404 thoughts on “Outrage Greets 2016 World Fantasy Con Program”

1. Cheryl S. Said:

   I think referencing the norms of the past as if that somehow excuses anything then or now is merely exculpatory and not useful as a point of argument.

   I missed that earlier discussion, but I agree with you here. Absolutely.

   Plus, the more I think about it, the more absurd TMP’s claims seem. It was its use in the pulps and many other popular medias that made the word offensive. When someone is partially responsible for actually adding the offensive connotation to the word, it is ridiculous to claim their use was neutral.

2. Snowcrash, I’ve always found Asian to be funny, not the least because a Yank and a Brit will have completely different first impression about what it refers to, and neither one would be incorrect….

   But to be fair, the antique O-word is equally non-specific. It can mean the Middle East (there’s the Oriental Institute in Chicago, which has an amazing collection of artifacts from Persia and Babylonia) and it can mean China or Japan. Or India.

   Personally, since I was told by a coworker of Indian subcontinent ancestry that “Oriental” should only be used when referring to rugs and restaurants, I have endeavored to remember this fact and use my language accordingly. This despite the fact that I only found out that people of Asian extraction consider the O-word a slur a decade ago, and I have a lot of linguistic inertia to overcome.

   The only reason to use any term that is often considered a slur (even if it’s not universally considered a slur) is to shock, or to make a specific point. (All too often the point is to say “look how edgy I am” which might just as easily be interpreted as “look what an asshole I am”.) And I don’t see any point that was made by that program name. Especially since the O word wasn’t even in the original pulp magazine title being referred to.

3. Maybe instead of trying to come up with strained reasons why “Oriental” is not problematic, some people should listen to voices like Ken Liu, Wesley Chu, and Alyssa Wong, who definitely think it is.

4. @snowcrash

   @Lee

   Why are you so heavily invested in proving that everyone else here is wrong?

   I believe @TMP is engaged in an activity referred to as “virtue-signalling”.

   It’s rhetoric. 🙂

5. @Lee: And a slight corrective to your corrective. There is only one n-word.

6. I know in this case it stems from the title of the OP, but I really wish people would stop using “outraged” to mark every case where people protest a word usage, or a complaint. Because often, the people in question are not “outraged”, and painting them as so is what leads to others painting the whole movement towards respectful language as frothing, raging people, faces swollen and tainted purple by the blood-rush of their fury. People who clearly need to be protected from their own feelings, since their feelings are so intense. That’s not how it works.

   Most people are, in general, annoyed when this happens, but not outraged (At worst, they become outraged when what seemed like a reasonable request is dismissed and derided, or further and more intentional slurs are used). They have reasons, and they are good ones, for not wanting to see a term used – that does not put them in an echo chamber, mean they are unaware of history, or mean they need to be wrapped in bubble wrap because they are so sensitive. It does not mean that reading actual works of a racist era is beyond them.

   So stop assuming a protest means outrage, and outrage means apoplexy.

   Or that emotion in general means unreason.

7. On another note: I’ve been to two WFCs, and had fun at both of them, and felt included, and found myself in the presence of plenty of people – often any of younger, female, or PoC – who didn’t seem old, hidebound or exclusionary. The last several things I’ve been hearing out of WFC have kept making me wonder what I missed and how I missed it.

8. @Cassy B.

   Oh no doubt! I find that particular aspect of “Asian” funny, but it’s light-years different to “Oriental”. It’s semi-fine when it comes to places and things – ie case in point the half a dozen or so places called Pearl of the Orient, but your best result if you called someone an Oriental would be a polite correction.

9. TMP:

   Not sure if you’ve flounced yet, but if you’re going to claim that people pretend the word is a slur, you may want to talk to some actual East Asian people. Note I say “you”, as I say this is something you should try, instead of regaling us with the tales of the many Asian people you just totally know who are cool with “oriental.”

   Ironic you refer to this behavior as an Internet mob when it’s basic fucking civility in the 21st.

10. @Cora:
    
    I have an interest in vintage pulp fiction, so I actually got the references, though “Oriental” had me stumped for a moment. However, you cannot expect a general audience in 2016 to be familiar enough with obscure 80 year old pulps to get the reference. Oh yes, and it isn’t funny either.
    I’ve recently acquired an interest in vintage pulp, so I got the reference, too. (That makes three of us.) But you’re right, it’s not funny, and most people won’t get it. I’ve been reading SF since The Spaceship under the Apple Tree, and I’ve read many stories that were once published in the pulps, but I’ve only recently learned about some of the most famous pulp titles. So someone who doesn’t know about Spicy Detective is going to think it’s an item on a menu.

11. That list of slurs is very interesting. I’m both an Arkie and an Okie and know exactly no one who would be offended by those usages today. Good ol’ boy has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. Rebel and Reb are offensive to me, but not because they’re slurs. They are just the opposite. They’re an indicator of pride in racist treason (though that’s not so of every Confedate soldier, it’s true of enough of them that I’m comfortable with the overstatement.) Redneck and hillbilly can be used as slurs. They’re also self-descriptors of pride for many.

12. @JJ

    I’m not particularly outraged by that many things. However, my attitude is, if a term or phrase is considered racist by the people it describes, then their judgment reigns: It’s racist, and courtesy and humanity require that I not use it. Period. Full Stop. End Of.

    But what if it’s not considered racist by large swaths of the Asian community? Did you not read the article linked by Hampus, where the Asian American reporter talked about her father using “Oriental” to this day, saying it’s a generational thing? Did you not note how she doesn’t use it, but doesn’t get “particularly worked up by the term” (by far the most typical response, I have little doubt)? It’s an outdated term with the younger generation, and I agree with the reasons why (as I stated above), but to pretend it’s inherently “racist” when you see it is simplistic. What do you say to that reporter’s father, if it’s his preferred term? This is what I mean by an echo chamber: We have people here saying that an Asian man is part of an older generation that “have a hard time keeping up with that words with a racist connotations are no longer acceptable” for the term he uses for his own ethnicity.

    Personally, I’m for using whatever term someone prefers when referring to their ethnicity. However, piling on with the criticism of that panel name, when it was clearly a reference to the days of pulp and the term is to this day the preferred term of some and has never been a slur, seems like massive overreaction.

    @Lee

    This is the “But he was a man of his time!” argument, which is a known fallacy.

    No, it isn’t. If you can’t see the difference with what was explained above, I doubt you’ll get there. Oh, and the n-word was always a slur. Confusing that with words like “Oriental” and “Negro” is intentionally misunderstanding the words, which is my actual point.

    @P J Evans

    TMP, you seem to have missed the point. “Oriental”, when not used for physical objects like carpets, is an insult, and has been for years.

    So are you saying I should have been focusing on how it was used here for a physical object like a Zeppelin?

    @snowcrash

    I’m not sure why it would be “virtue signalling,” but whatever. I just don’t think internet mobs are a healthy thing, and so I thought to comment to counter the pile-on on someone who obviously didn’t mean to start a firestorm. If I’ve signaled to others some virtue they are supposed to see in me when they were piling-on, I didn’t intend to, as I think what they are doing is rather meanspirited.

13. @TYP

    Not sure if you’ve flounced yet, but if you’re going to claim that people pretend the word is a slur, you may want to talk to some actual East Asian people. Note I say “you”, as I say this is something you should try, instead of regaling us with the tales of the many Asian people you just totally know who are cool with “oriental.”

    Ironic you refer to this behavior as an Internet mob when it’s basic fucking civility in the 21st.

    OK, this approach is disingenuous, and you know it. First, there is already an Asian reporter talking about the term in the link by Hampus. That should satisfy you on the existence of Asian people who still use the term (as well as an example of the more normal reaction of the younger set–they don’t use it, but it’s not something to get particularly worked up over). Second, you know perfectly well that if I had mentioned the Asian people I know who are fine with the term, you would just refuse to believe me, because you are already depending on the echo chamber to deem the term highly offensive, and can’t look at the information already linked. I haven’t mentioned that my writing partner and dearest friend (other than my wife) is Taiwanese (and doesn’t use “Oriental,” but he’s young, and isn’t particularly offended by it, either, preferring “Taiwanese,” with “East Asian” if absolutely necessary to be so general) because it’s not the basis of my argument: I don’t need you to believe me about that. What I do think you should recognize is that it’s a cheap and dishonest approach.

14. TMP:
    *plonk*

15. TMP: piling on with the criticism of that panel name, when it was clearly a reference to the days of pulp and the term is to this day the preferred term of some and has never been a slur, seems like massive overreaction.

    Except that it’s not an “overreaction”. It’s a bunch of decent, mature individuals pointing out why that panel title was so incredibly inappropriate.

    It may not have been a slur then. It is a slur now. Your refusal to acknowledge this is childish and ignorant.

    TMP: I just don’t think internet mobs are a healthy thing

    As TYP has pointed out, this isn’t an “Internet Mob”. It’s a number of people who have explained, in great detail, why your various apologisms for racist terms are specious and unacceptable.

    “But some people of that ethnicity don’t consider it racist!” is not an excuse for using a term when other people of that ethnicity do consider it racist.

    Grow the hell up, and join the rest of us adults in the 21st century. 🙄

16. Another serious question, but more general: When a representative sample of members of an ethnic group is directly asked–I’m not sure whether on line or in person with another member of that same group asking would give better results–about these words, what are the results?

    And a more contentious question: How many people from a group have to find an expression offensive before it becomes acknowledged as such? One in five? One in a hundred? What if members of the group find it to be a positive expression?

17. @Aaron

    Maybe instead of trying to come up with strained reasons why “Oriental” is not problematic, some people should listen to voices like Ken Liu, Wesley Chu, and Alyssa Wong, who definitely think it is.

    First, if people had only used the word “problematic,” I’d never have commented here. If you look at my first description, I agree it has problematic associations and it’s a good thing modern language has moved on from it being the standard term, so I would be very careful if I were ever to use it in writing or conversation (I don’t even use it for rugs or restaurants). If someone thinks the panel should not have been called that because of those reasons, that’s fine and dandy with me, because I’m sure they can make valid points about it. It was that people were casually declaring it and the author “racist” that I felt deserved pushback, when the reference and meaning is clear, and not worthy of such vitriol.

    Second, I find it problematic to assign “arbiter of Asian-ness” to any three people, even if I think one of them is a great author. When I brought up this discussion with the Asian I know best and trust most, he literally laughed in my face on if he was offended by the panel title, even a little. Does that mean I make him my designated arbiter of Asian-ness? No, of course not (although he would be the one if I were to designate someone). Nor is the Asian American reporter’s father who still refers to Asians as Oriental, because he’s from the generation that often does. What I think people need to do is realize not everyone (or every Asian) agrees on the term, and putting it in a panel title isn’t worthy of such vitriol in response.

18. Wow did this thread blow up today. So much attention to one person who needs to justify overt racial terms from the past as never having been that bad and people are too easily offended rather than we should treat others with dignity and respect not racial slurs.

    Some straight white men are a waste of time talking to or taking seriously because they have no basic respect for anyone or anything which makes them uncomfortable or requires they treat those not like them as fully equal human beings.

19. So how about the WFC panel. Compare it to MAC II and wow what a difference. MAC II has some panels on dead white authors but they sound interesting and they aren’t all there is. It’s interesting comparing the two as I think a number of the topics are similar but the title approach and focus by MAC II is relevant for authors and fans today. They panels on older SFF is appropriately titled as history.

20. @JJ

    As TYP has pointed out, this isn’t an “Internet Mob”. It’s a number of people who have explained, in great detail, why your various apologisms for racist terms are specious and unacceptable.

    To clarify, I’m not feeling mobbed. It’s the poor person who was only trying to put together a panel I think has been mobbed. I entered the echo chamber by choice, anonymously, and will leave the same way when I wish.

21. TMP: To clarify, I’m not feeling mobbed. It’s the poor person who was only trying to put together a panel I think has been mobbed. I entered the echo chamber by choice

    I just love how you’re calling a group of intelligent, courteous and considerate adults an “echo chamber”. I’m certainly glad I don’t hang out wherever you hang out on the Internet if you consider this place an “echo chamber”, because your hangout must be populated with a bunch of selfish, entitled assholes. And I think it’s very sad that you apparently consider that normal behaviour rather than an “echo chamber”. 🙄

22. @John A Arkansawyer – And a more contentious question: How many people from a group have to find an expression offensive before it becomes acknowledged as such? One in five? One in a hundred? What if members of the group find it to be a positive expression?

    I think part of the answer depends in some respects on whether it’s in group or out group use of the descriptor. Having “dyke” yelled out at me from a group of young men in a car is very different from one of my close friends noticing my very subtle flirting with a woman and twitting me with the word (to be clear, I identify as queer, not lesbian). One makes me roll my eyes, the other gives me no pause whatsoever.

    To your larger question, it’s tough to enumerate the zeitgeist. Maybe 10% objectors, maybe fewer and it becomes at least a matter of politeness to not use that word. There will always be outliers such as the Asian journalist and her father mentioned many times above, but eventually not polite becomes socially unacceptable. I don’t know where those tipping points occur, but I’m guessing it’s a fairly small percentage at the outset.

23. I wonder what the appropriate number of objections or disagreements are. Maybe we should officially limit it to 2 people? Maybe 3 if it’s a really dumb idea? We need to avoid pile-ons after all – what would the world be like if just anyone could give their views on just anything?

    I also wonder if it’s enough that one person saying that they weren’t bothered by a particular term, then how many people daying that it is insulting or demeaning does it take to decide that, “Hey, maybe it is a crap term that should be used more carefully?”.

    It should be a large number I think. The perceived powers of Magical Minority Faeries are not to be underestimated

24. @snowcrash, you and the Magical Minority Faeries owe me a keyboard. 🙂

25. One of the minor annoyances about all this, is so far I’ve had to explain to three separate people that World Fantasy Convention is NOT WorldCon, and it is not WorldCon that’s going through this Oldfan-privilege bullshit.

26. Regarding Asian…

27. Cheryl S.: @snowcrash, you and the Magical Minority Faeries owe me a keyboard.

    I am now eagerly awaiting the appearance of Camestros’ 3D animated rendition of Magical Minority Faeries.

    Assuming that Timothy the Talking Cat didn’t already have said Faeries for lunch. 😉

28. Cheryl S. In the late sensitives and early eighties, the UA-Fayetteville lesbian student group (which also functioned for the whole community, to some extent) was the Razordykes. (For those who don’t know, the school mascot for UAF is the Razorbacks.) They had to fight for that name on both sides, against the people who couldn’t bear to see the holy sports name so defiled by the womyn (their preferred spelling–only a few locally used wymyn or wimmin, so far as I could see), and the people who found dyke offensive.

    So yeah, you can’t put numbers on it, at least not easily and not just one number, context matters a lot, and it’s best to err on the side of politeness.

    Numbers come to mind because this program (to push myself back on topic) looks like such a total cluster. If any one single thing was all there was, that’d be one thing. But this thing is screwed up beginning to end, and that’s another.

29. TMP:

    No, it’s not disingenuous, it’s just polite if one regularly deals with East Asians regularly in any polite fashion. That you do not do this doesn’t mean it does not happen for others.

30. I find it problematic to assign “arbiter of Asian-ness” to any three people, even if I think one of them is a great author.

    I was using them as examples, not as the universe of arbiters. I have yet to see any prominent Asian author who has not reacted in a similar way to those three. I find it problematic that you’re bound and determined to weasel around the sentiments of actual people who would be targeted with such a term by using prevarications and evasions to claim we should not accept their assessment of the issue.

31. I have been informed WFC is not using the Gahan Wilson Lovecraft bust, just issuing certificates. Just wanted to correct my error.

32. I just don’t think internet mobs are a healthy thing, and so I thought to comment to counter the pile-on on someone who obviously didn’t mean to start a firestorm.

    To clarify, I’m not feeling mobbed. It’s the poor person who was only trying to put together a panel I think has been mobbed.

    These have to be the most disingenuous things you’ve said. Schweitzer was informed, directly, that “Spicy Oriental Zeppelins” was a panel title that people would take offense to. He waved off the warning by claiming it was a fannish in-joke (an in-joke made in a form that only he seems to have ever used). He knew this would be a problem because he was told it would be a problem, in no uncertain terms. He still chose to do it. He isn’t some “poor person” who was “only trying to put together a panel”. He’s someone who came up with an obnoxious panel name and bulled through against contrary advice to put it on the WFC schedule.

33. @Aaron:

    I have yet to see any prominent Asian author who has not reacted in a similar way to those three.

    Not in regard to this incident, but as a more general thought, are authors the right people to make these judgements by? I ask because I’ve noticed that in discussions of SF (I’m not following any other discussions of literature closely), people frequently talk about things done to characters as though they were done to physical beings, actual people. The discussions I follow are full of working authors and dedicated readers, and that makes me wonder whether we might be too close to words and story, too in love with them, to evaluate them correctly. It’s a weird thought, but I wonder.

34. Wow. What no one seems to have called TMP on is his dismissal of Asian commenters on twitter as an ‘echo chamber’*. Rule 1 of being a good ally, you shut up and listen when the people directly affected are talking. Instead TMP has been thrashing about for ways to say that their views don’t count. Their views don’t count, consider that for a second or two.

    In the specific history of pulps, Oriental has never had a positive association, the classic example being Doctor Fu Manchu, plotting to destroy the Empire, thwarted by that true-blooded Englishman Nayland-Smith. If you make a joke based on something rooted in racism, explicitly drawing on that racism, and sexualizing it, then you can only expect to be called on it.

    * Presumably the thousands of Asian voices condemning the cultural appropriation of Asian roles by white actors in Dr Strange, Ghost in the Shell, and tThe Great Wall are also an ‘echo chamber’ in TMP’s view.

35. @John A Arkansawyer

    Not yet a published author here, but working on it. I’d say your thought isn’t right. For Own Voices authors (I’m disabled, and an activist when not writing), we have to very carefully consider the issues we write and tweet about, because even when we don’t mean to talk as representatives of our minority groups, people assume we are. Many of us are driven to be writers in part because we can’t stand the horrendously bad default representations of our minority groups.

    What I’m trying to say is that we’re forced into the activist role whether we like it or not, and that behooves us to develop our thinking as representative of the beliefs and views of our minorities. So when an Own Voices author says something, you can trust our words are almost certainly representative of our wider groups.

    Where a facility with words does come in useful is picking apart the negative meanings that might pass other people by because they’re either unfamiliar with the issues and ways that we are oppressed, or because they don’t have the same ability to deconstruct literary nuance. ‘Oriental’ is a particularly good example of this, it’s an unacceptable usage for the group it refers to, because of a past history of racist use. And our genre has an awful part in that history, but we’re still primarily a white genre, and many people see ‘Spicy Oriental Zeppelins’ and just don’t understand how offensive it is because they don’t experience race related oppression in their daily lives and/or because they don’t know the history of racism among the pulps. But the Own Voices authors and allies either know them directly, or have educated themselves to know them.

    When we speak out, trust us there’s an issue here.

36. I’m disappointed the discussion (here and elsewhere) has focussed so much on the racism of ‘Spicy Oriental Stories’ (though perhaps TMP made that inevitable here), while ignoring the other equally problematic issues revealed by the programme. There’s still the issues of gender balance, including a massive imbalance between previous centennial tributes for male authors and the lack for a female author (Foz Meadows did blog on this aspect), the focus on an author we know is problematic, if deeply influential, and the disregard for anything written since about 1980.

    For me, as disabled fan and disability rights activist, the worst aspect is the sheer lack of recognition at how insulting that Freaks and Sideshows panel 7 is to disabled people. I can count the number of people who seem to have caught it on the fingers of one hand, even though it was explicitly called out in Sarah Pinsker’s original rant. (Honorable exception to Ann Leckie). Even the elided version still refers to the sexuality of disabled people as ‘the final frontier of bad taste’ You can have a damned good panel on how sideshow culture has been dealt with in SFF, but this isn’t it.

37. As John said above:

    “Numbers come to mind because this program (to push myself back on topic) looks like such a total cluster. If any one single thing was all there was, that’d be one thing. But this thing is screwed up beginning to end, and that’s another.”

38. @David Gillion: I’ve been an activist myself, and so I have some thoughts on what you say, but I’ll either save them for later or skip them, as I’ve talked enough for a while.

    I’m disappointed the discussion (here and elsewhere) has focussed so much on the racism of ‘Spicy Oriental Stories’ (though perhaps TMP made that inevitable here), while ignoring the other equally problematic issues revealed by the programme.

    I think here at least that’s because no one here finds anything at all defensible about the rest of that cluster of a program. I sure don’t.

39. @Jon Baker

    I once worked for the “International Center for the Disabled”. When it started, it was the “Institute for the Crippled and Disabled”. At the time, “crippled” wasn’t offensive to the disabled. By the 1970s, it was.

    The dates there are very significant. Part of the evolution in what language is acceptable to minority groups is an evolution in our understanding of the ways society oppresses us. The Disability Liberation movement didn’t kick off until the very late 60s (with the independent living movement in the US and UPIAS in the UK), so ICD was almost certainly named by the self-proclaimed ‘great and the good’ who saw us as children to be protected and wouldn’t have dreamed of asking us what terms were acceptable. Nowadays we consider infantilization a particularly pernicious hate crime.

    And even that original wave of liberation groups are now seen as problematic, with ‘white men in wheelchairs’ being a typical description. Our mantra is ‘Nothing for us, without us’ for very good reasons, bringing disabled people into leadership roles is still a work in process in many organisations that are supposedly for us (take a good long look at the International Paralympic Committee and the various national ones for a good example – IPC actually coopted someone most disabled people consider an outright oppressor not so long ago). Actually looking at intersectional roles, at issues faced by disabled women, and black disabled women in particular, is still a work in progress, as is bringing learning disabled groups into equal focus.

    So our understanding of oppression evolves, and attitudes to the pulps are now informed by an understanding that wasn’t there years ago. That doesn’t give out-group people the right to dismiss it because it didn’t used to be an issue, it gives them the responsibility to listen when in-group people are talking about why it is, _and was_ unacceptable.

    Also to be understood wrt acceptable usages are reclaimed words and in-group usage. I’ll happily refer to myself as a crip among other activists I know, because I know that we all understand the shared heritage of repression it relates to, the n-word sees a similar usage in some black activist circles, however I will be cautious among disabled people I don’t know as many see it as universally unacceptable. But if any out-group person uses crip to me, I’ll rip them a new one. That word is wrapped in our blood and oppression and our fight for equality and they don’t have the right to use it.

40. David Gillon: I’m disappointed the discussion (here and elsewhere) has focussed so much on the racism of ‘Spicy Oriental Stories’ (though perhaps TMP made that inevitable here), while ignoring the other equally problematic issues revealed by the programme… I can count the number of people who seem to have caught it on the fingers of one hand

    I don’t think people here are “ignoring” any of that. It’s just that there’s no ignorant person continually posting here trying to defend the rest of the items which are on that CF of a World Fantasy programming schedule.

    Quite a few people here have expressed their dismay with the whole programme as it was listed. I posted the link to Foz Meadows, who pretty much says it all. Just how much dismay do the people here need to post to satisfy you that we “caught it”? 😐

41. David Gillon: I’m disappointed the discussion (here and elsewhere) has focussed so much on the racism of ‘Spicy Oriental Stories’ (though perhaps TMP made that inevitable here), while ignoring the other equally problematic issues revealed by the programme… I can count the number of people who seem to have caught it on the fingers of one hand

    I signal boosted Sarah on Twitter. The statistics she tweeted appalled me. Unfortunately TMP hijacked this thread. It happens.

42. David Gillon: What I’m trying to say is that we’re forced into the activist role whether we like it or not, and that behooves us to develop our thinking as representative of the beliefs and views of our minorities. So when an Own Voices author says something, you can trust our words are almost certainly representative of our wider groups.

    Oh hell no. When I speak as a woman, as an incest survivor, as a rape survivor, as someone with chronic fatigue, as someone with a lifelong disability, as a Jew, as an Orthodox Jew, there is no way I can speak for everyone in any of those groups never mind as someone from all those groups. At best I can speak for many of the group. I can frequently gauge when language or a conversation is likely offending many others from my group But I won’t be speaking for 10-70%. You elude to intersectionality but I don’t think you truly get how much it plays a part.

    We as a society need to stop boxing people. The few you’ve met =/= the 99% you haven’t and depending on social power and structure and how in your own head you are you may not truly know the few.

    Example: As a white feminists I can’t truly speak for PoC, poor, LGBT feminist who we’ve failed generation after generation. As a middle class white feminists I can’t truly speak for those who’ve been poor all their life. I’ve gone through short time periods of poverty both as a child and an adult but I have safety nets and knowledge and access someone born into poverty doesn’t have. Intellectually I can educate myself on these issues but my unconscious biases exist. This would be the easiest of the topics I mention for me to learn and educate myself on to be able to speak for a larger group as lots of poor and PoC have and are writing about it. But that still leaves so many issues which should be addressed by feminists which I only have a little bit of personal experience, friends experience, and what I read which isn’t easy to find as none of this was a concern for most white middle class feminists of past generations.

    Know your limits and how much you don’t know. The more I know the more I know I need to learn. Never be afraid to ask for help. But do your research first. Don’t 101 your sources.

43. @Tasha Turner “there is no way I can speak for everyone in any of those groups never mind as someone from all those groups”

    Very good point, very important point. I wouldn’t dream on speaking of the specifics of lived experience for disabled women, and especially not black disabled women. It’s an experience I don’t have and can’t understand. My point was meant to be a more general one, because there are issues that affect us all: access, employment, care/support, discrimination, etc. And yes, some people will disagree, I’ve been called a supporter of the Final Solution for arguing that we need to ensure all disabled people are adequately supported by the state (yes, that was a bit of peculiar logic on the part of the person involved, they wanted to exclude anyone with a pain, fatigue or nausea based disability, and if I supported benefits for them then I was taking support away from my accuser, but it illustrates how even apparently neutral points can lead some people to disagree). But I believe I’m well enough embedded in the UK disability movement to know whether or not I’m speaking along lines that are generally agreed upon.

    Part of knowing when to speak out is also knowing when not to, or when to qualify yourself.

44. @JJ “Just how much dismay do the people here need to post to satisfy you that we “caught it”?”

    I was talking about reactions across the net, not simply here, but as far as I can see, I’m the only one in the thread to have pointed out that even the elided version of panel 7, which calls disabled people ‘the final frontier of the bad taste’ (and we know it was using that term in relation to our sexuality), is still an issue, not fixed. I’ve spoken to at least one disabled person who thinks it’s worse than the original. I know there are people who feel the wider issues of gender representation and so on haven’t been addressed, and I don’t want to take away from seeing the racism addressed, but when open ableism goes largely unremarked it’s a depressing reiteration of a widespread problem.

45. David Gillon: as far as I can see, I’m the only one in the thread to have pointed out that even the elided version of panel 7… is still an issue

    That’s because you’re not a member of this community.

    You said, “Part of knowing when to speak out is also knowing when not to, or when to qualify yourself”.

    Well, part of knowing when to speak out is also making yourself familiar with the community where you’re doing the speaking. I can guarantee you that 95% of the people who have participated in this thread clicked on and read Foz Meadows’ post delineating all of the problematic aspects of the WFC programming schedule. (Actually, I’d say it’s probably closer to 100%.) At the very least, another couple of hundred people who’ve been reading this thread but have not posted in it have also read Meadows’ post. And many of those participants and readers will have also Googled for, and read, other reactions and comments on the web — and they will have read the WFC programming schedule itself.

    You do not do your cause any favors by criticizing allies for not offering up sufficient condemnation to suit you.

    I’m frankly more than a little pissed off about all of the blatant racism, sexism, ableism, and genre blindness that schedule represents. I’m sure that you can understand that I don’t particularly appreciate you attempting to “school” me in things of which I am already very well aware. I can’t speak for others here, but I suspect that many of them had the same reaction as me.

    You don’t know this community. So you don’t know that many of the people here have disabilities, or that many of them have been severely hurt by racism and sexism. You don’t know that we discuss those issues here quite frequently. And it’s pretty arrogant on your part to assume that no one here has actually thought about — much less actually has to live with, on a daily basis — some or all of the problematic aspects of that schedule.

    It is always wise, when showing up late to a party, not to assume that everyone else has only just gotten there, too.

    And to claim that your thoughts and words are representative of all disabled people? I don’t even have the words to describe the arrogance of that. 😐

46. I’m a straight white person over 50 of Southern ancestry and I can’t EVEN with WFC’s -isms.

    “Oriental” has been frowned upon for as long as I can remember, unless you’re talking about rugs or breeds of cats. I was always taught that you don’t use it to refer to people, because that’s racist. Human beings are Asian, East Asian, South Asian, or the specific country.

    The “recent” works being from the 1970’s? Sure, that’s gonna appeal to today’s kids. There’s been a giant explosion in fantasy, and it’s so varied nowadays. You got YA, you got steampunk, you got characters of every ethnicity and gender identity — why limit yourself to old stuff?

    @David Gillon: YES. I’m also disabled and have a lot of friends who are (in varying amounts of visibility) and to suggest that disabled people having sex is “perverse” or “bad taste” is HORRIFYING. We’re people, we have sexual thoughts, we manage to have sex. People who have sex with us aren’t perverts, they like us for who we are And freakshow sideshows are actual bad taste! (Yes, I know about fetishes, but those don’t represent most people; that’s why they’re fetishes). You can call me a crip.

    But, thankfully, we didn’t have any idiot popping in here to repeatedly defend that bit of discrimination.

    (I think if you’re eating Spicy Oriental Zeppelins, you’d want either a Chinese beer or a nice Gewurztraminer. I’m picturing them as a fried wonton sorta thing, puffed out like a Zeppelin envelope, with Sichuan spices.)

47. I’m thinking some nice potato dumplings, in a sauce with bacon, onions, and those deadly little Sichuan dried red peppers. (Hey, they’re deadly to me. I’m a spice wimp.)

48. I like how we’re converging on some sort of dumpling with Sichuan peppers.

    But potatoes don’t seem very “Oriental” (does finger-quotes, rolls eyes), from the “Mysterious Orient” (ditto).

    To keep with the theme of our agog-ness, I’m thinking they should be something that 100 years ago would have been stunning and weird, but which today we’re all “Sure, I’d eat that. I think I did eat that once.”

49. lurkertype: But potatoes don’t seem very “Oriental” (does finger-quotes, rolls eyes), from the “Mysterious Orient”

    Surely the filling should be inside rice-paper wraps which have been origami’ed into a zeppelin shape?

50. Well sure, but wouldn’t a Zeppelin with Sichuan peppers be a Hindenburg?

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