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cimoreneRead this. In which Kathryn Cramer should be shunned for our own safety and the sake of our communities, a post about the most recent fallout of the race and cultural appropriation debate '09 in which professionals from the sff field target their most vocal opponents in the debate for ad hominem attacks, public attempts to destroy their anonymity by linking their real identities and locations to their fandom presence, and then... redirects designed to infect your computer with malware when you try to visit the shameful posts.
The months-long debate started at cultural appropriation and characters of colour in sff, and moved on to an examination of the ways in which priviledge and power are able to deny criticisms and re-imagine events after Teresa Nielsen-Hayden engaged in a series of threats and ad hominem attacks on behalf of her husband's, Tor senior editor Patrick N-H's, hurt feelings. The latest round has devolved so far as to leave behind the territory of race entirely and enter the ludicrous realm of K.C.'s claims that there is no imaginable need for anonymity on the Internet and W.S.'s now-infamous (and noisy) schtick of sidetracking any discussion of race into claims about class. His new occupation is to worry his opponents with unsubstantiated speculation about their class backgrounds: Vom Marlowe in Fuckingng WS Insults Me & My Family (in which a random blogger's Blue Collar Cred is derided because she went to a renowned university) and Deepa D in To Burn a Bridge is Sometimes as Necessary as to Build One (in which an Indian woman is repeatedly subjected to WS's random ignorant assumptions about the Indian caste system which he admits are without foundation, but somehow assumes would nonetheless be accurate).
(At the current rate of devolution, the debate should be breathing with gills in Counselor Troi's bathtub by the end of the week.)
And yes, one point of this post is to say "What the fuck kind of game of Internet telephone are we playing when 'hurtful racial stereotypes in fiction are bad', two months later, somehow becomes 'being from India is morally wrong and so is using a pseudonym on the Internet'?" It's a rhetorical question, because I know what game we're playing: it's the game where institutionalised priviledge protects itself from any challenge, even verbal acknowledgement of its existence, using every weapon in its arsenal, and that eventually includes vicious personal attacks and changing the subject. Priviledge always wants to change the subject, because it owes its existence to its invisibility.
But the main point of this post is: SHAME. Shame on all the participants in the debate who engaged in these attacks which their intelligence tells them are not, by any standard, morally or ethically or socially acceptable. Shame for their lack of good faith arguing. Shame on the friends of these people who stand by silently and allow their battles to continue in this unacceptable manner without taking a stand against them, and no, commenting in Deepa D's journal that WS is crazy but you love him anyway does not count, Elizabeth Bear. And shame on anyone who tries to ruin people's lives by spreading their name, job, location, and life around the Internet. That behaviour isn't acceptable - not in our community of media fans, not in fanfiction, not in wider sf fandom (and they cannot pretend that it is), and not in our society at large. It's not morally okay, ethically okay, or socially acceptable. It earns shunning, so I say: SHUN THEM. Shun them, remember what they did to deserve it, and spread the word of what they've done so that their character is known.
The point of shunning and shaming is not only to spread the word and warn potential future victims of the transgressor. That's one motivation, but another one is to set a boundary - a way for the culture and the community to draw a line and say THIS IS NOT OKAY. The more voices who say it, the more powerful the line is and the stronger the deterrent. That's why it is so harmful that earlier participants in the debate aren't saying it; that's why the silence of Bear and that writer whose name I've forgotten and the Nielsen-Haydens are their consent and complicity (not that I expected different from them at this point). And that's why it's important that more voices in fandom speak up at this time, and why I hope that voices from the sff field at large, perhaps even outside of our semi-detached media fandom blogosphere, will be heard to say the same thing.
The months-long debate started at cultural appropriation and characters of colour in sff, and moved on to an examination of the ways in which priviledge and power are able to deny criticisms and re-imagine events after Teresa Nielsen-Hayden engaged in a series of threats and ad hominem attacks on behalf of her husband's, Tor senior editor Patrick N-H's, hurt feelings. The latest round has devolved so far as to leave behind the territory of race entirely and enter the ludicrous realm of K.C.'s claims that there is no imaginable need for anonymity on the Internet and W.S.'s now-infamous (and noisy) schtick of sidetracking any discussion of race into claims about class. His new occupation is to worry his opponents with unsubstantiated speculation about their class backgrounds: Vom Marlowe in Fuckingng WS Insults Me & My Family (in which a random blogger's Blue Collar Cred is derided because she went to a renowned university) and Deepa D in To Burn a Bridge is Sometimes as Necessary as to Build One (in which an Indian woman is repeatedly subjected to WS's random ignorant assumptions about the Indian caste system which he admits are without foundation, but somehow assumes would nonetheless be accurate).
(At the current rate of devolution, the debate should be breathing with gills in Counselor Troi's bathtub by the end of the week.)
And yes, one point of this post is to say "What the fuck kind of game of Internet telephone are we playing when 'hurtful racial stereotypes in fiction are bad', two months later, somehow becomes 'being from India is morally wrong and so is using a pseudonym on the Internet'?" It's a rhetorical question, because I know what game we're playing: it's the game where institutionalised priviledge protects itself from any challenge, even verbal acknowledgement of its existence, using every weapon in its arsenal, and that eventually includes vicious personal attacks and changing the subject. Priviledge always wants to change the subject, because it owes its existence to its invisibility.
But the main point of this post is: SHAME. Shame on all the participants in the debate who engaged in these attacks which their intelligence tells them are not, by any standard, morally or ethically or socially acceptable. Shame for their lack of good faith arguing. Shame on the friends of these people who stand by silently and allow their battles to continue in this unacceptable manner without taking a stand against them, and no, commenting in Deepa D's journal that WS is crazy but you love him anyway does not count, Elizabeth Bear. And shame on anyone who tries to ruin people's lives by spreading their name, job, location, and life around the Internet. That behaviour isn't acceptable - not in our community of media fans, not in fanfiction, not in wider sf fandom (and they cannot pretend that it is), and not in our society at large. It's not morally okay, ethically okay, or socially acceptable. It earns shunning, so I say: SHUN THEM. Shun them, remember what they did to deserve it, and spread the word of what they've done so that their character is known.
The point of shunning and shaming is not only to spread the word and warn potential future victims of the transgressor. That's one motivation, but another one is to set a boundary - a way for the culture and the community to draw a line and say THIS IS NOT OKAY. The more voices who say it, the more powerful the line is and the stronger the deterrent. That's why it is so harmful that earlier participants in the debate aren't saying it; that's why the silence of Bear and that writer whose name I've forgotten and the Nielsen-Haydens are their consent and complicity (not that I expected different from them at this point). And that's why it's important that more voices in fandom speak up at this time, and why I hope that voices from the sff field at large, perhaps even outside of our semi-detached media fandom blogosphere, will be heard to say the same thing.
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(no subject)
Date: 4 Mar 2009 01:35 pm (UTC)YES! I am so, so angry -- what the fuck is going on their little minds? Esp. that whole "oh, he's really a nice guy off the internet" ploy. I call bullshit, and then some.
(no subject)
Date: 4 Mar 2009 03:18 pm (UTC)Perhaps he should stay off the internet, then.
(no subject)
Date: 4 Mar 2009 03:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4 Mar 2009 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6 Mar 2009 01:52 pm (UTC)An excellent post,