Category: Rants

How to be black

Sometimes Allies Are Bad Actors

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism

How to be black

“Stop attacking your allies!” –White Proverb

Okay, it’s not really a white proverb. This is the favorite rallying cry of a certain kind of ally1 — the kind that assumes their self-proclaimed ally status means that any disagreement with them is an attack. And those in need of allies should be careful of attacking, else they will have none.

There’s a lot of bullshit wrapped up in this.

The main problem being that just because you’re an ally doesn’t mean you magically always act in the best interests of the group you’re allied with, and nor should you assume you are. An ally is not some glittery state of being in which you can do no wrong, in which your presence is always wanted or helpful, in which the loss of you represents a great loss to the cause. Sometimes allies are more here for themselves than they are for others.

“Sometimes allies are bad actors.”

That last is a quote from the panel “What Happened With WisCon Last Summer?” Mikki Kendall was the one who said it. She said it in response to Pat Murphy, who expressed sadness that the actions of some people on the WisCon ConCom caused longtime volunteers of the same to drop out of the organization. The people who left are those who have done a ton of work for the convention and for the fan community. This is not in dispute. They are people who have worked to build a feminist space within SF fandom, and are committed to their feminist values. This is not in dispute.

They are also people who, at some time or another over the past two years, have failed to be good allies to people in their feminist space who are not from their same generation, their same race or ethnicity, their same class.

That doesn’t mean they’ve done no good work, or that all their good work is moot. Plus, no one is perfect. Even the most hardcore social justice warrior (or paladin, cleric, rogue…) can fail to be a good ally to someone from a different group or identity at some point. What matters, what always matters, is how you deal with your fail. Did you apologize? Did you sit with yourself and examine what happened and why? Did you think about what being a good ally really means? Did you recommit yourself to being a better ally in the future?

Or did you double down with the idea that you’re an ally, not one of those bigots out there, and you marched with King, and you supported some feminists in 1973, and you’ve done all this work, and therefore you didn’t do anything wrong, you find nothing objectionable in what you did (or failed to do), and so the problem must be with the people you’re allied to, and not with yourself. In other words: did you center yourself?

The kind of people who say Stop Attacking Your Allies are the kind who tie their allyship to specific behaviors from the group they’re supposedly interested in helping. They, the ally, want to dictate the terms of the relationship and want to be the one to say “Now it’s the time to address this thing,” instead of allowing the marginalized and oppressed folks to make that determination. The ally wants to set the rules for what is appropriate discourse, to determine the parameters for politeness, and the conditions under which they will use or set aside their privilege. Do I need to explain the problems with that?2

Are we really “driving away” our allies, or are we making it clear that we won’t accept an ally relationship that is about the needs and comfort of the allies above everyone else? Yes, we might be making that clear with harsh language. And yes, in making that clear we might hurt some feelings. That happens when allies don’t listen to the polite, patient words that come before the yelling.

We are far more patient with our allies because they are allies. Because we know, on some level, that they do get it. And we want them to understand. We need our allies.

But we don’t need them so much that we’re willing to be treated like they know what’s best better than we do. Nor so much that we will tolerate them not listening or being dismissive when we say “this is wrong, hurtful, damaging, dangerous, and deadly.” Allies that do? We don’t need.

Sometimes allies are bad actors.

Do you want to be a good actor? To be the real ally you consider yourself to be? Then I suggest you read this guide to allyship & interracial friendships on The Feminist Griote, as it breaks allyship down extremely well. The article focuses on white allies to POC, particularly women of color, but the kinds of questions raised–Do you, white person, have any POC friends? Do you allow your closeness to POC to give you an excuse to not police your whiteness?–apply to many an ally relationship.

Read that article, sit with it, and consider whether you have been a bad actor in the past. If you have, then the best way to make up for that is to do better going forward.

Footnotes

  1. I have an acquaintance who just loves to whip this out when someone confronts her on her less than sterling attitudes about progress and diversity. [⇧]
  2. Nevermind, I’ll let Dr. King do so: “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.” [⇧]
microagressions

Your Microaggressions Aren’t Welcome Here

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism

microagressions

Two years ago I proposed, then moderated a panel at WisCon called “Speak To Me In Your Native Language!” And Other Things You Should Never Say To Anyone (clicky for description). The panel title comes directly from something a WisCon-goer said to a friend of mine; and that’s just one of the othering experiences she’s had at the con and why she hasn’t been back in a while. I brought up other examples on the panel having to do with inappropriate touching/moving–of hair, of assistive devices such as wheelchairs–inappropriate interrogation–“You’re not blind, so why do you need a service dog?”–and similar instances of Othering1. I created this panel because I wanted to try and figure out how WisCon and the community of people in it should address the problem and maybe even strive toward fixing it.

The panel didn’t go completely to plan because we got derailed several times by one of the panelists2. I also don’t remember us coming up with any actionable solutions.

The most obvious one for me is to be that person that calls folks out when I witness such situations and encourage others to do so as well. That’s only workable so long as there are people willing and around. You can’t be everywhere. And while that could eventually grow and grow into awareness for everyone, that could take time. And while that’s happening some people still won’t feel welcome at the con.

What didn’t occur to me is that WisCon the organization could do something to address this behavior3. As of this year, we are.

The Safety chairs made it clear that con goers should, if they felt comfortable doing so, report such behavior (labeled microaggressions4 ) to Safety, and that the on duty staff as well as appropriate department or con chairs would take steps to address the problem with the involved parties. That could mean having a discussion with someone about their inappropriate words/behavior and giving them guidelines around further contact with the person who filed the complaint (such as: do not approach them again), as happened this year. That’s not the only recourse. The idea is to make WisCon a safer space for everyone, not just some certain kinds of people. To make WisCon the type of con where you are not required to let things roll off your back and ignore or laugh off microaggressions and othering so you don’t disrupt everyone else’s good time5.

I never realized until recently that there could be an official response to these kinds of actions. Or even what that response would look like.

I know that going forward I’m going to have to fight my own impulses to shrug off such behavior and only share and get understanding over how much it sucks from friends and fellow POC. For so long that was the only recourse I had–well, that and talking about it on the Internet. I got used to that being the status quo. I’m grateful others shattered the status quo.

I’m also glad that as a community we’re more and more giving the signal that addressing Othering and Microagressions is a community effort, not just an individual one. At WisCon, Debbie Notkin noted that when she was young, individuals (mostly girls and women) were expected to deal with sexual harassment on their own. That it was your job to remove yourself from that person, your job to find friends who could help you, your job to be on the lookout and not get in their sights again. Now folks take the stance that it’s the responsibility of the community as a whole to deal with harassers. By actively removing harassers from our community spaces, by identifying harassing behavior and making it clear it won’t be tolerated, by ensuring that people can safely report harassers and feel supported when they do.

As a community, can we make it clear that othering is not okay? That microagressions are not appropriate? Can we make it our problem to address as a community and not only a burden individuals have to deal with? Can we agree that allowing this crap to drive people away (and it does) is untenable?

Can we, community?

Footnotes

  1. Othering is viewing or treating a person as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself. Doing so allows you to say or ask completely inappropriate stuff that you would never if you saw that person as fully human as yourself. Here’s a deeper breakdown. [⇧]
  2. He kept saying things like: “You just need to let things like that roll off your back.” and “I don’t see how getting angry does anyone any good.” These can be valid strategies for getting along in the wider world, but were counterproductive in the context of the panel and the con itself. [⇧]
  3. It should have. That it didn’t has a lot to do with the organization’s reluctance to move on certain things in the past. [⇧]
  4. the top image is from this vid on microaggressions. [⇧]
  5. I should also note that the Safety folks at Arisia are doing something similar and have been proactive in addressing this problem at their con. [⇧]

Good Writers, Coasting, and How You Can Avoid Joss Whedon’s Mistakes

By:  TempestWriting Life

There are a ton of great articles examining Joss Whedon in the wake of Age of Ultron and plenty of crunchy debates to dive into because of them. In this piece, Sady Doyle illuminates something about Whedon that I’ve understood on a subconscious level but not been able to crystalize until now. To wit:

My ultimate take on Joss Whedon’s “feminist” screenwriting is that it’s a byproduct of good writing, period. The writer he most reminds me of is Charlie Kaufman: They’re both deeply personal writers, who clearly have a wide variety of sexual hang-ups, and to the extent that these hang-ups center on women, they probably do affect their perceptions of real-life women in many ways. Plenty of women have noted that Whedon’s fixation on emotionally vulnerable, eighty-pound teenage girls is disturbing and off-putting, and I would tend to agree. Charlie Kaufman’s apparent belief that a sexually awakened, self-realized woman wouldn’t need him, and would therefore abandon him to a hostile universe, is also kind of weird and upsetting, or (at least) a good reason not to ask Charlie Kaufman out on a date. However, because Kaufman and Whedon are good writers, who understand why stories work, when they sit down to write a story, they feel the obligation to make all of the characters identifiably human, including the women. This is, sadly, so rare that their female characters are often more well-rounded and interesting than almost any other characters out there, including a lot of characters written by people with better sexual politics.

When I read that a light shone down from heaven because YES. This is not just a Joss Whedon issue, it’s an issue with a lot of writers who hail from the land of privilege.

I (and others) have said many times that when you write stereotypical or downright offensive minority/marginalized characters, it’s almost always due to bad writing. If you’re a good writer, you don’t reach for the easy stereotypes, you don’t pull from the box of overused ideas, you aren’t a lazy thinker making lazy choices. And that often results in passable minority characters that might even be considered amazing and revolutionary1. Especially when compared to a sea of characters that are nothing but two dimensional offenses to all good taste.

Sometimes that’s even enough.

When you’re thirsty in a desert, even cloudy, contaminated water looks great.

However, it will not always be enough. That situation is a place to start from, not a place to kick back in and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Yet that is what many, many writers do. Whedon certainly seems to have done. As Ashly Nagrant points out, we’ve now had 20 years of Whedon doing the same thing over and over, coasting on his talent instead of building on it.

Joss Whedon has failed to evolve as a writer and a director. People who are longtime Buffy fans saw Age of Ultron and complained about how quippy the dialog was. That quality has always been part and parcel of a Joss Whedon project — it has long been one of his trademarks. When the question was how could people who loved Buffy be surprised by this, I could only venture a guess:

We are suddenly, sadly realizing Joss Whedon is a one-trick pony.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy those tricks and there is nothing wrong with that! I am in no way saying that I haven’t enjoyed Joss’s work and won’t continue to in the future. But it does hit a point where it is almost 20 years since the debut of Buffy and you suddenly realize Whedon is just writing the same thing over and over again. No matter how much you like garlic bread, you can’t eat it all the time or you’ll get sick of it.

What’s the solution? Continuously work on becoming a better writer.

Pay attention to evolutions of thought on representation and be aware of the kinds of tropes that most media properties–be they TV, movies, or lit–engage in. Listen when your readers critique your minority/marginalized characters, particularly if they are the same identity as said characters. Accept people’s lived experiences as valid and learn from them.

Read books and articles on this subject. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is an excellent place to start. Invisible and Invisible 2 are also excellent resources for delving deeper into representation.

Take classes and workshops that address this specific skill. Yes, I teach them, and so do others. Both in person and online. (If you want to find one, I can help with that!)

Read fiction by authors who have a reputation for writing amazing, deep characters. Examine how they do it, absorb it, learn.

Basically all the things you’re supposed to do to become a better writer, anyway. All the things truly great writers do, even after they’re hailed as being great.

Footnotes

  1. This accounts for a lot of Steven Moffat’s success as well. He’s clearly a good writer when he’s on his game. And that good writing can distract you from some underlying problems. And because the writing is good you want to ignore the underlying problems. There comes a point for many of us when that’s impossible. Like Whedon, that point arrived when his popularity meant a large body of work to examine. [⇧]

Further Discussions of Rape in Fiction and Media

By:  TempestWriting

Once again, the showrunners for Game of Thrones added a rape to the TV show that isn’t in the books1 and, in doing so, managed to piss off a vocal slice of the fanbase. The reactions I saw on Twitter were vehement, with some even offering their condolences to George R.R. Martin for how the show has destroyed his creation2. The scene has re-ignited the neverending debate over the use of rape in fiction and media and specifically why Game of Thrones returns to it over and over.

One friend on Facebook3 posited that Sansa’s rape is justified by the plot and characters and filmed in such a way that it’s not titillating. They asked: “If that’s not an appropriate way to handle a scene of sexual assault, what is?” My answer is: Not having it there at all, in this case.

I’m not convinced that the rape was justified by the story and character arcs, especially since the showrunners put Sansa in this situation where rape is now the only way to upset her so much that she allows Brienne to come rescue. The writers could have avoided it instead of making it seem necessary.

That’s really the crux of this: writers don’t always have to make rape necessary to the plot.

Writers can choose to do things differently. A few days ago I came across this post on Seanan McGuire’s Tumblr about her “No Rape” rule:

wordsandstrangeways asked:

I just wanted to say to you how grateful I am for your ‘no rapes’ clause on writing. My mum and I have very similar taste in literature and I found you about the same time she found Ilona Andrews so we’ve been swapping books to try them out and I’d never realised before how much the fear of assault hangs over me when reading fantasy. It’s shockingly common both in reference and in act and when dealing with anxiety it’s wonderful to have a safe book space to retreat into. Thank you.

seananmcguire answered:

That’s pretty much why it’s there.  I’m not saying “no one gets to write about this, ever,” but it’s not a tool I need when there are so many others for me to use.  Giving people a little peace is a joy. (If you wonder what this is in reference to, here: http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/470626.html)

That reader’s reaction is key. It’s important to have fiction you can count on not to include rape because that element is so prevalent in other books and media. That’s a thing some people need.

All writers don’t need a No Rape rule. And I would never say that no one should ever include or talk about rape in their fiction. If you choose to do so, it should always be a considered choice. And even then it’s not going to work for every reader.

Sadly, “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” at Clarkesworld is not worth getting through the violent sexual assault in the middle.

— K Tempest Bradford (@tinytempest) February 20, 2015

That tweet inspired this post by Kelly Robson, the author of the story in question. She explains why she included rape in her story and lists all of the ways in which the story does not engage in the problematic aspects I point out in this post. And she’s absolutely right in that. Her inclusion and depiction of rape is not about quick and cheap character motivation, is not there to titillate, and is a considered choice. I also understand her reasons for needing to write that story.

I didn’t have a problem with her story on those grounds.

Though she interpreted my tweet to mean her story wasn’t worth reading, I meant what I literally said: it wasn’t worth that rape scene. It triggered me, and I didn’t feel that the story offered enough to make how much it triggered me worth it. It almost got there–Robson is a good writer, which helps–and for someone not as triggered as I was or not triggered at all, that story likely works just fine. For someone who would be triggered, maybe not. From the responses I got to my tweet at the time it seemed as though folks who also have issues with being triggered were glad to know this.

Any writer who decides to include rape in their fiction has to take that into consideration. You can do everything right in terms of how and why you include and depict rape and still some readers are not going to want it. As long as you’re aware of and fine with that, just keep doing the best you can. Some writers, like McGuire, make the choice to just not include rape at all, which is just as valid.

Right now I would settle for a lack of rape that’s included due to bad and lazy writing. If we can just eliminate or minimize that, I think we could have a productive and meaningful dialogue about the rest.

Footnotes

  1. As some have pointed out, what Ramsey did to Sansa on the show he did to Jeyne Poole in the books so technically it’s not an extra rape it’s just the rape of a different character than expected. Not that it makes any of this better. [⇧]
  2. I have some quibbles with this reaction, but that’s another post. [⇧]
  3. No link because the status is locked to friends. You’re free to out yourself here if you wish! [⇧]
Me and Razorhurst

In Which I Engage In Multiple Multimedia Projects

By:  TempestNon-Fiction Publications

Keen eyes on social media may have noticed that I quietly began a new vlog called The Tempest Challenge in which I recommend books to read if you’re interested in taking up my reading challenge. The first two episodes are up and subsequent ones go live on Saturdays.

I created a landing page here on the site with info on the challenge, including the official hashtag for recommending books: #KTBookChallenge. Once I get a few more episodes going I’ll probably create a Tumblr for the vids and reblogs of book recs.

I don’t mind telling you that Alethea Kontis is to blame for all of this. She has an ongoing web series where she rants about fairy tales (because she writes amazing books that weave fairy tales together). And, since I’ve been hanging out with her for the past six weeks, she’s had me on as her special guest a few times. Here’s the latest one:

And my favorite one in which I sing the first song to ever be banned from the radio:

And the one where I try to mimic Wagnerian opera…

And a playlist of them all:

As you can see, we had a fabulous time. And it inspired me! Thus my own vids.

Depending on how things go, I may start another web series in which I rant about TV shows or something. But first I need to get the hang of editing and possibly find some better software for Windows. (iMovie is the only thing I miss about having a Mac.)

Video is not the only form of media I’m indulging in lately. As I pointed out the other day, I was also on the radio. And after that I was interviewed by the esteemed Minister Faust for his podcast–I’ll drop the link once it’s live–and after that I lucked into being in the first episode of the JEMcast! That was a lot of fun to do and I shall return as a guest host any time they ask. Because I never get tired of talking about Jem.

I suspect there are more things coming up in the near future. In the meantime, if you want me to be on your podcast or radio show or whathaveyou, please use the handy contact links on the sidebar :)

Let’s Talk About “Comfort Zones”

By:  TempestWriting Wisdom

Danger Zone

Of the reactions to the piece on challenging yourself to read non-white, cis-het male authors for one year, I find one to be very telling about people’s assumptions of reading experience. Paraphrased, it goes something like:

But in her piece Tempest said that she only read fiction within her comfort zone!

What I’m understanding is that these decriers think that when I made the choice to not read fiction that bored me, made me mad because it wasn’t good, or offended me, I was looking to only be comforted.

I think the fault lies in the conception of what “offended me” means. Because people who are steeped in some kind of unexamined privilege often see Being Offended as Being Made Angry or Being Made To Feel Mildly Uncomfortable. That’s what I see as being behind all those “You’re just looking to be offended!” cries when a woman or person of color or any number of people from a marginalized or oppressed group points out offensive stuff.

The assumption is that I can choose not to be offended1.

A white man might read stories written by other white men that have offensive to black people stuff in them and not even notice. At all. Or care. At all. Or, if they notice, the experience may be one of, “Oh hey, that’s not all right.” But it doesn’t hurt that white male reader.

Offensive stereotypes of black or brown people as ignorant savages hurts me. Fiction wherein women are only in the story to be sexual slaves without agency or even names hurts me. Even casual, offhand, not blatantly racist/sexist/whathaveyou offensive crap bourne out of a writer’s ignorance hurts me. Literary microagressions.

When I read fiction–especially for pleasure, but even for the purpose of analyzing it so that I can grow as a writer–I don’t want a majority of my experience to be about getting hurt. And a lot of the time the white, cis-het male writer behind those stories has not given two thoughts to privilege or stereotypes or that social justice warrior glittery hoo-ha crap2. So I stopped reading them.

However, in sticking to women, people of color, LGBT, and other authors from marginalized identities, I was not reading in a “comfort zone.” I was not more comfortable, I was just less likely to run across fiction that hurt me. But the stories were certainly not universally comfortable to read. Not at all.

I’ve never sought out comfort when looking for new things to read. A thing may become a comfort read once I finish it. In fact, much great fiction makes me uncomfortable, which is a big plus.

The first time I experienced this was in high school. I read Octavia Butler’s Kindred3 and it made me profoundly uncomfortable. I still remember the almost panic feeling I got when I imagined for a moment if what happened to Dana happened to me. I was sure I would not have made it at all. The thought that it might happen was terrifying.

This was the first time I understood how fiction can affect a reader. No book, even books I loved, had ever made me that uncomfortable. And I had never identified with any protagonist so deeply.

Same thing happened with Derrick Bell’s The Space Traders. Oh man, that story jacked me up for years. Because everything Bell wrote in that story was so true. 100 percent truth.

Truth is rarely comfortable.

So no, I did not escape into my comfort zone when reading non-white, cis-het male authors. In fact, I put myself more and more out of it as I went. Because not all of the fiction I read catered to the mainstream gaze. And the gaze it catered to wasn’t necessarily mine, either. There were stories that challenged my notions of how stories are supposed to go, how plots are meant to unfold, how characters must be constructed and revealed and relate4. This is what happens when you step out of mainstream culture’s comfort zone.

That’s probably why so many people are scared.

Footnotes

  1. Which is… no. I can choose not to tell you I’m offended. I can choose to hide that I’m offended. I can also take the offense to heart, consciously or unconsciously, and feel like I’m worthless. I’m not going to do that just so you don’t have to hear me talk about offensive shit. [⇧]
  2. This is not true for every single one of these writers. Noting is true for every single one of any kind of people. But these days I am less willing to give a new author from this group a try unless I see some evidence that they have thought about these issues. That’s not a hard thing for me. Thus I end up reading some of the best white, cis-het male SF/F authors publishing today. WIN. [⇧]
  3. This was assigned reading, too! Yeah, I don’t know how that happened. [⇧]
  4. If this all sounds like some awesomepants to you, then I suggest you go through my Favorite Fiction archive here on the blog and check out my column at io9. [⇧]

You’re Excluding Stories By Straight, White, Cis Men? J’accuse! J’accuse!

By:  TempestFavorites and Recommendations
You're Excluding Stories By Straight, White, Cis Men? J'accuse! J'accuse!

A year or so ago some dude (whose name I’ve forgotten) who writes reviews of SF/F books noticed that in the year or two (or longer) previous he had not read or reviewed any books by women. This caused him to pause and go: “Huh….” and noodle on in some surface way about how he really should make an effort to read more women.

I suggested that, since he was now aware of the issue, he should do something more “radical” and spend an entire year reading books by nothing but women.

“But I can’t do that!” book review dude exclaimed. “That would be tipping the scale too far. That would be BIAS. That would be excluding men for arbitrary reasons! That would be wrong!1”

I knew, of course, when I made the suggestion he wouldn’t accept it. Because it’s just too much of a hardship to read only women. He even said some shit about how he’d miss out on too many good books by limiting himself that way. There was not enough side-eye in the universe for that conversation.

If you’ve spent most of your adult life reading mostly men without consciously thinking about the fact that you mostly choose books written by men or mostly have books written by men recommended to you or shoved at you as Good, then a year of reading only women is not even enough to balance the scales.

Reading only women for a year takes some thought and effort. And if you do that, people hardly ever assume that it happened Just Because or On Accident or because you were Just Reading The Best Books Regardless Of The Identity Of The Author.

Unlike if you just happen to read only men for 10 years at a stretch.

Funny that.

I told you that story to tell you this one.

The first comment on my latest io9 post pointed out that all the stories I featured are by women, and asked if that was a coincidence. I’ve been running this column regularly since July 2014. It took until February 2015 for someone to notice that. Or, I should probably say, it took until now for someone to ask me about it.

A few hours later another dude came by to confront me about this in more detail. His comment is still “pending,” so it’s not initially visible when you look at the page.

In all seriousness, not trying to be a dick here, but you do seem to be purposefully excluding white men from these roundups, correct? I mean you post almost entirely women writers, and the small handful of male authors you do include are either AOC or queer authors. If you have a criteria other than quality to select or filter authors, then shouldn’t you state so somewhere in these posts? I mean at least be straight up about it. At this point there seem to be far more opportunities, in the short fiction marketplace at least, for authors of color/LGBT authors, since there are magazines who won’t accept submissions from white men altogether. And then you have magazines like Lightspeed who were recently only accepting submissions from LGBT authors for the “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” anthology. I guess I’m seeing a lot of editors/magazines making an effort to increase their magazine’s diversity, when it actually seems like there isn’t a bias against minority authors at all? If I’m wrong then please tell me how so. But if only certain types of people are eligible for these “Best Stories” posts, and if many magazines are refusing submissions from white or straight or male authors, while many others explicitly state they’re looking for diverse voices (Shimmer, Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Lightspeed, et al), then where exactly is the bias? Is it possible this preoccupation with identity politics has gone too far? I guess I’m just saying, if these “Best Stories” posts really mean “Best Stories By Women, LGBT, or AOC” then shouldn’t you say so?

I am certain that this person is not such a regular reader of my column that they know off the top of their heads the makeup of the authors featured. This person went back through all my posts and tallied this info up before coming back with his observations. And in the process assumed not that I just happen to like stories by women, people of color, and LGBT folks better than that of straight, white, cis men, but that I am actively excluding that last category and should be up front about it.

Funny that.

Sunil Patel, who reviews books for Lightspeed, recently tweeted:

Promoting diversity is about boosting underrepresented voices. It is about leveling the playing field. It is no coincidence that my book review column features no white male authors. They can have EVERYWHERE ELSE. Do I feel like I’m discriminating against white male authors? I kind of do. But I also know that women and POC are reviewed less. Those with privilege are getting by just fine on their own. We need to use what privilege we have to boost marginalized voices.

What I do in my column isn’t precisely reviewing. It’s more signal-boosting of the fiction I read that I liked or loved. That’s why it’s called “The Best Stories from…” and not “Stories out this week” or whatever. When I did this on my own I called it Favorite Fiction. It’s a link, an excerpt, and a short paragraph, maybe two, about what struck me about the story, why I liked or loved it, what elements I appreciated. I rarely do anything that looks like a full-on critical analysis–that’s not what the column is for. I also don’t include stories I don’t like in order to explain why I don’t like them.

Still though, I am very aware that my signal-boosting carries meaning. I’m also aware of which kinds of authors often get more boosts in what venues. That kind of thing matters to me.

I will say this plainly: If I read a story and I like it a lot, I would never not include it in my column based on the identity and background of the writer. Because the whole basis of this is what I read and liked.

I’ll also say this plainly: A reviewer who makes the choice to focus exclusively on marginalized voices is making a good choice. There are plenty of places for the privileged to get and gain attention. Making a space for everyone else is not bias, it’s a step towards balance.

Footnotes

  1. I am paraphrasing. [⇧]

Calling Out, Collecting Receipts, And The Line Between Creepy and Conscientious

By:  TempestRants

Receipts

In the midst of the discussion around Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s outing as Requires Hate, I had several conversations about the Internet “community” Fail Fandom Anon (FFA). I had to explain to people why I didn’t trust any of the anonymous commenters in the threads even though my default position is to believe the victim, even if the victim won’t reveal their name or full identity. I’m unfortunately too familiar with the tactics of the anons that hang out in FFA and the people like them. Tactics that include pretending to be a person from a specific identity in order to add more credibility to what they have to say and discredit their mortal enemy, the SJW.

FFA isn’t just about the community/meme, they also have a wiki where they collect receipts on the people they hate most in order to catalog all the reasons why they are The Worst. Requires Hate has an entry there, as do several other writers and fans in our community.1 I’ve glanced through several of them and even went through the Cat Valente one in detail, clicking on every link. And there are a lot of links.

Why did I do such a soul-crushing thing? I wanted to know whether or not any of their grievances had a basis in fact.

I have a surprise for you: most don’t.

Claims are made about a lot of bad behavior and unnecessary whining and evil appropriation and just plain wrongness. But when I clicked through to the original sources I either didn’t see what the anons saw at all, saw the situation distorted, or saw people desperately trying to fit words or actions into a pre-determined narrative based on an existing hatred. There were some situations represented fairly (by my own view), but they were far outweighed by the other stuff.

That was a couple of years ago. I had a deja vu moment earlier this year when I did the same thing with a call-out post about the blogger behind MedievalPOC. Once again, there were several accusations of lying and appropriation and bullying and terribleness, all allegedly backed up by a list of receipts. I started clicking and, lo, I did not see a lot of evidence to back up these assertions. What I did see was people engaging in grudgewank, uncharitable and distorted readings of situations and words and intentions, and statements of “She did X” when I very clearly saw her doing Y.

The call-out post and the entries on the FFA wiki come across to me as disingenuous in a generous reading and creepy and terrible if I’m not being generous. It’s not the collection of links and context that bothers me, because that’s never all it is. The MPOC post included deep speculation on the woman’s racial and ethnic background based on pictures and amateur analysis of skin tone plus invasion of privacy-style sleuthing into family history. The folks who contributed to Cat Valente’s wiki entry spent time going back through something like 10 years worth of LJ posts in the hunt for evidence of her awfulness. I’m sure some of them just remembered things they found irritating, but there’s a level detail there that smacks of creepiness.

These aren’t the only examples of this. They’re just the ones that have come to mind of late. I’m sure plenty of you have examples of your own. It’s not as if this stuff is uncommon.

As much as I am against the kind of nasty, mean-spirited, stuff that goes on in the FFA Wiki, I can’t outright dismiss the need for comprehensive receipt collection2. Two recent occurrences have prompted me to ponder the validity of doing so.

A little over a year ago I became aware that a woman I’ve known for several years (I’ll refer to her as SL) was dating two other people I know (a married couple — this is a poly thing)3. Based on some things said on social media, I had a gut feeling that this relationship would not last long and when it ended, it would end badly. SL has a pattern that repeats regularly and she was about due. This spring things went boom in a very public way. I and others who’ve known SL as long or longer expressed little surprise. We’d seen it all before.

At the time and in the months since, I’ve had people ask “Why didn’t you/others say anything?” and “People should have warned us about her!” Part of the reason is assumptions — folks in this community tend to assume that the dramas and flareups that consume their corner of things is also known to the wider group. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it isn’t.

How many people outside of Harry Potter fandom knew about the Cassandra Clare/Claire plagiarism thing before the long expose/explanation showed up on Bad Penny and angry fans valiantly tried to ensure all the pro writers knew about it? How many people reading this still have no clue what I’m talking about? But to the people embroiled in it, and the people who knew the people embroiled in it, that shit was major. It tore whole communities apart. They are genuinely surprised when others don’t know.

Same with SL’s behavior. In certain corners of the community her pattern is well known and even documented. I’m sure there are people who would be surprised that the couple SL hooked up with didn’t know about her long history in various fandom and poly communities.

For my part, I didn’t feel it was my business or my place to say anything. The couple involved are folks I’m friendly with, though not close to. People don’t always react favorably when you point out that someone they like or even love is a problem. And anyway, it wasn’t MY relationship.

Then I wonder: what if there had been an FFA Wiki-style post detailing all of SL’s past public behaviors with links to LJ posts and screencaps and emails and chat logs? What if, whenever I or someone else saw that SL was integrating herself into a pocket of the community or starting a relationship, that link magically appeared in an inbox, or a social media post, or an IM? Is that being creepy or protecting the people you care about? Maybe it’s And.

How about a less personal example:

The other day Karnythia tweeted this Storify pointing out how Gamer Gate harassers are the same people who harassed Fem Frequency years ago. Same names, same tactics popping up over and over.

It’s not so surprising, right? If you’re spending your time saying ridiculous and hurtful things and engaging in harassing behavior and you didn’t just log onto the Internet for the first time yesterday, chances are you’ve been involved in this kind of thing before.

The same names tend to pop up when you poke your head into RaceFail, GropeGate, SFWA Fail, MammothFail, and other related terribleness. But that’s not always evident unless you remember or someone keeps track.

It’s almost to a point where one might want to put together a dossier so that when the same old assholes pop up to spew the same old shit in all new places you can immediately dismiss or call them out or warn other people. Because it’s really easy to forget.

However, it takes a certain kind of stamina to do this work. Crawling back through post after post of triggering, upsetting, harmful, hurtful material and compiling it is rough work. As someone pointed out to me not long ago, there’s a reason why Racefail historians and link gatherers burned out and stepped back for their own mental health.

There are those who would take glee in doing such a thing. You can find a lot of them in Fail Fandom Anon. There are those who would claim that they don’t take glee in it, but in their heart of hearts they know the task energizes them. If I found that to be true, I’d be worried about myself in such a case.

There has to be a balance between ensuring that important information is not forgotten or swept away or allowed to fade. The recent resurgence in interest around the case against Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley illustrates this well. There is a website with all the publicly available information about Breen’s predatory behavior toward young people and Bradley’s complicity in it. Yet it was a super surprise to many when this came up again. Maybe it matters less because both of them are dead. Or maybe it doesn’t–a question Moira Greyland might have an answer to.

Figuring out where to draw the line between creepy and conscientious is not easy. I’m sure there are many who struggle to navigate those waters all the time. I don’t know how to do it, for sure. I just know what side of the line I want to be on.

Footnotes

  1. If you decide to go look this wiki up, take note of how many people who have dedicated entries are women. Curious that…. [⇧]
  2. For the uninitiated, Collecting Receipts and Showing Receipts is the colloquial for citing your sources with screencaps and links and such. [⇧]
  3. You’re probably wondering at this point why I am not just naming the people involved. There’s no need to. Also, there are already too many posts linking the three people’s names together in a way intended to cause harm. I’m not in the mood to add to the Google juice. [⇧]

Steampunk without POC is so 1899

By:  TempestRants

Saw the other day that Hullaballoo, a new steampunk animation project by former Disney animators, reached it’s funding goal on IndieGoGo. Good for the project. It looks like a worthy one. The animators involved want to prove that hand-drawn, 2D animation is still where it’s at. I’m down. The story takes place in a cool steampunk world and has two female leads. More down. The animators themselves are not all white dudes. Very down.

But then we come to the characters. All of them are white.

hullabaloo poster
Seriously??

When I pointed this out to Mary Robinette Kowal, one of the voice actors, she pinged the producer to bring up this point. The answer she got was that the team didn’t have time to make changes to the trailer and concept art before the IndieGoGo campaign, but that there would be a “diverse cast.” Mary also suggested that raising this question in the comments on the IndieGoGo page would not be a bad idea.

I agree. But that shouldn’t be the limit to where we raise that question. It needs to go on the Facebook page, mentioned in YouTube comments, brought up via the contact form on the website, and raised wherever you see someone posting about this project.

Because while I do really want to see this succeed, it would be ridiculous to make a steampunk film with only white characters. There’s no justifiable reason for this cast not to be racially diverse. Even if we’re sticking with Victoriana, it would not break the world to make one of the protagonists Indian, Black, or Asian, just to name three obvious choices among many. And let’s not stop there–diversity among secondary and background characters is just as important as it is for the leads. Hullabaloo could be a great opportunity to show what a racially and culturally diverse steampunk world could be like.

So my challenge to you is this: make that happen. Tweet, post on Facebook, leave a comment on the IndieGoGo page, write blog posts about this. Advocate for positive change. The time to do so is now when the project is still in a nascent form.

Erasure Comes In Many Forms – A ReaderCon Report

By:  TempestSFF Community

The other weekend ReaderCon happened and, on the whole, I had a great time. I am sad I had to leave early to go to a wedding in the city, but that’s way better than missing everything. ReaderCon is usually a good time, even as much as we snark about multiple references to Proust.

There were a couple of things that marred my enjoyment of the con and I’d been trying all last week to write about them. Instead of trying to temper my anger and aim for tact, I’m just going to be blunt.

The fact that none of Andrea Hairston’s books were in the dealer’s room is bullshit of the highest order. Andrea was a Guest of Honor. You don’t fucking NOT stock the book of a guest of honor at a con where you are a book vendor. How is this not con vending 101?

Andrea Hairston is not here for your bullshit

 

The ReaderCon dealer’s room is called The Bookshop for a reason: almost 100% of the stuff for sale is there are books. Every now and then there might be a T-shirt vendor or maybe a flash of jewelry. But it’s ReaderCon, so it’s all about the books. This makes sense.

Some of the booksellers are publishers who are pushing their own books and maybe the occasional extras by smaller presses who can’t afford a table. Those dealers not carrying Andrea’s books makes sense–they are not her publisher.

Some of the booksellers deal in used books or rare books. They also have some excuse for not selling Andrea’s books.

But to the several vendors who sold current, regular books? You all need to have your asses kicked.

Throughout the con attendees asked these sellers if they had any of Andrea’s books. I know for a fact that one of them, Larry Smith Booksellers, told people that her books are out of print. Which is a lie. When I asked, a guy I can only assume was Larry Smith himself yelled this at me. He was angry–really angry–that I had dared to ask him about this and proclaimed loudly that he only sells new books. Meanwhile, Andrea’s most recent book came out weeks ago. Guess that’s not new enough for him.

As an aside, the selection of books on offer by Larry Smith and the other general book vendors is hardly any better than what I can find in the Barnes & Noble. So what value are they adding to ReaderCon, exactly?

If you can’t be bothered to order the books of a guest of honor at the con and you’re rude as hell to con attendees? You shouldn’t get to vend at ReaderCon. And I’m filing a report with the con chair to that effect this week.

In addition to that indignity, the newest issue of Locus contains this:

Alaya Dawn Johnson wasn't even there

That’s from their article on WisCon. There’s a picture of Andrea (with correct attribution) to the right of these words. So it’s a real mystery why the 2011 Tiptree award winner is identified as Alaya Dawn Johnson, who has not won any Tiptree nor was she at the con at all. Seriously, not at all.

Alaya Dawn Johnson wants you to stop saying she was at WisCon

Ever since I started going to cons I’ve joked about how (mostly) white folks can’t tell the POC at the con apart from each other. I don’t even mean just mistaking one black person for another black person or one Asian person from another. I mean mistaking an Asian-American for a Latino dude (this happened at WisCon).

This happens all the time. ReaderCon was no exception. I watched a guy come up to John Chu at the Meet The Pro(se) party and ask him to sign the issue of F&SF with Ken Liu’s The Glass Menagerie. John was very polite when he said “I’m not Ken Liu.” That was, apparently, only one of the times that people mistook him for Ken Liu at ReaderCon this year. I heard that someone congratulated Sofia Samatar on being the guest of honor. I heard that someone started up a conversation with Mikki Kendall and then continued that conversation with a different black woman later on, not realizing that the shorter, lighter woman looked absolutely nothing like Mikki.

Here’s the thing: at cons, we are all wearing name badges. Thus, it is not at all shameful for you to look at said badge to confirm that you are, indeed, addressing the person of color you think you are. Especially if you have not ever met said person of color. It’s okay. But assuming that the Asian man standing in the room must be the Asian man you’ve heard of and asking him to sign a thing? No, people. No.

Over the years I’ve often joked about this. In fact, in my introduction of N. K. Jemisin at WisCon I referenced this phenomenon for the purpose of making folks laugh. I do sometimes find it funny.

Very often I do not. Because this is a form of erasure. It’s a microaggression with a subtext that says: I do not care to figure out the difference between one non-white person and another. And it makes us feel like you don’t eve think of us as people, but interchangeable entities.

And it needs to end.

Stop erasing our humanity by assuming that any brown person might be any other. Learn how to tell non-white people apart. Check name badges. If in doubt, ask us: “What’s your name, again? I’m good with faces but not names.” Don’t ask us: “Are you [other person]?” Stop erasing our accomplishments by assigning them to other people. Check your facts. And for the love of Seshet, stock our books in the damn dealer’s room!