Taking A Stab At Sincerity

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Taking A Stab At Sincerity

Once, long ago, there was an internet fight. Instead of being about race, it was about gender. And it started because there was a book, and that book was covered in penises male author names even though inside there were just as many female authors. The discussion/debate/wankfest became epic, but during the darkest part of it one of the people on the “other” side sent me an email asking if we could perhaps speak on the phone about the whole situation. We had that conversation, stuff was discussed in civilized manner, we both walked away still liking and respecting the other. I found that very valuable.

I often find person-to-person conversations about contentious topics valuable. I realize they are not always possible, but with the magic of the telephone or even my webcam-enabled Skype, they can happen.

So I’m making a limited-time offer — if anyone is interested in having a real and honest conversation with me about the issues raised in the current debate, be they from the core of it to the spiraling out of control reactions to rections to reactions, I am interested in having a conversation with you. If you’re in NYC, we can meet up for tea. If you’re in other places, we can arrange a time to call. I’m open.

Except:

If I have banned you from my blog or repeatedly expressed interest in never engaging with you again, then I ain’t talking to you anywhere else.

If you think that by talking to me you will gain Black Person Validation, don’t even bother. I am already trying to break certain people of the habit of treating me like a Special Black Friend, I don’t need to deal with it even more. I am not on top of the black chain of command or anything. So keep that in mind.

Contact link is at the top of my fluidartist blog (LJers, just click the permalink).

Update: As I was riding into work I wondered if I came off sounding like I am a person you should talk to, or should want to. Which is not the case. There are a lot of smart people involved, a lot of people who are feeling hurt, and a lot of folks willing to actually listen. I wasn’t even involved in a whole swath of the madness, so talking to me about it probably won’t help. If you’re keen for a conversation with a person over the phone or over tea, maybe try politely asking. You’d be surprised how many will say yes.

Drowning in Apathy

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Drowning in Apathy

I’ve been trying all weekend to write a post that will express several emotions and truths about this latest explosion of debate, discussion, and fail around cultural appropriation and other related issues. You’re all sick of hearing about it, yadda, yadda. I never could write that post. Because it would be pointless. Because most people just aren’t fucking listening. And those that are don’t need the post.

I love how it’s always those people over there causing the problem. I love how everyone gets to say “Oh, it’s those people who love conflict doing a circle jerk!” I love how people are complaining about the lack of listening to individuals and not reacting in a knee-jerk way while being completely unspecific, waving hands in general directions, and not listing or linking to anything specific or engaging with the ideas of the people you reluctantly admit aren’t necessarily a part of it.

It’s so easy to point to a group of brown people and hurl the label “mob”, isn’t it?

I love how when it’s you or someone you love who is hurt, other people’s hurts don’t matter. Not just the specific hurts involved in arguing in this climate, but the hurts involved in just being a person of color and having your very self dismissed on the basis of bullshit and, yes, racist thinking.

I used to think that it was possible to make a difference in this community when it came to this kind of thinking. Hell, I’ve had people tell me that my writing or my taking part in discussions has helped open their eyes, change their minds, make them see other points of view. But I’m not sure if it’s worth watching yet another of these discussions devolve again.

Once again certain people have made me question my participation in the SF community. Once again, the majority of those people are white folks engaging in racist thinking and activities, unconsciously or not.

A friend of mine recently complained of a lingering feeling of apathy over this whole issue. Recently as in 3 days ago. At the time I cautioned her against giving in to that feeling — it might not pass quickly, but it will pass, I said. Well, after this weekend, I am mired deep in that apathy myself. Though still pretty damn angry, as the several times I have had to stop and take a breath while writing this attests.

I’m not about to do a flounce-off. Mainly because if I do, nothing will ever get resolved. Or, more accurately, I will not be part of the solution, and I do strive to be.   But I am thinking about what I want to do going forward. I need to take some time on this, because my current instinct is to separate everyone into categories of “Worth my time” and “Worthless” and just go from there. In the long run, that’s probably a mistake. So I’ll hold off.

In case you were wondering, here are the posts I have either partially written or thought about writing:

  • I was going to write about how there’s a difference between someone saying you’ve engaged in a racist act or in racist thinking and calling someone a racist.
  • I was going to write about how the side of this argument that is mainly made up of white people using words against the side of the argument made up of POC and allies like “mob” and “horde” “oversensitive” and “attention whores” is extremely problematic, not just from a reasonable debate standpoint, but also from a racial one.
  • I was going to write about how divorcing yourself from the label of ally because of all the horrible people picking on you is not a form of bravery or self-righteousness, but a form of saying “I refuse to be an ally to you on your terms, seeing that you’re the one suffering from the hurt and oppression I’m allying with you against. It’s really more about what I’m comfortable with.”
  • I was going to write about how if you don’t want people react to your involvement in a conversation as if you’re just like the 10,000 people who have come before, then maybe you should shut up and not make the same statements or ask the same pointless questions that aren’t really questions as those other 10,000 people.
  • I was going to write about how this is the same thing I have seen happen in every debate about race and gender in SF and how we never get anywhere.

Dear Writers,

By:  TempestWriting
Dear Writers,

A truth that I’ve come across many times over the years and passed on to me by writers much more experienced and intelligent than I and that I feel is apropos in these times:

Just because you wrote a piece of fiction doesn’t mean you own the only true way of reading/interpreting/understanding that piece of fiction.  It is, in fact, one of the most wonderful and frightening things about being a writer that we do not.

We may own the copyright on the words we strung together in that particular way, but we do not own reader reactions to that, be they good or bad.  We may get a real thrill from positive reactions, and we may learn new things from honest criticism, discussion, and dissection of our work.  But we may not privilege those reactions above the ones that hurt us most: the negative, the violently opposed, and the ones that result in OUR hurting someone else.

You cannot distance yourself from the culpability you have in hurting others with your fiction if you are not willing to distance yourself from the good feelings that come with giving joy and understanding.  You can talk about intent all you like — and don’t misunderstand me, intent is important, it is just not primarily important — but in the end your intent is worth nothing if you cannot own all of the results of your efforts.

That doesn’t mean you need to take it all in to yourself, beat yourself up, or label yourself as bad, bigoted, evil, or wrong.  What it does mean is that you need to ask: How did I fuck up?  Is there some way I could have avoided fucking up?  Will you give me a chance to prove I will not fuck up in exactly this way again, and will do my best to not fuck up in other, related ways?  Will you accept that I am a work in progress even if I do?

If you ask these questions in all sincerity, the answer will probably be: Yes.

More love than you probably understand I’m giving you,
Tempest

We Don’t Need Bears But We Got ‘Em Anyway

By:  TempestRants
We Don't Need Bears But We Got 'Em Anyway

A few days ago Elizabeth Bear put up a post about cultural appropriation and writing the other.  Post gets many comments, some by the usual cultfans and some by folks thoughtfully engaging in the topic.  One particular exchange lead to this Open Letter.  That open letter led to another post by Bear.  That post led to some number of comments in which the words “overreaction” and “over sensitivity” were uttered, with predictable results.  (It’s not on the bingo card for nothing, folks.)  Further discussion here.  More as I find them.  Because this will unfold, and rapidly, and it is guaranteed to piss me off.

Looks like the time for discussing Cultural Appropriation is uh…. now.  Check the ABW this evening.

What Media Player Do You Use and/or Suggest?

By:  TempestGeekitude

I recently had to uninstall my favorite media player: MusicMatch Jukebox.  I’ve had that same install since 2004 and absolutely loved the program.  But, sadly, it was getting buggier and buggier, and, of course, it was no longer supported.  not because it was old, but because Yahoo bought MusicMatch and proceeded to amke ti a piece of crap as they discontinued support for pre-Yahoo versions.  Yahoo ruins everything.

I used to use RealJukebox until it melded back into RealPlayer, and I haven’t seen a version that truly rocks my socks.  (I’m willing to be convinced that it’s better now.)  Everything else just seems to suck.

I downloaded Songbird, which is all right, but I think it’s not quite ready for prime time.  It crashes easily, doesn’t dig the add-ons as much as I would like (and is thus reduced to really basic functionality), and doesn’t even play or rip CDs at the moment.  How annoying is that?

I’m currently using the Creative media player that came with my MP3 player, but it isn’t as robust as I would like, either.  I do like that it plays video and music.

Windows Media Player… meh.  I suppose I could use it.  It’s better than it used to be, that’s for sure.

iTunes is a big fat NO.

What I want is to find another program as awesome as MusicMatch JukeBox.  I would prefer one that also played video.  I want something with lots of functionality, that plays and rips CDs (to MP3), that organizes tracks well and will batch process them (like updating the meta data).

What do you use to organize and listen to your media?  Suggest stuff to me, please.  My music library will thank you.