SF3 posted this on their blog:
SF3 has withdrawn the invitation to Elizabeth Moon to attend WisCon 35 as guest of honor.
As I’ve said to others lately, this by itself will not fix everything. However, it is a step in the right direction.
Realms of Fantasy Dead, Again
For those who have not seen the memo, and Shawna’s goodbye, and Doug’s goodbye. Almost 2 years ago now I wrote a blog post about how the death of RoF made me feel, and I actually still stand by the sentiment today. Yes, since then there have been some fishboobs and some whitewashing and even some random trolling from people only tangentially involved. Still and all, I did love it once, and I cherish those memories.
WisCon developments and my breaking heart
For those of you who haven’t heard, the SF3 organization that is the parent org for WisCon passed a resolution at their Oct 3rd meeting recommending to the concom that they rescind Elizabeth Moon’s guest of honor invitation. This is just a rec, though. It’s still up to the concom — I assume the troika, actually — to follow through on it. Based on this post by Karnythia, there seems to be a lot of discussion going on within the concom about following this rec, with some strong voices opposed to doing so.
Karnythia’s post is a must read, but even more so the comments. She is not the only one stating that she does not want to attend WisCon but will probably come to Madison. There are even some saying they will not come to Madison at all. The people saying this are people whose contributions to WisCon — both on the concom and the community — are so valuable. They are awesome people, exactly the kind of people you’d want to spend a weekend having conversations with.
That these people may not show up to the con is breaking my heart. And I am so, so angry and hurt by those who are seriously attempting to brush aside the bigotry of Elizabeth Moon so that she doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable and be sad.
Fuck that.
These people are pouring acid over the best part of WisCon, the community. A community that will be diminished if this foolishness doesn’t come to an end. I want to go to WisCon and honor Nisi and have a fabulous tine. Damn you people for putting that in jeopardy.
As Nora succinctly states: A con that honors a bigot is not feminist.
Coming Out Day
I actually have no interesting coming out story to tell. Mostly because my coming out happened in stages and in small steps over time. Most of my extended family has no clue, and my immediate family either knows or doesn’t based on if they’ve been around when I’ve talked about past girlfriends or something. Overall, I haven’t felt a big need to talk directly about this kind of thing because my family considers me so weird for so many reasons this would just add to the pile and not mean much.
Though I am pretty sure that at least one of my aunts thinks I am going through a phase.
I find that I am reluctant to formally come out to anyone, not because I have any shame about what I am, but because I end up getting into odd, intrusive conversations for no good reason. But when it comes up I do usually identify as bisexual unless that day I’ve decided to identify as a lesbian. Why the switch? Because there are many days when I just don’t like men very much, and I’d rather not admit any kind of connection to them in the attraction department. These days usually include those where I have to deal with really sexist dudes, which thankfully isn’t all that often.
I remember in college we used to have discussions about identifying politically as Lesbian or Gay even though one is actually Bisexual. So sometimes I’ll say that politically I’m a lesbian, but emotionally I am bisexual.
I’m also Poly, which most people don’t know about me due to my reluctance to get involved with one partner, let alone multiples.
Actually, that’s what a lot of this reticence comes down to. I do not often enter into romantic relationships (by choice), so there’s not usually much reason for me to reveal my preferences in the matter. Unfortunately, this feeds into the whole heterosexual privilege thing, as many probably assume I am het. And though I am an activist for social justice in many arenas, including LGBT issues, that is not my forefront activism, thus it’s not always apparent.
So, over the course of my life before this, and probably after, I will have many small coming out moments. This post is probably one.
Is It Okay To Dislike Gwen If I Swear I Won’t Use Misogynistic Language?
Over at GeekFeminism there is a really great post about how hating on women characters isn’t cool, especially if you’re doing so using really misogynistic language. It’s definitely worth a read. As I was going through the post, I found myself cringing at the language and hatred on display. I mean, I have issues with Gwen, too, but dear Isis, people, must we make fun of the gap in her tooth?
Scrolling down the comment thread, I saw this from Lizabeth S. Tucker: “I also believe that the reason that a large number of female characters on television series are not liked is simply because they are badly written. I always hope for a strong female character, not necessarily perfect, but one who holds her own, who stays in character.”
Yes. Absolutely yes. And no where is more apparent than with Gwen Cooper. Let it be known up front that I do not usually like Gwen. I did not begin disliking her immediately, as many fans did, but over time. After watching my favorite Torchwood episodes over and over again, I discovered that the times I really wanted Gwen off the screen were the times she was in a room with a guy she was snogging or wanted to snog. She was fine in scenes with Jack until the horrendous moment when Torchwood decided that the two of them were inexplicably in love. Anything she did when Owen was around annoyed the hell out of me until they finally got over each other. And I am convinced that I hate Rhys only because we rarely see him not with Gwen, and thus everything is just horrible all around.
When Gwen is not in a scene with a man she fancies, suddenly all the things that I find annoying about her fall away and she becomes a character I can really like and root for. So what’s up with this? I suspect that it’s because many of Torchwood‘s male writers do not know how to write relationship and sexual tension stuff to save their lives. They do not know how to make a woman be in love or in lust without being insipid and ridiculous. Need more evidence for this hypothesis? Look 3 feet to the left where Toshiko is standing.
And, as always, I blame Chris Chibnall most of all.
So really, the problem here is not Gwen, it’s the writers. And I’ll just bet if you went through every episode of Torchwood that was written by a man (with the exception of Russell T. Davies), you will find the bad writing, characterization, and awkward, bullshit sexual stuff with Gwen and Tosh (though Tosh’s stuff was limited to Owen, mostly, and her badly written character we felt sorry for). If you look at the episodes written by women, I bet the better aspects of both Gwen and Tosh come to the fore, and we feel less sorry for the latter and/or more warm toward the former.
Writing Music (Suggestions Needed!)
Those of you who follow me on Facebook may already know that I am indeed in the midst of writing a novel at the moment. One of the things I like to do when writing a novel or short story is to create a playlist to inspire me. This grouping of songs will not only get me through cafe writing sessions when truly terrible music comes over the loudspeakers, but also helps kick my writer brain into gear. It’s easy for me to associate a song with an action, so hearing the appropriate songs can put me in writer mode fairly quickly.
For this novel I need hard driving music with plenty of percussion and energy. I’ve got some appropriate music from DJs I’ve encountered in the city or music sent by friends, but I need suggestions for more stuff to acquire. House music, dance music, world music, remixes, instrumental, whatever. Suggest artists, specific albums, specific tracks. Hopefully I’ll be able to find it on Zune :)
What kind of music do you listen to while you write?
My Thoughts On the Whole Katy Perry/Sesame Street Thing
Dear Outraged Parents,
If you think that your Sesame Street-watching toddlers do not know that: a) Breasts exist and b) Women have them, or if you think that seeing a woman’s cleavage will cause them to have inappropriately sexual thoughts instead of recognizing breasts as a source of sustenance (if they even notice that kind of thing at all) then:
You are doing something really, really wrong as parents.
Audible Tempest
Due to a great lack of spoons (and the evil hacking of my web server), I have not yet made a post telling you about wonderful things! Fiction-related things! I shall do so now.
First, as I mentioned, I was on the radio the other week. Hour of the Wolf, 5am, reading the first draft of a story and having it critiqued on air by my wonderful writing group, Altered Fluid. For those of you not up at 5am on a Saturday, the archive of the show is here1. Those of you subscribed to my first draft journal have seen that story in its very, very first incarnation.
In other news, my Interfictions story, “Black Feather”, recently went up on PodCastle. You can check out the story here if you haven’t already2. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the folks on the forum did not hate it! Not everyone loved it, of course, but there appears to be some nice balance to the responses.
I am amused by the discussion going on surrounding the line “Flying is nothing more than controlled falling.”
The mighty Amal El-Mohtar read the story beautifully, and the awesome M. K. Hobson did the introduction. These are two of my favorite ladies, so it was all squeeness for me. Amal wondered how her reading compared to the one I did below. I have to say, I had the benefit of a band behind me. Normally, I feel like my readings suck. But that night everyone who read was on fire. I still need to make an MP3 of Veronica reading “Rats”.
Anyway, if you listen to both versions, I think Amal and I would both enjoy hearing what you think of them.
Footnotes
You Know What I Wish?
I wish people would stop mischaracterizing what went on during RaceFail as mostly a bunch of name calling and ad hominem attacks online1. I really do. Why? Because that’s not how it was2.
You know what else I wish? I wish people would quit using the scare quotes around the word fail when speaking of that time. And trotting out the fallacy of the Fail Fandom or referring to people who work for social justice within the SF community as the Fail Community. Why? Because that’s utter fucking bullshit3.
Given how at least two people lately have rolled up with this kind of language only to then look at the conversation around MoonFail and say “Oh my, I am seeing a different side of things now!” elicits mixed feelings. I mean, yay that they see the inherent issues here. But the fact that they are still talking about how RaceFail was all just This Way or the Fail Community is usually wrong about these things and just picking on people makes me seriously want to throw hard, overbaked and burnt cookies at them until they cry.
When you dismiss all of the conversations that happened during RaceFail as one kind of thing and when you refer to a Fail Fandom, you are dismissing the very real problems we have in our community surrounding prejudice and the work people have done to eliminate that prejudice from said community. And taking a dismissive stance is just a punk move all around.
Maybe instead of holding on to your ideas of what RaceFail was and what we Fail activists do, you ought to step back and re-examine in light of what you see going on right now.
Footnotes
- Before you ask: Yes, I do realize that the person in that post is apologizing for making assumptions. Though I appreciate that, I don’t think that erases my overall point. [⇧]
- I’m not going to say that every single person behaved well during RaceFail. But I have seen less evidence of widespread evil orc horde activity and more evidence people ignoring the bulk of the discussions in favor of keeping to the self-perpetuated myth that everyone on both sides were acting badly based on a small sampling or just one person/post. No. Just no. [⇧]
- I got no qualifiers for this one. It’s bullshit. [⇧]
MoonFail: Reasonableness
Jim Hines wrote an interesting post the other day about being the voice of reason and how taking that particular tack can be problematic, even when it has its benefits. This right here is what crystalized it for him:
Isn’t reasonableness a good thing? …I couldn’t quite parse it … until another commenter popped up to say he was talking to me because of my reasoned take on things, “unlike 85% of the poo-hurling monkeys.”
In my time as the Angry Black Woman, I’ve encountered many who have pointed out to me that Martin Luther King is remembered and revered, whereas Malcolm X’s attitude was rejected by sensible folks. These people do not often include folks who have actually read King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail, and especially not this section of it:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
The idea that it’s never okay to be angry, to speak angrily, to be persistent, vehement, and unyielding to the idea that a little bit of prejudice is okay as long as Big P Prejudice isn’t happening here is an idea that only people like the white moderates King speaks of feel strongly about. Funny how that works out, right?
Jim is right in that reasonableness (or the appearance of it) and patience has a place in sticky issues like this. May of you will probably never believe it, but I used to be known as a “reasonable” black person. I know, crazy, right? I used to be the one who would make very low-key, patient, thought-out and emotionally leveled posts or emails or explanations. I thought that it was something I should do as one of those black people whites felt comfortable around because my skin was light and I spoke “properly”. I thought I was being sneaky by flying under their radar, when in reality I was behaving exactly as they hoped I would behave and not having much impact at all. Even if they agreed with me in principle, most would still go away thinking “Well, Tempest isn’t like those other black people. She’s articulate, intelligent, and reasonable.”1
There is a really delicate balance and a fine line to walk concerning reason and anger.
People need to understand that prejudice hurts in all its forms. No matter where that prejudice lies along the spectrum from major to “minor”, it hurts people. Real people. Not just ideas of people. If you hurt me, and I react in anger, and you react badly to that anger even though you did the hurting, who is the jerk in this scenario? If you cut me, why do I need to spend hours and days and weeks explaining to you calmly that I do not enjoy bleeding, that it is bad for my health, and it does not foster a great sense of fellowship and community between us if you keep doing it. Anger is sometimes the only way to make people understand the seriousness of their actions. But, instead of realizing this, they just decide that people are being mean to them.
The balance is, sometimes putting a calm face between the anger and the person hurting you is the more effective route. I’ve found that it’s easy to treat the 100th person to say something stupid and ignorant just like the first 99 people who did the exact same thing and then argued with you about it. It is hard, so hard, to take a step back and realize that there is this constant process of starting over when you introduce people to new concepts. Thing is, those who are constantly embroiled in these fights, who have had this stuff explained over and over, perhaps even calmly, reasonably, and still persist in their ways, don’t get that benefit anymore. And yet they’re the first to complain about it.
And the sad truth is that it’s often the allies who take the position of sounding “reasonable” as they try to get through to people. It’s a sad fact that sometimes their words are given more consideration and weight. I would say it’s incumbent on them to then say: I’m glad you listened to me for whatever reason. But I need you to understand that, as patient and reasonable as I’m being with you, have no doubt that I agree with these people. I think their anger is justified, and your actions/speech are not.
Footnotes
- This post by Shweta Narayan about assimilation reminded me of some of what I went through at that time in my life. I did not have the extreme experiences she did, but the tenor of what she describes is so familiar to me. If this doesn’t help you understand what I mean by prejudice hurts, then you’re a cold-hearted person. [⇧]