Category: Rants

You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds

By:  TempestConventions
You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds

Can someone please explain to me how one makes the leap from “We no longer want to honor this person” to “Book burning and censorship“? You people do not even understand what censorship means, do you? And to this asshole who threw up the Heinlein quote: since when was WisCon ever a government or a church?

Do you people even read? Do you have brains that work in a logical manner? Or do you just simply wander through life parroting the things you read without any understanding or absorption of them?

Goddamn you stupid, ignorant troglodytes. I am ashamed to share a planet with you, much less a community.

Also, can I just point out that at no point has anyone said Elizabeth Moon can’t come to WisCon. At no point has anyone said that there can’t be a discussion about the issues raised by her post, with or without her. Hell, it’s WisCon, there is going to be a lot of fucking discussion. But I love how these useless wankers run right to that mission statement and declare that there obviously won’t be any of those things because… apparently because they’ve imagined it in their tiny minds.

Your tiny, dirty imagination has no bearing on actual fact. And, you know what, I am hella glad you all won’t be coming to WisCon. I wish you would refrain from coming to World Fantasy, Readercon, or any other con I happen to attend. People like you we don’t need. But thanks to the free speech you so loudly claim no one at WisCon has1, you can spread your bullshit in public places and at public events. All the while whining about how you’re being oppressed.

I have reached a real breaking point with the cowards in this community. The sad, pathetic people who wish to stir up shit just for the sake of pageviews or getting well-known as crusader against people who think racism and sexism are bad2. I am tired of this utter bullshit that comes up Every. Single. Time.

The bottom line is this: you are wrong. You’re just wrong. Bigotry: is wrong. Elizabeth Moon: was wrong.

That doesn’t mean that things or people or ideas or thoughts can’t change. But this is immutable: Bigotry has no place at any con, and I can only be thankful that many of the people who run and attend WisCon work very hard to eliminate it from that one. And that starts by not honoring someone whose bigotry is not in question and who does not, apparently, feel she’s done anything wrong nor has shown any proclivity to dialogue that would lead to something valuable. Therefore, it was the right decision to remove her.

If you feel differently, then say so. But do it out in the open.

Footnotes

  1. Because of RaceFail, doncha know. It’s just so hard to be racist when all of your friends are totally against it! [⇧]
  2. I know people think the same thing about me — that I say what i do just to stir up shit and get attention. Because it’s so totally fun being an activist and working to eliminate racism and sexism. It is just too, too exciting feeling all the time like there is a giant group of people out there that thinks nasty thoughts about me, or wishes harm on me, or thinks I’m less than nothing because I’m a black person or a woman or queer or any combination thereof. I absolutely love that! And if I open my mouth even a little bit to say: Hey, that’s not cool, that is hurtful, that is fundamentally wrong, suddenly I am the problem? What even worse: I am not the only person in the community to whom this paragraph could apply. [⇧]

My Thoughts On the Whole Katy Perry/Sesame Street Thing

By:  TempestRants
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.

You Know What I Wish?

By:  TempestRants
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

  1. 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. [⇧]
  2. 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. [⇧]
  3. I got no qualifiers for this one. It’s bullshit. [⇧]

MoonFail: Raising The Bar

By:  TempestConventions
MoonFail: Raising The Bar

I wanted to expand on some of what I said in my first post a few days ago about not settling for the bare minimum when it comes to charged discussions ignited by Elizabeth Moon’s post and the WisCon troika’s subsequent statement regarding it. I’ve been mulling over this for the past few days, but this post by committee member Piglet snapped things into focus. In particular, this line:

The bar for disinviting a Guest of Honor is much, much higher than the bar for inviting a GoH.  I can’t imagine (failure of imagination again, no doubt — nevertheless) circumstances under which I would support it.  Yes, even someone who verbally attacked my marginalizations in the interim between invitation & con.  Or, as Ms. Moon has done, those of my friends.

When I read that, my immediate thought was that this was not something I expect to hear from a WisCon committee member. And while I was feeling very wavery about whether Moon should be disinvited before, I now feel very strongly that she should.

My path here has been very similar to what Nora describes in this post:

For awhile I thought of this as a matter of professionalism, and the ineffectuality of a top-down gesture. But that letter makes it clear that what motivated the ConCom was not a concern for professionalism, or the desire to make the most effective protest. That letter makes it clear that the decision was made out of the usual fear of taking a hardline stand on principle, and the usual expectation that oppressed people will find some way to accommodate the bigots who hate them.

Further down, what she has to say here:

I think I’ve become too wedded to defending people like this. ::sigh:: Damn, I must be getting old. I’m always so grateful when I encounter people willing just to have these conversations… even if talking is all they do. I’m always so happy when they take a step… even if it’s nowhere near far enough, and even if they land on my foot in the process. In this sense I’m actually buying into Moon’s BS — specifically her resentment over having to make even the slightest effort to accommodate others’ differences and needs. It’s gotten to the point where I expect that resentment, and even plan for it. But I need to expect better of the people I call my friends.

echoes what Amal said in the post I pointed to either:

I’m grateful that [the ConCom doesn’t] see her words as anything less than hateful and damaging. I’m grateful for their dismay and their anger. But that gratitude should be telling. That gratitude is part of the problem. That gratitude is indicative of the fact that the status quo is so dire that I perceive basic human decency as Moon’s “bending over backwards,” and that some part of me was afraid that the ConCom would see no problem at all with what she said. After all, millions of Americans don’t.

I was okay with the ConCom’s statement because I was afraid there’d be no statement at all. I was okay with the ConCom’s statement because it didn’t sweep this under the rug, because they offered me something I could engage with. …that’s our purpose, of course. To be Makers of Points before we are people. To be valuable and acceptable additions to Moon’s commonweal. To be pattable on the head.

This is particularly appropriate given recent WisCon history. As I said, in the years I’ve been going to the con I’ve seen an increase in people of color and a definite change in attitude toward what counts as a “Feminist Issue”. Intersectionality is a higher priority, as well as an increase in awareness surrounding the needs of different WisCon-going groups1. But getting to that point wasn’t a smooth road. Those things had to be asked or fought for specifically, sometimes over the objections of people on the concom. It’s not all a happy, shiny family — nor would one expect it to be. It’s a community of people who have some interests and goals and ideas in common, but not all.

On these issues we are moving past (or have already moved past) the stage of things where basic human decency should be all we expect and should be grateful for. Oh no. Just acknowledging that what Moon had to say is wrong is not enough. Not at this point. Given that this con is built around a social justice issue and an incredibly important ideal and movement, it is shocking to see that attitude on display. The bar for disinviting a GoH is high? Sure it is. But is it high enough that you are willing to go back on what WisCon is about in order to bring in and honor someone who holds ideas that are antithetical to the very work this con is about?

WisCon isn’t just a convention of people who love science fiction and fantasy like, say, WorldCon or PhilCon or something. WisCon stands for something. WisCon is where you go when the sexism and prejudice at other cons becomes intolerable. WisCon is where you go when you realize that other cons aren’t going to disinvite their GoHs for saying/doing the most despicable things about/to homosexuals or women or immigrants or people of color or Jews or Muslims or or or.

People can shout all they want about how Elizabeth Moon is being honored for her fiction, but WisCon hasn’t always just been about the fiction. The conversations we have there, the issues we tackle, are not fictional or always concerning fiction. Or, when they are, they are also about how fiction affects and shapes our society and our opinions about each other. Why else would there be a panel about cultural appropriation? Not just for a bunch of people to talk about how it’s okay to appropriate as long as you write a good yarn, but because it’s important to acknowledge how the choices fiction writers make affect readers, which affects how readers think and view the world.

Someone feel free to correct me, but it seems that the bar for inviting a Guest of Honor to WisCon is that the person, in their life and in their fiction, embody what WisCon is about. What WisCon is about has changed over the years, and will continue to change (hopefully for the better). And before now I would have hoped that it did not stand for the kind of ignorant, bigoted ideas that Elizabeth Moon holds. I suspect that if the marginalizations Moon had attacked had been closer to Piglet’s her attitude about disinvitation would be different.

Because this con stands for something. Wanting to attend means something. This is not Joe Blow’s Con Of Stuff. This is not the con for being grateful just because people acknowledge bad things were said without actively fighting against bad things. It is no longer acceptable to simply be appalled. Being appalled is step one. Step two is doing what is in your power to change things for the better, to make a better world. Or, short of that, a better community.

Amal, again:

The precedent we should be worried about setting is not “blogging could get me disinvited from a convention as Guest of Honour.” The precedent we should be worried about setting is “some fans are worth more than others, and Muslims don’t matter enough to take a stand for.”

What kind of community do you want, WisCon committee? A community in which social justice and fighting prejudice stops at “That was a really terrible thing to say!”? Or, at least one that stops at that when it’s not YOUR marginalization that’s under attack?

Footnotes

  1. Including, but not limited to, people with disabilities, as one example [⇧]

Why I Haven’t Posted About MoonFail Until Now

By:  TempestRants
Why I Haven’t Posted About MoonFail Until Now

There are a few reasons why most of my reactions to Elizabeth Moon’s post and subsequent discussion and developments have been confined to Twitter and Facebook until now. The main one being that I haven’t had a lot of time for posting, and responding to stuff like that takes time. Lots of things going on at work, as always. Plus, what free time I have I am trying to fill with fiction writing.

But one of the big reasons has less to do with time constraints and more to do with the fact that I did not have to post. By have to, I mean that there wasn’t such silence, such unwillingness to tackle the issue by the SF community at large that I felt compelled to speak out. I no longer feel like mine is one of the few voices calling people out on shit like this.

It’s a good feeling, though bittersweet.

Not just for personal reasons. Yes, activism takes emotional tolls. But also because it means that there are more people using their voices, more people aware of these issues, more people who care, and more people willing to fight. Always a good thing.

None of us should feel alone. Like we’re yelling into the darkness yet no one cares. None of us should have to bear such heavy burdens.

And I’m really glad that the people I see speaking out are not just the groups Moon chose to be so ignorant about and hurtful toward. It’s all kind of people from all kinds of backgrounds being angry and saying: This. Is Wrong.

I will never stop being an activist. But it’s nice to know that I don’t have to be active all the time in order for someone to point these things out. It means things are changing for the better. Maybe slowly, by increments, but it’s happening.

When Writers Fail To Understand How Words Work

By:  TempestWriting
When Writers Fail To Understand How Words Work

It starts with Elizabeth Bear1 using the word (or tag) ‘deathmarch’ to describe difficulties in moving forward on wordcount with a novel. Apparently the word in the original post here has been removed due to concerns raised in this comment here:

The word I want to point out is “deathmarching”. I’m well aware that some people may use this to refer to a hard, exhausting, sometimes perilous struggle, but there’s history attached to that word, and thus it’s not one that ought to be used lightly.

Read the whole comment, as it makes some good points. And then be prepared to stab yourself in the eyes after reading Bear’s response:

I have very mixed emotions about political correctness in language: I believe that it’s our responsibility to be aware of the language we use, but I also have a sense that mythologizing language only gives it power.

I’m going to just say two things about this and the subsequent conversation in Bear’s journal and elsewhere.

  1. Every time I see someone (usually a white person) using the term ‘political correctness’ in this way it makes me want to get on a rocketship and leave this planet behind forever. It’s not all that shocking for me to see Bear waving around PC in a manner that would make Glen Beck proud given the racial politics she’d displayed lo these many years. But still, lady, what the hell? You’re a goddamn writer yet you wave off the very real consequences of using loaded words casually by complaining about political correctness? How much fail can possibly be contained in one person?
  2. I really don’t think that it should be up to people in positions of privilege to decide when it’s okay to make words mundane and erase their history of blood. I think it should be up to the people with the history and the people the word affects. Hint: that ain’t you, eBear.

And to be honest, it’s not me, either. It’s folks like this:

You see, in this story, by subsuming such outdated usages of “death march” into the mantle of the banal and the mundane — why, “imeldific” was such a success — we have embarked on the positive process of washing the blood out of our history. We have smoothed the jagged edges of our own psyches by repeatedly enduring the battering of the hardness and pain inherent in the stereotyping and prejudice we encounter. Saying and saying and saying, again and again: war, war, indio, savage, ladrones, blood, our little brown brethren, war, master, master, yes — until we accept the reality of it, and the repetition renders the reality common, banal, mundane, free of pain.

Why, look at us. We can even assume respectability now. Tayong hindi lumilingon sa pinanggalingan.

— ephemere (Trigger warning for descriptions of violence.)

And while we’re at it:

The background behind “deathmarch” is real. There is nothing mythic about respecting the experiences of those who have been systematically dehumanized and slaughtered or the people who belong to one or more cultures scarred by those experiences.

— manifesta

And then, AND THEN someone unearthed this blog post from 2006 which is actually, seriously called The Bataan Death-March of Merchandising. Because, you know, dealing with the Comicon dealer’s room is totally like unto a deathmarch.

Which all leads me to agree heartily with megwrites: fuck you, Elizabeth Bear, fuck you so, so, so, MUCH.

But, here’s the thing. As this post at Fiction Theory points out, this problem is not limited to Bear, it is vast. And the way to combat it, other than calling her and any other writer out on this stuff, is to do our best as writers or just as people not to contribute to it. You should go read.

Footnotes

  1. Yeah, I know, pretty much any sentence that begins this way can’t end well [⇧]

Realms of Fantasy: Full Of Some Whitewashing You Don’t Care To Read About

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Realms of Fantasy: Full Of Some Whitewashing You Don't Care To Read About

I know that pointing out RoF Fail is a little like kicking a puppy, but you know how it is when Nick Mamatas sends you a link clearly meant to induce blog-worthy rage — you just have to accommodate him.

So, LJ user torrain was reading the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy and didn’t get far before the facepalm reached epic proportions. Inside the magazine’s movie review of The Last Airbender ze found this awesomeness:

However, The Last Airbender has already caught flak for “whitewashing,” meaning, the casting of white actors (or actors who appear to be white) to play non-white characters, especially when those characters are heroic. It’s a hot-button issue that dredges up memories of images like Al Jolsen wearing black-face makeup. Of course, there are two sides to this coin. On one hand, whitewashing can feel insulting, disrespectful, and disappointing to movie-goers. Many may label it as politically incorrect. On the other hand, anyone who has run a casting call will tell you that when you find the right person for the role, something magical happens. Time seems to stop, and you feel as if the character comes to life right in front of your eyes. The character is no longer ink on paper; the character begins to live and breathe. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the individual human being reading for the part. Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

There’s a lot of obvious fail going on here, and it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with this notion that “something magical happens” when the right person comes along for the role, even if that person is white and the character is not. Even if this was ever true somewhere in the world, it’s not true in this movie. Let’s quote Roger Ebert talking about the casting, specifically:

Shyamalan has failed. His first inexplicable mistake was to change the races of the leading characters; on television Aang was clearly Asian, and so were Katara and Sokka, with perhaps Mongolian and Inuit genes. Here they’re all whites. This casting makes no sense because (1) It’s a distraction for fans of the hugely popular TV series, and (2) all three actors are pretty bad. I don’t say they’re untalented, I say they’ve been poorly served by  Shyamalan and the script. They are bland, stiff, awkward and unconvincing.

Entertainment Weekly:

The trouble with The Last Airbender is that Aang, as a character, is a saintly abstraction (Noah Ringer plays him with a sensitive pout that grows cloying), and he’s surrounded by generic young actors who are like place holders for real stars.

Variety:

Shyamalan has worked wonders with child actors before, but Ringer is no Haley Joel Osment, delivering some fancy footwork but zero charisma in the pic’s key role. Most dialogue scenes are framed in tight Sergio Leone-style closeup, emphasizing the actors’ wooden nature. At that proximity, we notice that Rathbone never blinks; nor can he be counted on to deliver any of the comic relief of his animated counterpart.

I could go on. The issue here is not that M. Night just happened to find these amazing kids to play these roles who just happened to be white. This is what he or the producers or the studio set out to do from the beginning because, even though millions of people love the cartoon and its clearly Asian characters, they felt that audiences just can’t handle brown and yellow people as the heroes. As the evil villains, sure. But protagonists must be white, right?

Whitewashing, no matter how much you pretty it up with the magical casting feeling of amazingness, is still just damn wrong.

The second half of that paragraph, which you probably didn’t even read because the first part was so rage-inducing with its faily wrongness, I shall paste again, because it also needs addressing:

Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

Jesus. Okay, deep breath. First of all, the conceit of having women play roles written for men is usually about deconstruction more than it’s about some magical audition process or someone being “right” for a role. And I can’t come up with any examples of people of color playing roles “written for white people” unless you’re talking about classical theater or something. Maybe they mean Sam Jackson as Nick Fury? But again, when POC play, uh “white” roles, that actually has a different weight and purpose behind it than whitewashing. The power differentials there are NOT equal. Are POC overrepresented in Hollywood movies and American television? No. Are white people? Yes. So when whitewashing occurs, do you know who it hurts and disrespects and diminishes? POC.

The fact that this Realms columnist doesn’t understand any of this is already major fail. The fact that his or her editor doesn’t understand any of this is even bigger fail. And it’s leading many people to question why they would even bother to save such a magazine from its impending cancellation when all they have to look forward to is a bunch of racefail in the non-fiction section.

I’m just going to bottom line it for you: Whitewashing is never okay no matter what. If you don’t agree, then you’re really too far gone to exist in polite and cultured society and perhaps you should do us all a favor and go back to the cave you most certainly crawled out of.

Is that too harsh?

I hate to harsh anyone’s squee, but…

By:  TempestRants
I hate to harsh anyone's squee, but...

The Doctor Who season finale was just as mediocre and disappointing as the rest of the season. I don’t know what the hell everyone else is so happy about, except perhaps Steven Moffet’s lackluster turn as head writer has somehow lowered everyone’s bar and they were happy to see anything resembling a moving bit of drama. Cut for spoilers, unfortunately too late for many… sorry. :(

Continue reading “I hate to harsh anyone’s squee, but…” →

Portrayals of Rape in Fiction: An Exploration of Where It’s Done Wrong or Right and Why

By:  TempestRants
Portrayals of Rape in Fiction: An Exploration of Where It's Done Wrong or Right and Why

I’ve been thinking about writing this post since the Take Back The SciFi Redux panel at WisCon where we talked about media that portrayed rape in a horrid, sketchy way but also mentioned some media that did it well. The latter list was very small, as you can imagine.

I’ve railed against the way writers of books and television shows and movies use rape at least twice before. But there are obviously some people who still don’t get it, and they don’t know why they don’t get it. What makes the portrayal of rape in book X palatable to me, but the portrayal in book Y sends me into a fit of rage?

There are three books I’ve read in recent years that make excellent examples – two bad examples, one positive example:

Below is a description of each book that contains spoilers for the story and possible triggers for those who’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, so please take care when clicking. Though my hope is that the issues raised will be more helpful than harmful. Click here to read.

Thoughts On Jay Lake’s Continued Ass Showing

By:  TempestWriting

Late last week as I was getting settled in at WisCon couple of people brought this to my attention:

“I probably won’t ever be at WisCon again, sadly, as it used to be one of my favorite cons, but RaceFail has made it very unwelcoming and unsafe for me.” –Jay Lake

This was a comment on someone’s LiveJournal in response to their post on the panels they’d be doing at WisCon. Why Jay felt the need to express this sentiment at that time in this journal, I couldn’t tell you. But the comment had the predictable effect on me.

I made some snarky tweets at Jay on Twitter (hilariously getting his Twitter name wrong twice) and went on to spend a lovely weekend with fine people and free liquor. But then I read more of the conversation on that blog1 and saw a little of Jay’s post on the subject and then this going on in yeloson’s journal and I just…. smh.

So here’s the thing. I will say that I probably should have written an in-depth teardown of Jay’s crazypants instead of just snarking on Twitter. I just don’t like to give that dude any more time than he’s worth. But if his requirements for criticizing him must include having read the things he’s written, then obviously I’m the person for it. Because I was once Jay Lake’s friend.

I met Jay in 2003, I started following his blog shortly after, we always hung out at conventions whenever possible, we chatted and emailed and became good buds. He was at various times incredibly awesome to me. And at various times I stood up for him to people who had Things To Say just as I’m sure he may have done for me without my knowing.

But then.

Okay, the POC reading this will know what I’m talking about, and probably the allies will, too. Because we have all had that friend who is well meaning and smart, but who says problematic things about race (or gender or religion or whatever) and because they are otherwise awesome you engage with them on a good faith basis and try to get them to understand where they’re mistaken, how their problematic words are hurtful, and how they can possibly do better. When a friend tells you that you’ve got your skirt stuck up in your pantyhoes, you might be embarassed for a bit but you’re grateful a friend was there to tell you, right? Right.

But then the hits just keep on coming, and pretty soon you feel more ragey or just plain annoyed than you feel in kinship with this person. And then one day you have enough.

So this is pretty much what went on with me and Jay. He would say incredibly problematic stuff, I would attempt to untuck his skirt, and he would say thank you and profess to do better. Thing is, he didn’t. It was Lather, Rinse, Repeat every time. Finally I reached the point where I’d had enough.

The nature of the lather, rinse, repeat on issues of race, at least, was that Jay would use the same two nuggets of his existence as a shield against accusations that he was not as enlightened as he purported to be. One was that he’d been raised (partially) in foreign countries where whites where in the minority in the population (though not in terms of power, necessarily), and this gave him a better understanding of priviledge and of otherness than the average American white guy. The other nugget is that he has a Chinese daughter, and therefore he Knows, Man.

Setting aside the sketchiness for a sec, both of these elements can indeed lead someone with privilege to examine it, work against it in their sphere of influence, and come to deeper understandings of the workings of racism in our society in order to be a good ally and maybe change things. Unfortunately for Jay Lake, this doesn’t seem to have quite happened.

I’m going to go on another tangent — it’s related, so bear with me. This weekend at WisCon I was explaining to people at the Dollhouse panel that there are many levels to privilege and understanding and such. Down on the bottom level you have the folks who are just racist or sexist or whatever and haven’t ever examined anything and don’t want to for various reasons.

But then up higher is the level where people agree that racism is bad and wrong, we’re all equal, and everyone should just stop being so mean. Na’amen helpfully labeled this the Kumbaya level, because it’s that kind of surface, touchy-feely non-racism that doesn’t actively engage with people of color or any oppressed people.  Nor does it work to change things for the better because, hey, aren’t things just great now?

While the Kumbaya level is much better than just plain racism, people on this level often really frustrate us because they are resistant to acknowledge that they still have work to do. They don’t wear white hoods so they can’t ever say or do things that have a basis in racism. Not that they are racist, but they aren’t helping, which is bad enough.

This is where Jay Lake is right now. And he’s a walking cliche of Kumbayaness. He uses those two nuggests about himself not as a way to grow, but as a sheild against accusations of problematic behavior or speech. Literally. You can’t have a conversation with him about this stuff without him bringing up “but I have a Chinese daughter” as if that gives him special cred or insight. I can point to the words of many transracial adoptees to show that just because a white person adopts a child not of their race, they do not automatically have some special insight or are any less prone to fail. This situation most certainly can produce this result, but it is not a given. So no, no one is going to give him a pass for that.

Having spent many years reading Jay’s blog and talking to him personally on these issues, I feel I am qualified to say that he is a Kumbaya, not an ally. That his views and words are deeply problematic for many reasons. And that he constantly weilds his privilege like a bat instead of examining it deeply. He may know what privilege is and understand how it works, but that does not mean he isn’t guilty of still being mindlessly mired in it. After all, take the statment that started all of this. How he feels “unsafe” at WisCon because people there might make him uncomfortable. The privilege dripping from that whole mindset is staggering.

I meantioned that I used to be Jay’s friend and that one day I couldn’t take all of this any more. Here’s how we became unfriends: After years of being one of the people untucking his skirt from his pantyhose only to find it stuck there again the very next day or week or whatever, I finally said to Jay that in further discussions of racism, he could no longer use those nuggets I mentioned as sheilds, because that was problematic and unhelpful. If he needed me to explain why that was, I would do so.

His response? Silence. He unfriended me on all social networks where we were connected and hasn’t spoken to me since. I wasn’t too surprised at this. I’d avoided saying these things to him so bluntly before because even though Jay says that he wants his friends to be truthful and honest with him about his own behavior, he didn’t model that mindset, ever (or, at least, in the scope of my hearing/seeing/reading). People who criticized him professionally were “jealous of his success” and so forth. But there comes a time in every POC’s life where they have to lay it all out for that Kumbaya-level white friend. It either means that you and the friend come to a better understanding of stuff, or you lose that friend2. You already know how this story ends.

The bottom line is this: I have read Jay’s words, his fiction, and have enjoyed a friendship with him for a time. So I feel I’m qualified to say that, yes, Jay Lake’s ass is showing, and in a big way, and more often than not when it comes to issues of race. He is not a racist, but he sometimes says racist things and holds some sketchy ideas in his head about race that he then articulates and wonders why people find it a problem. He does not model good ally behavior, he seems unable to truly examine his own privilege as a man and as a white person, and because of this he takes up the “Everyone is mean to me just because I’m white and male!” cross at every opportunity. The people who buy this act? Other Kumbayas.

The only thing Jay isn’t safe from at WisCon or any other SF event is people who don’t agree with him3. Does feeling uncomfortable = unsafe? I’m going to go with: No. But you see, Jay has the privilege of sailing through life without ever having to purposefully encounter those that bring up uncomfortable thoughts around these issues. And if he chances upon them, he runs back to the comfort of those who are so very willing to prop up his privileged notions. If these are the only notions he has of safe and unsafe, he’s a lucky guy. A lot of us have to deal with real unsafeness.

And that’s what pissed me off the most about his bullshit. That he would use the language of safe space/not safe space in the context of a feminist event to justify his unwillingness to not be beloved by all. Yes, I know he said “Oh, I misspoke” and claimed “chemo brain” for the slip. And I would totally be willing to give him a pass on that if not for two things. One: that statement is of a piece with how he’s been since before he had cancer. Two: his comments on yeloson’s blog were long after he claimed to have misspoken.

Someone needs to pull his skirt down. Thank goodness it doesn’t have to be me, anymore.

Footnotes

  1. The comments have now been erased or screened so you won’t see anything at the link. There is a screencap here — thanks gem225! — so his words are preserved forever and ever, amen. [⇧]
  2. Though the latter is more often the result in my experience, I can say that since RaceFail I have had more conversations that ended up with a happier ending. [⇧]
  3. Just like in life! [⇧]