Pompeii, Krakatoa, Sasquan — only one of them was a science fiction convention…
(1) Dilbert bypasses actual writing to work on social media marketing for his sci-fi novel.
Yes, sometimes there is a fine line between documentary and parody.
(2) SF Signal’s new Mind Meld “Exploring Fear in Fiction” poses this question to its participants:
How do you use the fears that fascinate you in your writing, and how do the things in those dark recesses and corners of your mind come to the fore? What authors evoke the fears lurking in your own head and how do they do it?
Rising to meet the challenge: Stina Leicht, Kendare Blake, Robert Jackson Bennett, David Annandale, Lisa Morton, Mercedes M. Yardley, Mark Yon, David Nickle, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Andrew Pyper, Kate Maruyama, Anna Yeatts, Tiemen Zwaan, K. V. Johansen.
(3) Camestros Felapton (Nick asks, is that your real name?) has produced a literal (did I use that word right CPaca?) map of the 2015 Puppy kerfuffle.
A map of the various websites and groupings involved in the on-going internet kerfuffle over the Hugo Awards. Most symbols don’t really mean anything. Groupings of bloggers under a heading in bold. Crossed swords represent places where a notable discussion/argument etc occurred. This may include Brad Torgersen explaining what he intended or some kind of deceleration of intent (e.g. a boycott) or somebody pointing out what somebody else had done.
Several people offered corrections and suggestions. The best is CPaca’s plaint, “What, you couldn’t have a little Tank driving off a cliff in Marmot Gulch?”
(4) Sarah A. Hoyt’s version of the past six months of Puppies, “The goat kicks back”, shuffles the cards and deals them in a way that makes sense to her. That generally means belittling critics, or treating them as if they don’t have agency.
Which brings up “I’ll walk with you.”
I like Vonda and read her long before I came here. And I’m sure all she’s heard is the game of telephone in her circles, the same nonsense that convinced the dim bulb Irene Gallo that we’re all “right wing extremists.” I’m just going to say she’s trying to be nice, and the reprehensible people in this equation are the ones who so “Othered” Sad Puppies as to convince her we’re some kind of bigots.
To borrow Mark’s description in a comment here: “It’s a whistlestop tour through puppy history, illustrated with out-of-context screen shots and bizarre conflations of different events, culminating in identifying a clearly satirical website as an attempt to trick potential puppies.”
(5) Chris Meadows sums up the Antonelli story for TeleRead and makes a reliable prediction:
This is really something in the nature of a pre-game show to the kerfuffle that will invariably follow the announcement of this year’s Hugo winners (or “No Award” votes, as the case might be). No matter who wins, or whether nobody wins, some people won’t be happy, and there will be plenty of ranting and grumbling from both sides. And the Puppies will emerge determined to do even better (or worse) next year—which they might well be able to do, since Worldcon bylaws mean that no change designed to rebalance the procedure can go into effect until two years after it was proposed.
I just keep thinking of the old aphorism about academic politics being so vicious because there is so little at stake. It occurs to me that could very easily describe the politicking over literary awards, too.
(6) Although Ann Somerville’s primary interest is rebutting selected statements by K. Tempest Bradford, in the process she distilled the latest kerfuffle into a few well-chosen, pungent words.
As letting Antonelli off the hook, this is simply bullshit. No one in the comments on that post is saying “Antonelli should be let off the hook or let’s wait and see or oh it was so long ago”. The only defenders of Antonelli I’ve heard about at all have been his Sad/Rabid Puppy fellow travellers. Even at the very start of this, when all we knew about Antonelli is what he’d done to Gerrold, his apology, and Gerrold’s acceptance, there were easily half of those commenting condemning him outright and saying the apology was self-serving. The others thought Gerrold had been generous and on the face of it, the apology matched the offence. The more information we have had about Antonelli’s behaviour, has meant those praising him for his apology have changed their minds, and more people have joined in to say the apologies are nothing but an abuser’s typical tactic.
No one is letting Antonelli off the hook, not even Sasquan. Whether he’s facing the full consequence of his behaviour is another matter. But the idea that he is being given a free pass is nonsense – and again Bradford knows this. She also knows the only reason Antonelli’s apology was given any consideration by serious people was because the only known (at the time) victim of his actions, accepted it.
(7) Lyda Morehouse in “Dirty Dogs, Old Tricks” on Bitter Empire pays David Gerrold several ironic compliments.
Amazingly, this so-called reaction to the way he thought he was being treated has resulted in… (drum roll, please)… zero consequences for Antonelli.
Yep, the way he’s been treated by his loyal opposition is well beyond fairly. A few more people know his name now, and, at worst, have crossed him off their to-be-read list. But, the folks running the Hugo Awards, the Sasaquan WorldCon Committee, have not banned him (though they really kind of wanted to). Guess why they didn’t?
Because David Gerrold asked them not to.
In fact, Gerrold has been calling for peace all over the internet and asking everyone to try to be more compassionate.
Wow, yeah, what a psychotic that Gerrold guy is.
Good thing the cops know to be on the alert. You wouldn’t want a raging wanker like Gerrold wrecking your party.
(8) Vox Day has his own notions about giving peace a chance:
As for Sasquan, we have no interest in disrupting it, but we do expect our attendees to be prepared for any SJWs inclined to violate the posted Sasquan harassment policy. That is why I encourage every VFM, Puppy, and Dread Ilk attending Sasquan to keep a recorder running at all times on your Android or iOS phone. If you’re subsequently subject to any verbal or physical harassment, you’ll have material evidence on hand to bring to the relevant authorities. More importantly, you’ll also have a strong defense to present against the inevitable SJW lies concerning your own behavior.
(9) Deb Geisler, chair of the 2004 Worldcon, puts in perspective what the 2015 committee is going through.
Today, there is a group of people who are starting their own week-long count-down to the World Science Fiction Convention. This one is in Spokane, Washington. Their convention has been fraught with difficulties. Many of their people are not laughing. They’re not even grinning.
They are still trying to build something special for fandom. They’re often not getting much satisfaction. In fact, some are sitting around right now, wishing they were somewhere else, dealing with something else. Perhaps at a villa in Tuscany…perhaps in Port-aux-Français (since that’s as far away as one can get from the Spokane Convention Center and still be on land) in the Kerguelen Islands (also known as the Desolation Islands – you can get to the irony of that on your own)….
What I will say is this: If you are going to the convention, say something nice to the people you meet with a “committee” or “staff” or “volunteer/gopher” ribbon. You don’t need to compliment them on things. Just say something nice. Or maybe something that will make them laugh. Or smile at them and say nothing at all. (This last works particularly well when you don’t much like them.)
For those of us who have slogged this slog, sometimes a smile from someone is better than a paycheck. Hell, it *IS* the paycheck.
(10) Anne Rice in a public comment on Facebook renews the argument that the limit on freedom of speech depends on a willingness to defend its least savory examples.
Signing off with thanks to all who have participated in our discussions of fiction writing today. I want to leave you with this thought: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who “has a right” to write about what. Some even advocate the out and out censorship of older works using words we now deem wholly unacceptable. Some are critical of novels involving rape. Some argue that white novelists have no right to write about people of color; and Christians should not write novels involving Jews or topics involving Jews. I think all this is dangerous. I think we have to stand up for the freedom of fiction writers to write what they want to write, no matter how offensive it might be to some one else. We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored. We must stand up for freedom in the arts. I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised. It is always a matter of personal choice whether one buys or reads a book. No one can make you do it. But internet campaigns to destroy authors accused of inappropriate subject matter or attitudes are dangerous to us all. That’s my take on it. Ignore what you find offensive. Or talk about it in a substantive way. But don’t set out to censor it, or destroy the career of the offending author.
(11) And here’s an unsavory example you can practice on: Tangent Online Special: Androgyny Destroys SF Review of Lightspeed.
Therefore, Tangent Online will show how the philosophy, the core defining predicates of androgyny can be applied to non-fiction as well as fiction and how in other ways it should be applied to areas of our real world lives. Thus, the table of contents for the August issue of Lightspeed below will contain only story titles—no author names; for revealing an author’s name would give immediate rise to the same conscious or unconscious bias we find in so much of our fiction. As well, the name of the reviewer is not mentioned for the same reason. Following the lead of the special Women and Queers Destroy SF issues of Lightspeed, you will find an essay following the review. Its author is also nameless, as it should be. It is the content of the words which truly matter and not who penned them. Content over author or editor is the only way to go in the Androgyny Revolution.
[Thanks to Mark and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist .]
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“I would like to return this troll. It is warped.”
I’m pretty sure Karry C and Brad T weren’t claiming a Gramscian cultural hegemony as the problem with the Hugos as that would directly negate their claim of an active bias in favor of one determined by socio-economic forces, and which a set of slates and voting campaigns would be ineffectual against.
Bruce:
Oddly, the Cuinn thing played out entirely online, so if they dread him pointing his scant followers at them, they should probably dread saying bad things about him online rather more than being across the room from him at a convention. But they don’t, or at least don’t seem to. They’re happy to say bad things about him online, even though that seems to be what has triggered him in every instance. [Well, Cuinn did something he didn’t enjoy via e-mail, but close enough.]
Still, if they dread a keyboard warrior in person but not at the keyboard, I’m not one to deny their feelings, even if I scratch my head a bit.
I just wonder how you build a consistent policy around that, with all the questions I brought up about harassment policies earlier.
To summon the Brian you must chant his name three times.
Brian Zee
Brian Zee
Come spread the FUD on PH (E)
Filk and troll and annoy me
We call you hither Bria…
Phew, just stopped myself …
[Note to MG: messed up my own email address on my phone Sorry ]
Richard Brandt — Nah, it’s only resting. Probly after a long flight back from Malaysia.
It’s not resting, it’s just missing then
Ooh! I know this one!
Because a random Muslim is less likely than Correia or Tank Marmot to pepper their speech with homophobic, misogynist and transmisogynistic insults (as both Correia and Tank Marmot are known to do, though admittedly the latter more than the former) and (in Tank Marmot’s case) threats to come find their interlocutor and punch them in the face for disagreeing with them?
Seriously, you really should go look up Tank Marmot’s previous participation in the Puppy round-up threads. If after doing so you don’t understand what makes polite and productive conversation with him so difficult, then there is little point in speaking to one another, as we will have encountered a conceptual divide too vast to cross.
Honestly, there are a vast number of people with differing religions, cultural backgrounds, and ideologies with whom I can hold a pleasant conversation. However, I draw the line at folks whose ideologies include the assertion that I am less human than they are. I frankly feel little obligation to make nice with someone who considers my equal humanity up for debate.
*The name of power has been replaced with the anagram commonly used at File770, because the spam filter can’t be having with that and who’s got time? But then, you say you’ve been reading this blog since January. You’re probably familiar with what words of power get a post caught in the spam trap.
buwaya:
No, we’re discussing the fact that something like 15% of the nominators decided to block vote rather than nominating their own personal favorites, contrary to generations of Hugo nominating tradition, thus disenfranchising 85% or so of the nominators, and getting drek like “Wisdom from My Internet” onto the Hugo ballot instead of, for instance, the Heinlein biography that would otherwise almost certainly have made it onto the ballot.
And we’re discussing the reasons that they, themselves have said they did so, which consists of lots and lots of name-calling and baseless (and often invented) insults on their part against the rest of the Hugo nominators. Note that when the non-Puppies call them Sad Puppies or Rabid Puppies or just Puppies, we’re calling them the name which they chose for themselves; it’s thus not an insult.
As for “no objective damage”, what do you think about the fact that works such as the Heinlein bio were forced off the ballot by a small minority of the nominators? Do you think it’s honorable and right that a mere 15% or so of the nominators, if they choose to vote in near lockstep, can nearly completely disenfranchise the other 85% when it comes to Hugo nominations? Why or why not?
In afterthought: Anyone comparing random Muslims to Larry Correia or Tank Marmot in terms of civility ought to be ashamed of themselves. What a terrible insult to such a large and largely blameless group of people! …some of whom are right here to speak for themselves, should they care to.
Mechanism of Hugo voting is important ?
What does that have to do with anything ?
That is missing the forest for the trees.
The issue at its root is not the Hugo voting.
This is controversial only because it is a tactic by the original aggrieved side.
Some of you at least seem to feel that it is a matter of changing voting mechanisms and all will be solved.
This is a broad cultural war. Beale says this, and he is right, whatever side you are on. It is a usually unstated motive of many of the other puppies, which probably leads to a degree of incoherence. Wars of world-view are like that, there are no satisfactorily definable concrete points at issue. This is tribe against tribe for the sake of tribal identity and the minds of the future.
Hey, it doesn’t get more SF than that. This sort of struggle is all over JCW’s magnum opus, the Count to a Trillion books, in spite of a need for severe editing.
Read that BTW, its a struggle but the scope and detail are incredible.
Consider this Hugo hijack Science Fiction of the deed, to paraphrase the old anarchists. If this seems semi-fictional and fantastic, then, well, so much the better. It’s already succeeded. Hey, it got me buying Stross and Wright and dear old Clifford Simak, and a dozen more.
It is a symptom of a much bigger struggle, which no doubt is inconveniencing many who want to ignore it. I sympathize, to that extent. You are inconvenienced.
I suggest that one should consider a different take on it. The whole thing is itself a collective work of art, whatever the outcome.
It certainly deserves a record number of Hugos.
Well, you say that, but you don’t mean it. As you’ve explained, people don’t say what they mean, and you’re a poor communicator besides, so it’s not what people actually write, it’s what they mean, which is derived by assertion.
That’s how we know your really agree with us on everything, even the stuff we don’t agree with each other on. You’re solidly in agreement that slating the Hugos and how the Hugos are voted for is the key issue.
Thanks for your support.
Buwaya
1. Your post looks more like textual diarrhoea than an attempt at any sort of a point. You’re not so interesting that I’m going to try and ruminate on the mysteries of your writing. Be clearer.
2. Please answer my earlier question, namely:
This thread makes me nostalgic for way back when, when we were calling Brian out:
I called you a Sealion months ago and that’s what you are.
I mean seriously, was he littoraly calling him a sea lion?
And in literal literary littoral matters, I still have fond memories of Camestros Felapton’s Map. Though I think that a Boston should point out that GRRM LJ US the last standing remnants of the sunken continent of LiveJournalLand. Though we might include the Charybdis of More Words Deeper Hole..
Also, IMO, the very magical girl show these days is Steven Universe.
Troll:
Yes it is. Cultural warriors with no interest in SF can bugger off.
Kurt, the scenario I imagine and that I think others imagining goes like this: Fan X (unbeknownst to Speed, Fan X is his long-lost brother 770) goes to a panel where Antonelli is one of the participants and asks impertinent questions. Antonelli gets pissed off, sits down, gets out his phone or laptop and makes a post, perhaps with a picture, of the jerk who was so rude to him in that Puppy-hating, Puppy-fearing way we Maoist academicians all have. His readers go to work with harassment.
Or, alternatively, Fan X is impertinent, Antonelli adds him to his enemies list, and makes a long post about all of them and their sundry offenses after the con’s over. His readers go work.
Well, to start I haven’t called anyone names (that I recall), I have agreed to be corrected as required, and I have not expressed any strong opinion regarding anyone’s taste in literature.
And I have agreed to criticize, to a degree, various people you dislike.
(Beale, Wright) . So I have met you part way.
SF is cultural warfare.
Almost by definition.
This is my future, this is my narrative of what ought to be or what may be, this is my opinion on some transcendent idea.
Even Conan stories change minds.
Bruce —
I’m not sure that’s quite the scenario — if they dread being in the same room with him, why did they go to his panel and talk to him? And why aren’t they concerned about any of that when they’re online, calling him unpleasant things? Is that not impertinent?
And what about the rest of it? If a consistent Code of Conduct is a good thing (and it is, I’d say), and Antonelli should be banned not even for harassing Cuinn but for making it possible for his pathetic group of followers to do so, whether intentionally or unintentionally, then isn’t that an issue at every con, not just Sasquan? And what about Tank Marmot’s online threats, which people here have said make them feel unsafe around him?
Don’t make me type out all the questions again, please. What are the parameters of a Code of Conduct that requires policing the internet? Should Sasquan ban Antonelli even if the Gerrold Letter hadn’t been Sasquan-oriented, but had still led Cuinn to bounce his story?
I understand that you say they dread him in person in a way they don’t dread him online, even though he’s never, as far as we know, gone after people he photographed from a panel table at a con, but has gone after people he finds annoying online. Hey, dread is dread. Even if I don’t find it logical, that’s not to say it isn’t there.
I keep pointing out I don’t care if Antonelli gets to go to Sasquan, I’m interested in the boundaries of a harassment policy, and you keep telling me people dread Antonelli. So fine, let’s pretend they kicked him out instead. How does a consistent CoC address that for everyone else that someone might potentially dread at a con? How does one proceed with that as a foundation?
What happens if he wants to go to WisCon or MystiCon? Same issues, right? He’s got his phone and people might be impertinent, right? But there’s no letter to the police about their GoH. What do they do?
I’m not being Socratic here. I genuinely don’t know where the boundaries should be drawn.
The trolling is strong with this one.
Aw, you don’t mean any of that, Buwaya. We know, because you said it, and people don’t say things they mean.
Kurt: I’m still poking my way through this, so you’re getting work in progress. There’s a part I don’t yet have words for.
Okay. I’ll try to hold off responding until you let me know you’re done poking, and I can see the whole thing. I don’t have answers myself.
I liked it.
That’s a keeper. Did you just make it up, or is it one of those vestiges from Usenet?
You’re not fooling anyone, Brian.
But then, that’s been true for a while.
Kurt: The more I think about it, the more I think the difficulty with words is a big part of the fear. For those of us with PTSD and other such complications, life has voids in it. Thinking too intently about stuff orbiting triggers is like staring at the sun. The thought of being around someone like Antonelli is terrifying because he’s clearly willing to engage in efforts to make his enemies miserable or worse and chooses his enemies according to criteria that don’t make much sense. So then we start thinking through things that might set him off, and it devolves into tangles like “Suppose he walks past me and friends dissing someone else and thinks it’s an assault on him?” I would not go out of my way to interact with him, but can I keep sufficiently out of his way? I wouldn’t know, and I’d worry about it.
I think others are feeling something more or less like that. I can point at three targets of his in four months. That’s way, way too many to feel confident.
Just so long as the Muslims don’t go organising any Hugos slates. Then? Oh, it’s on, entire Muslim world. In the grand tradition of the Skibbereen Eagle, File 770 Has It’s Eye On You.
You called homosexuals calamities. Which means….
Oh, the Hugo stage is coming on over the hills
With David Gerrold in a flowing red dress and and a wig
He’s given awards
The rockets will fly
No-award-away no-award-away no-award-away!
I think that we broke the latest troll. It seems to have devolved into word salads and non sequitors.
@Kurt: (musings on inter-con communication WRT harrassment policies)
One perk of attending convention meetings, at least in my area, is that if you’re at the right ones, you can participate in the guest selection process. While I decline to name any of the guests I’ve heard discussed, I will observe that their reputations certainly play a role in their inclusion on or exclusion from the longlist that gets built from the initial “brainstorming” stage… just as their work (do we like their stuff?), the perceived size of their audience (will they be a draw?), their location (will it break us to get them here?), and other such factors do.
Sometimes there is a substantial amount of lobbying back and forth in the meetings, and sometimes one person present reveals something about the proposed guest that results in a significant, fast decision in either direction. Perhaps someone we invited last year couldn’t make it, but now their schedule’s free; odds are that person will make not just the longlist, but the top of the shortlist. Then again, maybe somebody’s heard that as good as this person’s work is, they’re obnoxious and abrasive in person; chances are good that this will disqualify that individual from consideration as surely as if they were on a blacklist. Sometimes it’s something as basic as “he doesn’t do cons anymore” or “she doesn’t travel to this part of the planet” or “one of his conditions for acceptance is logistically problematic” – a neutral dealbreaker.
There is one local convention that I will be skipping next year, because one of the lead Puppies is listed as a guest. (No, I’m not talking about LibertyCon. I’ve said my piece on that.) Since I traditionally work as staff at that event, I have contacted my “boss” to relate this information. It won’t prevent me from attending in 2017, though, and I relayed that as well. Taking this back to hypotheticals, if enough regulars or volunteers were to do such a thing, it is conceivable that the guest’s invitation might be revoked. This sort of situation is one of the headaches of running a convention.
In other words, fandom has an effective grapevine. It’s not always right, and that’s rarely fair, but it exists… and cons use it. I have been staff at multiple conventions in the same year, and that’s not unique. I primarily think of one person as the chair of con X, see them at meetings for con Y, know they’re involved in a significant way with con Z, and have seen them in the past couple of years as a guest liaison at con W. I have also seen people stop volunteering at two related cons because they disagreed with a decision their chair made. Fans talk. We’re fans; it’s in the job description.
All of which is to say that if I were at a guest-selection meeting for any convention and someone suggested inviting LA, the first thing out of my mouth would probably be an incredulous, “You mean that jackass who tried to sic the cops on a Worldcon GOH?” I would not be at all surprised if that question were met with a “He did what? Right, so, moving on…” from whomever was running the meeting. That’s a kind of drama that no convention wants.
The whole point to having a guest selection meeting is to get that sort of information out before any invitations are made, and chances are that it happens at any con that’s been around longer than a couple of years. It’s not a secret cabal, but every group has gossip, and all gossip has some effect on decisions. Hence, grapevines and quiet decisions not to invite Jackass X because even though he sells well, Laidback F has written some good stuff and is more personable.
The same sort of thing probably happens in comics, no? A book needs a new artist, and the guy who does amazing work but is chronically late gets passed over in favor of a competent guy who meets his deadlines. There doesn’t have to be a formal line of communication between competing editorial departments for that word to get around, and I strongly suspect that you’ve thought of a couple of examples in the time it took to read this paragraph.
Um, by watching it and talking about what we like?
If you had been following File770 as you suggest you would have noticed a couple of long anime discussions. Here is a list of shows mentioned plus some extras I added.
Shows for Anime Enthusiasts to Consider(From a File 770 conversation)
@Rose
I’m not sure if I’d classify Steven Universe as a magical girl series, since it doesn’t share many of the tropes I think of when I think “magical girl”. (Although, the theme of the power of love and friendship is a definite commonality.)
It is however, one of the best shows on television and anyone who isn’t watching is missing out on something amazing. I intend on nominating an episode or two for a Hugo next year. I’m most seriously considering “The Return/Jail Break”, “Sworn to the Sword”, or “Alone Together”, as of this date.
And now I need to go listen to aivi & surasshu’s soundcloud. Because “Stronger Than You” and “Do It For Her” are calling to me.
I think we’ve reached the infinitely repeating troll singularity with buwaya. Go back to the beginning, please. The “puppies” are about gaming the Hugo vote. All of their opinions are only relevant to the rest of fandom because they gamed the Hugos, completely dominating it with their fiction and non-fiction, and posting many essays, comments, press releases and so on defending their actions.
Without the gaming of the Hugos, I would know Torgersen as a writer of uninteresting Mormon-themed SF that gets onto Hugo ballots for some reason (and would probably still be getting him mixed up with whoever wrote that Mormon space whales story), Correia as a writer of urban fantasy that some of my friends like but I was never able to get into, Beale as that weirdo racist misogynist who’s always feuding with Scalzi, and Wright, Antonelli, etc. not at all. I wouldn’t know who they were or what they think, and if I did know, it wouldn’t seem terribly relevant.
Their gaming of the Hugos is the only reason I have an opinion about them at all. It’s the only thing that DOES matter.
Pissed off, more like. I don’t care about the Hugos on account of convenience. And whatever this “bigger struggle” is — unless you can explain exactly what it is in plain coherent English, I’m going to continue to assume it is nothing. A personal metaphor.
If by “work of art” you mean “bad prank,” this might be something we agree on.
And you still haven’t explained exactly how File770 regulars are more parochial than sad-rabid regulars. You’ve mostly asked a lot of questions like, “have you ever talked civilly to some person you really disagreed with?” as if you assumed the answer would be no, and when the answer was yes… well, what?
This might be long. Apologies.
Context: I’m the past and future Chair of the Code of Conduct Committee for Minicon, which is currently a local convention in the 500 attendee range. I’m also currently on the Board for Mnstf, a local sf club that sponsors Minicon. I was instrumental in writing the current anti-harassment policy and procedure for our club, as well. I’m kind of neck deep in a lot of this.
I don’t like the word “safety” when we talk about harassment issues. The reason is that safety means too many things, and has both objective and subjective components, which lead to competing narratives, and that tends to lead one down ratholes. Nasty, dank ratholes.
In a lot of ways, harassment is as much or more about harassing someone’s squee as it is about safety. I’ve been harassed. I’ve even been (technically) assaulted. It didn’t make me feel particularly unsafe. It made me toweringly angry. When we create a safety narrative, one of the things we do is limit our definition of what is and isn’t acceptable based on the response of the target. This is a serious problem, since people respond in very different ways to unacceptable behavior. Fear is only one possible response. Moreover, we keep on trying to create victims. A bad behavior doesn’t stop being bad if the target declines to be upset by it. But if we insist that the target act like a victim, we are actually revictimizing the target. Worse, we use that as an excuse not to deal with a real problem, whose behavior will, later, frighten and upset someone. Just because a particular target isn’t afraid doesn’t mean that the behavior isn’t frightening. (I have a longer story about being 16 and having someone threaten to rape me. He didn’t frighten me, because I was more afraid of my parents. This doesn’t mean that what he did wasn’t terrifying, even if I failed to react that way. I just had some weird, specialized circumstances.)
I tend to view harassment as a consent issue, primarily. Harassment is where there is an interaction where one of the parties does not consent, and the other party persists. There are other problematic behaviors, all the way up to illegal behaviors, and many of these do not require multiple instances in order to be ruled completely unacceptable.
In re: LA. The letter to the police is sufficient, in my opinion, to revoke his membership. That is the kind of epic fail that doesn’t require multiple instances. It threatens both a member and the convention as a legal entity. Furthermore, an inquiry into patterns of behavior would indicate that this is a person who doesn’t have a lot of respect for other people. Whether what Sasquan decided to do was wise I can’t really judge. Although transparency is a wonderful thing, the problem is that when making this kind of judgment, the concom almost certainly ended up using some information that they can’t publish. In general, I think that concoms shouldn’t try to publish extensive justifications of their decisions. Most of the time, at least some of the information you are working with is either confidential (the reporter or another person really doesn’t want that information made public) or you are using a certain amount of rumor and public reputation. There will also, likely, be a lot of contextual considerations that are almost impossible to explain. However, the convention should never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, put the responsibility for their decision on the reporter, or the target. The convention must own their own decision, whatever it is. Even if one of the factors they considered was the target’s preference (and, really, you probably don’t want to do that), you do not use that as part of your explanation. Because, in the end, even if that was a factor, saying so makes it sound like the target responsible for your behavior. Don’t do that! Ever!
One of the issues with Lou’s behavior on line versus in person is this: on line, you have an ability to decide whether or not to engage. You can make a considered judgment about commenting on his blog, or commenting elsewhere and using his name. At a convention, chance encounters are entirely possible. And he may be on programming items with other people that you do really want to see. His presence may actually constrain your behavior, if you are afraid of him, in ways that are not entirely analogous to on line interactions. But should conventions ban people solely for their online behavior? Oy, what a can of worms.
One, that, in fact, Minicon wrestles with. There’s a local writer who was heavily involved in RaceFail who does sometimes attend. His on line behavior was not nearly as bad as LA, but it was really fucking bad. And remains incredibly unacceptable, over the course of many years. On the other hand, his in person behavior is nearly impeccable. He’s well known, here, and some people like him. He is capable of great kindness and generosity, and is rarely a dick in person. So, what do we do? We decided that our job was to police our space, but not the internet at large. We decided to stick to enforcing our code of conduct. We also didn’t put him on programming. The sad fact is that there are probably some people who read his name tag, recoiled, and felt uncomfortable. But that is probably true of a whole bunch of people whose names I don’t know, who also had epic fails in portions of the on line world I haven’t been privy to.
I am so glad I’m not dealing with this issue for Worldcon. Minicon is already difficult enough.
Arghh, somehow I managed a partial post without noticing, at 6:57 a.m. So sorry. If deletable, please delete.
Really, I went on long enough. Don’t need to do it twice.
@RedWombat
I really look forward to seeing the Bob story! *squee*
More generally, regarding tolerating people with different views, I’m pretty sure my in-laws have much more conservative views than mine. I like them much better than Puppy leaders of all stripes because:
1) They keep any active hate to a minimum in public. Maybe they think gay marriage is weird and upsetting, but they don’t stand up and call gay people “a calamity” right in front of my face, or badmouth them in public screeds intended to explain what they have done and win friends to their side.
2) They haven’t *done* anything to shove gay people out of public spaces. They haven’t, for instance, conspired to fill every place on a bus with their friends to keep those icky gays from riding the bus. Or conspired to fill every place on a Hugo ballot with their friends for a similar purpose.
(Though lets be honest here, it’s looking more and more like the culture war was the *excuse*–trappings to get the rank-and-file Puppies to shell out 40$ each–and the real motivation among Puppy Leaders was to turn the Hugos into a sort of Chamber of Commerce circular back-pat that raises the profile of certain small businesses with the expectation that the owners of those businesses then owe favors to the person who actually chose them for the Hugos, in a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours kind of way.)
It’s not the Puppies *views* I dislike them for. It’s the way they behave as a direct result of those views to other people who have done them no harm.
I don’t have to tolerate unkind behavior to be a tolerant person.
Bruce Baugh,
This may not be seen since our host no doubt has today’s thread already up, but I found your comments interesting.
Anarcho-libertarian atheist, thank you very much. 😉
I don’t think a conversation about religious belief would be productive in most online fora, but the overt Christian message fiction that is on this years ballot could be a reasonable topic. It certainly doesn’t qualify as the best writing of the year by any stretch.
It’s my understanding that several of the Sad Puppy organizers support same sex marriage, so I don’t think we’d have too many disagreements there. This is one reason why the “racist, misogynist, homophobe” narrative is inaccurate and unfair, by the way.
It’s entirely possible that tribalism will triumph, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. I’m still participating at Monster Hunter Nation and According to Hoyt, discussing EPH. We’ll see how it shakes out.
And we’ll see how different views are incorporated into the discussion here, as well.
It’s not the Puppies *views* I dislike them for. It’s the way they behave as a direct result of those views to other people who have done them no harm.
As I said in my long ago tweet that sparked Antonelli’s first notable meltdown of the Hugo season, people don’t dislike the Pups because they are conservative. People dislike the Pups because they are assholes.
@ Aaron,
Yeah, shorter, more forceful way to say what I said.
With the observation that my way makes clear that it’s their actions rather than their views that I judge before coming to the conclusion that they are assholes.
It’s my understanding that several of the Sad Puppy organizers support same sex marriage, so I don’t think we’d have too many disagreements there. This is one reason why the “racist, misogynist, homophobe” narrative is inaccurate and unfair, by the way.
Well, maybe. Let me point to something of a counterexample. Torgersen claims that he is okay with same-sex marriage, which one could say is good. On the other hand, he is very fond of using homophobic slurs, and using homosexuality as a slur to attack people with. He tried to attack Scalzi by implying he was gay. He rather famously referred to those who don’t like the Puppies as “pink and pouffy” (among other homophobic insults). And so on. Does Torgersen’s support of same-sex marriage make him not homophobic? Given his use of being gay as an insult and his frequent resort to the use of homophobic slurs, I don’t think so.
Yeah, shorter, more forceful way to say what I said.
I was using twitter at the time.
Patrick May
It’s perfectly fair. Wright thinks that it’s normal to want to beat gays to death. Beale is openly anti-gay. Even Torgersen thinks that being gay is bad–witness his attempt to smear Scalzi as gay and then his apology–because being gay is so bad that even Scalzi doesn’t deserve to be called that.
I trust you don’t think we’re stupid, so maybe 1) you forgot those things or 2) you don’t think they rise to the level of homophobia?
@Aaron,
Quite so; I didn’t mean to criticize. Twitter is not a good place to put in the nuances.
RedWombat, I look forward to reading your new short story with interest.
Shorter:
Narwhals! Pools! SQUEEE!
Matt said
I thought we were Anarcho-Fascist Lesbian incest cannibal serial killers? Something something Dark Side? Oh, yeah, and socialists, too?
@RedWombat: Woo-hoo on Bob, Marlene’s Son!
Patrick May:
While I admire the effort, I don’t think you’re going to convince anyone at any of those places to support or even give EPH a fair hearing, given the fact that it’s not in their interest to admit that slates are a problem.
Cat,
That makes it fair to characterize those particular individuals that way. It does not make it fair to smear every Sad Puppy supporter, including those who have were publicly in favor of marriage equality before the Puppy campaigns were a gleam in anyone’s eye.
I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say that every puppy supporter is homophobic, any more than to say that every commenter here is liberal, or concerned with social justice, or whatever we want to agree the ‘opposite’ is.
But the puppies, as a movement, have a distinct ideological tinge. From the start, it has never been just. “let’s get popular action oriented SF a Hugo” There has always been a political justification for the campaign. An argument that SJWs have taken over the awards. That the books winning were not just literary, but leftist, and people should vote for puppy books for political reasons. So I think it’s fair to characterise the puppy movement as displaying certain tendencies, e even if not every member would agree with all of them.
This is also why people resist being defined as puppy kickers or whatnot. Because we have not come together with a political agenda, we’re just fans who were going about our normal business when someone attacked one of our institutions