Soon after the 2021 Hugo Awards finalists were announced, Chris Logan Edwards asked in comments here, “How is ‘George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun’ not a violation of the DisCon III Code of Conduct?” That eye-catching phrase is attached to a Best Related Work finalist whose complete title is “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)”, Natalie Luhrs (Pretty Terrible, August 2020).
The specific issue is that DisCon III disseminated this phrase on its website, in press releases, and on YouTube – and in doing so the committee itself (not Natalie Luhrs’ blog publication) violated their own Code of Conduct.
The applicable parts of DisCon III’s Code of Conduct are —
We do not tolerate harassment of convention attendees in any form. Behavior that will be considered harassment includes, but is not limited to…
Comments directly intended to belittle, offend, or cause discomfort including telling others they are not welcome and should leave…
We require attendees to follow the CoC in online interactions with the convention (including the volunteer mailings, wiki, and other online facilities), at all convention venues and convention-related social activities.
I sent Edwards’ question to several committee members together with the request, “If your immediate thought is that the Hugo voters can trump your Code of Conduct, please explain why you think that.”
DisCon III’s decision to broadcast this phrase on their own platform means they also are committing to having it repeated over and over again in all their venues. As Elio M. García, Jr. explained in another comment here:
Websites around the world have amplified that a member of the WSFS should fuck off. Every official publication that lists the nomination is telling a member of the WSFS to fuck off. The Hugo Nominees discussion panel will have people talking about how GRRM (and Robert Silverberg) should fuck off. On the night of the ceremonies, the screen, the presenter, the sign language interpreter will be announcing to an audience of hundreds that specific members of the WSFS should fuck off.
(Garcia is webmaster of Westeros, a George R.R. Martin fan site not run by the author.)
Tonight Adam Beaton, the Worldcon’s Outreach Division Head, emailed the committee’s reply to my question:
Our response for publication is, “DisCon III does not publicly comment on potential Code of Conduct matters.”
Have a great day, Mike!
The leadership is going to find out how hard it is to administer a Code of Conduct they are unwilling to publicly account to themselves.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@alexvdl:
Weren’t you just now having a problem with people making unflattering assumptions about the significance of an action instead of taking the most positive possible view of it?
It would be exceptionally uncharitable to pick up your ball and go home because someone criticized your bad behavior.
That is a good question and I think we would.
Again, you do not understand me correctly.
Pingback: Some Thoughts on the 2021 Hugo Finalists | Cora Buhlert
Aaron: You are not construing the sentence correctly.
The word “including” means such a statement would need to belong to the set of comments with the intent to “belittle, offend, or cause discomfort.” Administrative actions with the intent of communicating determinations under the Code of Conduct are not part of that set.
alexvdl: “Finally we get to the real issues!”
Have you ever been in a conversation with fans?
Enough to know that your statement was both a real issue, and that the hardest part about being in a conversation with fans is getting them to talk to about something other than their particular set of Fandom.
I think your comment was hilarious.
Administrative actions with the intent of communicating determinations under the Code of Conduct are not part of that set.
I am reading it as written. You’re putting spin on it, as I said people would reasonably be expected to do. Why do you make an allowance for it that way?
I don’t claim to special knowledge, insight or perspective, but I wrote a short blog post with some thoughts, FWIW.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/hugo-awards-and-50082640
Aaron: When I worked with statutes, I analyzed the construction of their sentences. In this case, the word “including” indicates what follows is an example that belongs to the defined class of violations. It does not add an additional, ambiguous class of wildcard possibilities as you are reading it.
@alexvdl
I’ve spoken to people from several different groups who were involved in this. Like most convention snafus it seems to have been a communications problem. As far as I could see it was not caused by anything done by George R R Martin.
The basic accusation was that the venue was too small for the numbers at the party. I’ve been involved in running a Worldcon party for 3,500 people in a room with a capacity of a few hundred. WorldCon parties have a constant flow of people in and out so we can use rooms which way first would seem to be too small. Unfortunately in this case the party being off site meant the flow didn’t work as well as expected and it broke down after the ceremony. Now in retrospect we should have spotted this. It led to people being stranded in the cold with even colder rain dripping down their necks. Their anger is more than justified but every single person in the chain of planning and organisation missed the problem because they unconsciously expected it to work like previous years. The critics went after George exclusively and in a particularly nasty way. I think this led to George being a bit too defensive but I also think that there were people who used the genuine distress of those people stranded in the rain against him in a very destructive way. His sole job was to say “Here’s a pile of money, take it and throw a free party” and he did. Does anyone seriously believe he should have been personally calculating people flow numbers? Most of fandom seems to want him to spend his time on other things.
@Aaron:
A technical point: I don’t think the WSFS Constitution requires the con committee to publish anything. IIRC, they have complete discretion on managing Hugo packets, ceremonies and announcements.
I know I don’t show up here very often but I just wanted to say that I kind of had the impression that Hugo Finalists are chosen by the nominators, and I think discarding one because the committee doesn’t want to say the name of it would be a significant departure from precedent.
Of course every member can vote their best judgement and none of us have forgotten that No Award exists and can even win. But I thought the whole point of EPH (which I argued for, wrote a song to explain, and even went to WorldCon and attended every business meeting that year—a very educational experience—to vote for) was to allow nominators to nominate as they thought best while ensuring the final ballot would reflect the favorites of the largest possible number of nominators.
Is there reason to believe that there was active collusion to force the work in question onto the ballot? I can’t really picture how that would even work, now? If not, hasn’t it won its place fairly? I remembered the work immediately when I saw it among the finalists and I can’t say I was surprised or thought it out of its league. I’m neither the most attentive follower of SFF news nor the possessor of a great memory, which suggests it had a lot of reach and was memorable, both characteristics that would make it easier for a related work to reach the ballot honestly, as a result of the spontaneous choices of a significant number of nominators.
I have read through the comment thread here (I admit to skimming some of the Usual Suspects but I at least tried) and I’m somewhat surprised by the division; there are commenters I remember fondly and respect on both sides of this question. I don’t envy the WorldCon organizers who are going to have to try to thread this needle because I also agree the code of conduct is important.
But I feel like GRRM, while he shouldn’t be drummed out of fandom, stepped on a lot of toes. The circle of acquaintance and interests is much bigger than it was in his salad days (and I’m happy about this) and a ceremony that ought to be brisk and entertaining and focused on the finalists and winners is not enhanced by in-jokes and reminiscing that most of the audience doesn’t understand. Some of the reminiscing in particular seemed to be intended as a rebuke to people who had risked reputation and livelihood to push for fairness to marginalized groups. And I feel like a lot of the newer members were alienated by aspects of his performance mentioned in this related work, and I think that alienation might reasonably be considerably worsened by having the related work that championed them turfed from the ballot.
I don’t have a problem with the title of the essay including a profanity. Fantasy recently published a story titled “So. Fucking. Metal.” I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t speak to how good it is, but if I love it, I will happily nominate it next year, f-bomb and all. (Look, I loved both Deadpool movies; I’m not going to retire to my fainting couch just because someone used a naughty word.)
For purposes of the question, “What, if anything, should DisCon III do about this nomination?”, I don’t even particularly care why the people who nominated it did so. I don’t think Worldcon should be in the business of policing whether or not someone nominated a work for the “right” reasons.
However, it seems pretty clear that the title of the essay does violate DisCon III’s CoC. Telling someone to fuck off, whether or not the sun is involved, is by definition telling them they aren’t welcome. This doesn’t look to me like an edge case. And that puts the Concom in a really awkward spot. There’s no point in having a CoC if the Concom won’t enforce it or abide by it themselves. OTOH, the integrity of the Hugos could be damaged if the Concom of a given Worldcon interferes in the process of selecting nominees or winners. I can understand why the Concom would want to avoid even the appearance of that.
I honestly don’t know what the best way to thread that needle is. But whatever route the Concom goes, they need to make a statement explaining why they’re choosing that course of action.
Natalie Luhrs wasn’t arguing for GRRM to do better. She was arguing for him to go away. She called him and Robert Silverberg “gross racist misogynistic transphobes,” said his Hugo ceremony performance “just reeks of bad faith,” and wrote in summation, “In conclusion, let us shoot George R.R. Martin and Bob Silverberg into the sun where they shall bother us no longer.”
Yes, it’s a blog rant written in the passion of the moment where a writer is most likely to be want license to engage in hyperbole. But I don’t think the selection of the post as a Hugo-nominated work expresses a desire for GRRM to do better.
It’s a call for Worldcon to do some addition by subtraction.
rcade asks It’s a call for Worldcon to do some addition by subtraction.
So how much discretion does Worldcon have over removing a nomination after it legitimately makes the final list? Do they have any grounds for doing so provided it met the rules for being on the ballot?
I think my last line was misconstrued. It was still referring to how people feel about GRRM.
But to answer those questions I don’t think there’s any ability for a Worldcon to remove a work voted onto the ballot. At most there might be discretion on how to refer to it in public statements and the ceremony or whether to include it in the Hugo packet.
Cat Eldridge: As far as the rules go, if a nominee comes through the voting process a finalist, and the person or creator of the work accepts the nomination, they go on the ballot. So DisCon III has to deal with this remaining on the ballot in whatever they do to address the Code of Conduct problems.
Is ANYONE , including those who are wondering about the CoC, actually WANT Concom to remove it from the ballot? Last I hear the vast majority even of its biggest detractors are calling mostly for a voluntary title change (that won’t be forthcoming) or even just a public statement by Discon about why they are eliding, or keeping, the title.
Because I keep seeing people making statements like Cat Eldridge’s, asking if the con has the power, like Cat Sittingstill’s otherwise excellent post which starts talking about that …
Did I miss someone actually saying it should be discarded as a nominee? Because this feels a lot like one side is being treated as demanding more and worse than it is, and maybe it’s the twitter discourse I noped out of, or commentary elsewhere, but I don’t recall seeing it in 300+ comments on File770, and I don’t think I am so tired I’d have missed that.
I’m somewhere in the middle on this. I don’t think the mere existence or even reading aloud of the title is a CoC violation or if it is it is because the CoC was poorly written, but I can understand how it would feel in poor taste to say aloud repeatedly at the convention.
I do think last year’s ceremony sounded awful, but I don’t think anyone on any side at this time is defending the ceremony itself. Maybe Miles Carter?
I wouldn’t have nominated the post myself but I don’t think people were wrong or acting in the spirit of the puppies or otherwise inappropriate if they did want to, and I don’t speculate about their motives.
I do think it’s possible to say harmful and even hurtful things even about rich and successful public figures, yet I also don’t think it’s a good idea to bring up a person’s good acts while the conversation is trying to critique their bad ones.
Camestros, it’s reassuring to hear someone say they think we still would. It’s sort of what I would hope, and yet I had to ask, because, well, the world isn’t always as I see it.
I have a lot of complex thoughts that I’m not going to hash out here. But @KR’s comment really rankles. The comment that goes [paraphrased, full comment here] “GRRM not attending DisConIII is a HUGE amount of harm done, and you only think otherwise because you aren’t aware of how much GRRM does for marginalized fans and creators! Only you never hear about it, because he doesn’t broadcast it. But you better believe he does it, and that it’s everyone’s loss that he’s been driven away from attending DisConIII.”
I’ve heard this point made before.
One day in my teens, at a family gathering, sitting in front of the TV during the commercials, I heard an uncle say to his son, in a voice meant to be overheard, “Gee, there sure are a lot of n—-r shows on TV these days.” Of course I was outraged at this blatant display of racism but even more at the fact that this what what he was deliberately teaching his son. I was even more outraged when later I learned that his son had been acting on that racism his father was teaching him, viciously and violently. But of course the entire family shouted me down. How dare I criticize my uncle?! How dare I call him racist? He’s family! Plus he does so much charity work for local poor black families via his medical practice–bet you didn’t know THAT, little miss holier-than-thou!
And what I wanted to know was, so why isn’t that anti-racist charity work the example he wants to set for his son? Why instead does he choose to specifically and explicitly model racism instead?
So, yeah. Why, having been given arguably the largest stage in SFF, does GRRM not take the opportunity to express support for the marginalized in our community, and to celebrate their wins, and to say “Yes! More like this!” Surely seeing more non-white, non-male, non-straight creators being honored in the Hugos is precisely in line with the sort of behind-the-scenes work @RK lauds GRRM for! And yet, we all saw him spend a huge portion of his four hours on that stage broadcasting explicit contempt for BIPOC creators, and singing Campell’s praises in a way and context that he must know would come across like a slap in the face to many of the very people @RK says he supports!
It makes no sense to me that someone who is a force for good in (relative) private should choose to undermine those good works in (extremely) public. But that’s the choice he made. That is the harm he chose to do. And it makes me mourn less the absence of his chosen public persona, and the harm it has historically done, from DisConIII.
(That is probably the only clear and unambiguous thought I am having right now, and it is specifically a reaction to a comment posted here, not to the Hugo nomination situation itself. Please do not extrapolate from it any opinions on the Luhr piece being nominated, or on its title, or on its CoC implications, etc. Thank you.)
I must have watched a different Hugo ceremony…
Could I ask why, so far in this discussion (unless I’ve missed something), nobody has thought of referring to a highly pertinent clause of the WSFS Rules – namely:
In almost any year, some of the people who a Worldcon bid would want on their committee are also closely involved with a potential Hugo finalist which would be excluded by the first sentence of this section (the most obvious example of recent years is probably James Bacon, the Dublin 2019 Chair, and the fanzine Journey Planet, but more usually the problem would probably involve a division head). Consequently, the great majority (if not all) worldcons of recent years have taken advantage of the loophole provided by the second sentence, and I would be surprised if Discon III is an exception to this.
In this situation, almost any premature comment by the Discon concom (or someone speaking on the concom’s behalf) about a potential CoC case (no matter how apparently blatant) involving a Hugo finalist list is likely not only to be seen as risking prejudicing the conduct of the case but also as trying to influence decisions about which the concom has already renounced all authority.
From what I can see, the rules mean that responsibility for pretty much any decision coming from the Hugo Awards Administration team more or less has to stay with the Hugo Awards Administration team (and everyone from Natalie Luhrs, through the nominators and right the way through to Awards Administration, and indeed the concom, has acted either in a way that individually they had a perfect right to do or come to decisions which were more or less mandated by rules, Worldcon custom, and prior practise, however potentially undesirable the result).
My own feeling is that, whatever else needs doing, the eligibility rules for Best Related Work are in need of revision. The apparent intention at the time of the change from Best Related Book was to remove restrictions on the physical format of contenders rather than change their intellectual content, but subsequent nominators and voters have decided otherwise. However, when four of the six finalists effectively look like manifestos about conrunning, two of them making pretty specific criticisms of last year’s Worldcon, a Hugo category in which they are competing with one another (and two works which apparently have little if anything to do with conrunning) just to win a rocket looks singularly ill-adapted to making sensible decisions about them – and centred far too much on worldcons rather than wider science fiction culture.
Lenora Rose: I bet it’s possible for there to be a title that would create such exposure for the Worldcon that steps would have to be taken — a long title that’s a recipe for bombmaking? maybe not that, something criminal anyway — but this one doesn’t rise to that level of problem. I don’t think the work should be removed from the ballot. I also don’t want to have to sit, grinding my teeth, while that phrase is constantly repeated in Worldcon information because nobody will enforce the Code of Conduct.
During the puppy years, it was made very clear that it’s not the Hugo administrators’ job to police the finalists. If a work gets sufficient nominations and is eligible in the category, it goes on the ballot.
You may not agree with a certain finalist or you may think that they should have withdrawn. And indeed, there have been cases where I thought, “Why didn’t they withdraw?” However, the only person who gets to decide whether to accept or withdraw or under what title a work goes on the ballot is the finalist themselves. We don’t get to tell anybody whether to withdraw or change the title.
Everybody is free not to vote for Natalie Luhrs’ post. However, the only person who gets to decide whether it stays on the ballot and under what title is Natalie Luhrs.
Also, if we think back at the puppy years, “Safe Space as a Rape Room” and “If You Were an Award, My Love” were deliberately designed to insult the entire Worldcon community in general and Rachel Swirsky in particular. There were definitely bad faith nominations and also very likely Code of Conduct violations. Yet I don’t recall any actions being taken except that “Space Space as a Rape Room” was not included in the Hugo Voter packet. And the two erotica finalists, “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” and “Stripper Bones by the T-Rex” were not included in the main Hugo voter packet, but available via a separate download with a warning.
Regarding the potential Code of Conduct issue, DisCon III could decide to bleep out and/or asterisk out the F-word (which wouldn’t affect the title, because we all know what it says). They could also add a warning with the post in the Hugo voter packet or just include a link and not the whole post. After all, it’s not as if the post is difficult to find.
Regarding George R.R. Martin, do we know for sure that the nomination for Natalie Luhrs’ rant is the reason he will not be attending DisCon III in person? Cause it might also be in response to the date change or Martin might consider attending an in person con during a pandemic still too risky.
Peter Wilkinson: I’m still not clear on what application you think this rule has to the present situation. I am familiar with it — in 1996 I recused myself from Hugo consideration and put myself on our own subcommittee (although I agree with you that more often it works the way James Bacon handled things). Even if DisCon III has such a subcommittee, the Hugo ballot is set and I’m not seeking to overturn any of the results.
John Lorentz says I must have watched a different Hugo ceremony…
Thank you. I couldn’t figure out that remark either. I thought Martin had a pathological fondness for the long gone history of the Hugo Awards but I didn’t think that he showed he contempt for the group she mentions as he pretty much was unaware of them in his remarks. Along with pretty much everything else that had happened in the past several generations of Hugo Award history regardless of race, color, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. It was if someone has stuck him in a closet sans any SF connections about in the early Seventies and just pulled him out.
Well, Martin repeatedly mentioning the name Campbell and the way he stressed “Astounding” did strike me as a jab against the Campbell Award renaming and also against Jeannette Ng.
And many finalists, myself included, felt that it was disrepectful to be left hanging while GRRM went on and on and on.
There was also the issue of Martin repeatedly mispronouncing names, particularly but not exclusively, the names of finalists of colour. It’s not clear how much of that truly was his fault, because the phonetic spellings of the finalists’ names that were given to CoNZealand apparently never reached the presenters. But it can be seen as disrespectful towards finalists of colour.
@Cat Eldrige–
Being “unaware” of the influx of the increasing diversity of the sff fans and creators, and not bothering to be sure he had the correct pronunci ation of unfamiliar names is experienced as contempt by the people on the receiving end, and by many watching and listening. Ask me sometime how many people in this world I give a pass on misspelling my not very difficult, and rather familiar, first and last names.
But a lot of that happens because my names are familiar, and people are sure they already know how to spell them. The names GRRM didn’t bother to get the pronunciations on, were in many cases names he couldn’t have missed were unfamiliar and had a high likelihood of being pronounced in ways not obvious to him.
He’s done a lot of good for fandom over many years, but that Hugo ceremony absolutely was a show of, at the most positive interpretation, complete disregard for many of the people who were intended to be honored that night.
Suggesting it’s out of line or unreasonable for people to feel, and express, real anger at that, and to receive it as a show of contempt, is just bizarre.
@Cora Buhlert
I know you probably weren’t doing it on purpose but just the sheer baddassery of just being able to drop
“And many finalists, myself included”
Damn. Much respect to you.
I personally changed my name last year after a bad experience with constant mispronunciations some years ago. My first name used to be “Gösta” which people outside the Nordics seldom can pronounce.
While it got extremely irritating to be misnamed for more than a month during a hospital visit, I didn’t blame those who had no knowledge of Swedish pronunciation rules, but I think the fact that I even removed one of my names show how grating it is when they are used incorrectly.
Lis Carey says
I don’t think GRRM I’d self-aware enough on these matters to be showing contempt. Watching him, I got the feeling that he was genuinely oblivious to anything that had happened in the past several generations. He may well just not have read that deep in contemporary genre fiction. If at all.
alexdvl: JJ continually states that the nomination being on the ballot is bad, but doesn’t articulate how that nomination produces any more harms than any of the other nominations does.
The comments I’ve linked in this previous comment contain several explanations of the harms I see being caused by the nomination of this work.
If you do not see those explanations, it’s either because you are still not actually reading what I wrote, or because – whether you agree with them or not – you are simply refusing to acknowledge that they are indeed explanations; however, your pretending that they are not there does not alter the fact that they are indeed there.
Example of one of your Strawman Arguments:
They certainly don’t show how it produces more harms than the 4 hours of bullshit it critiques.*
They don’t need to. These are two separate incidents, and it is entirely valid for me to point out all of the harms caused by the second one without having to prove anything in relation to a separate incident.
* Oops! You’ve just admitted that they are there!
In addition to the Puppy nominations, there are a couple of nominations for works that were aimed at a particular living person (that i can think of – there may have been others) – I’m thinking of Laura Mixon’s fan writer nomination and Christopher Priest’s BRW nomination. I recall some controversy about the more recent case (I wasn’t involved in organized fandom at the time of the first one).
Cat Eldridge: I don’t think GRRM. Is self-aware enough to be showing contempt in this matter.
I have to disagree. I think the extra 1 hour and 40 minutes of bloviating GRRM did during the ceremony – in which he mentioned Campbell’s name dozens of times (and, as someone pointed out, said the word “Astounding” with almost a sneer) were very much a deliberate, passive-aggressive response to his anger about the award being renamed.
The rest of the horribleness of his performance at the ceremony – the utter self-absorption and the irrelevant meandering – I put down to Too Big To Edit syndrome. No one around him has been willing to rein him in since he got hugely famous (if they ever were to begin with).
It’s been years (if ever) since anyone pointed out to him that a joke he cracked was sexist or transphobic – instead, they snicker along with him, because no one wants to piss him off. It’s been years since anyone asked him to do something like host a ceremony and given him very specific guidelines about what he may or may not talk about, and strict limits on the length of what he says.
(And I have a huge problem with the people involved in last year’s Worldcon and Hugo ceremony, who were apparently too starstruck to do their jobs and make sure that his performance was time- and content-appropriate.)
Unlike most people who are aware that the world does not revolve around them, GRRM has spent many years in a world where he really is The Center Of The Universe. He’s spent years with the people around him hanging on his every word as if it’s the Divine Wisdom Of God, so it doesn’t occur to him that everyone else might not have the same passionate interest in hearing every random reminiscence and anecdote about himself that happens to cross his mind. He fancies himself to be a master raconteur (after all, he’s made million$ doing it), and no one has ever sat him down and firmly made it clear that there are situations where him grandstanding in that role is just not appropriate.
It’s possible to mispronounce “George Martin”, but it’s pretty hard to do so, and I doubt that he ever had to deal with much of that (and certainly not at all after he became really famous). So he doesn’t have any comprehension of what an incredible microaggression it is for someone to have their name continually mispronounced.
I’ve had my name mispronounced all of my life, even though it’s pronounced exactly the way it’s spelled – so if I were asked to host a ceremony of any kind or a make a speech which names other people, it would just never even occur to me not to first make sure how to pronounce all of the other peoples’ names correctly. The very rare mispronunciations of his name have been no big deal to him, so it never occurs to him what a big deal it is to other people who receive a constant barrage of mispronunciation – and of course BIPOC are subjected to much higher levels of it than people with white European names like mine.
I think that last year’s fiasco was very much a combination of deliberate revenge for the Campbell renaming, and utter obliviousness on the part of someone who is used to everything being about him, who hasn’t had to live in the same real world as the rest of us for many, many years.
None of which excuses his execrable performance last year, but I think it’s a pretty accurate analysis of how the fiasco came about – and I don’t think it’s possible to believe that at least some of it was not deliberately intentional.
@Cat Eldridge–
That’s…not actually a meaningful defense. Certainly it’s not a reason for the people whose names were mangled when he could have made the effort to find out the correct pronunciations not to be hurt and offended.
Nor is it a plausible defense for repeatedly bringing up Campbell’s name, and his quite deliberate extra emphasis on “Astounding.” That was quite clearly a dig at Jeannette Ng, and anyone who supported the name change.
Lis Carey says That’s…not actually a meaningful defense. Certainly it’s not a reason for the people whose names were mangled when he could have made the effort to find out the correct pronunciations not to be hurt and offended.
Nor is it a plausible defense for repeatedly bringing up Campbell’s name, and his quite deliberate extra emphasis on “Astounding.” That was quite clearly a dig at Jeannette Ng, and anyone who supported the name change.
Ok I think that GRRM is one of those white privileged wealthy males so self-centered that he’s blindingly unaware that his actions have any effect upon others. He indeed exists in a Universe where his every whim is subject to be gratified as soon as need be. And as a result, it is hard to say that he is showing contempt for others as I don’t think he realises his actions have consequences.
He’s egoistical in the extreme and no one apparently ever has told him that’s wrong.
@Cat Eldridge–The chocolate arrived. I opened it, and said, oh, no, Cat forgot that I like milk chocolate. Then I said, no, Cat knows chocolate, I am going to trust him and try it.
And it is marvelous. A joy! A delight!
Thank you.
@Aaron beat me to the punch. A code of conduct should protect people against being harassed by other people for personal issues. Criticism of another’s work, including in the harshest terms (His writing is so laughably bad that he should be kicked out of SFWA. Her writing is so racist it would make the KKK ashamed. Their writing is so woke that we will never need coffee again.) should not be a violation.
It is not wrong for a harsh work of criticism of a public performance to be nominated for a Hugo, and it should not be a CoC violation. If it is, the CoC needs to be fixed.
Lis Carey says The chocolate arrived. I opened it, and said, oh, no, Cat forgot that I like milk chocolate. Then I said, no, Cat knows chocolate, I am going to trust him and try it.
And it is marvelous. A joy! A delight!
Thank you.
You’re welcome.
Some of the dairy free dark chocolates are really more like really fine mile chocolates so I figured that you might enjoy it. One of my joys in life is searching out and giving away really great chocolate.
Now reading Charles de Lint’s new Newford novel, Junniper Wiles while listing to Nightnoise, a Celtic music group.
Mike Glyer: I don’t think the work should be removed from the ballot. I also don’t want to have to sit, grinding my teeth, while that phrase is constantly repeated in Worldcon information because nobody will enforce the Code of Conduct.
This is pretty much my position at this point. I think DisCon III is faced with an unresolvable situation. No matter what they do at this point, it is not going to be a “right” choice. They can only figure out what they believe is the “less wrong” choice – and whatever they choose is still going to be wrong.
@Cat
My package arrived today also. Quite yummy, thank you!
Without addressing the merits of the work in question, assuming DisCon III intends to follow the WSFS Constitution in administering the Hugo Awards, they can’t disqualify a Hugo Award finalist that has met the technical requirements and received sufficient votes. The Hugo Award rules take precedence over any additional rules (such as the Code of Conduct) that a Worldcon may establish. (Just as local law takes precedence over the WSFS Constitution.)
Mind you, in my opinion, DisCon III has already decided to set aside the WSFS Constitution when it comes to administering Site Selection, so possibly they could do so with the Hugo Awards as well. When you start ignoring any of the rules (particularly easy-to-understand ones), then none of the rules are safe.
Kevin Standlee: That’s an empty statement because the WSFS Constitution doesn’t have any rules micromanaging how the finalists must be announced or identified in publications or social media. But those decisions still have to conform to the Code of Conduct.
Foz Meadows has a twitter thread about matters adjacent to the matter at hand:
https://twitter.com/fozmeadows/status/1382904636844085248
@Cat Eldridge
Oh, dear. I googled “Junniper Wiles Charles de Lint”. That was a bad, bad idea. Do not google “Junniper Wiles Charles de Lint”. Really, don’t. It is OK, however, to google “Juniper Wiles Charles de Lint”. And let me tell you, when one “n” makes that much difference, our AI overlords are going to be a long time in coming. Unless they’re already here and giggling to themselves.
I’m trying to noodle my way through the CoC issues. At least for some people, the word “fuck” is the deal-breaker. I find that level of pearl-clutching a bit tiresome. It is a vulgar word used for emphasis, but I don’t think that it is sufficient to justify a claim of harassment.
I’m trying to construct an analogy to help me sort out the issues. Let’s say a club has a monthly newszine and hosts a convention. One year, the person in charge of the Artshow was incompetent which allowed for theft of property, and the cost of that error, born by the club, was such that several projects they normally fund had to be cancelled. The club ran an article explaining this in their newszine. This embarrassed and upset the Artshow head, and made them feel unwelcome. Was that a violation of the CoC? The newzine also ran several letters, including one that argued that until the loss had been covered by the Artshow Head, they should not be allowed to attend club meetings. Was that a violation? Another letter said that the Head had done so much damage to the club’s rep that this person should fuck off into the sun. Was that a violation? None of those seem like violations, to me. They seem like a normal range of responses to a difficult situation. I also think that when a person fucks up that badly, they should feel embarassed.
But if someone went up to the Artshow head at a meeting and started yelling, “You need to fuck off,” that does seem like a violation, to me.
Were there any rule changes relating to Hugo administrators disqualifying work and votes out of hand after The Silmarillion fiasco, or was that already against the rules?
Martin Easterbrook on April 15, 2021 at 4:49 pm said:
I think it’s more complicated than that. Yes, there were capacity issues, not all of which could have been anticipated. Stuff happens. We live, we learn.
The problem was a sense though that once the problems had happened, once people were left out in the rain in their party gear, there was a perception that GRRM was laughing at the silly people who got there late, and then going full defensive rather than displaying any sympathy. That’s what really rankled. Not the events, but the response to the events. And that was entirely in his control.
Warner Holme: Were there any rule changes relating to Hugo administrators disqualifying work and votes out of hand after The Silmarillion fiasco, or was that already against the rules?
I don’t think it resulted in any rules changes, but it resulted in social ostracism and condemnation — which can be powerful influencers in fandom.
What that Hugo Admin did was technically “legal” — but that didn’t mean that a lot of people considered it “a reasonable interpretation”. It appears to me (and probably to a lot of the voters at the time) that it was a case of a Hugo Admin coming up with a seemingly-legitimate way to enforce his personal prejudices against a work/author. I think there was probably so much general condemnation about that sort of hair-splitting that subsequent Hugo Admins would have been very hesitant to do anything similar, which is why a rules change was not considered necessry.