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

1. lurkertype on August 3, 2016 at 7:14 pm said:

   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).

   A classic massaman curry springs to mind – although, if I understand the entymology of the Thai word for potato correctly ‘man farang’ means something like European vegetable/fruit/tuber/thing.

2. But it must be poofy so as to be a Zeppelin! Like an Asian equivalent of sopapillas. Or origami wonton as JJ suggested.

   Maybe taro instead of taters?

3. Curry puffs have potato in them and they are eponymously puffy
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_puff

4. Not very oriental, those Zeppelins. We have them in Sweden too, but for some strange reason, we call them “kroppkakor” (bodycakes).

5. Stoic Cynic on August 3, 2016 at 9:53 pm said:

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

   Oh, the humanity!

6. A belated note…

   You know what doesn’t happen? When you change a word that some members of a group find offensive to one that none do, people in the target group who don’t mind the term don’t – as a general thing – go on and on about how they wouldn’t have been offended. The people who go around taking offense at the removal of an offense-for-some are almost always outside the target group in the first place.

7. @JJ

   I seem to have annoyed you. That wasn’t my intention, because it again distracts from the issue.

   I think we’re looking at File 770 in different ways. I view it as a general SFF news site, you as a community. So no, I don’t know the details of the regular posters, but that shouldn’t be important on a news site when commenting on the reaction to the story, especially when addressing the cross SFF reaction as a whole.

   You raise Foz Meadows blog, which I read shortly after it appeared. You describe it as “delineating all of the problematic aspects of the WFC programming schedule.” Actually it doesn’t touch on the ableism, something I was surprised by, Foz is normally one of the few SFF bloggers who does address that aspect.

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

   What I was surprised, and yes, disappointed by, was how few people even mentioned it. At the point I wrote, three people that I’d seen had reacted to the ableism, and I was one of them (the other two being Sara Pinsker and Ann Leckie). Yet the original Sarah Pinsker posts specifically called out both the racism and the ableism (and the rest of the mess, but those two are the errors of commission, rather than omission). I’m not so much calling for a specific level of condemnation as asking why there was such a disparate take-up.

8. David Gillon:

   File 770 is absolutely both a new site and a community. A lot of us are regular posters, we know each others quite well after having read a few hundred (or more like thousands) of comments from each others since before. So we do know each others opinions and do not have to worry about them.

   As you yourself said, the discrepancy here was quite obviously because of one persons ongoing trainwreck. You can be quite sure that people here were as annoyed at the ableism as at anything else.

9. @David Gillon I think we’re looking at File 770 in different ways. I view it as a general SFF news site, you as a community. So no, I don’t know the details of the regular posters, but that shouldn’t be important on a news site when commenting on the reaction to the story, especially when addressing the cross SFF reaction as a whole

   This is definitely a community. Because you don’t visit or read and/or participate in the comments doesn’t change the fact. When Mike Glyer began posting about the SPs and RPs and the Hugos many of us became regular commenters and file770.com became a community as well as a general SFF news site.

   When you come into a new community it’s a good idea to learn its cultural norms and take care with your wording. Or at least I’ve found it helps my integration into new communities. In the early days I try to be careful my questions don’t sound like accusations.

   For example if I were curious about the lack of attention the horrifically worded panel on disability was worded I’d try something like: while we are talking about bad panels at WFC what does everyone think of x? As a disabled person I’m so tired of seeing this kind of crap.

   Had you done that one of two things would have happened:
   1. Filers would have responded with their agreement with you and similar frustration

   2. You would have been ignored in the same way my attempted redirect was because there was someone wrong on the Internet and must be put right and in his place

   Your redirect did go better than mine at getting attention but only because we were attacked and needed to defend ourselves. Which didn’t do much to help your case. Nor is continuing to lecture us on what this website is helping your cause.

   If you want to discuss problems of disability and how we are treated/ignored/etc. you need to focus on your points without antagonistic language. More than half of us responding to you are disabled in some way. We know this about each other because we are a community. I could probably write up responses for a number of the regular filers and they for me on the topic as we have discussions around ableism and our personal issues and convention problems we’ve experienced.

   #sorrynotsorry this is so long. Back before I was hit by an 18-wheel truck in 2012 I was able to write more concisely.

10. David Gillon: I think we’re looking at File 770 in different ways. I view it as a general SFF news site, you as a community. So no, I don’t know the details of the regular posters, but that shouldn’t be important on a news site when commenting on the reaction to the story, especially when addressing the cross SFF reaction as a whole.

    You know, you can call this site a cheese sandwich if you want — but that won’t change it from what it is into what you think it should be.

    Understanding your audience is important. I’m frankly boggled that you consider yourself an activist, but you don’t seem to be aware of that very basic fact.

    You chose not to listen to, or take on board, the things that Tasha said, and the things that I said. I think that as long as the switch on your two-way radio is set permanently on “Send”, you will struggle to achieve any sort of effectiveness as an activist.

    But that’s your journey to make. I wish you all the best on it.

11. @Bruce Baugh
    Missed your comment earlier. Really well said. 😀

12. The Okeanos Explorer is on a new mission, exploring the deep oceans around Wake Island. It’ll be on duty through the 19th of August, so folks who missed most of their last mission can catch a bunch this time. 🙂

    Their Youtube channel, with daily live streaming.

    And thanks, Tasha.

13. @Bruce Baugh

    Very cool news! There’s something addictive in watching exploration live. Thanks for sharing!

14. Yeah, it’s fascinating too be seeing things that literally no human being has ever seen before, with a time delay of a handful of seconds.

15. They need to be completely (or mostly) hollow to be properly Zeppelin-y. Certainly

    Bruce Baugh, so very well said.

    Even pure news sites have communities and community standards in their comment area. Where there are comments, there are communities and their mores. That’s been true since before we had these keen webpage things.

    I don’t know what I’m looking at underwater, but it’s pretty neat. I foresee much Googling to investigate what these things are. Animal, vegetable, and what sort?

16. Lurkertype, you’re mostly seeing rocks – chunks of lava and igneous rocks coated by a “dust” heavy in manganese (which also comes from eruptions). Most of the stuff that isn’t rocks is corals, which are animals that look like plants. 🙂 Various starfish-related creatures live among the branches of some types of coral. Then there are shrimp and fish.

17. There was a thing that looked like a pinwheel, five lobes perched on a stem. Coral?

18. Yes, also a coral.

19. In googling “spicy zeppelin stories” you do get more than ten hits. So, it is there, though the addition of the word “Oriental” only gets the one hit. And there is a “Weird Trails” magazine too.

    There is a sense of over zealousness from some people.

20. About what? About “Spicy Oriental Zeppelin Stories” not actually being the fannish in-joke he claimed it was? How is it over-zealousness to point that out?

21. Is it the word “Oriental” or is it something else?

22. @Robert Whitaker Siragnano
    Yes it’s the addition of the word Oriental to the phrase which is the problem which if you’d been following the thread/conversation would be obvious. 😉

    There is a reason you only found one hit on the offensive racist not-a-fannish-in-joke-phrase

23. There was, in fact, a 1930’s pulp magazine called “Oriental Stories.” There was also one called “Zeppelin Stories.” The word “spicy” was often used in pulp magazine titles.
    “Spicy Oriental Zeppelin Stories” is a snarky mashing together of these terms for humorous effect. Would people have been offended if the actual title. “Oriental Stories” had been used in the panel title? I note that “Oriental” in this context is simply a descriptor of a type of story.

24. Of versions various heard over the years at East Coast conventions. Hint: not everything is on Google. I see that it would be no less offensive if the terms were SPICY AMERICAN ZEPPLIN STORIES. or is that far too broad? would SPICY PHIALDEPHIA ZEPPLIN STORIES do?

    I understand the evolving PC mind set but often….don’t quite buy into all of it.

25. This is what the Contento Index says about Spicy Zeppelin Stories.

    Spicy Zeppelin Stories
    This imaginary title was a long-standing joke amongst pulp fans, representing the ultimate absurd cross-genre magazine. It was probably inevitable that someone would eventually attempt to fabricate a copy. Odyssey Publications, a pulp reprint publisher, made such an attempt, with partner Will Murray writing the entire issue. Unfortunately, Odyssey became dormant shortly thereafter, and the publication languished until 1989, when pulp fan Doug Ellis heard about it and persuaded Murray to let him publish it.
    Publishers: Tattered Pages Press; Chicago, IL.

26. I think it can be considered both a “fannish in-joke” and offensive. But the joke only succeeds IF the audience is familiar with pulp’s history of “Spicy” and “Zeppelin” and “Oriental” themed magazines.

    Without that knowledge, the more modern and more offensive connotations of “Oriental” leap to the forefront.

    So the intent was to be a joke, but it ended up being a -failed- joke.

    I think Scalzi’s “The failure mode of Clever is Asshole” probably applies in this case.

    (Awhile back, I submitted a story set in the 1890’s to my local writers’ workshop. One of the other people found it confusing, because they had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what a “dime novel” was.)

    More disturbing then the failed joke, imho, was the disregard shown by WFC when people complained about the use of “Oriental”. It was only when the complaints went embarrassingly public that a change was made.

27. I can accept Bruce Arthur’s overview. I’ve always had the word used to apply to a generic and then it had its breakdowns into specifics as it had in a library catalog. It is still used that way.

    Dime novel? Is that now as forgotten as “Horatio Alger”?

28. Hi Robert! I’m sorry, but I do not live on the East Coast. Am I supposed to get in-jokes anyhow?

    Also: If the in-joke contains words that are nowadays slurs, is the programming really a place for such in-jokes that can only be understood by a small subset of fans that live on the East Coast?

    Here is the thing. A joke is not funny if you have to explain it. A joke is even less funny if you have to explain why it is not offensive.

    Also, can you explain what way “Philadelphia” is known as a offensive word?

29. Because of the Move confrontation and incineration, and a one time known aspect of Police thuggery at that time. Oh, I had to explain. Its old politics.

    I meant that changing from the overly broad use of one noun to a specific noun.

    Orient is broad, where Japan is a specific.

    And the learning goes on.

30. Dime novel– like a Stephen King novel published a chapter a week for 36 weeks.

31. It must feel good to whitesplain why groups of people shouldn’t be offended by a term used against them.

    Some of you are behaving in a way where your SWM privilege is showing your ass. Congrats

32. “Because of the Move confrontation and incineration, and a one time known aspect of Police thuggery at that time. Oh, I had to explain. Its old politics.”

    Ok, so you wrote that comment on pure bad faith and trolling. Should have known.

33. Tasha Turner on August 5, 2016 at 9:56 am said: Some of you are behaving in a way where your SWM privilege is showing your ass. Congrats

    Racial slurs seem OK when you are the one using them.

34. No I wasn’t. Just wanted to understand a word transition from a generic to a slur.

35. Well, on a bulletin board I inhabit, we do have an “Only in Philadelphia” thread, but it’s about played out, and I think we’re going to move to “Florida Man”.

36. “No I wasn’t. Just wanted to understand a word transition from a generic to a slur.”

    The start for “Oriental” to become a no-no word can be found in Edward Saids book “Orientalism” from 1978. It had a huge impact in showing how colonialism and racism went together in the thoughts and descriptions of the “Orient” and “Orientals”. Of course, he wasn’t the first critic, only the most well known.

    And since there has never been an “Oriental” describing themselves as an “Oriental”, the word stopped being seen as acceptable. It is a word created for negative stereotypes. And that is why it is no longer allowed to be used in state documents.

37. From Wikipedia:

    “Distinct within American culture, some American English speakers consider the term “Oriental” to be an antiquated, pejorative, and disparaging term. John Kuo Wei Tchen, director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York University, said the basic critique of the term developed in U.S.A. in the 1970s. Tchen has said: “With the U.S.A. anti-war movement in the ’60s and early ’70s, many Asian Americans identified the term ‘Oriental’ with a Western process of racializing Asians as forever opposite ‘others’.”[7] In a 2009 American press release related to legislation aimed at removing the term “oriental” from official documents of the State of New York, Governor David Paterson said: “The word ‘oriental’ does not describe ethnic origin, background or even race; in fact, it has deep and demeaning historical roots”.[8]”

    I do find it weird that people who seem to defend the usage of denigrating words always have to ask others to do their basic research.

38. Colonialism turned people into properties to rule over. “The Orient” was what England ruled until the tribes, the people wanted their own autonomy back.

    This much I can understand. So I’ll avoid using it. I’ve had my metaphorical and virtual hand slapped several times for overly broad description before.

    Live and learn.

39. An “Oriental story” is a tale set in the Orient i.e. the East. It was a specific genre of fiction. Is it politically incorrect to discuss such fiction at all? That’s what it was called. Is it necessary to create euphemisms to discuss such in public?

40. Should we picket stores that sell “Oriental carpets?” That’s how they are advertised.

41. @Lee Weinstein: Oriental carpets are things. People referred to as “Orientals” are people. And the stories which referred to them were kinda racist. They’re still worth studying. But let me put it this way: There are some tracks Louis Armstrong played great on which have very embarrassing lyrical content. What they were called at that time was “coon songs”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have that phrase bandied about without reason. I’m a little bummed using it, but since I’m on record as saying Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven are the pinnacle of Modernist art, I think it’ll be understood that I reject the racism of the phrase.

    If there’s a panel about the magazine “Spicy Oriental Tales”, well, that might be one thing. That’s the edge case for me. But this is not that.

42. “An “Oriental story” is a tale set in the Orient i.e. the East. It was a specific genre of fiction. Is it politically incorrect to discuss such fiction at all? “

    But the this part of the programming wasn’t about this genre of fiction. It was about flying pulps. Oriental had nothing to do with it.

43. @Milt Stevens
    SWM isn’t a racial slur. Thanks for playing and being tone deaf.

44. Tasha Turner on August 5, 2016 at 12:26 pm said:
    @Milt Stevens
    SWM isn’t a racial slur. Thanks for playing and being tone deaf.

    You are misrepresenting what you said. You were disregarding what other people said based on their race. That is racism.

45. @Milt Stevens
    I’m not misrepresenting what I said. Nor am I ignoring what others said. You might be misunderstanding me and entire parts of this conversation.

46. @John: You do make some valid points. But if you accept a panel about “Spicy Oriental Tales” why not “Spicy Oriental Zeppelin Stories?” Both are in the context of a magazine title, not a description of people.
    @Hampus. Yes, the whole point was that the panel title was to make fun of the kind of titles that pulp magazines had, by exaggeration for humorous effect.
    My point about “Oriental carpets” is that the word is still in common acceptable usage in other contexts. I am surprised that people would interpret the panel title as a racial slur.

47. Could people coming late to the thread please read all of the comments, in their entirety, before commenting themselves — instead of simply reposting a bunch of things which have already been posted by others, as if they were saying something new?

    This looks like bad faith behavior to me — and I don’t particularly think anyone in this thread has an obligation to engage with bad faith commenters who can’t be bothered to read the full thread before chiming in with redundant inanities.

48. @Lee Weinstein – Is it politically incorrect to discuss such fiction at all? That’s what it was called. Is it necessary to create euphemisms to discuss such in public? and I am surprised that people would interpret the panel title as a racial slur.

    First, I generally interpret “politically incorrect” used in this way as “why do I have to pay attention to the feelings of others,” so that’s one thing. Your surprise at the interpretation probably has its roots in your not being Asian, so that’s another thing.

    It’s hard to convey nuance on the internet, so let me be clear that I’m not being disapproving here. I do want to offer something for you to consider, though. When faced with a group of people who find a particular term risible, it’s generally not a bad idea to think about why that would be so instead of leaping to either a defense of the term or expressing bafflement that it should somehow be offensive.

    Do you still wear your hair the same way you did in 1970? Are your slacks the same? Bet your ties, unless you’re into fashion jokes, are way different too. Fashion changes. Social mores change as well and just like Sansabelt slacks now look ridiculous, so do the terms white USAians used to use for Asians and other racial and ethnic groups, with the added fillip of being rude.

49. “Yes, the whole point was that the panel title was to make fun of the kind of titles that pulp magazines had, by exaggeration for humorous effect.”

    Thing is, it was only fun for a small group of people. The rest were just perplexed over why the hell a word with some very bad associations were used. Perhaps programming titles aren’t the best place for injokes between a small set of persons? For me, “Oriental Zeppelins” sounded like zeppelins manned by these nasty orientals. The addition of “Spicy” was only weird.

    As I said before, a joke that has to be explained is not funny. A joke that has to be explained why it is not offensive is even less funny.

    But I think people just would have shaken their heads a bit if this hadn’t come together with the rest of the problems of the program.

50. Oh, lookie! Lee Weinstein, Robert Whitaker Sirignano, and Milt Stevens are all good buddies with Darrell Schweitzer! Why doesn’t that surprise me? 🙄

    Why don’t you ask your buddy Darrell to come over here and speak for himself, instead of you all engaging in a bunch of dissembling and disingenuous behavior on his behalf?

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