fail Burton (I assume he’s a he, but I could be wrong — looked on his profile; he says he’s a he). He’s made a remarkable number of absurd claims. I’d like to respond to one of those here: There is no proof SFF needs any conversation of the sort. Innuendos about a “narrow set of authors” without documentation or any sort or definition of what “narrow” means in the first place are just that, innuendos. There is also no “compared to what?” If SFF needs this conversation then so does women’s romance novels, the NBA, rap music and Indian cricket. Surprise – the politically correct have no interest in that, and the reason is obvious. This is not being offended by a neutral principle everyone can benefit from. This is specifically and only targeting anything too white, too male, and too heterosexual because it’s an auto-KKK. Everything else gets a pass. The PC do the same with history – there is only ever British or European colonialism. Mughals, Aztecs, Incans, Arabs, Ottomans and Mameluks all disappear in their complaints, as if by magic. There has never been institutional white or male supremacy in SFF. The idea is as ridiculous as race, sex, gay = interesting literature. 1) That there are no conversations about biases in other fields does not invalidate discussions about such things in sf/f. This assumes nobody is having those conversations, but I gather you, like me, are not an expert in Indian cricket or romance novels, or the NBA, or rap music (though, I’ll accept that you might be an expert in one of those). This means the point is irrelevant. At best, it’s a faulty comparison fallacy. There’s also the assumption here that fans of sf/f who are critical of its representation of people are obligated to talk about representation issues in other fields. This would be like telling the Financial Times it is now obligated to cover Seattle Seahawks games or Nature to cover horse racing or a Congressman to represent the interests of people in another state. These things may be connected on some sort of common ground, but they are not contextually relevant to the declared interests of each thing. At best, this is absurd. 2) Context matters for what we discuss. People talk about European slavery in the West because it is the most relevant, immediate history of slavery *for the West.* Whether Aztecs had slaves isn’t relevant to the immediate history of slavery here, nor to the structural racism that followed the end of the slave trade in Europe and, eventually, in the United States. This applies to colonialism as well. If we were discussing a cultural context in which another form of colonialism or slavery were relevant, it would certainly be important to acknowledge such things. Indeed, even within discussions of U.S. slavery (and colonialism), there are long debates and discussions about, for example, black people buying and trading other black people as slaves (a fact which makes sense only if you put it in the context of the slave trade in the U.S., which was primarily run by and in service to white people — crazy, I know). These topics *are* discussed regularly in academic circles, but considering that most Americans couldn’t tell you much about a random African, Middle Eastern, or, hell, even European country (except, perhaps, random stereotypes (not necessarily negative ones) and little tidbits of info), this seems a moot point. I can no more control what people don’t know than you can. Yeah, all those other places (as far as I know) had slavery. Did the Aztecs have slaves during colonial times in America? No. So why would a conversation about slavery in America or England need to discuss these other issues? You seem to have a problem with the fact that people aren’t raising irrelevant issues in specific cultural contexts where that would be bizarre at best. If you want to hear about Aztec slavery, there are books on tlacotins. 3) Your claim that diversity arguments are exclusively an attack on white, heterosexual males is not quite a straw man, but close enough that I’ll call it one. Considering that there are women who have been criticized for their positions on various things (Elizabeth Moon and Sarah Hoyt, for example — not necessarily on the same scale) and plenty of folks who are white, hetero males have been part of the call for diversity, I can easily conclude that your statement is nonsense. Next, the argument that there has never been an institution of white supremacy in sf/f is laughable. Considering what Samuel R. Delany says here, and the fact that publishing in general was in fact structurally racist throughout much of the 20th century (earlier too, but that’s obvious), any claim to the effect that sf/f has not been affected by racism or white supremacy (this is the wrong term, but given your loose use for it, I’ll let it slide) is woefully ignorant of actual history. One would have to have read a lot about the Harlem Renaissance and learned about decades of sf/f history, and then one would have to pretend all of that never happened. That’s the only way this claim works. Blind, willful ignorance (or, technically, just ignorance). 4) Just because you don’t find certain kinds of literature interesting does not mean others do not. I don’t much care for a lot of things, but I’m happy to recognize that a lot of people do like those things. Good for them. 5) This whole thing is about you playing victim, not because you’re actually a victim, but because being one is convenient for your “cause.” And that’s sad. And that’s probably all I’ll ever say about this individual. Laters.
Criticism Does Not Equal Bullying (or, What Bullying Means to Me)
(Update regarding comments: if you’re here to leave a flippant comment about the issue in question, it is unlikely to get through. Either engage or move on. This is likely to become my comment policy from now on because I really don’t have patience for people who want to treat my comments section as if my blog were an opinion piece on HuffPost.) If you missed the events of the last 36 hours, you should probably catch up here. I linked to that post earlier today; in short, Charles A. Tan takes an editor to task for their problematic anthology submission guidelines, among other related things. Earlier today, that same editor, after declaring on Twitter that they felt persecuted by people like Tan, etc., decided to delete his Twitter account and make his FB profile inaccessible (I think the latter is true). This came on the heels of this editor’s belief that he was being bullied by the people who he had un-affectionately called “rotten meat” (you can see the Twitter exchange for part of that here). I’m not here to talk about the editor’s submission guidelines or any of the major criticisms offered by Tan or others regarding what this editor has said about Africa and other things. Instead, I want to talk about the charge that Tan, myself, and others who have criticized the editor (Natalie Luhrs and Jim C. Hines, for example) are bullies. In short, I will say this: criticism is not the same as bullying. First, bullying is not: Being told why a position you took is racist Being told why something you wrote could be misconstrued as X Being told why your editorial decisions are contradictory and are not as inclusive as you think Being told you got something wrong Being told you offended someone Being told you said something sexist Being told you need to think about things and stop resorting to name-calling because you got criticized These are not instances of bullying. The nature of these “instances” are not, in principle, irrational, though they may be unwanted, and so they fall more clearly under the domain of “criticism,” as they are, indeed, criticisms of a position. One could be wrong about any one of these, but it’s impossible to discover the truth of a given matter if one does not treat it as initially valid. Indeed, I’ve been criticized for many things in the past and have disagreed (and agreed) with a variety of different positions. Articulated properly, a disagreement about a position is far more useful than blanket condemnation of that position as “bullying.” Second, bullying is a far more pervasive and insidious practice than some who use its name seem willing to accept. A good definition of bullying can be found on the U.S. government website, Stop Bullying. I won’t include the whole definition here, but here is a relevant excerpt: Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems. Let’s toss aside the bit about children because I think most of us would agree that bullying can happen between adults, too. The same page lists a number of behavior types which are defined as bullying, from taunting to unwanted sexual comments to name-calling (i.e., a variation of an ad hominem attack, to be honest) to exclusion , etc. Notice that the definition makes clear that power is an essential feature. If I could criticize this page, it would be that it doesn’t make explicit the difference between normal social control (wherein a behavior is rationally excluded on the basis that it is bad — i.e., someone who believes women shouldn’t have any rights and belong to men) vs. coercive social violence (i.e., using ridicule, public shaming, and other tools to prevent someone with legitimate concerns from engaging in a community, such as a woman who speaks out about a sexual assault being repeatedly told by a community and the police that she should shut up — see Steubenville). I think these are valid distinctions. The former is a normal consequence of a social culture (women wouldn’t have the rights they have now without some variation of social control); the latter is abusive and can happen in a variety of situations and in a variety of communities, even sf/f (such as someone being blacklisted on the sole basis that other people don’t like them). None of what falls under the “bullying” category should be misconstrued as “criticism.” Here’s what bullying means to me: It means being afraid you’ll get punched by someone with a spiked ring, but also so terrified to tell an adult because you don’t think they’ll do anything about it and because you’re afraid the kid will follow you home and punch you when you’re off school grounds. It means feeling helpless to protect yourself and feeling like nobody else will help you even if you really need it. It means being openly ridiculed for literally no viable reason (you’re short; they just don’t like you; they want someone to pick on; they don’t like your glasses; they don’t like your hair; you have freckles; you look different; you talk different; you wear the wrong clothes) and being unable to stop yourself form taking on the names and knock pegs off your self-esteem. It means running home from the bus because you’re afraid of what the other kids will do to you. It means closing in on yourself because you can’t reason with someone who hates you for no reason, who won’t listen to adults, who looks for every opportunity to punish you, who follows you around, who abuses you physically and mentally, who reminds you that you’re really just a worthless pile of shit. It means starting to believe that you just might be worthless, or close enough to it. For the record: most
Ethnic Heritage, Rejection, and Me
A few months back, Julia Rios and I recorded a whole bunch of interviews at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). One of those interviews involved a discussion about ethnic heritage and its various diversities with Mary Anne Mohanraj and Cecilia Tan, in which I lightly (and rightly) got called out for referring to my own heritage as “uninteresting” by dint of having descended from “old dead white people.” Having just edited the episode which contains this interview, I feel I should talk about this aspect in more depth, since I didn’t actually explore my heritage in the podcast in question (me being the interviewer, not the interviewee). I’ve been known to say two things about my ethnic heritage: It’s not important (see above) I’m descended from Saxon Thanes (which I usually utter in an absurd, sarcastically prideful fashion) Neither of these responses is actually fair to my history. So I should probably say something about where I come from. First, both of my biological parents were adopted. I know very little about my father’s side of the family, except that there is likely some Native American heritage there; I know considerably more about my mother’s side, in part because she became obsessed with figuring out our family tree many years ago and has pages and pages of information. On my mother’s side, I’m supposedly descended from Saxon Thanes. No joke. She traced our lineage back to the 900s. That’s pretty cool. Most of my mother’s side is French or Anglo-Saxon (or mixtures therein). There may be other European groups in there, but I haven’t dug deep enough into it. Supposedly, my family owned a huge portion of what is now Yorkshire; the Norman conquest of 1066 apparently put an end to that, but I’m not exactly sure how or why. My heritage doesn’t stop there, though. In a weird way, being the son of two adopted parents means I have a connection to a lot of different pots. For a long time, I didn’t feel like I had a right to these pots, since I’m not biologically connected. I’m not sure that’s fair to my heritage or to myself, as heritage is also cultural. My mother’s adoptive parents (i.e., my grandparents) are an interesting bunch: my grandfather was a would-be rancher / thoroughbred Yankee in the Western U.S.; my grandmother is a white South African. My father’s adoptive parents are equally interesting: on that side, my grandfather is, as far as I know, a white American (heritage unknown), but my grandmother was a Native American (I don’t know which group or the percentage, but I seem to recall she was very much rooted in her Native American heritage and was herself more NA than anything else). I still have the leather wallet she gave me when I was a kid (no idea where she got it). All of this is part of my family’s history and is actually far more interesting than “descended from old dead white people.” The more I think about this, the more I actually want to know where I come from, biologically and otherwise. There must be some interesting characters in my family’s past. I bring all of this up because I have started to wonder why I reject my heritage in such a flippant manner. Why would I deem my history as less worthy than others’? Why would I make fun of it when it, in some ways, defines who I am? I can’t put my finger on the reasons. The truth is that I probably discount this heritage because of my own insecurities, which seem derived from my past and not from anything happening now. And that’s got to stop. My history matters. My family’s history matters. Anywho.
A Cereal Metaphor for the SFF Community
Imagine you have a bowl of cereal, and there are a bunch of other people with bowls of cereal, too. Person A really likes Lucky Charms, which you think are OK, but you’re much more into Cocoa Puffs. Person B likes neither, but prefers Mini Wheats, while Person C enjoys Lucky Charms, but discovered Trix and hasn’t turned back. Along comes Person D. They like Grape Nuts. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Grape Nuts. Sometime’s it’s OK. Heck, sometimes it’s even good if you’re in the mood for it. Other times, it’s the thing you avoid in the morning because it’s like chewing on rodent food. But Person D likes Grape Nuts, not because it’s good for them or tasty, per se, but because Grape Nuts is what their friends eat, and they like their friends a lot. None of this would be a problem, of course, as one can like whatever they want. Indeed, one should eat whatever they want in this metaphor because, well, it’s a free country (or a mostly free world or something; this metaphor isn’t perfect). But unlike Person A or B or C or yourself, Person D believes you’re all ignoring Grape Nuts because you hate people who eat them. There might be some truth to that. You’re not overly fond of Grape Nuts eaters. They make far too much noise when they chew and they’re constantly going on about how good Grape Nuts are for you…if you’d only stop being stupid by eating all those Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms and Mini Wheats and Trix, you’d see the light. So you may not eat Grape Nuts for that reason, or perhaps because you just really hate Grape Nuts (it’s an acquired taste, after all). So Person D says, “Fine. I’m going to piss in your cereal so you can’t enjoy any of it.” You’re understandably shocked by this. Why would someone piss in your cereal just to make a point? Isn’t that petty? Isn’t that rude? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of the purpose of eating cereal? Isn’t all this supposed to be about getting some breakfast? More importantly, while you can understand some dislike the love you share for Cocoa Puffs, you at least poured it into your bowl solely because you liked it; indeed, the inventor of Cocoa Puffs shared their own favorite cereals so you could maybe enjoy some Pops or Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Froot Loops, and so on and so forth, because that’s what we do in a community: share cereals. But Person D decided to piss in your cereal. The question is this: How do you get the piss out of your cereal? Maybe you just pour another bowl. Or try to ignore the piss taste in your mouth. Or find a way to siphon out the piss and save your cereal before it’s too late. Either way, someone has pissed in your cereal. How you react is up to you.
How to Destroy the SFWA…err, no, I’m not going to talk about that after all
This post began as a parody or a satire. Whatever it began as, it was a scathing critique of someone else whose post I’m not going to link to because I just don’t see a point in directly addressing anything said there or using my website as a link vehicle for what amounts to “people screaming about things they don’t understand.” Phew. Big sentence. So, I’ve come to this point where I either shrug, shake my head, and walk away to other things, or I write parodies/satires because I don’t want to repeat myself. I’m going with the first route (except the walking away part). The SFWA nonsense shouldn’t be so nonsensical. It shouldn’t be this difficult for some people to articulate a position that doesn’t make them look like assholes. It shouldn’t be this difficult for those same people to understand what some people are saying. It shouldn’t be this difficult for those same people to acknowledge that their worldview isn’t the only one or that it shouldn’t be just because it makes them comfortable. It shouldn’t be this difficult for those same people to realize they’re arguing over a straw man and to start actually addressing what really bothers them, or to understand that gender matters, race matters, that our field is not perfect, that there are real structural problems here, that how people feel matters even if you don’t understand it because you’re not like them, that the world and its sf/f traditions matter, that how you represent others in a professional venue matters… It shouldn’t be this difficult. But it is. And it’s incredibly frustrating to see name after name after name argue “1st Amendment” this or “political correctness” that. To see them argue about things that aren’t happening, using definitions of words that make no sense (apparently “no politics” and “professionalism” means “say whatever you want in a professional venue without repercussions” — who knew?). To see other people explain why the views of this group is skewed by straw man arguments and misunderstanding, only to get ignored because…reasons? To see perfectly intelligent people refuse to acknowledge that gender and sexuality matter, and that giving up something like a pronoun really doesn’t cost any individual person anything worth hanging onto, or to see them hypocritically argue that the SFWA shouldn’t have anything to do with gender/sexuality/etc. while supporting inappropriate behavior from a while male author or two in a professional venue. To see a female author get pissed on by someone in a position of authority because she didn’t dress conservative enough to qualify as a “feminist” (another redefined term). To see discussions of diversity dismissed as “political correctness,” which roughly translated means, “I used to be able to say offensive things to these people, but now I’m unhappy because I can’t without getting called out for it.” To see a member of the community write a mini-manifesto on how to fix the SFWA, when really it would completely destroy the organization’s ability to represent the interests of sf/f writers and prevent the organization from celebrating its diversity (of all sorts). As if somehow this would make things better. As if somehow the organization does nothing today, when it obviously does. To see the complete inability of certain people to have the basic level of respect for others, even insofar as it might mean letting those others be represented in a journal designed for their profession. Not as a political game. Not as a manifesto for something. But as an acknowledgement that people like them exist and are writing books or movies or whatever, and that there are particularities to the field that are relevant to them. SF/F deserves better than this. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Censorship is what people say when they don’t want to address the actual issue…for reasons
The other day, I posted about the SFWA Bulletin Petition thing. I’m not going to rehash that debate here, though you’re welcome to read it (there are links at the bottom of that post to other discussions). However, I do think it a good idea to take a moment to talk about the rhetoric surrounding this ordeal, because much of the anger and confusion is, if not deliberate, then certainly the product of a particular discourse which naturally stifles debate or discussion. The centerpiece of this rhetorical game is “censorship,” which many have already discussed at some length elsewhere. Here, I’m interested in how “censorship” is used in the service of the agenda at the heart of the petition and the debates that followed: I. Censorship is a Distortion First, I think it is worth reminding everyone that in discussions that begin with censorship, the charge itself is almost always not reflective of reality. The original version of Truesdale’s petition argues, for example, that the SFWA is “about to institute a policy of censorship based on political correctness in the organization’s public publication,” followed closely by the following: The search for a new Bulletin editor followed the Summer 2013 resignation (under pressure) of the then (lady) editor (for the use of an “inappropriate” cover among other alleged crimes), and the brouhaha involving two long-time and well respected Bulletin columnists whose use of the words “lady editors,” “beautiful,” and a few other innocuous descriptive words led, for the first time in the history of the Bulletin, to its suspension (as of this writing no editor has been selected and the Bulletin remains in limbo).[1] As has already been pointed out by many people (see the links in my original post), this charge not only misrepresents what censorship is, but also the events which led the SFWA to make the changes that it did. It is either a deliberate distortion, or a delusional one, but a distortion nonetheless. Much of this relies on fuzzy terminology, such as the idea of “political correctness,” which in one light might mean “respectful” and in another might mean “stifling,” though the latter is definitively not the intent nor the purpose of the acts that frequently fall under “PC” (a distortion in and of itself). After all, to ask someone not to call black people “niggers” in a professional publication is hardly “politically correct” (i.e., stifling of one’s speech), but really a request for common courtesy at the very least. “Politically correct,” in other words, is just a buzzword for “I want to be able to say whatever I want without getting called out for it.” In a civilized culture, that’s hardly a reasonable position to take. Back to the subject of censorship as a distortion: Truesdale himself lists the offensive aspects of SFWA’s editorial job description, none of which fit within the definition he provides by implication. Censorship, in his argument, must by necessity have a political agenda. Yet, when he pressed Steven Gould for an answer to this “agenda,” the response demonstrated the exact opposite. As Gould wrote, “We don’t have guidelines for “acceptable” articles, art, and ads other than content needs to serve the needs of the organization. Chief among those are our 5 core mission areas: to inform, support, promote, defend and advocate for professional writers.” Simple right? Since the job of an editor is quite literally to fulfill the mission of whatever publication they edit, and that editor is answerable to whoever pays to publish the works, it’s hardly censorship to request that an editor have to do any of these things, particularly given the context in which the SFWA has made its claims. So the argument that an editor doing what an editor does in the service of a publication with a specific purpose is “censorship” is merely a distortion of editorial duties, and one grounded in a perspective which neither acknowledges that mutual respect must fall on the grounds of language (because language matters), but also within the terms of a given space. In this case, the SFWA’s space has a specific purpose, and the SFWA, it appears, has taken steps to make sure the Bulletin is relevant only to that purpose. There’s no active attempt to prevent members within the SFWA’s borders from saying what they like, just as there is no requirement for the Bulletin to publish whatever gets sent to it, as is completely reasonable. That’s just reality. Ultimately, censorship is rarely used in situations where it actually applies in these debates, in large part because censorship almost never occurs in these debates. Real censorship looks like this: You’re threatened with or put in prison because of what you say or write by the government or someone working for that government. You’re threatened with or a victim of violence because of what you say or write by the same. You’re preventing from accessing avenues of speech by the same. For example: if you run an online newspaper and the government shuts down your Internet or destroys your computers. Or any other situation in which the government directly interferes with your ability to freely exercise your speech (setting aside, of course, cases of libel, etc.). Not surprisingly, none of this applies in SFWA’s case. II. Censorship is a Distraction Since this petition relies on casting not only its initial terminology (censorship), but also the events in question within a perspective which requires absolute adherence to the first and absolute rejection of the latter (on the terms of the author alone), there’s little room for an actual debate here. In fact, the distortion of censorship (applying it in a scenario where suddenly “editing” becomes “censorship”) is a distraction. In vociferously defending this notion of “free speech” in a context in which it definitely does not apply, those who hold this position betray not only their ignorance of the terms, but also a profound disinterest in debate about the actual issue. As I noted to Paul Levinson in the comments