- Comedy Duo Create An Extremely Detailed Portrait In A Portrait 18 Levels Deep – DesignTAXI.com
- Women of Reddit, when did you first notice that men were looking at you in a sexual way? How old were you and how did it make you feel? : AskReddit Content warning for many, many stories of adult men sexualizing girls when they are 11 or even younger.
- Experiment Shows Teachers View ‘Deshawns’ More Harshly Than ‘Gregs’ | Colorlines “…teachers reported higher levels of being personally troubled by the report when the student had a name like “Darnell” or “Deshawn” than when the student had a name like “Greg” or “Jake.” They were also more likely to call for harsher punishment…”
- Written testimony to Congress by Nancy Chi Cantalupo: “It is downright dangerous to conflate civil rights and criminal justice approaches to sexual violence and allow criminal justice responses to dominate our collective imagination regarding how to address this violence. If we did so, we would eliminate sexual violence victims’ civil rights to equality, specifically student victims’ rights to equal educational opportunity.” (PDF link.)
- Republicans Like Class Warfare—So Long As It’s Against Hillary Clinton | Mother Jones
- Appomattox: How did Ulysses S. Grant become an embarrassment of history and Robert E. Lee a role model?
- Man Camp I wish this were a joke, but I don’t think it is.
- Americans’ Spending on Dining Out Just Overtook Grocery Sales for the First Time Ever – Bloomberg Business
- Why We Let Prison Rape Go On – NYTimes.com
- New Type of Boredom Discovered, and It’s Rampant The headline sounds like a parody, but it’s not.
- i want to remind people that if there had been no video of michael slager executing walter scott, he would have just been another cop who got away with murder. he knew the exact story to tell, the exact evidence to plant, and delivered the exact easy bake bullshit that you hear every time they slaughter a black person. and yet you wonder why we question every death— why we never believe them when they say someone tried to take a gun. wake the fuck up! #farfromover
- I Posed As A Man On Twitter And Nobody Called Me Fat or Threatened To Rape Me For Once – xoJane.
- “Rape is good fodder for comedy”: Amy Schumer makes a case for the feminist rape joke – Salon.com
- Fannie’s Room: Researchers Study Online Antisocial Behavior
- Will Hillary Clinton be too weak on climate change?
- Democratic voters love marijuana legalization. Hillary Clinton doesn’t.
- A Miscarrying Woman Was Denied Medication Because of “Conscience”
- Corporations now spend more lobbying Congress than taxpayers spend funding Congress
- Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy: The UNC Case. Amp’s comment: David has it right here. Criticism of a choice of speaker is not censorship.
- New York A.G. to Investigate Employers Who Keep Low-Wage Workers “On Call”
- As Cities Raise Their Minimum Wage, Where’s the Economic Collapse the Right Predicted?
- California Bill Would Require Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Discuss Abortion Options. Heh. I’m of course against this idea writ large, because free speech; however, I don’t necessarily object to this law, because it limits itself to government-licensed facilities which provide pregnancy-related services.
- What If MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Had Been a Facebook Post? This is a post about the ways that prisons forbid prisoners from using social media – and punish them when they do. Alarmingly, Facebook is cooperating with the prisons on this.
- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations.
On The Murder Of Rekia Boyd
- A Judge Just Let A Cop Walk After A Deadly Shooting. Legal Experts Say The Reasoning Is ‘Incredible.’ | ThinkProgress
- Rekia Boyd Fact Sheet
- RIP Rekia Boyd: November 5, 1989 – March 21, 2012 | Gradient Lair
- On Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray and the Cost of Police Impunity
- America’s big criminal justice lie: What one cop’s acquittal reveals about police violence & Rekia Boyd’s death – Salon.com
- We Do This for Rekia | Transformative Spaces
Puppies, puppies everywhere!
- “In other words, of the 16 written fiction nominees on Torgerson’s slate, 11 – more than two-thirds – had not actually been nominated by anyone in the crowd-sourced discussion from which, we are told, the slate emerged.” Amp: How very democratic and non-elitist!
- On screaming “We’re not VD!” while ignoring your relationship with VD — Jason Sanford
- Some Sad Puppy Data Analysis. The blogger, a puppy supporter (the most civil one I’ve encountered), attempts to use data to support the Sad Puppies; I debate him in the comments.
- Philip Sandifer: Writer: Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters “Ultimately, that’s all Beale is doing: he’s hiding what he actually means behind a paper-thin veil so that it is communicated with deniability. (Fittingly, the usual name for this rhetorical technique, a favorite of political campaigns of all leanings, is “dogwhistling.”)” Warning: this one is very long.
- Why I Won’t Be A Presenter At The Hugo Awards This Year | Connie Willis. (Willis, for those who don’t know, has won 11 Hugos for her fiction, and been nominated 24 times.)
- Back To The Future – Of The Hugos | Barno’s Stables Another blog post where I’m debating the author in the comments.
- ETA: (3) Captain Christian White, supreme commander of… This parody of Puppies, written by Adam-Troy Castro, totally cracked me up. Thanks for the link, Myca!
You know, this conspiracy stuff is actually made up by you guys. Mandolin said conservatives are welcome, look at Resnick. I said lol. Patrick and Myca said a ha there’s no conspiracy. Well? If that’s your position – we don’t conspire, we just get offended and act like assholes individually – I’m happy with that. It’s not really what I’m worried about. I’m not committed to the feud that’s going on. I just hate politicisation.
I don’t suppose this is a decent time to point out that I published Mike Resnick.
It’s a good story, and worth a listen.
The conspiracy stuff is because the only way you can credibly claim that Resnick’s failure to obtain a Hugo nomination in 2014+ is because of feminists not liking him is to hypothesize a conspiracy to defraud the Hugo nomination process.
Alternative explanations are laughable because no amount of angry offended feminists can stop Resnick’s fans from voting for him, and the idea that 100% of Worldcon attendees are offended feminists is belied by even the most basic understanding of the facts (like, the existence of the puppies?).
But I suppose the fact that your position is ridiculous is why you won’t actually make it- you just insinuate it, then whine when I ask you to speak frankly.
These days, there isn’t necessarily that much difference between Lucy going to talk to people and Lucy posting Lucy’s opinions on her well-read blog. Clearly Linus is organizing to influence the vote. Is Lucy taking steps to influence the vote and garner support among like-minded folks? Sure, maybe.
No, I am not explicitly saying that I cannot see any substantive difference between what Linus does, and what Lucy does, in this example.
That is such a limited question that I’m not sure why you’re invested in having me answer it, though.
Well, no. It’s factually correct. Which is to say, I accurately represented what Torgerson actually said.
You can disagree with him being right, of course. But if you’re going to keep hammering on proof and facts and semi-demanding responses to your questions, it’d be nice if you would correctly quote.
I am not Torgerson. Want my guess as to what he would say? Probably something like this: Talking about this is a bit like talking about affirmative action. You can’t tell changes in rates merely from presence/absence of things.
Since this isn’t precisely like AA, folks don’t have much OTHER than feelings to go on; there isn’t an obvious control group.
How would you prove that? That isn’t a trick; I haven’t the foggiest idea. Simply saying “these books are here” isn’t proof, since there might have been MORE books absent someone pushing them aside. Same for nominations.
I was trying to find an example of my narrating his work for Escape Pod, but it looks like I didn’t; I produced several of them, though.
I was going to dig out my favorite (also worth a listen) but I can’t figure out how to use search terms to dig it up, since Resnick was the most-published author at Escape Pod at least at one point, and also many of his stories shared similar subjects (robots in this case).
Here’s a link to his “Bride of Frankenstein” instead. http://escapepod.org/2010/06/24/ep246-bride-of-frankenstein/
Yes, it is interesting, because – as Ruchama touched on – the whole paragraph highlights exactly how dishonest and stupid the SP arguments really are.
Dude is quoting Star Trek. The “yo dawg, I heard you like social justice, so let me put some SJW in your SJW” of science fiction. The show that was explicitly intended by Gene Roddenberry to be about issues like racism and sexism and to put those issues on ‘permanent display’.
But no, to idiots like BT, that’s a ‘pew pew’ science show with fun and adventure and none of that boring-O social justice stuff that ‘pushes to the side’ the sense of wonder and adventure. Meanwhile, they shit themselves raging about Ancillary Justice, a space adventure that was widely admired but is just so social justicey because of the way gendered pronouns are used, and Redshirts, which is basically a madcamp Star Trek fanfic romp but it was written by that arch-SJW Scalzi, cursed be his name.
That’s not even getting into repeating yet fucking again that despite the see-no-evil protestations of the SP and people like Pete Patriot, SFF has always been politicized and always been political. It’s just that the SP don’t like the fact that the market doesn’t cater entirely to their interests, and that maybe the reason that people are not hurling Ancillary Justice across the room is that they think the use of female pronouns doesn’t, in fact, detract from a very good story.
Hey Copyleft, since you think that art passes untouched through the artist, like a medium channeling ectoplasm, here’s a book relevant to your interests!
The Iron Dream
Seriously, it’s amazing, and if you can keep from losing it during the initiation scene with the Steel Commander you’re made of sterner stuff than I. I should warn you, though, that the ‘introduction’ and ‘afterword’ have some clever and not-very-nice insinuations that pissed off a lot of SFF fans when it was first published.
Bach’s Prelude No. 1, played on Boomwhackers:
http://fascinately.com/fascinating/2015/04/performance-of-bachs-prelude-no-1-using-only-boomwhackers-is-fantastic/
That was really wonderful!
I think a certain, very vocal, segment of our culture has become utterly obsessed with identity diveristy.
I also think a certain, increasingly vocal, segment of our culture has become utterly sick of it overwhealming everything else.
For quite some time, one of those segments, rather than using rational discourse to counter political positions they disagree with, has been using emotive obnoxiousness to try to intimidate the people who say things they dislike. Instead of putting forward a persuasive argument, they resort to physically distrupting peoples lives in an attempt to gain support. Or if that fails, they just coop offical organisations to exclude their political opponents.
I’m not going to argue on the words ‘conspiracy’ or ‘censorship’, partly because it seems like it’ll just end up disolving into an argument about definitions, but partly because those words don’t really capture the problem. Over the last decade or so there’s a been a trend toward the normalisation of vitrolic trantrums as an appropriate response to encountering opposing political views. There’s a strong pattern, and its predictable. Its so predictable and prevailant there are online communities dedicated to mocking the behaviour.
So no, there might not have been a conspiracy. But that’s because one wasn’t needed. A segment of our culture is already conditioned to react with hostile bile, largely in order to try to silence certain political perspectives or at least drown them out in the noise. It’s predictable, and some people are utterly sick of it.
Reading up on some of these events makes it clear that the sf/f community hasn’t avoided these trends. The puppies slate is hardly the first salvo fired in the battle over the community. One side has been encouraging the rebels to fight, sending supplies and advanced weaponary, and sending in their own troops to fight without uniforms. And now that an airliner full of innocent civilians has been shot down, that side wants to feign innocence? Sorry, don’t buy it.
“Iron Dream” sounds like a blast, thanks for the recommendation.
For a lighter take on the author-politics issue–which definitely doesn’t mention Orson Scott Card by name at all, honest–check out this week of Unshelved from 2008:
http://www.unshelved.com/2008-2-4
For the record, I’m 100% on Dewey’s side. Which is supposed to be the side of those who are saying “judge the story, not the author.”
Dude. I’m all for taking this issue seriously, but maybe we could avoid reference to actual deaths?
In any case, one side of this was importing culture warriors from outside the SFF community, and that was the one trying to get uninvolved folks to vote for their slate in the Hugos. And there’s the usual chicken and egg problem with identity politics; in my view, as soon as people stop treating me badly for being a woman or queer, I’m happy to stop pointing out that they’re doing it. I understand that you see things differently.
(Actually, I’m pretty amused by the way that everything after your first two paragraphs could be exactly the same–with different links–coming from my perspective. Heh.)
I understand that you see things differently.
I’ll tell you, it’s so frustrating to hear people whine about how my loud music is keeping them awake at night; it’s like they can’t talk about anything else, and seriously, it completely overwhelms everything else. My loud music doesn’t bother me, so why can’t these people STFU and stop harping on it already, and just enjoy the nice weather? I mean, it’s like they’re killing a planeload of civilians here!
In other news, a jury in, I believe Illinois, just acquitted a man of rape charge. He had sex with his wife, an Alzheimer’s patient, after nursing home staff opined that she could not legally consent. NPR brought in an ethicist who essentially threw up her hands and proclaimed that there is no consensus on any if the issues involved and she can’t even speculate on how the nursing home made that judgment.
Helpful tips on weaponizing this- choose one or more of the following!
1. Illinois juries think it’s ok to rape your wife! Rape culture!
2. People with infirmities are being infantilized by the state! Ableism!
3. No one is addressing the ethical issues because they think old people don’t have sex! Ageism!
4. A woman wouldn’t have been prosecuted for this! Reverse sexism!
5. If this is happening in nursing homes, just imagine home care! Elder abuse!
6. The jury flaunted the law! Jury nullification!
Whatever you do, make sure to analyze this in a rights/pollution moral framework, rather than a harm/care framework. Because otherwise you might have to reevaluate everything you believe. Can’t be having that.
Iowa, not Illinois. (Between the and Joni Ernst, I’d like my home state to stop being in the news now, please.)
Sorry. I’m on mobile and heard the story by radio a few hours ago.
So there’s a whiteness fairy that keeps white people from getting shot by cops? There’s a lot of dead white people’s families that wish that was true.
Here is a detailed treatment of that “Husband cleared of raping his wife” story at The Volokh Conspiracy. There’s a possible political angle to it – the husband was a Republican state legislator that dropped out of his re-election race after the charges were brought by a Democratic Atty. Gen.
There’s a lot of angles to this story. I’d read up on it before drawing any conclusions.
Copyleft @ 111:
Comic:
“I’m pro-bunny!”
“Me too. They’re delicious, especially sauteed in a white wine sauce.”
A group of (mostly female) Scouters and I walking down a trail in the woods and being surprised by a group of deer running across it in front of us:
Two of the women: variations on “Oh, how beautiful!”
Me: “Yeah, and they taste great, too!”
The latter comment was not well received by the women, but the other guy with us broke up laughing.
desipis @ 112:
Then there’s the segment of our culture which perceives that the obsession with identity diversity is being used in an attempt to eliminate thought diversity.
No, but there’s definitely a whiteness fairy that’s effective at getting a subset of police to try solutions other than shooting first, and a whiteness fairy that’s effective at getting a subset of police to accurately judge threats. See, e.g., news stories about cops “talking down” somebody with a gun (who may have been actually aiming at folks, or actually shooting) vs news stories of cops shooting within a few seconds of perceiving a danger. There is a strong color gradient between those two classes. (And obviously lots of police are already thoughtful about their uses of force; this applies to the ones who aren’t.)
As amended? Yup, apparently.
For sure. Probably not as many of them as there would be otherwise, though.
1) Thanks for the retraction and apology, although blaming your comment on someone else, rather than accepting responsibility for your own choices, is less than ideal.
2) Please don’t make personal attacks on other commentators here, such as “your provocative and belligerent ignorance.”
The whiteness fairy didn’t seem to help this woman much.
RonF, I recently read a news story about an auto accident in which the driver was thrown clear, and survived with injuries. Does this mean the Seat Belt Fairy didn’t help them, and it’s complete bullshit that seat belts save lives?
Nobody is saying that white people are never killed by police.
For fuck’s sake.
The Baltimore Police have years of abuses under their belt that have caused $5.7 million to be paid out in over 100 successful lawsuits in less than four years, including, for example, breaking the shoulder of an 87-year-old woman who called the police because her grandson had been shot. But, obviously, white people not in Baltimore should feel morally superior because we’re not rioting over a single incidence of police violence. And obviously, “burning things down” is not an accurate characterization of the entire response in Baltimore.
I know you didn’t write that, RonF, but I can’t believe you even quoted such a snide remark on this topic.
Boston Magazine just published a fantastic interview/profile/history of GamerGate, in which they talk to the man who started it: Eron Gjoni, the creepy abusive stalker ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn.
I would say that’s less of a “history of Gamergate” and more of a hit piece on Gjoni. Although he richly deserves a hit piece, so I’m okay with that.
Well, sure, but there’s a lot in there that isn’t about him.
In any case, the dude deliberately incited a mob to attack his ex girlfriend, and is continuing to do so, so I’m comfortable with it being a hit piece too, though.
—Myca
RonF, I just noticed the blog post was from February, so I was wrong to reply to the quote as if it was a direct reference. Still, not a good time to quote that part (and I stand by my response to it in that context).
Nobody is saying that white people are never killed by police.
And include in that nobody the actual fucking cartoon linked to above; see the last panel.
Rick Hanson’s analysis of why the new Supreme Court ruling allowing states to modestly restrict the fundraising of judges running for election, is interesting.
At least one feminist on your blogroll disagrees, Amp.
It may be that Eron Gjoni has done/is doing something terrible to Zoe, but that Boston anti-Gjoni smear job is so completely one-sided and dripping with contempt for the idea of fair play for Eron that it would be foolish for anyone to treat it as a reliable.
I’m a white cis het man, but I’m pretty certain that isn’t the cause of the headaches. Because if that were all I were, I wouldn’t get the headaches. I’d know exactly were I was in the heirarchy of privilege.
But you see I’m not just a white cis het man. I’m also mentally disabled. I take Lamotrigine 100mg daily, or to be more precise, I do if I can get my head together emough to actually take the pills. I see a psychiatrist roughly once per month. I get two visits per week from the Community Mental Health team, to help me with the routine tasks I might lack the spoons to do that week, and of course, also to keep an eye on me. I haven’t worked in about twenty-four years. I subsist on welfare. Consequently I live in poverty.
My diagnoses are Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Asperger’s syndrome. The Asperger’s is inate. It’s also not a problem. (I hate the phrase “suffers from Asperger’s” I don’t suffer from Asperger’s. I have suffered from neurotypical people.) The rest is damage; the sequelae from being tortured throughout my entire early childhood***.
As between myself and, say, Grace, which one of us is supposed to check our privilege in respect of the other? Fucked if I know.
All I know – and frankly, all I care about – is that Grace has never asked me to check my privilage. In fact I’ve never found anything in her words hurtful. The same cannot be said for several other people here. (I acknowlege that I have probably said things hurtful to them.)
Grace has posted some of the most poignant and beautifully-written descriptions I’ve ever read of the ugly oppression one person can suffer at the hands of others. Her writings have brought me to streaming tears on occasion, not merely out of sympathy for her – though of course I do sympathise – but because I have found in her writings about her own suffering, a cogent and powerful description of mine. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that this paragraph, and the previous, were written about the same person.
***Some UK-based surfers visiting my website will by met by a blocking page declaring it to be a hate site. It isn’t. There’s no hate-speech there. It’s a progressive, leftwing site which is pro choice, pro gay-rights, pro trans-rights, and supportive of abuse survivors. Unfortunately it is also fiercely critical of a movement with enough institutional clout to persuade the authorities to silence its critics.
(If you can’t view any of the pages linked above, look at the URLs to get a sense of what they’re about.)
“Quinn is an abuser” and “Gjoni deserves a hit piece” are not mutually exclusive propositions. Both members of a relationship may be bad people. Gjoni, by his own words and actions, wrote his post for reasons other than just highlighting an abuser, and continued to take action to harm Quinn.
(I’m taking Ozy’s post at face value, due to previous reliability; I have not read, and am not going to read, Gjoni’s post.)
Do you have specific arguments with it, factually?
And yes, as Harlequin has pointed out, the piece of Ozy’s you linked does not make the claim you attribute to it.
—Myca
You know what’s satisfying? I’ll tell you because I have had a fucking awesome day.
When you have a multimillionaire who is living the high life while stealing his employee’s tips. (Total asshole.)
And then you sue him.
And then he tries to settle. And gets super DUPER “oh, this was all a mistake, can I just give you a pittance to go away; here, have a hug; I love you guys” grifter-ish.
And then he looks at me. And he looks at my clients. And we’re just sitting there with a “are you fucking out of your mind?” kind of look.
And then he realizes that he is, for probably the first time in his life, going to actually get called to the carpet. He may lose his home. He may lose all three of his homes. Which is perfectly fine by me, since he owns $3 million of real estate and my clients are dirt poor and working three jobs.
And then he hires a completely idiotic attorney who talks a big talk. Lots of experience, I’m sure, but–apparently–not in this area.
So then he files an affidavit in which he unwittingly attests to something which may actually lead my clients to win summary judgment against him, probably because he had no idea of an on-point recent case which just came down.
Let me tell you, there is NOTHING so fun as representing the underdog. Especially when you are winning.
I have a feeling this case is going to meet the gold standard, which is when I make my clients cry…. for happiness.
It doesn’t, Myca? In hir own words, ozy says:
(Emphasis added.)
So ozy here explicitly defended the only thing Gjoni has done (to my very limited knowledge) which would have earned him the ‘right’ to be a target of a hit piece. (BTW, I’m not sure if I fully agree with ozy’s underlying principles here or not, FTR.)
No, but I stand by my assessment that the writer (Zachary Jason) was being completely one-sided, and that it would be foolish for anyone to rely on assertions made in such a relentlessly slanted attack piece.
Here’s an example:
So here we have explicit evidence that Gjoni told 4chan to stop harassing/threatening Quinn, and Zachary’s unsubstantiated statement that he was “stoking” them. Moreover, after priming readers to think of Gjoni as harassing Quinn in this paragraph, Zachary alludes to Gjoni as an abuse “puppet master” which he ‘substantiates’ with Gjoni talking about how he was doing things “in the background.” Of course, this is ‘substantiation’ only for those who already hate GamerGate and Gjoni, because it’s entirely possible that the background GamerGate stuff Gjoni was referring to had nothing to do with Quinn.
Now, it’s possible that Zachary’s description of what Gjoni was doing in this paragraph is in fact broadly accurate. It’s also possible that what Gjoni was doing was above reproach. It’s NOT possible for a savvy reader of the Boston piece to know which of these is the case. All I know is, if ozy’s assessment of the Gjoni/Quinn relationship is accurate, then Zachary’s piece is horribly one-sided and may possibly be compounding Gjoni’s original victimization by Quinn.
Now I want to add several important points: I’m not a GamerGater, and in fact have been critical of aspects of it (which you can read here and here). I also hate the utterly tedious blow-by-blow BS one is often compelled to get into to try to have a sensible discussion about it.
I just think the way that GamerGate gets vilified often appears to have more to do with preserving gynocentric feminists’ stranglehold on progressive gender discourse than with the actual culpability that known GamerGaters have for the noxious (and sometimes criminal) harassment that has been carried out anonymously online (occasionally in its name).
Ballgame, I’ll quote what I wrote in another post (in which I linked to the same Ozy post you just linked):
Seconded! Very, very seconded.
gin-and-whiskey:
That is awesome. I don’t get that often, but when I do, you’re right, it’s pure gold. Congratulations!
Grace
G&W,
You’ve got a good chance to win summary judgment? Wow! And congratulations.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Congrats, and I hope you are poised to lock his assets down, because you know he’s going to try some dumb shit with that.
Hi, Dianne. Are you the same Dianne who is a medical Doctor and who posted the first comment to the thread I linked to earler? If so, good to see you again. You asked a question in that comment that I had cause to revisit a year later. I don’t suppose you ever saw that later comment.
It’s remarkable what sticks in the memory.
If you’re another Dianne, then I’m pleased to meet you, Other Dianne.
The trouble is, “check your privilege” has several different meanings, of which the most common in my experience are “You’re (white, cis, het, and) male therefore you’re wrong”, which is a logical ad-hom, and “Shut up and listen”, which if both Grace and I were to do, all we’d hear from each other would be silence.
But yes, I agree with you that we both have our areas of privelege and disprivilage. I have never* not owned my white het cis privilege.
*Well, not since I first came to understand the concept.
But male privilege is a different matter. You see, when my sister got bullied, my parents’ response was to get onto the school to make sure that adult intervened to put and end to up. But their response to mine, when I let them know about it, was to tell me to deal with it myself. And all the advice they gave me made bullying worse. “Punch him on the nose”? That got me beaten up. “Ignore it”? You can see how well that works in this video. Does it surprise you that I stopped telling my parents about the bullying, and indeed actively concealed it, when I could? To this day I have a strong tendency IRL to want to conceal bad things that happen to me (at the level of every-day annoyances), even if they’re not my fault.
Moving on to my dating years, I became the poster child Nice Guy. Now feminists have the behavioural description pretty accurate, but internal mental states that they attribute these bahaviours to are dead wrong. It doesn’t come from “male entitlement”. It actually stems from parental abandonment (See this book.) See how these things feed into each other? Feminists also, by and large don’t understand how much it hurts. Here’s where I come back to Grace, because she has been able to do what I cannot. She can describe the pain in beautifl language. When I try to do so, my mind shuts down and I become wordless. Dear God, what a privilege it must be, to be ignorant of that pain.
I can’t go on. I’m crying too much.
OK. Assuming ozy’s post is broadly accurate, then you, ozy, and I agree, Amp.
Actually, I have similar misgivings. I have seen attempts to incorporate ‘emotional abuse’ into legal statutes (IIRC this happened in France though I don’t know if it was successful), and it’s good to see you and I apparently agree on how problematic this is.
FTR, ozy was pretty clear that it wasn’t the ‘secretly cheating’ part that was abusive, it was the ‘gaslighting after the cheating was discovered’ part. (I assume you agree — you did specifically agree that Zoe was emotionally abusing Eron — but I think some readers might be confused by your digression.)
The notion that publishing correspondence (of which Eron was presumably a party most of the time) constitutes “abuse” is highly debatable. Obviously, ozy disagrees. I haven’t come to a firm conclusion one way or another, myself. In Eron’s defense, I think it’s extremely unlikely that anyone would have taken his gaslighting assertion seriously without seeing the documentation, and it’s extremely likely that a large number of people — especially mainstream feminists — would have been quick to hurl the ‘misogynist’ label at him if he had made an unsubstantiated charge of gaslighting against Zoe.
So what was he supposed to do? Stoically suffer in online silence? Well, I guess that makes sense … if you endorse the patriarchal oppression of men embodied by the phenomenon of male stoicism (which, sadly, all too many mainstream feminists appear to do).
But even if you’re right (that publishing the correspondence was abusive), I don’t agree that morally justifies endorsing a smear campaign against Eron, any more than Zoe’s abuse justifies a smear campaign against her.
Ballgame, obviously not every case of publishing correspondence is abusive. But publishing a shit-ton of what was extremely private correspondence, for the purpose of hurting your ex-lover – even going so far as to actively prolong the relationship only so you can find out new private things in order to publish them – is abusive.
As I said, she cheated, and then she lied to cover up her cheating. I don’t think there’s much evidence of the kind of evil and malice and seeking to control that distinguishes lying from gaslighting in the logs I read (when Ozy explained why they thought it was gaslighting, they didn’t quote chat logs – they quoted Gjoni’s interpretations). (I just read that post of Ozy’s for the first time. I have to acknowledge, Ozy is making distinctions I didn’t realize they were making when I wrote the post I quoted above.)
You are not scoring points with stupid, hostile arguments like this. There is no scoreboard.
And yes, I do think Eron shouldn’t have taken it public – and that doesn’t mean I endorse male stoicism.
And as for what Eron should have done – he should have nursed his broken heart, complained to all his friends (including any mutual friends, if he liked) about what Quinn did, and in time he should have moved on. You know, exactly what millions of other people whose ex lovers cheated on them have done.
What Gjoni actually did, however, was abusive, misogynistic, and ludicrously disproportional to Quinn’s offense. Because someone cheated, lied, and broke your heart doesn’t give anyone license to sic thousands of misogynists on them, or to publish a ton of intimate correspondence in order to try and destroy their life (over what, a three month relationship?)
I thought the article was a hit piece, in that the journalist was clearly on Quinn’s side. But I don’t think it was a “smear campaign,” as in dishonest. As far as I can tell – and of course, I don’t have perfect knowledge of this, but neither do you – the important claims the article makes are true.
Was the article unfair? Yes, in the sense of being one-sided. Do I feel bad for Gjoni? No. He’s a creepy, bitter, misogynistic asshole, and he chose to make it public. In my view, his making that choice is what makes it morally justifiable that he be publicly critically examined in turn.
If he can’t stand the heat, he shouldn’t have dragged Quinn and himself into the kitchen.
ETA: I wrote “over what, a three month relationship?”. My memory was wrong; it was more like 7? months, I think, including a monthlong break.
I’m kinda wondering why we needed another article about that those two poeple, over 8 months after the whole original thing went down. Surely there’s been enough written about those two that the internet doesn’t need yet another piece on the matter. From what I’d seen they’d largely faded from public focus, so I don’t see what’s gained by attempting to draw attention to them again.
That is absolutely fucking awesome! Congratulations.
The incredibly frustrating part is that I can only talk about it anonymously, online. Much as I would like to inform everyone I know about the slimy folks, I keep getting good settlements that have confidentiality clauses. And even in cases like this, my clients won’t benefit from having the business publicly get shamed, because it might not be able to pay them.
Grrr.
That’s great, G&W! I hope it goes exactly as you’ve laid it out here.
On the Hugo Awards topic, a new update. Mary Kowal has rushed to the rescue! She’s buying memberships to WorldCon for followers of her blog in order to help ‘readjust’ the voting, to the tune of $4,000.
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/talk-with-me-about-being-a-fan-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy/
In other words, the “integrity of the voting process” is going to be redeemed by a champion who is literally buying votes. Hilarious!
You are not scoring points with stupid, hostile arguments like this.
Well. Not here he isn’t. If ballgame’s intent is instead to head back to Feminist Critics with a discussion of how he put you in your lying feminist place, though, Amp, I imagine it makes perfect sense.
@Daran, that’s horrible, and I’m so sorry you went through that.
Ampersand:
I think you misread ballgame. He does not mean that you, Ampersand, necessarily endorse this patriarchal oppression. He meant “if one endorses…”, “For those people who endorce”, and he invites you to consider whether perhaps you are one of them.
Perhaps “endorse” is the wrong word. “Have internalised” might be better. That many mainstream feminists appear to have – and haven’t self-examined enough to realise it – isn’t point-scoring. It’s a legitimate criticism. And of course, if that internalised norm manifests itself in what those feminists write, then the practical effect is that they do endorse it. He is not saying that you, (one, those people) do so consciously or with malice.
Mythago:
Now who’s pointscoring?
Of course you can point to an example when we’ve done this, I don’t think. Speaking for myself, I take stuff I do here back to FC, for three reasons: 1 Because I think my readers will be interested in the debate, 2 To continue an argument which has been shut down here, perhaps because I’ve been banned, and 3 to lick my wounds. Note that “lick my wounds” means that I’ve been emotionally hurt, not that I’ve lost an argument.
I withdraw the word “neurotypical”.
Most of those who have hurt me were, as best I can tell, neurotypical, but that’s only because most people are neurotypical. I don’t in general have a problem with neurotypically-disordered people, though their pathological need to stand around yacking when there’s work to be done is certainly irritating.
I’m reminded of a remark by Temple Grandin: If it wasn’t for autistic people, we’d all be sitting in caves, socialising.
Copyleft @149 –
I don’t actually think that Kowall’s action here is a particularly good response to the puppies, but I think that your characterisation of it is inaccurate and unfair. She is *paying* for votes, not buying them – she has made it explicit that she will pay for memberships regardless of what people intend to vote for (she’s not asking). And she also said that she’ll decline any Hugo nominations next year so that there’s no conflict of interest during the time those membership apply.
I don’t think these actions can in any serious way be viewed as “buying the vote”.
What sort of an asshole do you have to be to con someone into participating in a hit piece against them, knowing that they’re under a gagging order put in place to protect someone you’re ostensibly writing the piece in aid of?
In following the story on the lawsuit filed by Paul Nungesser I found a link to the recent dismissal of the other lawsuit against Columbia University. I remembered this case which never got as much publicity as the other one but had an interesting timeline:
– The disciplinary hearing was right after the Columbia students filed a Title IX complaint and DoE began an investigation
– The lawsuit was filed just as Emma Sulkowicz named Paul Nungesser
-Now, the lawsuit is dismissed just as Paul Nungesser files suit against Columbia.
When the suit was first filed I remember reading about it. I think we even talked about it on an open thread here, although I can’t find it. Here is what Frisky said at the time:
If I recall correctly that seemed to be the consensus at the time — either the student was found responsible because of a withdrawn consent or limited consent or possibly because of intoxication.
What I found interesting in the dismissal order is that this understanding was not correct. From the order:
I wanted to post about this for two reasons. First, this is the first case I’m aware of where a suspension was made for conduct that isn’t illegal at all. I have often said that colleges can and should punish behavior that isn’t illegal but I think it’s worth noting when we see this happen for the first time.
Second, while there remain a lot of unknowns in the timeline of how the initial complaint was decided I have some concerns about the “star chamber” aspects of the case. Was the accused notified in advance that this case was going to hinge on conversations or actions over a period of weeks? Was he able to think about who might have witnessed those communications and asked for people to provide statements?
If the accused was simply told that he had been reported for sexual misconduct he probably spent time thinking about witnesses who could testify that she wasn’t intoxicated (from the lawsuit it’s clear that he did exactly that). He might have worried that she was going to testify that she had wanted to stop and he ignored her requests (it appears she never made that claim).
I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I think the need for a speedy resolution needs to be balanced against the need to give the accused a full understanding of the allegations (not just the charge) reasonably in advance of the hearing.
The student’s suit against Columbia was dismissed on the basis that Title IX case law requires showing not just that the hearing was unfair but that it was unfair because of his gender. Disparate impact is not sufficient to meet this standard but the student would have to show that he was targeted based on his gender. I am not a lawyer but it appears the student may still be able to file in State Court on a breach of contract claim — I have no idea if he has a case on that or not, just that the Federal Court seems not to have disposed of that claim.
As I noted above, Amp, you and ozy appear to disagree about this. I’m agnostic on the topic. I respect your opinion about whether Eron’s choice to publish the documents online was abusive; I have less respect for your opinion that he did it exclusively (or even primarily) to hurt Zoe. If ozy’s assessment is accurate, he stated that he did it to warn others of Zoe’s propensity to emotionally abuse, and I’ve seen no reason to presume that wasn’t a big part of his motivation.
I don’t agree that my observation about male stoicism was either hostile or stupid, although for the record I am hostile to the hypocrisy and sexism of what I think of as ‘patriarchal feminism.’
Eron’s culpability regarding the emails Zoe has apparently received is much less clear to me than it is to you and others here. AFAICT, he did not post his piece on … that website-that-shall-not-be-named (or at least, there’s no evidence that he was the one who posted it there), and when did appear on … that website … he specifically called for people there to stop sending crap to Zoe. The evidence we have suggests that Eron did not want what happened to have happened.
You conflate two very different things here. I have no problem at all with the idea that Eron should “be publicly critically examined” … but that’s very different from getting smeared with a one-sided hit piece. That kind of smear is kind of like torture: it doesn’t just harm the target of the smear, it caters to our basest tribal instincts, degrades public discourse, and diminishes society’s capacity for empathy and insight.
Ballgame, if you think one-sided hit pieces are bad, then you should be much more critical of Gjoni’s “The Zoe Post” than you seemingly are.
Gjoni has said that he thought there was an 80% chance that posting The Zoe Post would lead to misogynists harassing Quinn. He’s also posted “please don’t harass Zoe” comments which seems intended to encourage harassment of Zoe (e.g., publicly saying that he doesn’t use Zoe Quinn’s real name because he suuure wouldn’t want anyone to “uncover her past,” wink wink nudge nudge).
If Snoopy knows that there are zombies roaming around, and he points to Woodstock and says, through a loudspeaker, “wow, look at Woodstock over there. Right there. In that tree. Boy, I hope no zombies attack Woodstock, right there, in that tree, that would be a shame” – after a certain point my bullshit detector is clanging too loudly to be ignored.
I think setting up a false dichotomy – either one endorses Gjoni’s actions or one is endorsing male stoicism – isn’t reasonable.
I’m curious. Which feminists aren’t you hostile to?
I’ve seen you praise Christina Hoff Sommers. But are there any feminists who aren’t right-wingers, and/or whose focus, in their feminist writings, isn’t primarily defending men from feminist criticism, or attacking feminists, whose feminist writings you admire? If so, which ones?
(Not that there’s anything wrong with either trying to help men, or with criticism of feminism. But surely you don’t think that’s the entire range of worthwhile feminist writings?)
I’m not assuming I know the answer. I’m genuinely curious.
Why do you keep noting this? I respect Ozy a lot, but I nonetheless sometimes disagree with them.
Finally, I know that Gjoni has written he had good intentions. That rationalization is commonplace among stalkers and abusers.
ETA: I’m not saying that saying one has good intentions is evidence of being a stalker or abuser.
But I am saying that, when Schroeder is acting like a stalker and abuser, it would be foolish to say “well, he can’t be a stalker or abuser, because he himself said that he has good intentions.”
I mean, you tell me: Does this tweet of Gjoni’s appear to be someone regretfully informing people that there is a danger in their midst, or does it look more like gloating from a bitter ex?
I gotta say, I would totally have given Gjoni the benefit of the doubt. For like, the first 24 hours? …maybe 48? Maybe even a week if he had been offline for most of it? Hurt people do mean things, and that doesn’t necessarily reflect on their overall character as people forever for all time. But… it’s been a bit more than that, and he keeps doubling down. The benefit of the doubt wears off eventually. At a certain point you have to conclude that seriously, this is a considered, intentional, long term thing. We passed that quite some time ago.
http://demotivators.despair.com/demotivational/persistencedemotivator.jpg
Grace
https://www.facebook.com/CHartoons/photos/a.1593666064179997.1073741828.1575357299344207/1610765279136742/?type=1&theater
Um, no. I would not expect a victim of abuse to be a paragon of fairness in describing that abuse and venting the pain and anger he or she experienced. (Of course, I would certainly expect them not to lie about it or invent things that didn’t happen, and I wouldn’t exempt whatever they did write as being above criticism. At the risk of being a broken record, I’ll just repeat: I’m not defending the ZoePost.)
However, the standards of fairness for third parties — including journalists like the writer for the Boston hit piece, and bloggers like you and me — is much higher, especially when there are political overtones to the material, as here.
If he’s actually refrained from using her real name, I don’t know why his pointing that out should be taken as evidence of his bad faith. I would need to see the actual quote in context to assess.
Just noting that ‘being hostile to patriarchal feminism’ is not the same as ‘being hostile to feminists.’ Daran and I strive very hard to focus on critiquing what people say and do, and to avoid vilifying the people themselves. (At least when it comes to gender; I’m not nearly as circumspect when it comes to criticizing certain right wingers.)
I have? I guess that’s possible, though I suspect what I actually did was praise something she was saying. She blogs for the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, so I’m not sure how much I would agree with her outside of the gender arena.
Sure. I was very moved by The Women’s Room (Marilyn French) when I read it when I was young, as well as Vida and Braided Lives by Marge Piercy. Doris Lessing is one of my favorite authors. I haven’t read a lot of Karen deCrow, but from what I’ve read she came across as very fair-minded.
And while “admire” doesn’t seem to be quite the right word, I certainly respect and endorse the writings of most mainstream feminists when they decry actual discrimination against women (i.e. specific acts of ant-female bias and the erosion of abortion rights).
Of course, the way you phrased your question is, uh, … problematic. If you’re a sensitive gender egalitarian climbing on board The Good Ship Feminism, one of the first things you’re going to notice is all the noxious anti-male bile it’s taking on, and you’re going to want to start bailing it out … and that simple act is enough to get you tossed off the ship. And if you ignore the fact that your ship is slowly sinking? That doesn’t strike me as being a very admirable admiral.
For a couple of reasons. One, zie’s a feminist on your blogroll who goes considerably further in zir defense of Eron than I, so I figure that would make it very difficult for you or others here to dismiss me or my comments as either ‘misogynist’ or ‘anti-feminist.’ Two, I’ve only read a small part of the ZoePost, so I’m relying ozy’s assessment of what can be gleaned from it. I figure her bias would be for feminists and against anything that smacks of MRAs or GamerGate, so if zie says something’s there, there’s probably something there.
As for that six month old tweet from Eron, I would say it looks like gloating from a bitter, abused ex, from which I must sadly conclude that Eron is, indeed, human.
None of the genre’s most influential writers – REH, Leiber, Lovecraft, Heinlein, etc – would get nominated now purely because of political distate for their work. This is a case of people who fundamentally despise the history of the genre for political reasons trying to ‘appropriate’ it for their own purposes. Of course there’s a reaction.
I’ve heard variations on this comment from Pete Patriot from near the beginning of the thread… not sure if “our stuff was here first!”/”SJWs are colonizing spaces” is more common than “SMOFs are unwelcoming to the new people!” or vice versa… It occurred to me that both sides may want to claim “here first”, except in that essay that Brad Torgersen linked to, that I linked to in the last open thread, the author is one of the self-described “barbarians at the gates”…
Anyway, I am highly skeptical of this whole idea that “SJWs” near-universally dislike Heinlein, Lovecraft, et al. (It is usually presented as near-universal, but I’d be skeptical that they even disliked them at much higher rates than other SF fans.) I get the feeling that a lot of people find it implausible that the same person could criticize Lovecraft for racism/sexism/etc. and also enjoy Lovecraft’s work. [*waves*]
Sometimes the criticism is presented even more strongly (though I see this more with the Gamergaters)–that “SJWs” don’t “really” like SF, that they’re just there to stamp out sexism (really? who has the time?) and/or that the SF they like isn’t “really” SF.
I was at Boskone in February, and one panel was called “Women in Science and Technology”. The women on the panel talked about their experiences with sexism in science and technology, and also about what books could inspire young women and what books inspired the panelists as young women. Heinlein, Vinge, and Bradbury were all mentioned. Heinlein was also criticized for his female characters. One panelist said that Space Cadet was good because there were no female characters for Heinlein to screw up. But this was in the same breath that she praised Heinlein for being a good, inspiring writer. [Some other stuff that I wrote down: Robert Sawyer’s Hominids trilogy; for young girls, The Green Glass Sea. Diane Halpern’s work on gender and autism came up, and the fact that she got death threats over it, as well as the fact that Halpern has been very good at admitting mistakes in her earlier research.]
ballgame:
I figure [Ozy’s] bias would be for feminists and against anything that smacks of MRAs or GamerGate, so if zie says something’s there, there’s probably something there.
I have a great deal of respect for Ozy, too, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Ozy does ID as a feminist, but:
1) A recurring theme/pet issue of Ozy’s is “my issues with SJ let me show you them”; Ozy has a lot of disagreements with the brand of feminism exemplified by (relevantly) much of the anti-gamergate movement.
2) I think that Ozy tries very, very hard not to let the fact that they’re a feminist influence them, and to not dismiss people due to being MRAs, etc., to the point that my impression is that Ozy may be overcorrecting.
3) Not directly related to what’s in Ozy’s mind, but I think it confirms that I’m not alone in seeing Ozy’s writing as quite SJ-critical: comments on Ozy’s blog defending SJ are significantly outnumbered by comments trashing SJ*; I think if anti-SJ people are disproportionately attracted to her blog it’s because they perceive her as critical of the SJ movement and sort of on their side (or at least, on their side “for a feminist”).
*there are also a good number of comments, probably a plurality, that criticize SJ but don’t out-and-out trash it–but when I say “trash it” that is what I mean, not “are sort of critical of it”. (A lot of SJ people “are sort of critical of it”, too.)
That said, I’m comfortable operating on the assumption that both Quinn and Gjoni are probably terrible people. There are a lot of terrible people in the world so it seems like a pretty safe bet.
Of course Eron Gjoni is human.
I’m not going to try to decide the Gjoni/Quinn matter. If I wanted to, there is a lot of hotly-contested material I would have to go through and consider before I tried to make decisions. Frankly, I don’t have the time, and even if I did, I have no power, here, and there’s no reason I should try to decide this case.
In cases like these, most of us will never have the time and the ability to make deeply considered, judicious decisions about who is ultimately more right or more wrong. That thought prompts me to reflect on the kind of information we use to make preliminary decisions, on incomplete and imperfect knowledge.
In my professional life, I’ve spent over two decades having routine contact with couples and family groups in crisis. All of them were human. It is a VERY seldom thing that one side or the other is completely blameless. Even when the abuse turns out to be very one-sided, the victims have almost always said and done things which were provocative. Often these are very natural, very human things. They are also very unhelpful things, which further a mutual pattern of behavior which leads to abuse. I’ve done some research beyond my training. Most of the time, I can see why people do what they do even when it’s not helpful. But the fact that it’s understandable doesn’t mean that it’s a step toward a non-abusive pattern.
In domestic situations, in my line of work sometimes I have to make a snap judgement on incomplete information — for instance, whether or not to arrest or detain someone when they express a desire to leave, but I’m still talking to people and looking at physical evidence and figuring out what happened. So I’m accustomed to making serious decisions based on incomplete evidence, and then adapting my response as we get more evidence.
For instance, a few years ago we were called to a domestic where a guy had punched and broken a door in his girlfriend’s apartment. He didn’t live there, and she was financially responsible for the door. He agreed that he punched the door, because in that moment he was angry and going to punch something, and so instead of punching her, he punched the door. We asked if anything else physical happened. He said no. He then said that he wanted to leave. I arrested him. On the way to the station, he started complaining that I hadn’t arrested her. I asked why we would arrest her. He said that before he punched the door, she slapped him in the face. I pointed out that that would have been good to know five minutes earlier. He said that it didn’t matter, because “the guy always gets arrested anyway”. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, I could retire comfortably.) Once I got to the station, I called my officer who was still taking statements at the scene and told him about the hit. He said that, yes, she had volunteered that she struck her boyfriend in the face before he hit the door. My officer said, “It looks to me like [i]she’s[/i] the primary physical aggressor.” I said, “Looks that way to me, too. Arrest her.” And he did. (And the guy never did concede that we arrest women for domestics, even when we walked her past him to her very own holding cell.)
So it goes. Because of the way they dribbled the information to us, we ended up arresting, and charging, both sides of a domestic, something which doesn’t usually happen in my jurisdiction.
But that case illustrates one of the most constant aspects of domestic calls, that when I get called to sort out a pile of manure, it’s very rare that all that manure was piled by just one of the people involved. And it’s not that I’m taking anyone’s word, here; usually, in the heat of the moment, I get to see both people at their most stressed and unhelpful, so I get to see some examples of the shoveling myself.
Also, my job is not to find out who’s purest. My job is to find out whether there is a “credible threat to the safety” of anyone involved in a domestic relationship with someone else involved, whether anyone has committed any of the offenses listed under domestic violence statutes, and who’s the “primary physical aggressor”, or, far more rarely, whether anyone is stalking anyone.
That’s why, “Yeah, but the other person did a hurtful thing, too!” doesn’t count for much. The other person pretty much always did a hurtful thing, and usually many hurtful things, and so whether or not the other person did a hurtful thing is not a useful diagnostic toward best choices now. What’s relevant is who’s making threats to whom, who’s damaging whose property, who’s hitting whom, who’s invading whose property, and so on.
So I look at the Gjoni/Quinn matter, and I cannot help but notice which one is in hiding, which one has the restraining order, and which one is filing evidence of multiple violations of the restraining order. None of that is dispositive that Quinn is a paragon of virtuous behavior, but it does powerfully suggest who’s in a powerful position relative to the other in this particular case, and who’s not.
It also reminds me of another case, one of the very few where all of the abuse pretty much was on one side. Guy and gal meet. They start dating. Then she decides to break it off (as she explained it to me, later, she decided that she just wasn’t that into him). He won’t let it go. He leaves tens of voicemails per day, sends hundreds of text messages per day. He calls her at work, and gets her in trouble with her boss not because of anything he says, but because he’s calling so often that he’s tying up the phone lines. She gets a restraining order. He violates it repeatedly, and in so doing commits crimes of harassment and criminal threat, but never does anything physical. He appears before a judge repeatedly. He gets found guilty of various domestic charges. The judge explains in no uncertain terms that if he violates it again, he goes to prison to serve a sentence of several years (based on the various domestic crimes and domestic order violations he was convicted of, at that point).
A few weeks later, the guy calls her up and asks if she wants to go to a football game with him. This is a violation of the restraining order and of his parole conditions. She reports it to me. I ask him to come to the station, and he does. When I ask him about what he did, he admits that he did it. He says that it was just an innocent question, and he doesn’t see what the big deal is; he just wanted her to know that he had tickets to a game, and find out if she wanted to come. I point out that he knows perfectly well that he is prohibited from having any kind of contact whatsoever. I point out that it’s a court order, as black-and-white as it comes, and not even a tiny bit negotiable outside of a court hearing. He says, “Well, I don’t agree with it. I think that judge is wrong.”
…and there’s nothing more to say. I tell him he’s under arrest. I call his parole officer, who says, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” His parole officer handcuffs him, tells him that per his conditions of release he’s going to prison to serve the rest of his sentence, and that they are driving directly there. And off the guy goes with the parole officer, arguing nonstop. Based on his behavior, I would guess that he is serving his several years in prison arguing non-stop to anyone who will listen that he shouldn’t be there, because he did nothing wrong. When he is released, if he doesn’t re-offend within six months, I’ll be astounded.
I tell this story because I think that most people simply don’t conceive of this kind of cognitive disconnect. It’s outside their experience. It is fundamentally irrational behavior, and most people — certainly almost everyone commenting at Alas — are basically kind, decent, reasonable people who probably have no exposure to this kind of magical thinking, where this guy thinks it’s okay to simply non-stop communicate with this gal until she — from his point of view — sees reason.
When I read about Gjoni and Quinn — and I’ve read other accounts than the one linked above — I am reminded of the second case I mention above. And if I were suddenly called upon to decide, based on the information I currently have, which of them is more dangerous to the other… Quinn’s behavior is a much poorer match for behavior I’ve seen before in stalkers.
Grace
Thanks for that, Grace. It articulates much of what I’ve been feeling as I read through this.
I figure her bias would be for feminists and against anything that smacks of MRAs or GamerGate
I assume you’ve not paid much attention to ozy’s blog then (for one thing, ozy identifies as genderqueer, not female). If zie hasn’t posted an “In Defense of Gamergate” article yet, color me surprised.
I’m not going to try to decide the Gjoni/Quinn matter.
I’m not sure what there is to decide. Are we talking about who was the ‘bad guy’ in their relationship? Why does that matter? I mean, that’s kind of what this whole thing boils down to, right – whatever Gjoni did is understandable because Quinn was a bitch and so deserved it?
Grace,
That cognitive disconnect is pretty much spot on matches the description of Quinn I read in TheZoePost. I haven’t seen much of what Gjoni has written besides that original post, so all I can see is a flailing attempt to rationalise some pretty intense emotions. However, the behaviour and writing of Quinn that I’ve seen exhibits an attention-seeking melodramatic style that seems like nothing more than an attempt to draw more and more sympathy, and its the exact style that I’ve seen in the people I’ve know in real life that hold the sort of cognitive disconnect you describe.
closetpuritan,
I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I read through the Hugo nominations from last year, there were a few examples that really stood out as not ‘really’ SF/F (“Wakulla Springs”, “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere”, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”). I can’t see how a work can be seriously nominated for a SF/F award if the SF/F element of the work is trivial and/or plays no significant part in the story. It suggests to me that a significant number of nominators (outside the puppies) were already voting for something other than the best SF/F stories. These stories can be contrasted with a something like “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, which while being as obnoxiously preachy some of John C Wright’s writing, is actually a SF/F story.
I find this criticism ironically amusing, mythago. If you re-read my paragraph that you were critiquing — or even the omitted part of the sentence you quoted — you’ll see why.
Zie endorsed this Ken White post, which hardly comes across to me as a ‘defense of GamerGate.’
First, there’s a difference between saying what Eron did was understandable, and saying Quinn “deserved it.” Sometimes people do things that are understandable, but still wrong. But no, it’s not about whether Eron or Zoe is the ‘bad guy,’ it’s that those of us who aren’t Eron or Zoe shouldn’t be writing or endorsing one-sided hit pieces against either one.
Desipis –
Regarding “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”:
There was an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in which Buffy wakes up in an asylum, and we find out that all the fantasy elements of “Buffy” are a dream-world constructed by a hallucinating Buffy. In the end of the episode, Buffy slips back into her fantasy world, but at no point is the “the entire series is a hallucination and no magic really exists” narrative contradicted (Joss Whedon has said that they deliberately left that possibility open).
So was Buffy therefore Not Fantasy?
How about the movie The Wizard of Oz, in which at the end we find out the whole movie was nothing but a dream? Is it wrong to thing of The Wizard of Oz as a fantasy movie?
Then there’s The Princess Bride, in which the whole narrative, including magical elements like bringing a corpse back to life, is explicitly nothing but a story told to a kid by his grandfather (or father, in the novel). Also, the adventure elements were also only a story told within the narrative. So is Princess Bride neither fantasy nor adventure?
Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court” also is explicitly a story told to the narrator by a man who may be lying, or deluded, or drunk. Not a fantasy story?
How about Alice in Wonderland? In the final moments of the book, Alice awakens from her dream. So would you say “Alice in Wonderland” is not a fantasy story?
The opening lines of Homer’s “The Odyssey” (“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy”) explicitly make it clear that the entire narrative is a story. So is “The Odyssey” not really fantasy?
I guess you could say that in all these stories, the fantasy elements, even if they were “just a dream” or “just a story,” were nonetheless an essential part of much of the narrative, and therefore not “Trivial.” But of course, the exact same thing is true of “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love.”
Your case regarding “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” seems even weaker. The story is built around a fantasy element (whenever people lie, water falls on them); how on earth is that NOT sf/f?
And this element is, even if you read the story only for the plot, significant to the story – in real life, Matt would never really have believed Gus’ declarations of love. But in this fantasy universe, it’s impossible for Matt to deny that Gus is telling the truth, and that sets the coming-out-to-family plot in motion. And Matt’s certainty – which would not exist without the fantasy element – is also significant to the conflict between Matt and his sister (see the scene in which Matt yanks the pan of hot oil away, for example).
This seems like an elaborate way of saying “how dare other fans like stories that don’t cater to my preferences?”
Why should other sf/f fans be expected to conform their Hugo votes to what you arbitrarily believe to be important elements of sf/f stories? Your standards would, if taken seriously, disqualify many classics of the genre from being considered part of the genre.
Personally, I didn’t love “Water that Falls,” although I liked it. It was beautifully written, but to me the character of Gus was so over-the-top perfect that he seemed more like a plot element than a person, and that throws me out of the story. In some ways, Gus is a male version of the manic pixie dream girl trope; he seems to have no existence outside of the purpose he serves for Matt’s need to be pushed outside of his comfort zone and grow.
(You could read Gus’ perfection as an element of Matt’s characterization; we’re just getting Matt’s POV, and Matt sees Gus as a perfect person. But I think I would have needed this to be explored more in the story for me to find it satisfying.)
But I think your objections would also cover stories I love, like Connie Willis’ “The Last of the Winnebagos” (Hugo award winner 1989). In that story, there are really only two science fiction elements: A plague that has made dogs go extinct years before the narrative begins, and a small portable camera that can identify, focus on and photograph human faces. (That part isn’t really science fiction now, but it was in 1989). Neither one of those sf elements are the main focus of the story – that is, the characters aren’t investigating the source of the dog-killing plague or anything like that. It’s a small, human story, in which the sf elements are used as the context for a story centered on emotions rather than technology.
Say, how do you suppose a story like that won a Hugo in 1989, long before SJWs allegedly destroyed traditional science fiction? It’s almost as if stories which focus on human hearts, rather than on technology, have been accepted as part of the genre for decades.
I assume then, desipis, that you agree with the people arguing that a bust of Lovecraft should not be the statuette for a fantasy award when Lovecraft is not considered fantasy by most people.
I don’t have a problem with people saying Dino’s not spec. I think Amps argument works; I think other readings work that don’t position it as SF; I am disinterested in arbitrating. However, some people — many — thought it was, including the publisher. It is, at any rate, in dialogue with genre, as is Wakulla (which technically has a supernaturalish ending).
Anyway, the problem of defining genre isn’t new. Andy Duncan has a story which I believe was nominated for the nebula years and years ago called “unique chicken goes in reverse” which I personally don’t view as SF, and therefore declined to publish on Podcastle. However, I didn’t tell ann Leckie, who recommended it to me, that she was acting out of insincere motives to suggest something *she also* thought was inappropriate for the magazine. I understood she drew the line around that story differently than I did. We disagreed.
There’s a tradition of stories responding to genre within genre. Karen Joy fowlers “what I didn’t see” is a response to tip tree, comes before brads time frame, has no overt spec element other than how it is situated and the context it’s meant to be read in, and I’m pretty sure was also nominated for stuff. Which caused controversy at the time.
Neil Gaiman’s “the problem of Susan,” in dialogue with Narnia, has been widely accepted as SF.
For what it’s worth, I think Dino and Wakulla can both be legitimately read as non-genre, which is a reason to decline to vote for them if that’s a an issue for you. To say others are wrong is the point of debating and fine; to assume they don’t believe what they’re saying is irritating.
Water — well, if you don’t think it’s SF, more power to you, and you’re welcome to argue it. I think the argument is more tenuous, though. My experience in the lit world suggests to me it would not be favorably received there by the mainstream who care about genre distinctions. Wakulla and Dino could cross-publish. I don’t think Water could.
Also, for what it’s worth, the disagreement re: genre positioning of dinosaur is pretty strong. Author of excellent traditional SF, Hugo-winning Nancy Kress, thought it was. I recently saw a blog comment by her partner saying it wasn’t.
People. They disagree on things.
This is complicated by the way that people associate authors with genres. A sufficiently popular SF author can write darn near anything and get it treated as SF because that’s where their fans are- that’s the market for what they wrote.
Is anyone else following the shootings at the “draw Mohammed” rally?
g’n’w @177
I’ve been following the news on it, and I for one am eagerly awaiting a wash of tasteless jokes in its wake. A sample:
Q. What were the “Draw Muhammad” shooters listening to on the drive to the event?
A. Two Tickets to Paradise.
Meanwhile, something more recent in the gamergate saga: Bomb Threat Targets GamerGate Meetup
Ampersand:
Re Dinosaur: I have no problem with the story within a story concept. However, unlike all the other examples you gave, I don’t see a coherent inner story in Dinosaur.
Re Water That Falls: I’m not saying that this one isn’t within the SF/F genre. When I read the story I felt it could have been told just as well without the SF/F element. The magical water played no role in the truth coming out, the characters all knew each other too well for it to be significant; it was simply a personal choice of the character involved to reveal the truth. The water was put in as a background element, and then its impact on the world largely ignored.
Re Wakulla: If someone had told me that it was a literary work describing life in Florida in the middle of last century I might have actually enjoyed it. But if you spend 95% of the story describing the mundane lives of people, and then in the last 5% point out there’s a monster that lives nearby but never actually bothers to interact with anyone, it seems like a stretch to call it SF/F.
I mean are the Hugo awards about the best SF/F and show casing the strength of the genre, or is it an award for the best writing that just happens to fall technically within the genre? When I read George R R Martin’s blog on the matter, I got the impression it was the great works which fell into the former category that had been honoured by the awards that gave the awards their gravitas.
Isn’t highlighting the best work that falls within the genre the best way to showcase the strength of the genre?
I mean, I think the Hugo awards are for “best/your favorite sf works of this year”, not “works that you think will be best at convincing someone to like sf/write in the genre/show that the genre is valuable”. I guess since it’s a fan award it’s whatever the fans think it is.
It’s interesting that an that Torgersen linked to approvingly contains a denunciation of hard sf in favor of adventure stories, space operas, etc. [“They didn’t know whether, once they plunged through six hundred pages of nasty, ugly world-building, they would ever emerge into any sort of light. Sometimes, the sf devolved into one long scientific exposition. Or into jargon-filled, hard-to-follow stories that realistically explored situations set up in the bad old days of pre-literary science fiction.”] If anything is “real” SF, I would think hard science fiction would be it. I don’t know how Torgersen feels about that particular bit of the essay. Still, the Sad Puppies seem to mostly be focused on the lack of “good old-fashioned adventure stories”; I haven’t seen them complaining about the lack of hard SF.
I have a theory: People talking about something not being “real” examples of the genre and upset enough to do more than just occasionally complain (and yes, I include the people pointing out that Lovecraft is not traditionally considered a fantasy author) are almost always not particularly upset about that, they’re upset about something else and using that as a supporting argument–while they believe it to be true, and believe it’s something that may convince other people, they’re not going to launch major campaigns to change things over it.
(Side note: Venus Plus X: not real SF? Too preachy about gender? Classic science fiction book by Theodore Sturgeon of Sturgeon’s Law fame?)
Venus Plus X was so good. At least, that was my opinion at the time I read it; it’s been a while.
EXTRA! EXTRA! NYT Editorial Page goes all-in for Trans Equality and issues a call for trans folk to post their stories on the NYT web page.
Read all about it…!
Internet hate mob drive Joss Whedon off twitter.
Whedon has always been strongly criticized by some feminists, that’s nothing new. Sometimes I’ve thought the criticisms were fair, sometimes I haven’t. I haven’t seen the new Avengers movie yet so I can’t comment on that.
I have to point out that Whendon not only didn’t write what “is commonly seen as probably the greatest run on the Wonder Woman comic book in the history of the character,” as that link claimed, I’m pretty sure he has never written the Wonder Woman comic book at all. (He wrote a Wonder Woman screenplay that hasn’t been publicly released for a movie that was never produced.)
It’s generally true that there are a lot of people on social media, including but surely not even CLOSE to limited to some feminists on Twitter, who act like assholes. And being hit by a lot of these people at once is a sucky experience for anyone.
But it’s also true that having done feminist work in the past doesn’t mean that your new movie has somehow earned immunity points and therefore can’t fairly be criticized for being sexist. I have no idea if Avengers II is sexist or not (again, I haven’t seen it yet), but no matter what Whedon has done or said in the past, none of it means that his new movie isn’t fair game for criticism. The “how DARE they criticize Joss when he has done SO MUCH for feminism” tone of that piece is ridiculous.
While I’m less forgiving of the connection between feminism as an ideology and people’s decision to be jerks on social media than ampersand, I have to add… is there any actual evidence that people being jerks to Joss Whedon on Twitter actually led to him deleting the account? He never cared much about twitter to begin with as far as I can tell, hadn’t been using it long, and social media feminists indulging in a cathartic communal hatred of Joss Whedon isn’t new.
Ampersand,
I’ll agree that’s not the best written article on the matter.
I agree with that, however no matter how much your movie is sexist, it doesn’t justify threats of violence and death.
Patrick, he was definitely seeing it. (The person in question has locked his/her Twitter so I can’t link to it any more, but I know one person who made a comment like “Who let Joss Whedon write Natasha” was blocked by him.) He hasn’t made a statement as to why he deleted his account, but I can’t imagine it had nothing to do with the comments he was getting, some of which were quite violent.
All right, guess I should eat my words: Joss Whedon denies he left Twitter due to feminist backlash.
Lots of people continue to try to blame Pam Geller for the fact that a couple of Muslim terrorists tried to kill her, and that she is now apparently on a target list for a variety of other Muslim terrorists. Because cartoons.
Fascinating, albeit a bit depressing.
Acting like an asshole should not be sufficient to warrant a death sentence.
I am sad to say this is not the first time I’ve had to use that sentence.
Some inconsistencies keep popping up in the responses to the Muslim-terrorist-shooting stuff.
1. To speak of Islamist violence, or to assert that there is problem in any of the current relatively-fundamental incarnations of modern-day Islam, is racist, and hateful, and irrational, and “islamophobic.” This applies to Geller, Hebdo, et. al.
2. It is predictable enough that Islamists may attempt to kill you if you say something which offends them, that victims of murder attempts can be said to have brought their attacks on themselves, to share responsibility, or to have “expected” attacks.
Two other hard-to-reconcile claims:
1. Modern day incarnations of Islam are compatible with core Western values. Like, say, free speech.
2. We’re going to have to change some core Western values–like, say, considering ways that we should restrict drawings, under the guise of calling them “hate speech”–to ensure compatibility with modern day incarnations of Islam.
Sure, Pam Geller is an asshole. So what? The Skokie Nazis were assholes, but we used to be able to ignore that in light of the larger and more important issues. People are scrambling–hard to say whether it’s out of fear of their own attacks–to find reasons NOT to defend Geller.
An interesting link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/05/charlie-hebdo-censorship-controversy-at-the-university-of-minnesota/
Gin @192,
I share your concern here re: double standards, but I think you could make your case more strongly by basing it on a specific quote or quotes. Something where you can say, “Here is a case where someone assigns some culpability to a victim of violence, saying their speech provoked that violence. They apply this standard differently when the perpetrators are non-Muslims.”
If you’re looking for an example, Ken White of Popehat wrote one about the incident recently: http://popehat.com/2015/05/04/unusually-stupid-mcclatchy-column-gets-free-speech-wrong/
Also, what’s the relation to the link you posted at the end? I mean it’s interesting, but I don’t see anyone inflicting or threatening violence in the incident, so I’m not sure what connection I’m supposed to draw between that and the literal attack on Geller’s event.
The link at the end was relating to my second one, i.e. the arguments for renaming blasphemy as “hate speech” and simultaneously arguing that it should not get 1st Amendment protections.
So, this guy named Bosch Fawstin, apparently an ex-Muslim, won the “Draw Mohammed” art contest.
Here’s his winning image–pretty clearly a specific strike at the “no drawings” issue. [Image: an angry Mohammed brandishing a sword, facing out of the cartoon and saying “You can’t draw me!” and the cartoonist saying “that’s why I draw you.”]
Here’s his blog.
Here’s the Washington Times article announcing that he is about to be added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “hate groups.”
I have no idea whether the people who seem to think that it was at least “understandable” if not “expected” to have violence are on the SPLC’s list of “haters.” SPLC’s website won’t load.
Any guesses?
I’m gonna make a wild guess that the reason that guy is going on the SPLC’s list is probably not because of the specific comic that he presented at the Draw Mohammed event, but rather because of his overall perspective on the world, including his muslim killing revenge-fantasy comic book character “Pigman,” with it’s polemical message asserting that the inherent nature of Islam is one of violence, repression, and terrorism. I’m pretty sure that’s what did it, rather than one comic of Mohammed.
I’m not personally sure how we should think about these things, because, well, most major religions are inherently hateful, and the whole point of religious pluralism is that we all sit in our little holes preaching that cosmic justice requires that our neighbors suffer infinite unending agony- a statement that the allegedly nicest folks will toss off as if it’s nothing, because, you know, suspension of disbelief and all, but properly understood, is, literally, maximally hateful. I’m generally fine with this as long as everyone keeps their hate within their own private communities. But that’s obviously a very vague line.
Things that assholery should not be punished with:
-death
-death threats
-15 years years in prison
-registering as a sex offender
I pretty much agree with everything Friedersdorf says here: What’s the right penalty for having sex on the beach in Florida?
And by the way, I really really agree that the people having sex on the beach were assholes. But the penalty for the sort of behavior should be fines and/or community service, not jail time. (Escalating amounts of fines/community service with repeat offenses of that type of behavior.)
Some people don’t want the US to be a theocracy. And some people are fighting over which kind of theocracy we should have. (I think that people who find the idea of Barack Obama being a Muslim upsetting are at least a little bit pro-theocracy.)
gin-and-whiskey: That’s a good cartoon. I haven’t looked at his other work, but death of the author. Uh, not literal death. You’re welcome, Kohai.
Mandolin: I am in the middle of Venus Plus X right now–I’m enjoying it so far!
Bernie Sanders and not wanting Clinton’s nomination win (if she does win) to be a coronation have come up here before: Don’t underestimate Bernie Sanders.
Avengers/Black Widow:
Alyssa Rosenberg argues that Black Widow IS a feminist character.
I09 condemns the death threats–This is why we can’t have nice things but argues that some of the criticism has merit.
It includes a full quote of one of the lines that has many people angry [spoilers spoilers spoilers]:
“You know what my final test was in the Red Room? They sterilized me, said it was one less thing to worry about. You think you’re the only monster on the team?”
At the time I watched it (I saw it Monday) I thought, “Oh, she must be talking about the fact that she’s murdered a bunch of people, it wouldn’t make sense for her to say that she’s a monster because she’s been sterilized under duress.” But even then I did notice that she had been talking about the sterilization immediately before. Maybe I’m right and that is what they really meant but it was written poorly, in which case the criticism is slightly different but it’s still deserving of criticism.
OTOH, I didn’t think it was super gender essentialist to have Black Widow angsting about family/babies; three male characters are shown to give thought to or care about having babies, though it wasn’t given as much screen time as Black Widow’s angsting, except for Hawkeye. Banner is also upset about being sterile (though it seemed like he was more unhappy about potential partners being deprived of kids than about being deprived himself; but then, people are often more upset about something that is bad for them when it impacts their partner). Captain America touches on it briefly, with a line about how going under the ice has changed him and having a family isn’t really a goal of his any more.
As spoilery as closetpuritan just was (the same spoilers) for Avengers: Age of Ultron:
I had heard about that conversation before I saw the film, and I was less disturbed about it than I thought I would be. I thought it was pretty clearly a reaction to, er, the events that had occurred just beforehand–everyone’s acting slightly OOC throughout these sections, due to…those things. It’s on her mind, and bothering her, a lot more than I think it would in the normal course of events, and I think calling herself a “monster” probably was a summation of everything that she’s become, including but not limited to the sterilization. That being said, while I can justify it in-universe really easily, I think it doesn’t play so well on a Doylist level as something the audience hears; but that’s the kind of thing that can be easy to overlook when you’re writing.
(I don’t totally agree with the io9 piece–in particular I think everything about the lullaby analysis is a bit of a stretch, and I think almost everyone, including most feminist critics, has a tendency to kind of downplay what she actually does in the various films she’s in–but I did like the summary of the character building throughout the franchise vs the character reveals in AoU.)
Also, this is of quite short-lived usefulness, but right now tomkatsumi on twitter is presenting the UK election results via cross-stitch (one color-coded stitch per seat, as they’re announced). It’s pretty nifty.