As noted last time, I am mostly out of the loop while overseas. Honestly, it’s a remarkable thing to be witnessing the American news cycle from a distance. Kinda surreal, to tell the truth. I don’t feel quite so immersed in the never-ending shouting, like I do when I am at home. And that’s been a relief.
Still, some things penetrate. And because the news of the past week is germane to a prior discussion, I wanted to put a few thoughts out there.
(NOTE: These are my opinions, just for me; take ’em or leave ’em. Others will have their own. I am not sure mine matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things. But here goes . . .)
If the base fear of religious conservatives is that gays and lesbians are “destroying” marriage, how can gays and lesbians destroy a thing which America’s straight couples have been actively destroying for a century?
Think about it. And let’s be brutally honest.
Rampant divorce.
Rampant infidelity.
Rampant abuse of spouses and children.
I don’t think those are the legacy of a people who collectively believe marriage to be sacred.
If I feel anything on the issue of marriage, I feel that marriage (by Americans) has been thrown into the mud and trampled upon. We did that. All of us. And now that gays and lesbians have picked it up out of the mud and said, “We would like to have this wonderful thing,” religious conservatives want to snatch it away and yell, “You can’t have that, it’s our most favorite thing ever!”
Oh really? Then why have we been treating marriage like garbage for so many decades? Because we have. As a society. With our collective actions, we decided marriage wasn’t important anymore. Long, long before the issue of gay marriage got to the Supreme Court.
And now that marriage is important to somebody — gays and lesbians — we try to keep it away from them?
I can’t wrap my brain around that. Too much cognitive dissonance.
The Supreme Court has swept away an inequality. Well, and good. I’ve thought this outcome inevitable for probably ten years now. Just because of the trajectory of the legal wrangling.
Does that mean I, as a person of conservative religious belief, have to cheer and applaud a thing which my religious doctrine says is wrong? Nope. But then, not every wrong thing in the world has to be barred legally. Like I’ve said before, freedom of choice is a bedrock principle of my LDS faith. And while I am not an authority — nor do I claim any ability to speak for any Mormon other than me — I do think choice is a huge part of these very divisive and contested political fights over the rights of other people.
Because the choices other people make, sometimes offend us terribly.
This past week, it seems to me that the Supreme Court decided in favor of more rights. More freedom. More choice.
I think that’s the way it should be. Even if my church doctrine believes also that the exercising of these freedoms (gay marriage) is against the plan of God.
Again, not every wrong thing must be legally barred. There are some pretty nasty guys over in Syria and Iraq right now who think every wrong thing (by their lights) should not only be legally barred, but people found violating the law should be burned, drowned, beheaded, and worse. In their desire to do a right thing (again, by their lights) they have fostered and fomented evil the likes of which we — as Americans — can barely imagine. Barbarity and bloodshed and the iron fist of true tyranny. That’s not what God wants. That’s not why Christ said what He said in His ministry on this Earth, and it’s not what the Atonement is about either.
The men of the so-called Caliphate have arrogated to themselves the seat of holy judgment. And they inflict heinousness in God’s name.
The men and women of the United States Supreme Court might also be accused of arrogating to themselves the seat of judgment, but in this particular instance, they have come down on the side of liberty.
I want to think that liberty — our ability to choose — is still the most important thing that sets America and Americans apart, from other nations and peoples in the world. Even if that liberty makes us highly uncomfortable, or we believe this liberty permits wrong-doing in the eyes of the Lord. We crossed the bridge of pluralism when the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Constitution of the United States, were forged. It’s not been an error-free path. Nor was the creation of the nation error-free. We almost destroyed ourselves in a Civil War that ultimately corrected the most egregious error. And the echoes of that error haunt our society up to the very minute.
Now, I believe another error has been corrected.
And again, neither you nor I nor any other religious conservative has to be thrilled about it. Compulsory celebration of sin — or the perceived expectation of same — is grating on many, and causing some very unhappy commentary. I get it. I really do. Nobody should be forced to violate his or her conscience by putting on a party hat for what we believe to be wrong.
But let’s not get wrapped up in negativity. Seriously. Not about this. Not about what the government says. The government’s job has been and always should be, to expand and defend liberty. The government just did its job. Believe it, or not.
Our job — all of us, and I am including progressive intellectuals too — is to find ways to be sowers of good seed among ourselves. To not be tempted into vindictiveness or hatred. To not inflict ourselves on each other, as a way to try to exorcise whatever negative feelings we have inside of us.
The most difficult part about being a religious conservative in a society which makes liberty paramount, is learning to get along with people who not only violate what religious conservatives see as God’s law, but getting along with people who think the law (and sometimes God with it) don’t even exist.
Likewise, the most difficult part about being a progressive intellectual in a society which makes liberty paramount, is learning to get along with people who not only don’t share the same standards and values, but who often think progressive standards and values are morally wrong, or lacking any moral fiber whatsoever.
That’s a mind-bending and difficult path. But that’s the spiral up. Blood, sweat, and tears. Not everyone is going to walk it. Many people will actively fight walking it — on both sides. But I think that’s the only choice that leads to net positive dividends for all concerned. One step at a time. The spiral up. And it starts at home. With our wives and our husbands, our children, our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and it moves outward from there. Neighbors. Coworkers. Friends. People we meet in our daily business. The lives we can touch in small ways, with quiet acts of charity, kindness, and mercy.
Not the blaring “Look at me! Look at me!” self-referential, vain pablum of social media.
I’m talking about the concrete, real-world stuff that nobody will see or notice: except those who experience the connectedness of a kind act, done out of kindness, with no expectation of recompense.
As I have loved you, love one another. That’s the Christ-like ideal. I think we express it best by tending to the gardens in our own back yards. And I don’t mean literal gardens. I mean spiritual and emotional gardens. Many of which are neglected and overgrown with the weeds of bitterness, rancor, resentment, and worse. I’ve got a garden like that. And I suspect, so do many of the people reading this. We all have to be responsible for our own gardens. And I don’t say that because I think my garden is perfect. Nope. I go to church every Sunday — yes, even when I am thousands of miles away from home — to be reminded of the fact that my garden is choked with weeds. And that weeding is a never-ending chore that I can’t escape. At least not if I want to be serious about my beliefs as a Christian.
I think mindful gardening and diligent weeding are chores secular progressives can embrace too. Dare I even say that some of the most mindful and diligent gardeners I know, are secular? Or at least not of my particular faith tradition?
It’s tempting to look at people — the world around us — and throw up our hands, declaring, “It’s all gone to crap!” So much wrong. So many people who seem dead-set on doing wrong.
What we do next, is a matter of deliberate choice. For our own personal lives. How we respond to the wrong. Not only the wrong we see outside of ourselves, but the wrong inside of us too. Focusing forever on the wrong outside, and ignoring the wrong inside — or acting like it doesn’t exist — won’t combat the weeds. It will allow the weeds to completely take over. Weeding is about tending to ourselves, and our own sphere. The people we touch every day. The ones around us who actually matter. That’s where the energy can bring forth good fruit. That’s where the “win” is. Not what goes on somewhere else, or what’s said in the news cycle. You can’t fix or control that stuff. You, in your office or living room, have no power to “fix” at the macro scale. And you will exhaust yourself fretting over the macro.
But you do have the power to “fix” at the personal level. I think that’s what gets lost in the never-ending carnival of arguments. We ignore the personal level, obsess about the macro level, and nothing worthwhile gets done. The weeds win.
Go back to gardening in your own back yard — daily — and you get the good stuff. It might not seem like it has a macro impact. But if everybody is a back-yard gardener, and everybody works at it, there will be a macro effect. That’s something I’ve always taken away from my scripture reading and other spiritual pondering. The idea that each of us individually doing small works of kindness, love, and forgiveness, can add up to a huge net dividend for the society as a whole.
This includes marriage. Do we want to put our money where our mouths are? How much time and energy are we devoting to our families and our homes? Shouting about marriage in the macro sense, while neglecting or abusing marriage on a personal level, is pointless. We prove we care about marriage when we put our wives and our husbands and our children first. Not last. First. And again, it doesn’t matter what the government does (or doesn’t do) about it. This is between us, and the Lord. He will judge us. Not the government. Not society. Not activists. God. How willing would any of us be to go before God right this minute, and give an account of our stewardship of our relationships with our spouses and our families? How much gardening have we done in that respect? Are we prepared to get called on the carpet? Do our choices and our actions live up to our rhetoric, as “defenders” of the “sacred institution” of marriage? Have we made it sacred every day? Do we show our wives and our husbands and our families forgiveness, compassion, love, and support?
Because that’s where my mind goes. And I think I am way too occupied trying to tend to my own garden — Weeds! Damned weeds, everywhere! — to get overly concerned with peering over the fence at somebody else’s.
Brad R. Torgersen 
Hear, hear! Tending our own gardens is the best way to restore marriage. Marriage was in shambles a long time before this week, that I’m surprised the gays even wanted it! As a Catholic, I agree that there are problems with legalising marriage, but I try to find the good in what’s occurred. I appreciate the sentiment that more freedoms are a good thing, even it’s the freedom to do something I might not agree with.
The problem that I have with the supreme court decision has nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the decision itself. Stripped down, the majority decision is that they overturned a couple of dozen laws that had been voted on by the citizens of the states in question simply because they thought that those laws might make people feel bad. The decision admits that there is no constitutional basis for throwing out all of those laws, but since they felt in their hearts that it was the right thing to do, fuck the constitution.
It’s very significant that it not only was a 5-4 decision, but that all four dissenting judges wrote their own dissenting opinions, and all four pointed out that the majority of the court acted outside of its authority.
It’s hard to “tend your own garden” when assholes can interfere in how you do it.
“Love One Another” is a joke when the hateful assholes are free to be hateful toward us.
Oh, to be sure, the legalistic nature of the ruling will have people talking about this for a long time. The way in which the ruling was arrived at, and the language used to support it, has already caused a great deal of unhappiness. Still, I think this decision was written in the stars. Because justice really does have to be blind. From a purely “blind” perspective, there wasn’t a sound legal reason to keep gays and lesbians from enjoying the same rights as straight couples. Do religious conservatives have to celebrate “marriage” of this nature? Nope. But at least the law of the land is now consistent.
My personal desire was to see the government get out of the “marrying” business altogether; remand that job to the churches, or the secular facsimiles of similar office. Because Lord knows I could care less about the piece of paper I bought from the government. What I am concerned with are the covenants I took with my wife in the LDS temple. That’s when I got married, for me. Not the piece of paper from the state. The temple sealing.
But, like the song says, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.”
I think the country needed this ruling. Maybe it was arrived at in a less-than-perfect manner. But then again, never letting perfect be the enemy of “good enough” is an axiom that is true in many different spheres.
At bottom line, the law hasn’t touched my church doctrine. If ever the activists decide that want the law to begin touching my church doctrine — LDS are particularly sensitive in this regard, because it’s happened before — then it becomes a whole new kind of discussion. About which I will have a wholly different opinion.
Hopefully activists are satisfied. Hopefully the endless wrangling, will abate. I think our country has more urgent things to attend to.
Paul,
Oh, I agree very much. Which is why if/when the activists decide to come after the LDS temples or LDS doctrine — and some of them may — it becomes a new matter altogether. I would also add: the rush to enforce “hate speech” codes on campuses, and elsewhere, is merely a form of political gamesmanship and censoring through institutional means. Liberty has to mean liberty for everybody, not just some people some of the time. We’ll see now if activists who favor using the institutions to enforce a one-sided and dogmatic attack program, are prepared to admit they got what they wanted, so now it’s time to back the hell off and be grown-ups; for a change.
I’ve been pro-gay marriage on a libertarian basis (people should be able to freely enter into any contract they like and maybe the government ought not be deciding what that contract is) but my take on the cause and effect of the destruction of marriage is… yes, indeed and I’ve said many times that attitudes toward divorce and viewing marriage as disposable is a *heterosexual* problem… It’s hard to demand that people not feel like marriage itself is under attack when it so very obviously *is*. And also, that it’s very easy to give something away when it has become (according to society) so very worthless.
So I suppose, I’ve been *for* it, but not been at all impressed with the arguments *for* it, and somewhat sympathetic to people who do see the destruction of marriage as a real problem.
I’ve argued for years that gay couples who want something valuable had a natural common cause with religious conservatives who want marriage to be valuable, if only everyone could see their way to that common ground.
Attacks on free speech? This didn’t take long.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/06/27/cnns-toobin-not-legal-for-scalia-to-talk-about-gay-people-like-he-used-to/
Unfortunately, I think the only group of people who will really have joy from this decision are the lawyers. Those couples who don’t want to get married will be pushed into it as partnership benefits vanish, those seeking acceptance instead of tolerance will not be sated, and homosexuals are now at the mercy of the divorce courts. So, lawsuits and legal fees will mount as each of these three gets worked out, not in the legislature, but in the courts.
“We’ll see now if activists who favor using the institutions to enforce a one-sided and dogmatic attack program, are prepared to admit they got what they wanted, so now it’s time to back the hell off and be grown-ups; for a change.”
Brad, those people are incrimentalists. They NEVER back off. They get a little (or a lot) of what they ask for and then they start all over again. It’s their religion.
“How willing would any of us be to go before God right this minute, and give an account of our stewardship of our relationships with our spouses and our families?”
Funny thing, I don’t expect to stand before any god and need to give an accounting. But if that did happen today and I had to give an accounting on my relationships with spouse, family, and friends, I’d have no qualms and I’m sure any god that was for love (as opposed to vengeance or something) would be happy with my stewardship. 🙂
Bravo Brad for telling folks to put their interest where their hearts should be. 🙂
To the best of my knowledge there has never been any law in the United States that prevented homosexuals from getting married. Nowhere was a certificate of heterosexuality demanded before a marriage licence could be issued. For that matter, I don’t believe that any test for homosexuality has ever been invented. So the idea that homosexuals were denied the right to do something that heterosexuals were allowed to do is simply not true.
Now, it is true that for all of human history until the present day marriage was defined as a specific contract involving a limited number of participants and that those participants had to be of opposite sexes, that’s because marriage has the primary purpose of producing children and children are produced by a biological activity that requires one male and one female. But there isn’t any law written that says that the male and female have to be straight, or any way of enforcing such a law if it were written. I can understand why homosexuals would not want to get married, and that’s fine. To the best of my knowledge there are also no laws that force people to get married against their will in the United States (although such laws are common elsewhere in the world.)
This may seen like a foolish point to make, but it is critical. The supreme court decision did not give anyone the right to do something that was allowed to some and denied to others. What it did was fundamentally change the nature of a basic human activity. It is an attempt not to rewrite custom but biology. It isn’t like repealing laws against interracial marriage, it’s more akin to redefining gravel as a foodstuff and demanding that people eat it.
I’d add that the State’s Historical interest in marriage was to determine the legal obligation for the material support of children *and women*. In that sense, sort of, any type of domestic partnership/dependency would qualify… if we actually had a real sense that the dependency was permanent and actual and paying for another person’s upkeep and misfortunes of chance was “life” instead of “unfair and taxpayers should do it”… it would certainly apply between non-reproductive adults and not just between adults with children.
In other words… why should anyone care? The reason they should care is that a marriage identifies a unit of financial obligation, of who is supposed to house, clothe, feed, and pay the medical expenses, of which other people and in what circumstances.
Except that marriage is not seen that way by nearly anyone at all. You get married for love, get divorced when life happens, the state steps in to mandate child support or alimony (though less of the latter now), and whatever social stability or general welfare benefits there ought to be no longer exist. The idea the the “community” ought to only be taking care of people with NO other family has been long ago abandoned. Now, taking care of your own family is either portrayed as “selfish” if you’re able to do it well, or “unfair” if misfortune strikes so that sacrifices need be made.
Much as I disagree with Torgerson’s opinion on homosexual marriage, I do agree with him that this fight was lost a long time ago, sometime around when no-fault divorce was instituted. Once that happened, this was inevitable.
I suppose my experience is slightly different. Here in Canada SSM has been legal for several years. I’m friends with two same-sex married couples. I supported SSM before Clinton and Obama, but then, I’m not a pandering politician, pretending to take positions to get elected. I am OK with gay marriage, though I do have concerns about how it was made into law. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a discussion about the matter, when you have people who start shrieking “BIGOT!” at the slightest hint of disagreement.
We had a shotgun marriage when my girlfriend found she was pregnant at 18. I suppose it technically wasn’t a ‘shotgun’ marriage – I stepped up to the plate and accepted my responsibilities as the father and I was proud and happy to do it. My Baptist in laws blew a gasket and gave sanctimonious speeches about morals and ethics and nobody really expected our marriage to survive.
9 months later, my daughter arrived and a few months after that my youngest brother in law passed away from medical problems. It changed my in laws – they threw out their faith wholesale and slowly came to accept their granddaughter and even tolerate me.
I am fairly quiet and critical in my thinking whereas my in laws just seemed to go where the winds blew. They started taking the path of least resistance in all things and as their family deteriorated – they seemed hellbent on taking mine with theirs. Was it 30 years ago? Time is a thief and I suppose I changed as well. In any event, my in laws came more and more to resemble the SJW/progtards and I became more and more conservative. Marriage means something to me and my wife and we took it very seriously. If you don’t that is fine and on you – but don’t tell me that my morals and ethics aren’t any good. Until such time as God disabuses me of them, they are mine and I will defend them up to and including violence if necessary.
5 years ago my daughter finished up a mickey mouse arts degree at a no-name college, and gave me the news: She was gay. Not only that – our family had to change to get with the times and accommodate her and her life-partner. My daughter and her ugly girlfriend would be in charge of our new family, of course. They would tell me what I could say and think; they would tell me what jokes were funny and I WOULD be punished with shunning and ostracism if I didn’t bow down and accept their moral and intellectual superiority. She did it with an email manifesto that would make any SJW proud – complete with threats, ultimatums and sanctimony. I sent her an email back saying I was disgusted with her maturity and handling of the issue.
That was 5 years ago and I haven’t seen her since. Brad – you are well fitted and well grounded upstairs when it comes to how your noggin works but this time – you are just flat out WRONG. Everyone wants to think gays are just nice people that want to get along and be left alone….but that is not who these people are. You really, really need to look at who these queers are and what they say and think. The fact is that most are sexually disturbed and the liberals are going to use them as the useful fools to drive some very foul new laws.
Their first assault will be on the church. That is their biggest enemy right now – but once they vanquish them – and they will – they will need to control other people and their opinions too. Think of the battle you have with your Sad Puppies – well, that little dust up is now a major fire fight on all fronts and you are in serious danger of losing – fact is I am betting against you myself. Up here in Canada gays won the privacy of their bedrooms. They promptly got out of the closet and the liberals had them pounding on the doors of the courtrooms, the classrooms, the public washrooms and the boardrooms. The Canadian Human Rights Council became their henchman and extorted and harassed those that objected to homosexuality. They began pushing for state run censorship. They bullied school boards to introduce gay sex education – to ELEMENTARY school students. We were all supposed to act shocked and surprised when it became public that some of the point-men on that were pedos.
Losing my daughter was traumatic and I began to study queers with ruthless clinical detachment. 125 years of rock solid classical psychology tell us that homosexuality is not mentally healthy and is often linked to other unhealthy and self destructive behaviours. Gay men tend to be boisterous and extroverted. Lesbians tend to be sullen and angry people. Yeah, I know…’STEREOTYPES!!!!’ … But stereotypes arise for a reason. You have literally opened Pandora’s Box with this, and the fact that you did it with good intentions won’t matter a bit in the coming culture war.
I don’t think gays should be beaten or harassed or gassed – but nor should deviant and degenerate behaviour be ‘celebrated’ and pushed at our kids. My advice to you now is – get your kids out of public schools. The pedos are on the way.
5 years ago my daughter finished up a mickey mouse arts degree at a no-name college, and gave me the news: She was gay. Not only that – our family had to change to get with the times and accommodate her and her life-partner. My daughter and her ugly girlfriend would be in charge of our new family, of course. They would tell me what I could say and think; they would tell me what jokes were funny and I WOULD be punished with shunning and ostracism if I didn’t bow down and accept their moral and intellectual superiority.
In other words, you DIDN’T have to change; you DIDN’T have to “accept their moral and intellectual superiority”; and you DIDN’T have to put them ” in charge of our new family”.
Your daughter, an adult who has the right to her own decisions, gave you the choice between accepting her and moderating your behavior, or her choosing not to associate with you. You made your choice, and now you’re bitching about the consequences. You didn’t “lose” your daughter – you CHOSE to value your bigotry over your association with her, and she CHOSE to value being true to herself and her love over continued association with you. You can draw parallels between people choosing to marry outside their religion, or people marrying those from a different race if you like.
She’s your daughter, not your slave. What you choose to interpret as threats designed to control you seem pretty obvious to an outside observer as her giving you a clear choice to resolve the position she was in between a homophobic family and her own identity. She is under NO obligation to associate with you if you cause her pain.
You made your choice. Live with it and stop whining.
Christopher M. Chupik says:
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a discussion about the matter, when you have people who start shrieking “BIGOT!” at the slightest hint of disagreement.
Yeah, it does make the “love wins” meme look a wee bit dishonest…
CPaca, you’ve no idea what the daughter did or didn’t do. I’ve sat across a table from a kid who was coached about how to bring their family in line. We got past it once the extreme pain had time to wear off a bit, but don’t pretend that it’s not confrontational and presented as an ultimatum. I’m not angry at my kid, but I’m still pissed as hell at the people who *advised* her how to talk to her family. Every second story about “I came out as gay and got thrown out of the house because my parents are homophobes,” is a story about the last straw… not the first one, the *last* one.
So you have no idea.
Regarding the people who scream “Bigot!” at the drop of every hat, I think sometimes they’re less interested in forwarding a cause, and more interested in simply taking a shortcut to what they believe is an intellectual insta-win. They don’t want to think about it too hard. They just want to be right. For all definitions of “right” that include, “Whatever the crowd is carrying on about this year.” They’ve put their fingers to the wind, divined which way the wind is blowing, and don’t really care who they call names — because “bigots” clearly don’t merit deeper, more thoughtful consideration. Hooray for the shallow moral victory of the cheaply self-righteous. The irony, of course, is that they’re emulating all the worst behavior of the actual bigots they — the cheaply self-righteous — claim to hate.
Julie took the words right out of my keyboard! Parenting is hard. Families are hard. When it reaches the point of ultimatums and being thrown out — or running away, as is often the case — I think that’s the dividend of years of steadily mounting problems. Some of which the parents may have to own (in the final balance) and some of which the kids may have to own, too. Always, there are two sides to every story. Now, sometimes, it really is the parent. My wife’s Dad was an inflexible hardass who poisoned most of his relationships with his children, simply because he was unyielding and demanded respect which he ultimately didn’t earn. But sometimes, it’s the kid. Relationships are negotiations in progress. You have to give, to get. Pounding a fist on the table and trying to make it an all-get, no-give affair . . . is a great way to spoil things.
Also, ultimatums are never loving. Ever. Anyone who presents an ultimatum is declaring that they are the only opinion that matters. That goes for parents who give an ultimatum, and it goes for children who give an ultimatum, and it goes for spouses and friends and anyone else who decides that “you must do this, or else” is a reasonable tactic to take.
Cpaca… an adult daughter doesn’t have to issue an ultimatum in order to move away and create her new life. It’s what children DO. They move away from home. What possible purpose is there in, as you’re *leaving* anyway, blowing up the bridges behind you?
Cpaca… an adult daughter doesn’t have to issue an ultimatum in order to move away and create her new life.
Oh, I agree. If I was her, I would have just cut off contact and never told him why. I guess she respected him enough to give him one last chance to choose.
His choice, his consequences. I hope his bigotry and contempt for his daughter’s identity keeps him company on his deathbed.
I think defining coming out as an ultimatum is rather odd. I’ve certainly not had any experience of friends who present loved ones with an ultimatum, unless by ultimatum you mean ‘please will you still love me’. In most cases one comes out to the people you love and respect the most, even if you differ with them about politics or beliefs. My parents – both Christians had the usual fears and apprehensions, but now are very welcoming and are rather happy to have their Christmas dinner cooked for them by my partner.
Glenfilthie’s comment gave me chills… there is no compassion there, or attempt at understanding. Unfortunately, you can’t reach a compromise or negotiate with people who think you’re mentally ill, unhealthy or a deviant. That’s not an ultimatum, that’s simply self-preservation.
To add: there is a difference between “love me, as your child” and “love my choices, as your child.” All parents have to wrestle with this one. And while it’s reasonable for any child to desire unconditional love from a parent, it’s not reasonable for a child to demand unquestioning love or acceptance of that child’s choices. It gets extra-complicated if a child is making choices which are against the moral or religious beliefs of the parent. I don’t envy any parent placed in the position of having to love a child who is making choices that parent cannot — by conscience — approve of. Of course, this would seem to be the predicament God is in, with all of us, every day.
Now, the activist may cry, “But what about my identity??” Well, okay, what about it? How much of your identity is created by you, and how much of your identity has been created by factors beyond your personal control? If you’re going to demand love and acceptance of your identity, how much love and acceptance are you willing to extend to others’ identities? Yes, even the religiously conservative? I sometimes think the people carrying a grudge — because of rejection of identity — expect it to be a one-way street. Ergo, they want their own identities to be unconditionally loved and accepted, but aren’t willing to extend unconditional love or acceptance to the identities of others.
Really, in the whole identity debate, there are two pink elephants in the room. The first is wearing a t-shirt with the word PRIDE on it, and the other is wearing a t-shirt with the word HUMILITY on it. I’ve noticed that people who get all wrapped up in questions of identity, especially to the point of making demands, tend to be overabundant in the pride department, while also having a significant humility deficit.
Work on carving down your pride, while increasing your humility, and it’s amazing what doors will open for you — even doors you thought were locked tight.
The swallowing of pride — especially in families torn by strife — can seem an impossible task. Nobody is willing to admit fault. Nobody is willing to say (s)he is sorry. Nobody is willing to ask for forgiveness, nor give it in return. Everybody has an excuse to remain inflexible, because everybody feels (s)he has been unfairly or unjustly inflicted upon.
Being able to say, “I am sorry, I know I’m not perfect, and I know I’ve made things hard,” would seem to be a huge first step toward mending family wounds. And it takes both sides. The parent, as well as the child. Both have to swallow pride. Both have to humble themselves. It can’t be all one, or all the other. Not at the adult stage.
I would think that most people who come out are generally after the former. Whether they are straight or gay, many of us know that our parents will often differ in terms of what they want for us, and the kind of person they would prefer us to be with. I don’t think that by coming out people are generally seeking to ‘demand unquestioning love or acceptance’ of their choices from their parents; many of my friends expected some form of ongoing process – one of compromise and negotiation in which in the best cases each party gradually learns a little more about the other.
I didn’t mention identity. I think that in respect of those who have particular religious beliefs about homosexuality, most children who know their parents are not expecting some kind of Damascus conversion – for them to suddenly love ‘all things gay’, nor would most people see this as a necessary outcome. You’re not rejecting an identity when you tell your child they’re a deviant or mentally disturbed because of what they are – you’re rejecting your son or daugher who is trying to be honest with you and has made a decision even though they know this will likely make their life much much harder. Will it make their parents lives harder too – yes no doubt it will – no one is saying someone’s anxieties, worries or beliefs should be disregarded. But for me, in relation to your last paragraph Brad, I don’t think it would be fair to expect one to apologise for being who they are – just as I wouldn’t expect my parents to apologise for being religious/Christian. (I know you didn’t specify that this was in relation to coming out)
“My wife’s Dad was an inflexible hardass who poisoned most of his relationships with his children, simply because he was unyielding and demanded respect which he ultimately didn’t earn.”
————————————————————-
I’ve lain in bed awake at night worrying about that one, Brad. You see, my wife’s Dad was the exact opposite. He believes that it is a father’s duty to give his kids everything they want. I believe that a parent has to give them what the NEED – there is a difference and we almost came to blows over it a couple times. Like our lady higher up in the posts – he took my daughter’s side in everything, and felt free to meddle in our family and even obstruct me when my daughter’s behaviour called for discipline as a child.
You are of course, correct, Cpaca. Everything in life right up to and including victimhood is a choice. In my case, it certainly WAS a choice that the devil himself would have loved: Choose to live in a contemptuous, disrespectful family of militant lesbians, elderly hippies, sanctimonious socialists and feral feminists…or throw it away and start again to preserve my sanity. Brad seeks solace in the garden. When my daughter laid down the new law I threw a leg over the motorcycle and took some time off. I was angry, hurt and literally vapour locked. I was seriously given a choice straight out of hell – throw my morals and self respect away and bow down to the monster that my daughter had become… or be tossed aside. As I rode and put miles and days and light years under my tires I realized that the choice had really been made for me…and that I would die on my death bed alone. FYI …we all do, actually, Cpac…but I had made my peace with the devil long ago. We come into this world alone and with nothing and we go out the same way. It was Darwin and Murphy I was facing now, and when I finally got back home I took the wife aside and told her of my decision. I told her that I would not be treated that way by my daughter, nor by her progtard family.
She could side with me and we could continue with the marriage and our life’s road – or she could side with our daughter and progtards in-laws and seek her destiny there. All I knew was that my daughter was out of the closet, and my in laws were hell bent on putting me in it! The hypocrisy of it still gags me: when we were kids they looked down their Baptist noses at us because we had an unplanned pregnancy; now that they had thrown away those icky Christian morals and ethics – they were looking down their noses at me because I wouldn’t be bullied by a couple of angry queers. (Apparently my daughter’s life partner has ‘daddy issues’ too – and I yam shocked. SHOCKED, I tells ya).
She cried a bit when I told my wife that if she sided with her family we would put down the dogs, sell the house, she could have the cars and anything else she needed – and I would take my share, load the bike up and head back out on that road to see where it goes. For her it wasn’t a question – she sided with me – and my daughter promptly cut her off as well.
So – don’t tell me that marriage is nothing special. Gays tend to break families up as often and as surely as divorce does. Sometimes that is a good thing I suppose…but more often than not it is a failure – and the result of one or more family members being irresponsible. As we all know, families are the keystone of communities, and communities are the keystones of nations.
Today I am just a silly old fart that that doesn’t have the sense God gave a toad, but I do alright. I hang out with other stupid old farts at the airfield where our opinions get all the respect and consideration they deserve. Hey – Brad has his dirt and weeds; I have hemorrhoids and Lycomings and sometimes can’t tell them apart. My daughter is now thirty years old and has a part time job fixing bicycles in a sport shop; she doesn’t drive, she doesn’t have an apartment or a car, and lives in a communal home with other kidults and gay hipsters. I’m told she’s happy, and I am happy for her, I guess. Sometimes I wake up from dreams at night where my daughter married a Marine and need me to babysit…yeah, old farts have old fart dreams too! But … if you want to tell me that gay marriage will make her and her sullen girl friend happier? No, I don’t think it will. All it will do is leave them seeking some other way to annoy people that are doing their damnedest to love them and forgive them. I have asked my asshole in-laws for a meeting. The ostracized us as well and now they are in the home stretch of life. I am going to offer them an olive branch and see if they want to reconsider…otherwise their final years will be spent at the mercy of other family members that I have serious qualms about. I will not willingly leave them in their care – but we are all adults, and our actions DO have consequences, right?
Hold your kids close, Brad. There are dark forces circling around them and the little person you hold in your arms today – may not be the person they need to be when they are older. Just my two bits – I’ve been there, done that, got the tee shirt…and wish to hell I hadn’t.
Hear, hear, Brad. Good post.
Glenfilthie, you have my sympathy. I have seen it many places recently, “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” It can apply if it is a religious difference or a matter of personal morals. The fact that people consider it bigotry to for people to think homosexuality unnatural is there right. They also have the right to let you live your own life.
While we differ (sometimes greatly) on many political or religious issues, that was a fantastic read. I enjoyed the perspective of someone who reached a similar philosophical viewpoint as myself from a completely different chain of thought. In particular, laws that grant personal freedoms seem few and far between these days, and in the simplest sense the libertarian streak in me feels like you should be free to do most anything that doesn’t harm other people (including marrying whoever you like). Thank you for addressing that so thoughtfully. Although we may grow different things in our gardens, a lot of things remain the same regardless.
Rampant divorce and rampant infidelity I will readily grant, but I’ve heard too many cases where in order to get custody of the kids after the divorce, one spouse claimed that the other had been abusive, and the judge believed it even though it was a total lie. So I’m not entirely confident that the reported “rampant abuse of spouses and children” statistics are valid. Anyone have some good evidence on the matter? (Where it’s not just the court taking one person’s word for it, but there’s medical evidence, for example?)
Apart from that, I do think that if American conservatives are serious about wanting marriage upheld, we need to make a lot more stink about no-fault divorce laws. What harm gay marriage will do is a drop in the ocean compared to the vast harm that no-fault divorce laws have caused to the state of marriage in our country. Families torn apart, millions of children left to grow up in single-parent families (which does immense harm to the children: kids need a mom AND a dad)… No-fault divorce laws say “We don’t think marriage is truly important, so we won’t make you hold to the commitment you swore.” Which is not a direction our society should have moved in in the first place.
there is no compassion there, or attempt at understanding. Unfortunately, you can’t reach a compromise or negotiate with people who think you’re mentally ill, unhealthy or a deviant.
This really has to stop. Please consider writing sentences like this in the future: Unfortunately, you can’t reach a compromise or negotiate with people who think you’re
mentally ill, unhealthyEVIL, PERVERTED or a deviant. Because I agree, you’re right, that kind of attitude makes understanding and peace-making extremely difficult.Okay? Because people who think that same-sex attraction is a mental illness, or a genetic handicap like ADHD or Down’s Syndrome are not the problem. They are not evil. They are not hateful. At worst, they are simply MISTAKEN.
Because having a mental illness, or a genetic mental handicap, being (as the saying goes) “differently abled” is NOT “evil, perverted, or deviant”
Conflating these two things is wicked at worst, or unwise at best: Give progressives their head and they’re gung-ho to euthanize every mentally ill or handicapped child or older adult they can get their hands on. I know TWO people who were told to abort their “handicapped” child. One of whom is the mother of my daughter’s best friend.
So please. Reconsider using those terms in common
Brad, this was a decision against liberty for two reasons:
1. Whatever the Federal Government is big enough to give you, it’s big enough to take away. We now have precedent that the Feds, rather than natural law define marriage. Good luck with that.
2. The prime aegis keeping American liberty safe isn’t you lads in the armed forces, but the U.S. Constitution. Can you honestly tell me that adding to the rents and tatters of that shield is a good thing?
This was a decision FOR hatred and divisiveness:
1. When the Supreme Court discovered penumbras and emanations, how did that go for the cultural fighting and general love and good will re: abortion?
2. What’s wanted isn’t “marriage” it’s God. These people have a giant gaping emptiness inside that this cause or that social change or some other thing will fill. And they will move into institutions and communities clamoring and fighting and demanding until they get what they “want”. But it doesn’t satisfy, it never will, and they just move on to the next target. The institutions: the Academy, and the Hugos, to name two, are left mere shells of their former selves. Oh, intentions are fine, their propaganda inspiring, but… look at everything else they’ve gotten their hands on. Not to mention their next target won’t thank you.
As for the rest: What do you mean “we” white man? Religious conservatives have been fighting the good fight against the sexual revolution’s hook-up culture, against no-fault divorce as long as I can remember. And I’ve got quite a few decades under my belt. At every step of they way there was someone saying “Why are you such a big meanie? Shacking up first and abandoning my family and being a single parent is just as good as that stupid marriage you keep jawing on about.”
Yet, like you, I can’t help but want “Gay Marriage” to be viable. Emotionally, I would rather those friends of mine who identify as lesbian and gays to have something like what I have; some kind of warm and loving Happily Ever After. So when Canada voted in the decision to redefine “marriage” to include same-sex relationships, and when Washington State did the same, I shrugged. It’s a bad idea: a complete hetero-normative boondoggle that claims that the only legitimate family is a biological one. The unintended negative consequences are likely to be far-reaching and hard to ameliorate. But I can understand why people think it will make their lives better, because reason is hard, and entropy and sin are difficult concepts.
Nonetheless, the hallmark of a free democratic republic is the freedom to democratically choose something really, really stupid (Prohibition, anyone?) When the freedom to decide that way is taken away (as it was with both abortion and slavery) NOTHING good comes of it. So I didn’t say much because, as you point out, the U.S. institution of marriage, for those outside healthy churches and synogogues communities, is nearly dead anyways.
At the end of the day, the people who need what marriage seems to be offering them – same sex couples – will find out that it doesn’t. Families on the margins will find an institution that would normally help them preserve cultural capital and raise their kids to succeed in the U.S., does so even less. Our children will have a harder time finding mates that prioritize self-discipline and commitment over self-will and sexual incontinence. For this, we have to shred the U.S. Constitution?
Nobody wins.
The hilarious and sad thing I take away from this in terms of the SFF community is that the social justice crusaders most conspicuously happy are also the ringleaders of what I see as a sociopathic and even psychotic hate movement. What that leads me to believe is they’re not happy about gay marriage because they think it’s right, but because someone told them it’s right. Unfortunately they never got the memo about the rest of the human race. That Orwellian dissonance where a creepy, bigoted, racist demagogue and unconscious shill for hate features kiddy cartoons at the head of his Twitter feed is its own ready-made dystopian SF novel typical of the eerie insanity of 1984. Phillip K. Dick couldn’t have come up with a better character. It’s the Ministry of “#LoveWins.”
Doesn’t Clamps have a bed to wet in pure terror?
I am far from a PC crusader, but I liked Brad’s take on this one. If you are interested in legislating what other grown-ups do in their private lives I need to hear an argument that can’t be boiled down to “I don’t like it, even though it doesn’t directly affect me”. Not far reaching sociological theories, nor predictions of the end of western society (same sex relationships predate both sociology and western civilization). I have the same knee jerk reaction for prohibition, gun control, state mandated soda sizes, and helmet laws. I prefer to err on the “more freedom” side almost every time, even when it’s a freedom I won’t exercise.
Mr. Torgersen, I hope your deployment goes well for you. You have my unbounded admiration for your ability to be calm and level-headed – one factor among many in why you’re a CWO, I make no doubt of it. I’d love to manage to match your calm, but it’s just not happening. At this point, the actual subjects of the day, the Confederate flag issue and the gay marriage decision, don’t bother me nearly as much as the conduct of some of the advocates, on both sides of the issue. Take care while you’re over there and check six. QRT UFN.
@Bassmanco – you’re welcome!
Y’know, I hadn’t updated the Stalker Sticky lately… I probably should, heh.
I agree wholeheartedly. Since degenerates had previously lowered the standards of marriage, we should just shoot it in the head.
BTW, “liberty” is someone forcing me to recognize immorality as marriage? How is that liberty?
It’s a shame Brad that you reject the last few paragraphs of that ol’ Proclamation.
Oh, and this decision will be used as the torch to burn down at least half of the churches in the USA. The push has already begun to pull tax-exemption from churches, and college accreditation from religious universities. This will not end until all religion is pushed completely out of the public sphere.
And then the pogroms begin.
Also cataloguing how he misrepresents me elsewhere, tries to get other people to harass me, as well as cataloguing how he harasses conservatives, libertarians, and has a history of misogyny, threatening children, evades bans and follows people through the Internet.
It’s not just about me any more, but how he goes after people for their politics and having a different belief than what he approves of. It stopped being just about me when I discovered I wasn’t his only victim – and the reasons why he attacks other people are often very shallow, and very very vague, like as simple as “that woman’s art is liked better than mine, that man’s writing is getting more praise than mine” with Yama.
Well Nick, I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody talked chit about me because I would be a very wealthy man! LOL. My daughter has some other problems besides homosexuality; like you, she has some serious maturity problems. All that does is take an impossible situation and make it more impossible.
If I have one message I could impart to you young ones who are just starting out with families of your own, it is this: don’t get cocky. Don’t assume all is well. Don’t think your family is invincible. For us, ours was a semi-functional, semi-extended traditional family for decades and it was as solid as a rock. We took it for granted and I thought it would always be there…and in the blink of an eye my daughter tore it to shreds and pissed on it. After the chit storm we all sat around in our separate homes, catching our breaths, letting our pounding hearts slow down…and we (or at least my wife and I) scratched our heads in confusion and wondered how it all happened. Our rock solid family evaporated in a puff of smoke like it had never existed. You cannot imagine how strange that feels.
Like I said, I sent an email to my inlaws awhile back after a five year absence asking for a meet. I haven’t heard back yet…but if everybody keeps their hands where we can all see them, and nobody does something stupid or gets angry…I think maybe we can patch things up. But my daughter? It is my conviction that she is a moral and intellectual derelict and she is in that condition by choice. Only she can change that and I hope and pray and wish her well. But I have to wonder at the social justice warriors and their gays – thinking that gay marriage is going to help them is like thinking you can stop racist mass murderers by banning the confederate flag. There is a logic in there that makes sense to turd brains, liberals and stupid people but out here in the real world…the insanity worsens.
But I’M Sorry to hog your forum with my dirty laundry! You watch your ass out there, Brad and stay safe. Your garden and family need you back in one piece.
As far as I can tell, I am substantially more a bigot than Shadowdancer. It may be that I am in fact the most bigoted person to post here who has not been banned yet. I really dislike recreational drug use.
On that note:
It may be more correct to say it was a spree killing, not a mass murder.
The case that he was simply a druggie is stronger than the flag argument.
Speaking of flags, the symbol on the Mexican flag symbolizes a mass murdering regime. If one supposes that the confederate flag causes crime that might be described as white supremacist, one could just as fairly assume the same of the Mexican flag. Of course, it is racist to object to any of the religious practices of the Aztec Triple Alliance’s state cult.
@BRF – I don’t like recreational drug use either. I knew quite a few potheads and while mellow, you wouldn’t want them to make any serious judgements nor would you want them to drive. The thing is, just from watching them (I don’t do recreational drugs) they get to ‘drunk’ level faster than from drinking liquor. Just my two cents on the matter.
The Clamps/Yama outbreak has been cleaned up, for now. I apologize if I took some of the other posts with it. Really, the best thing to do with Clamps/Yama is ignore him. Don’t acknowledge his existence. Don’t respond. I will wipe out the Clamps/Yama posts eventually. That way, when the Clamps/Yama posts are gone, the conversation thread is more coherent, and I don’t have to remove anyone else’s posts; as collateral cleanup.
I’ll be blunt: I have an extremely severe aversion to “recreational” chemical mind altering of any sort. Like, very, very severe. So, Bob, I don’t think you’re alone. I’ve never let it affect my relationships with friends or coworkers. But when it comes to family . . . I am afraid my feelings can’t be so easily compartmentalized. When I discover someone in the family is doing rec drugs, it’s a four-alarm emotional fire.
Thanks, Brad. This was an outstanding post. I’ve quoted extensively from it on my blog, and encouraged my readers to come over here and read the rest.
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/06/brad-torgersen-nails-gay-marriage-issue.html
You did good, bro.
I feel a tremor in the Force, as if some very sad and lonely stalker desperately needed attention, got deleted again and then kept waving his tiny little arms demanding people pay attention to hiiiiiiim…
Oh well.
@ JohnLayton
“If you are interested in legislating what other grown-ups do in their private lives I need to hear an argument that can’t be boiled down to ‘I don’t like it, even though it doesn’t directly affect me’.”
I have two responses to this:
1) At this time last week, gay marriage was not legal nationwide. Yet gay and lesbian couples were still living together all over America, doing whatever they wished to do in their private lives without anyone having the power to prevent it. So your statement is based on a false premise.
2) In the spirit in which you made your comment: if you are interested in recognizing a Constitutional right to a certain behavior, I need to hear an argument for where in the Constitution it is, or how you plan to put it there by amendment.
As for me, my head is still reeling. Fifteen years ago, my stance was the same as it is today: while I didn’t believe that gay marriage was or should be legal, I was a supporter of civil unions, so that homosexual couples would have an easier legal time dealing with situations like insurance, hospital visitation, and inheritance. Back then, I was considered a thoughtful and moderate Republican, who recognized the necessity of tolerating the various harmless ways in which other people lived their lives, even if I disagreed with them. Today, the same people probably think I’m a mindless hateful bigot who doesn’t know how to read the Constitution, but I don’t dare bring up the subject with them, because the Internet now bears a depressing likeness to the Eye of Sauron — it probably isn’t watching you, but woe betide you if it is.
I’d love to just tend my own garden, but some people keep poisoning the groundwater.
“I feel a tremor in the Force, as if some very sad and lonely stalker desperately needed attention, got deleted again and then kept waving his tiny little arms demanding people pay attention to hiiiiiiim…
Oh well.”
I think he’s still mad because Declan’s story hit too close to home. 😀
@overgrownhobbit
those were the terms that Glenfilthie used in his post above me, and are the terms that are often used to describe homosexuality. I did not make that conflation – those are the analogies that are made in respect of gay people. So yes I agree with you that it is unwise, although perhaps for not the same reasons. ..
I agree absolutely, Brad; abortion, contraception, no-fault divorce, destigmatized pornography and pop culture if-it-feels-good-do-it sexuality have done far more damage to marriage as a cultural practice than anything people of differing orientations may want from the legal contract of the same name.
But the difference is, I can still criticize all of those without being assumed to be a rampant evil bigot and risking the loss of my livelihood, and my Church has been criticizing all of those since inception without being seriously threatened with financial punishment as a result. That this one issue, of all the things about modern sexuality with which traditional religion disagrees, has suddenly become consciously weaponized against religion in a way nothing else has seems significant to me, and worth objecting to.
But the difference is, I can still criticize all of those without being assumed to be a rampant evil bigot and risking the loss of my livelihood, and my Church has been criticizing all of those since inception without being seriously threatened with financial punishment as a result. That this one issue, of all the things about modern sexuality with which traditional religion disagrees, has suddenly become consciously weaponized against religion in a way nothing else has seems significant to me, and worth objecting to.
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say on this issue. Thanks for phrasing it much better than I could.
Referring to the SCOTUS ruling, Cora Buhlert tweeted:
“Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert · Jun 26
@FredKiesche @damiengwalter @PrinceJvstin Does this mean that the puppy leaders will spontaneously combust now?”
Man, we’re all they think about, all the time, aren’t we?
“That this one issue, of all the things about modern sexuality with which traditional religion disagrees, has suddenly become consciously weaponized against religion in a way nothing else has….”
It’s bad form to quote myself, but I’ll do it to raise a further point: I said “traditional religion” above because the vast majority of most faiths do in fact still uphold natural marriage. However, I think it is also worth noting that in practice this weaponization is almost always directed against traditional Christians — I have yet to see an Orthodox Jewish synagogue sued for their “animus”, or a Muslim mosque, Buddhist temple or Hindu mandir so sued. (It may be that such cases have occurred and simply not been reported, but even that has implications.) This, too, suggests to me that there is something more than impersonal disagreement on basic sexual morality going on, and reason to be wary.
“Man, we’re all they think about, all the time, aren’t we?”
Yup, and it’s hilarious how they think they know us and are so horribly wrong.
“Speaking of flags, the symbol on the Mexican flag symbolizes a mass murdering regime. If one supposes that the confederate flag causes crime that might be described as white supremacist, one could just as fairly assume the same of the Mexican flag.”
Speaking as one who lives under that flag, I would say that your assumption is wrong, if we look at the numbers of crimes against blacks in the southern states of the USA versus the numbers of human sacrifices to Tlaloc, Huitzilopochtli or Tezcatlipoca here in Mexico.
Comparing “crimes” against human sacrifice seems sort of…. Unbalanced. Though I think you missed the point Luis, which I understood to be that what things mean depends on what you want them to mean and which details you choose to obsess over and which you don’t.
Dangerdad : BTW, “liberty” is someone forcing me to recognize immorality as marriage? How is that liberty?
No-one is forcing you to “recognize immorality” as marriage. If you don’t want to acknowledge a white guy marrying a black girl, or two Muslims, or two women as being married, that’s your decision. You may get shunned as a barbarian and called a bigot as a result, but that’s life.
What liberty means is that YOUR opinion on morality doesn’t determine what OTHER people can do and what the State recognizes as marriage.
Deal with it.
And, obviously, Glenfilthie is hopelessly myopic on how others might see his situation. I congratulate his daughter on her courage in seeking a new life away from the bigotry and hatred of her father.
Chupik: I take it as a given that certain Puppy-kickers never actually read anything in this space. They just read what their friends say about us, or they simply make things up. (chortle)
“And, obviously, Glenfilthie is hopelessly myopic on how others might see his situation. I congratulate his daughter on her courage in seeking a new life away from the bigotry and hatred of her father.”
Ah yes, that’s right. I forgot about this since we were interrupted by Clamps’ usual spewing.
Who the hell do you think you are? Talk about hopeless myopia. You selectively read what Glen writes about the situation, ignoring the part about his daughter dictating to him how their entire family is going to live and decide he’s a bigot. Well, I’ve read enough from you to decide that you’re an arrogant ass and your opinion is worth less than nothing to me.
Deal with it.
Who the hell do you think you are?
Someone with enough education to have heard of the concept of an “unreliable narrator”.
Deal with it.
“Someone with enough education to have heard of the concept of an “unreliable narrator”.”
That’s what they teach you when you get a degree in “Smug Douchebaggery”, eh? Oh, and your opinion is still worth less than nothing to me.
That’s a dangerous road to be going down there, CPaca. Nearly all of the sympathy and goodwill your side garners is based around people forgetting the concept of the unreliable narrator.
Myself, I take people at their word on the Internet, unless there is direct evidence otherwise.
Dave W. : That’s what they teach you when you get a degree in “Smug Douchebaggery”, eh? Oh, and your opinion is still worth less than nothing to me.
You will note I haven’t bothered to insult you.
Says it all, really.
I only wish our SF, comics, video games and country were shunned as barbaric. Those would be good ol’ days.
“You will note I haven’t bothered to insult you.
Says it all, really.”
Aw dude, thank you, and I genuinely mean that. I couldn’t have ASKED for a better response to illustrate “Smug Douchebag” than that.
Well, Brad, apparently File 770 commenters are going on about comments in this very thread, despite the fact that they have NOTHING to do with Sad Puppies. Since 770 is reading comments, I hope they see this one: if you’re so desperate for content that you’re sifting through our comments, maybe it’s time to take a break.
BTW, for those of you who think we’re all hatey homophobes, here’s Larry Correia on Twitter today:
“Larry Correia @monsterhunter45 · 5h5 hours ago
I’m fine with gay marriage”
The rest of the tweet was related to an idiot he was arguing with at the time.
What’s that? A post that’s about to vanish when Brad gets back? And it smells like troll pee, too!
“Well, Brad, apparently File 770 commenters are going on about comments in this very thread, despite the fact that they have NOTHING to do with Sad Puppies. Since 770 is reading comments, I hope they see this one: if you’re so desperate for content that you’re sifting through our comments, maybe it’s time to take a break.
BTW, for those of you who think we’re all hatey homophobes, here’s Larry Correia on Twitter today:
“Larry Correia @monsterhunter45 · 5h5 hours ago
I’m fine with gay marriage”
The rest of the tweet was related to an idiot he was arguing with at the time.”
I’d almost bet money that they’ll pretend they didn’t see that particular one.
“Man, we’re all they think about, all the time, aren’t we?”
The digs aren’t all that great but not having to pay rent is a definite plus.
LOL. These clowns are the stuff of high comedy. Where is 770? I want to read it!
My problems with my daughter actually predate her coming out of the closet. When she was a kid there really weren’t any rules: she had to get good marks at school, she had to keep her nose clean – and she would be hung up and shot if she brought home drugs or angry cops. For the most part she didn’t even have to do household chores that most other kids do.
She loved art and fantasy books and she would while away the hours drawing and dreaming and I worried all the time about her. Like some of the twinks and turdies here…she got pretty obsessive with some things on the computer to an unhealthy degree. She started failing the maths and sciences at school and I realized I had a serious problem – so I took charge of it and tutored her myself. To be honest I was utterly disgusted with the curriculum and shocked at how dumbed down it was. Daughter didn’t like it at all at first and threw a few temper tantrums but I just brushed it aside and pushed her nose into the books because I saw no other way. Within a couple of weeks she was easily back up at grade level – this in spite of her idiot teachers who claimed she had ‘attention problems’ and ‘learning difficulties’. I got so damned mad at those unionized pooch screwers that I kept on tutoring my daughter and pushing her beyond grade level. In grade seven she learned basic algebra and exponential functions that other kids wouldn’t see till grade 10. In grade 8 she learned quadratics, trigonometry and geometry. In grade 9 she learned basic calculus with simple integration and differentiation. I didn’t flog her or beat her or badger her – at least not after she got after the initial shock, that is. If she was having a bad day we did 15~20 minutes a night. We did more if she was having fun. Afterward we often played video games and talked about stuff the way fathers and daughters do. I suck at video games…but those were some of the happiest days of my life. My greatest day came when she came home around the end of grade 9. I was home from work, had Halo 1 on the Xbox and was drinking a fine glass of home brewed beer when my daughter asked ‘What? No math tonight?”. No, I said. ‘We’re DONE’. I explained to her that she now had an understanding of mathematics on par with a grade 12 honor student – and I know she did because I taught it to her. With math out of the way all the other subjects are a breeze: chemistry and physics are mickey mouse – and she was a voracious reader so English would be a snap! She could literally snooze her way through high school and STILL get honors! When I told her that – she was so happy and I was so proud. She had so much promise – and she could have gone anywhere, done anything because the sky was the limit. But then she ran into the artsy-fartsy crowd in university where the guys run around in tutus and the women have hairy armpits, bad haircuts and smell like BO.
How did we go from that – to this? There are people that say I should encourage and enable my daughter’s homosexuality, her cop outs and failures and see them as wins and successes. I dunno about you but I just can’t do it anymore. Do you want a flag that symbolizes hate, ignorance and stupidity? There is one out there that is just for you – and it has a rainbow on it. It is my conviction that homosexuality, victim and progressive politics – and all the cop outs and logic inversions that go along with that – are for lazy, weak and marginal people. My daughter was raised and trained better than that. I will condescend to retards and pin heads that don’t know any better – but I will put the boots to people that should know better and try to take advantage of my good nature. My daughter and I are in for a rough ride and I hope we come through it okay…but it isn’t looking good; especially for her. If I can, and god willing there are any – I will pick up the pieces when she crashes.
It’s what good fathers do.
You will note I haven’t bothered to insult you.
Says it all, really.
You act like a judgemental twit, someone calls on it and you cry “I didn’t insult you” in response.
Yeah, says a lot about you.
“LOL. These clowns are the stuff of high comedy. Where is 770? I want to read it!”
http://file770.com/ Be warned, the comments sections are a Wretched Hive of Prog Scum and Villainy that would make Obi-Wan wince. 😀
I hope you and your daughter can someday work things out. To say it sucks is a serious understatement, and I feel for you.
“Someone with enough education to have heard of the concept of an “unreliable narrator”.”
It’s somewhere right under the entry for “projection.”
Yeah, when it comes to family, it’s a different thing entirely, so I understand it, Brad.
Chocolate is about as ‘recreationally’ mood altering as I get heh 😉 Mmmm. Chocolate covered cherries =9
Had a long discussion with a liberal friend of mine I think a year or so ago, and we eventually both came to the conclusion that it would be best for the government to issue solely civil unions and marriage be a religious institution. In function, legalese and purpose, they were no different but for the lack of religious connotations for civil unions, thus allowing all citizens to participate and avail of it, while marriage would be for the religious groups. At least, that’s the general gist I remember of the convo I had. It was interesting.
I’m actually okay with the idea of gay marriage; but how it’s been pushed for has me wary. I’m not on board with the ‘you must approve and agree with me 110% or you’re a bigot’ approach that has been pushed along with the closure of Catholic orphanages, penalizing Christians and Christian/Catholic schools for operating according to their religious beliefs has me shaking my head. That gay people should be married and recognized by the state I support; the penalization of people who disagree or do not approve of their sexual preferences and behavior I can’t. Especially as this is not used as a whip on Islam, where gays are murdered in the Middle East.
As I said above, I’m still reading, and reading, and stumbled on this article where, I think the litigious issues regarding the freedom of speech (including that of disagreement) are a valid concern. The original article was at The Public Discourse, but it won’t load now, so I found it re-quoted at CNS news.
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/dawn-stefanowicz/warning-canada-same-sex-marriage-erodes-fundamental-rights
Now, I don’t agree with the idea that gay parents cannot be good parents simply because there are good parents and there are bad parents, and sexual preferences ideally do not interfere with that. But I can see where she’s coming from too.
I watched a gay couple I knew online fall apart because one of the couple started to disagree with how he saw Christian groups being punished for behaving according to their religious beliefs, especially when held up to the silence regarding the murder of Muslim gays from the LGBT establishment. He felt that it was doing gay people a disservice in the long run, because it had turned from ‘tolerate’ to ‘become intolerant of dissent’, and he thought it would drive people who would otherwise support gay marriage in the long run, and prevent actual legitimate discussion that would help hash out the ‘rough areas to something that would work for both sides.’
His partner exploded with rage that the guy raising those objections even dared to dissent and ‘side with Christians.’ A lot of things came up in the resulting argument. The dissenting guy (DG henceforth) revealed that he didn’t think they should adopt – because of the demands of their respective jobs, which often had them staying out late. DG felt that it would be irresponsible of them to bring in a child to that kind of dynamic. DG’s partner said obviously one of them would have to start cutting back on their work schedules or give up working entirely – and when it was pointed out that neither of them made enough to support a single-income household, it got worse from there. They took the rest of the argument out in private.
When we saw DG online a week later, the ten-year relationship he had with his partner had ended, to our shock, and his partner moved out. All he said was that he hated that everything had gotten so politicized that he couldn’t raise objections without it becoming a three-part drama act on every topic with LGBT politics dragged in. “It had become more important than the life we shared to (his partner).”
I honestly felt bad for them. I wish that this could be talked about without the ad-hoc rage and screaming of bigotry left and right; especially among gay people themselves. I’ve seen a few of those ‘YOU HAVE BETRAYED US!!!!1’ reactions a few times, and they really silence discussion fast and uncomfortably. That’s not helpful.
Honestly, given that the trolls are watching, I wonder how much of this will end up quoted in places like File 770 out of context, and quoted out of context to FSTDT. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised anyway, because they’ve probably already gone and dismissed this kind of discussion as pure bigotry anyway.
Discussion assumes that someone is interested in the subject and not just using the subject as in-group vs. out-group identifiers. By being interested in the subject DG accidentally said, “I’m not with you, I’m with *them*”, which is a horrific betrayal. So much of this stupid stuff going on now with science fiction is the same… are you in-group or out-group? If you’re out-group then you side with *them* against everything possible that there is about *us*. So whatever self-identifying things there are about *us*, *them* are automatically against it. Worse, otherwise intelligent people absolutely refuse to voice disagreement with the worst sort of “just so” pronouncements as if they’re actually rational. (neo-nazi, anyone?) After all, discussing the subject requires the in-group and out-group identifiers to be used as if they aren’t set in stone and *boom*… horrific betrayal, rending of garments and knashing of teeth, dogs and cats living together, etc,.
We could all go the sneeches on beaches route, and have stars on our bellies for one side and bare bellies for the other side. That would be just silly but at least the goal posts of community membership indicators would never move. Star? Yes. Star? No. All neat and tidy.
gnashing?
😛
After all, discussing the subject requires the in-group and out-group identifiers to be used as if they aren’t set in stone and *boom*… horrific betrayal, rending of garments and knashing of teeth, dogs and cats living together, etc,.
It’s more like point and screech like pod people from the later “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” films.
Thing is… probably a significant majority of Puppies/Conservatives/Libertarians/BlahBlahBlah are either outright pro-gay marriage or don’t care.
Thing is… it’s not about people’s actual opinions about anything.
Thanks for that, Dave. what really got me through the heart was the speed of the change. One minute my daughter was a sweet, warm young woman with unlimited prospects and then in the blink of an eye, she became this rancid, sulky woman-child that only opened her mouth to whine, bitch or scold. I’ve often wondered if drugs aren’t involved – aren’t radical personality changes indicative of drug abuse…? Oh lord… I hope I’m wrong about that…
Shadow you are making the exact same mistake I did. You want to be fair and just with the gays…but as a group, they do NOT want to be fair with you. Homosexuality is constantly being whitewashed and sanitized; else people would see it for what it is and react accordingly. It’s not a ‘few rotten apples spoiling it for the rest’ in the gay community. It’s MOST of them. The tiny minority of courteous, discrete gays have gone underground and who can blame them? Who wants to be associated with the shrieking sexually disturbed freaks that infest the gay pride parades, the bath houses and liberal activist groups?
IMHO we need to seriously start looking at these folks and seeing them for who they are -and distinguishing between good queers and the pedos and thei social justice warriors.
You should have a read of Milo’s articles about gay life; he sounds just as exasperated with the gay pride displays.
http://www.breitbart.com/author/milo-yiannopoulos/
Chupik: some of the commentators at File 770 remind me of the South Park episode, “Make Love, not Warcraft.”
Hines can celebrate gay marriage all he wants, he’ll always be the wrong race and sex to this hate group of a social justice Klan. Some people can’t see a con game no matter how much you point it out to them. Like the recently disgraced anti-white anti-Gamergate Tauriq Moosa who Chuck Wendig cries tears for and anti-Gamergate’s Requires Hate Randi Harper now being lit up on Breitbart by Milo, Requires Hate is an extremely clever and sociopathic manipulator when it comes to her fabricated “marginalized” status and “oppression.” Social justice crusaders fall for the same shaming con from K. Tempest Bradford, Daniel Jose Older, Chauncey Devega and N. K. Jemisin, who could hardly make their disdain for whites any more obvious or obnoxious.
Keep in mind that Hines once defended Requires Hate’s Stormfront site by writing this:
“But speaking up to say you find a book offensive? That it’s full of stereotypes, dehumanizing tropes, sexist or racist bullshit, and so on? Criticizing books and authors who perpetuate colonialism or the erasure and sidelining of women and minorities, of disabled and LGBTQ characters? That’s not only okay, it’s necessary. It’s important. Even when the reviewer is angry.”
http://www.jimchines.com/2014/11/absolutes/
Hahahah. Thank you, ma’am. May I have another?
Hines ironically wrote “I was trying — perhaps unsuccessfully — to acknowledge the damage this individual had done as well as the good.
“That’s a little easier for me. To the best of my knowledge, I was never one of her targets.”
Well, you are now, and as I predicted, it’s because of your race and skin, and not one other thing. Don’t worry, “#LoveWins.” Pwahahahaha. It requires only that you hate.
Mr Torgersen, I disagree with many of the things you’ve said and done (and I feel the same way about Mr Correia). However, in this particular context, you (and Mr Correia) have definitely got the right idea. Well done.
Also, I’d like to ask your commenter “Glenfilthie” two questions – first, why does it matter if your daughter’s girlfriend is “ugly” (as you described her)? Second, would you *really* have killed your family dogs (as you had said you would do) if your wife had disagreed with you and sided with her relatives instead of you?
(I’m assuming that ‘killing the dogs’ is what you meant by ‘put down the dogs’; if I’m wrong, I welcome factual correction!)
Happy Canada Day to you Danny. I am in Alberta – where are you?
Perhaps I misspoke Danny. My daughter’s love partner maybe isn’t ugly. Perhaps better words might be ‘homely’ or ‘frumpy’. She’s flat chested, has the bad haircut and wears shapeless, unflattering clothes that the stereotypical lesbian does. She is a talented artist but from what I’ve seen and read of her…she’s a bit of an idiot. Cultural fascists scream and howl that you can’t judge people by their looks but we all know that’s bullshit – if it were not the entire fashion industry would go out of business! It makes me LOL actually, feminists are the worst: they claim that looks don’t matter and that they will dress and look as they please and to hell with what men think…and if some man tells them they look like a hippo or a tractor – they lose their chit and flip their gourds!
That brings a question up for me to ask you: I went over to 770 and they have a picture of a comic book up right now. I didn’t recognize any of the characters but at the very top of it there is this big fattie about to have a blow out in her spandex crime fighting costume…who is she? Trailer Park Woman? Donut Girl? Stan Lee must be hitting the bong again…LOL…
As for the dogs: when my daughter came out of the closet it caused some real turbulence in my family. I was facing the idea of watching my family crumble and I had no real exit plan. Now I do. If my wife ever regains her sense of sight and smell and kicks me out, the bike, the guns, the truck and the dogs go with me. She gets the rest or it gets sold! Within 30 days I will have a hangar or will start to build one preferably with access to a grass landing strip. When that’s done I begin work on either an Aircamper or a Flybaby – and the insane portion of my family can go suck a fart! And – they can keep doing that until I shuffle off this mortal coil, or get over themselves and grow up enough that we can begin a discussion.
It never really occurred to me but dogs make excellent replacements for foolish and disobedient daughters. 😉
A bit late coming to this, but I wanted to pull this bit out from Brad and be pedantic:
“This past week, it seems to me that the Supreme Court decided in favor of more rights. ”
Rights – that is, freedoms – cannot be given by government because the opposite of “freedom” is “government.” Freedoms exist only where government control does not.
The Supreme Court did not “decide in favor of more rights.” It decided to force one definition of marriage upon everyone at the cost of others’ definition. That is coercion by force.
A decision in favor of one side or the other in this matter is not a pro-rights or pro-freedom act. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. A decision that held that government had no Constitutional authority over marriage or unions beyond any other contractual matter (i.e., fraud, coercion, competence to enter into contract) would have been a pro-freedom one.
Just a casual observer here, interested in the back-and-forth of opinions. Wasn’t going to jump in but I have to say:
Glenfilthie, I truly don’t know if you’re for real or a troll or a Poe, but your posts are…memorable.
Dave W., I smell that troll pee again. Brad, clean up on aisle 89!
*sniff sniff* I smell troll pee.
Come on, Clampsy Wampsy, you’ve used that screenname at Vox Popoli before. You can do better than that. No wait, you actually CAN’T.
*High-five’s bass* 😀
I respect our host’s wishes not to engage said troll, so I will not address him directly any longer. But I can’t help calling it out, especially in case anyone not familiar with his antics sees it for the first time.
I’m trying to limit myself to one mock of him, just so we know it’s him. I’m reallllly trying hard to kick the habit, though. It’s like eating salty Pringles chips, you can’t stop at one! 😀
The Victorian novel Jane Eyre is a principled argument for gay marriage, even though it never intended to be. I mention it because it is precisely what SF’s feminist shits cannot write, even though it is well over 150 years old. That’s because Jane Eyre is a principled and humanistic argument, a thing SF’s social justice crusaders ironically have no interest in or understanding of. Their moral ethos lies in race and sex, not in an idea, not in right and wrong itself. That’s why their SF is so terrible; it cannot reach beyond identity into principle and shared humanity.
Jane Eyre is an example of what SF’s feminist shits cannot write because they don’t and won’t bury the lede so to speak – the message. That’s because they have no larger principled message to convey. They only have rightskin and wrong skin. Bury that and there’s nothing left in a typical feminist stab at literature.
It’s not rocket science to figure out what happens to humans when some have the protection of an institution and others don’t. That is unless you’re a social justice crusader in SF; then it is rocket science… minus the rockets… and the science… and the humanity… and principle. Then you get shit feminist “SFF” like “Wakulla Springs” and Hild. They are essentially anti-Jane Eyre; they appeal to nothing, no larger human instincts.
Although SF’s social justice crusaders claim every righteous historic event to reflect their own ideology and claim to always be on the right side of history, the is truth were they alive during slavery or riding and marching with Custer and Cortes, the worst of them would’ve owned slaves and sacked Tenochtitlan. The do-gooders would’ve done what flak catchers have always done – run with the crowd.
Errr…sorry folks. Just trying to laugh off some stuff that doesn’t seem to laugh off well. If you need to delete my stuff Brad just go for it and think nothing of it. Sorry to be a pain.
Sorry to be a pain, Brad – just trying to laugh off some stuff that doesn’t laugh off well. If you need to delete my stuff go for it.
No worries, Glen. We were talking about the troll that keeps dirtying up the threads. He constantly uses different screennames to circumvent his being banned from here. Brad just deletes his posts when he gets the chance to log in.
The only individual not welcome to comment here, is Clamps/Yama. And that’s just because Clamps/Yama is literally unhinged, and has a long track record of cyber-harassment against numerous authors, as well as fans.
Glen, no worries; about using this space to say what’s on your mind. I pretty much run a libertarian front porch. Anyone is free to join the conversation. People I disagree with. People who disagree with me. People who disagree with each other. All kinds of different points of view. Not all of them in accord with one another. As long as people aren’t turning it into a complete soup of vitriol and ad hominem attacks, I am cool with it.
Brad, I am sorry you have to continually steam clean your blog. Some people are simply too pathetic to comprehend.
One person humbly asks for his posts, about something that’s clearly difficult for him to talk about, to be deleted if they detract from the thread.
One person continually evades bans, here and elsewhere, in order to continue spinning his word salad, misrepresents the words and actions of others, and DARVOs as hard as he possibly can.
I know which one I prefer.
Do you guys hear a buzzing noise? Smells like troll pee?
I do, Dave W. Amazing how one troll can smell so bad.
Stalker sticky updated. Spewdonym list updated as well.
The latest update to the stalker sticky is worth a look (as is the whole forum thread itself) because of how it shows that while Yama is complaining about ‘the dread ilk’ supposedly ‘stalking Emma’ (a lie), Yama himself stalks Emma.
Stalker online and RL huh?
(Props feet up) On the one hand, we have a guy who’s honest about his opinions.
On the other hand,we have a band of folks who seem to think that “unreliable narrator” magically doesn’t apply to them.
Decisions, decisions…
Yeah. No need to leave, Glen. Brad’s house. What he says goes.
Seconded.
Well thanks Brad. I know you don’t want folks feeding the wildlife but some other things are in order, perhaps, and I think our friend and the people he runs with need to hear them
If you’re a young one and queer – and you have a hard/dumb ass father like me – don’t bullshit him. Don’t indulge in petty dramas and theatrics, and for chrissakes – don’t threaten him. Guys like me react to threats and will either move to contain them or eliminate them. If you start flinging accusations, threats and ultimatums at old world men like me you (and probably a few other family members) are going to get hurt. In my case I did not reject my daughter, I rejected her actions and a list of terms and conditions that I found unacceptable. I would do it again too. My daughter was a legal adult when she pulled her crap – but I will admit her conduct left me thinking she was still a child that hadn’t grown up.
If you are coming out of the closet you face men like me, you look us in the eye, and you let us know that you love us despite whatever fallout comes of it. We may lose or shit for a bit but we have to respect and reciprocate courage and love because that is what we do. Talk us through it, be patient and things may work out. If you try to bully us we will probably come back at you with a cold fury that everyone is going to regret later.
I also have a comment on your ‘Puppies vs social justice warriors’ flap too. I am looking at the elderly hippies, the militant homosexuals, and the pedos and flimps that are driving this tempest in the tea pot and I have no dog in that fight. I only know of it because my daughter wants to be an author/illustrator in SF/F but isn’t nearly good enough to make the cut. In any event…from what I am seeing the situation breaks out like this: you can play nice with fellas like Brad here and Larry Coraria and everyone can get along. If you try and take your ball and go home – Vox Day is going to punch you out, take your ball and probably your lunch money as well – and you will deserve it! There are times that 97 pound weakling deserves the beating he gets and you lot are seriously due for yours.
Just sayin’…
Also — since you asked, the fat character is Faith Herbert, aka “Zephyr”, from the comic “Harbinger”, by Valiant Comics. She was originally created in the mid-90s; to my knowledge, Stan Lee has had no involvement with that company.
For those unaware, yama likes to post my art, claiming it is bad. He likes to post earlier works and pretends that’s my ‘best.’ The landscape above was my first attempt.
This is one I’m working on, but he will NEVER link it because it doesn’t serve his narratives of “Shadowdancer is a lousy artist.”
So that Jim Hines thing is sort of funny. I don’t hate the guy, but what did he think? That being on the Side of Righteousness made him more acceptable, less triggering, and more safe than being a member of the Evil League of Evil would do? It’s not as though anyone was shy about explaining those sorts of things. Did you miss the whole “don’t read white men” thing, Jim?
I’m not sure what’s more pathetic, that the poor silly troll thinks that we believe anything he says or that he’s forgotten that we LIKE Shadowdancer’s art.
So… just wondering here… is there something wrong with a sexualized elf? Are we sex shaming now? The world is forcing people to behave and think in irrational ways… or trying. Most people on the planet are ignoring the stupid. Young women are still trying to be pretty and attractive to the best looking young men, who are also trying to impress the women. This is well and good and the whole reason that we exist on the planet at all. Romance is the highest selling genre, last I heard. Sex is good for humans, generally. It’s probably good for elves, too. We’re supposed to, just now, be having a celebration about LOVE. And somehow a picture of a perky elf is evidence of… something?
Don’t bother using logic on him, Julie. It’ll just make his brain seize up and he’ll get angrier.
Yeah, that essay I’m writing is going to be very relevant again…
Seriously what is it with radfems and their SJB white knights that hate beauty? Other than “she doesn’t have what I want” and “OMG out of my league” sourgraping? Because no matter how much they try to dress it up as being something else, they only end up sounding catty and pathetic.
@Julie honestly, the cognitive dissonance with the radfems and their supporters is clear to see. The same people who do slut-walks and scream about not suppressing their sexuality or damning them for wanting to sleep around are the same types who get upset at beautiful, sexy women who get tons of male attention and do exactly what the women for the slut walks do WITHOUT having to scream for that attention.
So the sane and reasonable wonder, what is it that radfems are yelling about – on one hand they parade about wanting to be able to show off their bodies and the power of their sexuality, and on the other, you have the same kind of lines that Yama spouts complaining about women being sexualized when they are beautiful.
Makes no sense, really.
Yeah, but it’s not just him. It’s barbarian babes in chain maille bikinis suddenly being bad because they’re silly. It’s the fact that if you look on the magazine shelves the glossy cover on the computer art mag will have the most freaking amazing barbarian or sci-fi female warrior just oooozing strength and vitality and don’t-mess-with-me and the sci-fi mags and the book covers… won’t. There are uncounted artists doing Frazetta level awesome… where are they? Not on book covers because someone will get the vapours and have to flee to a safe-place. On campus there’s a week long “how to have an orgasm” event and yet… omg… some student just barely drunk enough to get up his courage to ask a girl if she’s interested in that orgasm and it’s evidence of rape culture. (I guess only unassisted orgasms are allowed?) Black Widow is amazing, and isn’t that fabulous! Whoot! Female amazingness! Too bad she’s got breasts and a butt and looks like a girl. Hum? And you know… I always make my MMORPG character builds as fat and dumpy as I can…. not. But wowza, silly fantasy armor and stacked female character models are like… the end of the world… because women aren’t their parts. They’re just supposed to VOTE with those parts. Vote with your parts, ladies! Oh, wait… can’t use the word “ladies” either.
If I’m ever in the position to get cover art I’m gonna be all… sexualize my character PLEASE!
Because I’m not an idiot.
I would like to point out here that there is a grey area between “Can’t tell if it’s male or female under the robes” and “Dead in the first arrow volley.”
Honestly, what they’re doing is body-shaming women who ARE curvy, beautiful, have large breasts, etc. Hell, speaking as someone who doesn’t have a huge chest it’s not the only way to get compliments. Confidence, being pleasant in personality and a great smile does wonders. (Also, I’m glad I don’t have a huge chest. Mine’s just right for me.)
@juliepascal: Does it hurt, trying to think like an SJW?
My brain needs to untwist after reading that last post by you. O_o;;
60guilders… that’s why that particular genre is called…. wait for it…. *fantasy*. 🙂
Yes, but there I run into the “I insist that people actually act like people, arrows like arrows, and swords like swords”…unless there is a reason for it provided in-universe.
For example, a female warrior roaring through battle in a Chain-Mail Bikini(TM) and not dying of arrow fire or the death of a thousand cuts with no further explanation is something I, personally, would find annoying.
One doing so where the armor was designed by the smith of the Gods and every mail-ring has inscribed on it a spell of protection for the wearer–now that could be interesting.
Also, Patrick, yes. It hurts. There’s this thing? Right? It’s a You-tube video or something and I honestly think that none of the people in it believe it but the idea is… if men had periods they wouldn’t be considered gross. Even if most of the people involved in presenting this as yet another humorous way to point out some weird “truth” about the patriarchy are mostly doing it because it’s really funny (and gross) to imagine periods not being considered gross… there’s always someone who sees it and responds, “Oh! That is soooo true!” It’s not true. It’s *fantasy*. It’s like the emperor in his non-existent clothing and everyone knows it’s stupid, but few are willing to point out that the earnest sorts who are trying to make some weird patriarchal conspiracy out of women’s periods are bug nut crazy. I left this comment elsewhere… taking the time to state the unbearably obvious.
“Periods are gross just like poop is gross. Men poop. Poop is still gross. All sorts of bodily functions are gross. Puke is gross. Men puke. It is still gross.
I challenge anyone who thinks that periods can be made not-gross or that they’re gross just because women have them… to eat your next meal with someone’s used bandaid on your plate. Not touching your food. Just on your plate. Gross is gross. Period.”
As for the armor thing… it’s like a bullet proof vest. It works best if you don’t get hit. If you do get hit, you still go down, but instead of being dead, you probably only broke a few things and can get up again. A big guy hits you solid with a sword? You’ve still got major damage even if it doesn’t cut through your armor. It’s just physics. So the best thing is always not to get hit. The super amazing hero and heroine? I don’t have that much trouble pretending they are so awesome that they manage not to get hit so the mechanics of it don’t bother me.
This was one of the things about the original super hero leotards. The idea was mobility rather than armor, so they were dressed up like acrobats. It’s silly.
Course, I understand that people like gritty realism too, but if we’re talking gritty realism the female warrior isn’t there. She’s just not.
60guilders: There’s a magical barrier that provides protection against attacks.
(That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…)
It makes sense, period.
Nebezial ftw.
*FLEES THE INCOMING CARP BARRAGE!*
*expires from laughter*
I find it really interesting that Nebezial’s style is one of maybe a half dozen artists I can recognize with a single panel. Not like I even see his/her (which is it anyway?) stuff anywhere else besides infrequent trips to DeviantArt.
I also find it really sad that the same guys who came up with the Dickwolves joke (look it up if you want) now are kicking pro-cosplayers, booth babes, and regular folk out from their convention (PAX) for, and I kid you not, “the aggressive display of the navel.” (oh, and cleavage too, but aggressive navel is just funnier, and sadder) Aaaand I’m willing to bet this policy has affected far more women than men.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the chain-mail bikini look, but then I’m willing to live and let live. Something they seem incapable of doing. It also matters what the character is doing. A sci-fi character in a skintight spacesuit? Sure. A wizard in nonrestrictive clothing, perhaps hailing from a hot region? Sure. Front line combatant wielding a sword? Less so.
I mean, jeez. Red Sonja is dressed a bit silly, but she’s also one of the most recognizable ass-kickers of all of fantasy. If she isn’t a dynamic interesting character I don’t even know what they’re looking for anymore. (Actually, come to think of it, I *don’t* know what the fraking heck they want anymore, the goalposts keep changing so often.)
At E3 Sarkeesian REALLY pissed people off by decrying the insert to the badges as sexist.
Thing is, it was for a Persona 4 dancing game. So already we’re not talking combat in any way, shape, or form. Secondly, the character depicted is (in game) a Japanese pop star. So… yeah, she’s wearing a fairly short skirt, loooong stockings, and a midriff baring shirt. She’s dancing. By Japanese standards she’s not even dressed that outlandishly.
Really, what the frak happened to not shaming people (slut-shaming or otherwise) and letting women decide for themselves what it means for them to be empowered?
I have no right to demand someone dress up as Red Sonja and no right to tell them they can’t.
What if Larry Correia wants to dress up as Red Sonja? 😉
Hey, I’m not going to tell him no, are you?
I’ll be too busy putting on a blindfold lest my eyeballs melt.
Aaaand the internet provides.
Just saw Sarkeesian complaining about the Fallout Shelter game because, while pregnant, the vault dwellers won’t fight invading bandits but instead run and hide.
I guess she doesn’t know about the actual proven hormonal changes that happen during pregnancy.
Or, you know, the imperative to protect the unborn child by not engaging in gun/hand-to-hand combat with bandits or monsters. Never mind that a heavily pregnant woman can’t really do that as well as she can normally anyway.
I guess she’s running low on things and needed to seize upon something to save her phoney-baloney job.
Well, shoot. They’ve already claimed that games that have been in development for 14+ months with well established female leads in earlier entries are devs rejecting GamerGate. (Nevermind that GG has zero problem with any of these games. Heck, personally I’ve been waiting YEARS for a sequel to Mirror’s Edge, so screw them) Compared to that what’s a little hysteria about pregnant women in an ipad app not being Rambo?
In other words, they need to lie and shriek and hope people believe them?
Oh wait: SJW. It’s part of the basic programming right before being released from the cloning tank.
“I love you cold, unfeeling robot arm!”
Pretty much. Crowing about Fallout 4 (8th game in the overall series) letting you play as a woman was especially stupid since you could in the first game, and every game since. Fallout came out in 1997.
Also worth noting: I saw an AMD (video card) ad from E3 pretty much laser targeted towards GamerGate.
“You are not dead. Now go finish what they started.”
Given how massive the ‘gamers are dead’ articles were that is amazingly blatant. Seems like E3 has started a lot of the game devs not only saying screw you to people like Sarkeesian (even when not especially pro-GG either) but they’re realizing that they don’t need to hide from the game journos. As long as they make the gamers happy and themselves happy they’re good.
Of course, the other stuff certainly isn’t helping the aGGros any either. Like calling for a witch burning against one of the developers of Deus Ex: Humanity Divided for using the phrase “mechanical apartheid” to describe the game’s political climate. Course, a) it is an accurate depiction of the climate of fear against augmented humans in the game and b) they did it explicitly _white-washing_ the fact that the dev in question is a French Black man.
aGGros, ASPs, whatever. Far more often than not they seem to be their enemies’ best recruiting tool.
Really, this should be the only axiom that influences the creator/consumer relationship: is the creator a) enjoying creating stuff, and is the consumer b) enjoying the stuff the creator distributes into the market? If the answer is yes on both, it’s a win-win. And nobody should be complaining. If somebody decides that the stuff is (insert complaint here) then that somebody is obligated to do the heavy lifting of becoming a creator and/or finding a consumer audience for whom to create.
Trying to tell extant creators and audiences that they’re “doing it wrong” and/or labeling those creators and audiences as (insert horribleness here) is basically the 21st century version of the Church Lady from 1980s SNL. Shall we do the Superior Dance?
“Blues music is, alas, dominated by southern American black men.” – daffy racist Parisian woman
Imagine black guys whining about a blues album Kickstarter that’s all black and saying there won’t be anything new there and saying Africa is a “monoculture” and you get some idea of how completely bizarre this cult is.
Imagine some gay white woman publicly calling for not listening to heterosexual black bluesmen for one year and pressuring popular black musicians to push “marginalized” Norwegian and Japanese musicians. Imagine a sarcastic shot across the bows of black bluesmen in the form of an album called “White Women Destroy the Blues” accompanied by terms like “blacksplaining” and “black tears.”
Imagine boycotting an all-black panel on blues music at a blues conference.
Imagine the award for “Best Blues Song of the Year” has nothing that can be recognized as blues in the song. Imagine “Best Blues Album” is actually blues but rather ordinary and sweeps awards cuz star-crossed lovers can’t see each other’s gender.
Imagine Tweet after Tweet saying an all-women blues album will be “brilliant” before it’s even made and “buy this blues album – it’s white – it’s gay – it’s women!”
Imagine reviewers calling out a black blues album cuz the songs feature blacks and take place in a black area of New Orleans and the reviewers whining “it wasn’t ALL black” or “they’re just songs – you can put whoever you want in them.”
WHAT ABOUT THE GLOBAL BLUES VOICES? PLEASE LET THERE BE A SIKH OR MUSLIM!
If you can imagine that then you can imagine how drunk on its own crazy-fumes this silly cult is.
To add: anyone who was around in the 1980s remembers the whole Moral Majority thing, and the big push to sanitize music, movies, television, print media, etc. We’re now seeing something similar, only it’s coming from people who style themselves the inverse of the 1980s Moral Majority. We might call the new movement Moral Majority 2.0: same hectoring, just the politics are different. The targets and mission are still what they were in the past — sanitize the consumer media sphere — but they’re doing it (now) from a standpoint of hyper-radicalized progressive ideology. Sarkeesian probably wouldn’t like the comparison, but she’s basically Jerry Falwell.
Exactly. People may forget it was radical feminists Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, Audre Lorde, the crazy Robin Morgan, and Adrienne (compulsory heterosexuality) Rich who lobbied against pornography as a legally actionable civil rights violation starting in the late ’70s.
Dworkin had “pose workshops” where people would pose like in pornography, just as Jim Hines mimicked SFF covers with poses of women.
You see this same attitude throughout feminist moaning today about how women are depicted in everything, as if they want some type of voluntary Comics Code censorship applied to all media. They’re hopping mad about Game of Thrones and 50 Shades of Grey and just about everything else. They want everything critiqued through this oddball gender stance based on the idea men hate women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin#Critique_of_pornography
@Jared – Shiniez/Nebezial is a he. His wife is also on Devart and is also a talented artist herself.
Nebezial is also responsible for my favorite renderings of Wonder Woman. Heck, he’s able to draw big, muscular and POWERFUL women without them losing their being beautiful AND sexy.
@Shadowdancer: Okay, that was funny.
@Jared: And that right there is the crux of my problem with Sarkeesian and all the rest of the anti-GG crowd, along with the ASPs. They make mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains, know nothing about the history of what they talk about, and bury any legitimate points they have under a mountain of stupid.
Dworkin is what happens when you let the emotionally and psychologically unwell become spokespeople for an entire demographic. Of course, the internet has allowed a small flotilla of Dworkin clones to hog the mic and take over the conversation space, in the 21st century.
60Guilders – The WOOOOOOOMMMB sound effect he puts in there just totally seals the deal. I’m afraid every single time the whole unrealistic armor discussion comes up, those are the two strips I think of nowadays.
What music are y’all listening to minna-san (everyone in Japanese. I like using it.)? I’m enjoying Two Steps from Hell and music by Liquid Cinema. Day of Judgement is playing right now.
The whole shrill screaming from Sarkeesian and the anti-GG crowd and the ASPs generally seems to boil down to “But I don’t like it and neither should you! Because! And it doesn’t matter if I contradict myself!”
Jared wrote:
Pretty much. Crowing about Fallout 4 (8th game in the overall series) letting you play as a woman was especially stupid since you could in the first game, and every game since. Fallout came out in 1997.
Aw, I’m sure she’ll be disappointed. Maybe I can cheer her up and point out that you can play as a woman in the upcoming Mass Effect Andromeda game. 😉
Of course, the internet has allowed a small flotilla of Dworkin clones to hog the mic and take over the conversation space, in the 21st century.
Thanks. I needed an image of a flotilla of Dworkin clones marching around like clone troopers from that end scene of Star Wars Episode II. O_o;;
To add: anyone who was around in the 1980s remembers the whole Moral Majority thing, and the big push to sanitize music, movies, television, print media, etc. We’re now seeing something similar, only it’s coming from people who style themselves the inverse of the 1980s Moral Majority. We might call the new movement Moral Majority 2.0: same hectoring, just the politics are different. The targets and mission are still what they were in the past — sanitize the consumer media sphere — but they’re doing it (now) from a standpoint of hyper-radicalized progressive ideology. Sarkeesian probably wouldn’t like the comparison, but she’s basically Jerry Falwell.
The whole “style themselves the inverse of the 1980s Moral Majority” is itself an example of historical revisionism, in that the political left of the 1980s was often just as much on the moral crusader bandwagon as they are today. About the only place this survives in popular memory is the nicknaming of the Parental Advisory notices that used to be shoved onto music CDs (remember those?) as ‘Tipper Stickers’ after the wife of then Senator Al Gore. This got conveniently shoved down the memory hole to help Al with the MTv vote during the 2000 presidential elections.
Really, this should be the only axiom that influences the creator/consumer relationship: is the creator a) enjoying creating stuff, and is the consumer b) enjoying the stuff the creator distributes into the market? If the answer is yes on both, it’s a win-win. And nobody should be complaining. If somebody decides that the stuff is (insert complaint here) then that somebody is obligated to do the heavy lifting of becoming a creator and/or finding a consumer audience for whom to create.
This. If you think you can do it better, then give it a shot! Either it’s harder than it looks, your tastes are very different than most people (in which case you still likely have a market), or you have a new winner on your hands.
“you miss the whole “don’t read white men” thing, Jim?”
Hines hasn’t figured out that he’ll always be a lower caste to the people he admires so much. The other day I stumbled upon a Twitter convo between some SJW types and one of them declared that he was merely a “dumb white male” and that diverse voices “matter more” than his. This is the attitude of a slave.
“About the only place this survives in popular memory is the nicknaming of the Parental Advisory notices that used to be shoved onto music CDs (remember those?) as ‘Tipper Stickers’ after the wife of then Senator Al Gore. This got conveniently shoved down the memory hole to help Al with the MTv vote during the 2000 presidential elections.”
Eminem remembered, giving a hearty F-U to both Lynne Cheney and Tipper Gore at the end of his 2003 song “White America”.
… so, how quickly do you think every person in NZ ends up in jail?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/01/nz_swings_banhammer_at_trolls/?mt=1435838158346
@60Guilders ” I would like to point out here that there is a grey area between “Can’t tell if it’s male or female under the robes” and “Dead in the first arrow volley.” ”
Nevermind about looking male or female, if I can tell they’s a wizard, they’s getting killed in the first arrow volley.
The latest controversy was about the #AskELJames hashtag, the author of 50 Shades of Grey. Aside from lighting up her prose, the typical complaint did a Starship Troopers on James about “consent,” because a work of fiction is a form of hypnosis in which the public must be hypnotized the proper feminist way. The hypnosis seems to be a given, which is why feminists are always whining about post structural “agency.” If you treat people nice in fiction they’ll become nice, cuz fiction’s just based on other fiction and there was much less crime before Gutenberg. Crime jumped through the roof when silent films came and so the Hayes film censorship office eliminated crime from America in 1930 but then bikinis came.
Chuck Wendig was internet groped about the James thing to the point he announced he was “butting out” when it came to “mansplaining,” thus recusing himself from his own civilization and confirming women are so different from men only other women can truly understand them. That’s why we have all-female judges, attorneys and jurors in certain criminal cases and only men on others.
Feminists are the Comics Code in action with the difference you can kill all the men you want but please observe the Sansa Stark exception rule and also #KillFrankFrazetta.
So – surprise – the new mission of SFF is to lovingly depict race and gender in empowering message fiction where the message is never in doubt and straight white males are levered out because of Japanese blue musician paranoiacs who insist black Delta blues musicians erased Japanese blues musicians from history and now where’s my Hugo?
LOOK MA, I CAN’T SEE GENDER!!! NO MALE GAZE, NO WAR AND CRIME!!
Unfortunately the invisible female armies men erased from history will have to rise from their invisible military cemeteries and do the heavy lifting after the next Pearl Harbor.
The men and women of the United States Supreme Court might also be accused of arrogating to themselves the seat of judgment
I… um, no. I mean, that’s kind of right there on the tin, que no? Supreme Court? Made up of judges? Outlined as one of the three branches of federal constitutional government?
perlhaqr, SCOTUS is there to interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it. Hence, people are accusing them of putting themselves in the seat of Judgement rather than interpreting what the laws say.
On the larger subject, I agree. I’m not Christian, I’m not Conservative, I’m certainly not a Progressive Liberal, but I agree. I don’t think of it in precisely these terms, but it’s what I’ve been trying to do of late. For a while I tended the weeds. Eventually I realised that though I had a really amazing bumper crop of them, it certainly didn’t make me happy.
So now I’m trying something different.
Bassmanco: But… they are there to judge the laws according to the Constitution. I dunno. Maybe it’s a stupid semantics argument I’m indulging in.
perlhaqr, according to people who know the law much better than I, many of the decisions by SCOTUS have been outside their purview, hence they are not doing their jobs but being activists.
@perlhaqr: Think of the difference between McCullough v. Maryland and Dred Scott v. Sanford. The former case, concerning an attempt by the state of Maryland to tax the First Bank of the United States, was decided against the state of Maryland, on the grounds that the Supremacy Clause, which puts national law above state law, means that the states cannot tax an institution of the United States government.
Then consider Dred Scott v. Sanford, which is essentially a treatise on “the plain text of the Constitution won’t give me the answer I want, so I’ll force my own views of what it means onto it.”
The problem, Brad is that SCOTUS did not rule for equality of treatment under the law (which means that they are in grievous violation of the Fourteenth Amendment).
They ruled that the benefits given by the State to a group that is barely 50% of the adults in this country are to be extended to – wow! – another two or three percent (at the most – assuming that every homosexual now rushes right out to get married). Persons who are not married do not receive these State-granted benefits.
So – at least 48% of the adults in this country are now being discriminated against – as opposed to only 50% before this week. Not what I call “progress” – it is actually regressive, as it just further entrenches the legitimacy of this massive discrimination!
(Note – I do check my “privilege” status – and it tells me that I was privileged as a married heterosexual, and am still privileged as a married person.)
James May,
What you’re usually going on about — in a nutshell — is the eternal special pleading of the hyphenators and division-mongers. The people who forever insist there is no difference between the genders (when it suits them) yet will hotly insist there are stark differences between the genders (again, when it suits them) on matters of experience, POV, and opinion. Ergo, the “victim” gender is always on a pedestal. Because the “victim” is always a superior life form. Which is why so many of the straight white guys in this field who endlessly bleat about this stuff, have no problem demoting themselves. Because when you demote yourself — rhetorically debase and scrape your belly before the dwellers on the pedestals — you magically put yourself on a pedestal too; as an “ally” of the victim classes. Your pedestal is just a titch lower than the rest, but it’s still a pedestal. A perfect perch from which to piss down the necks of the dirty proles who still think Martin Luther King Jr. called it right: content of character . . .
Since they have no character it’s not surprising that they try to use other things: Pure desperation and complete dishonesty.
Content of character is a dead horse. This social justice crusade has debased and corrupted SFF on a culture-wide level I never believed could be possible. The 90% golden age coin produced 5 classic SF stories a year 1939-49 in Astounding alone. It’s not only been affirmative actioned into the ground but now the new characters must be treated an exact way even while the whole crew denies the affirmative action exists in the first place.
This is not a game of logic and principle but one where the straight white male is set up to lose coming and going, and that reveals the true origins of this KKK-like cult and why it has to lie through its teeth just to keep its “logic” above water, such as when a lone gunmen becomes all white Americans and ISIS become lone wolves or not even Islamic in a sea of Muslim murders which one journalist rightly pointed out is like saying “‘the alleged Netherlands’.”
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2015/07/isil-stands-islamic-state-levant-david-cameron-not-realise/
It’s a reversal of Orwell’s “Ministry of Peace”; ISIS must not be called ISIS. Just as we must “reassure hundreds of millions of Muslims that they are in no way implicated in Islamic State’s crimes” we must similarly reassure millions of white Americans they are implicated in murders by a lone gunman. Lone wolves suddenly become everyone if it’s a safe target.
“Hate is default White male behavior in America. Has been for a long time. Teach your boys better before they hurt/kill someone else’s kids.” – Rose Fox, SFF editor and reviews editor at Publisher’s Weekly.
Immorality is reversed again when it’s attached to “Heteronormativity” which has got to go and so does the “white Anglophone hegemony”
“sci-fi and fantasy have always been a very white, very straight, very heteronormative, male political project. A very colonial project… . By not publishing black authors, by not publishing books about black people, that’s become the message by default. Whiteness being the default has been the message.” – Daniel Jose Older
According to the Gender and Education Association, when it comes to ending the dominance of heterosexuality, a linked essay by gay activists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner states “We are trying to bring that world into being.”
“As Science fiction readies its generation ship to move beyond the white-heteronormative-males-conquer-the-galaxy pastiche, popular fantasy is beginning to look beyond the faux-medieval western European that remained so popular throughout the genre’s formative decades.” – Paul Weimer
“Students consistently report hostile classroom environments in which the effects of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other forms of institutionalized oppression have manifested within the department and deride our intellectual capacity, methodological rigor, and ideological legitimacy.” – UCLA student petition to address “micro aggressions.”
“… as a heteronormative white dude I’ve got like, 15,000 books that talk to me already.” – Chuck Wendig
“#Conservativesf Futures that are heteronormative. Futures that omit trans* people and asexuals and others not on the binary
— Kari Sperring (@KariSperring) February 18, 2015”
That’s no secret “cabal.” By SJW’s own definitions that’s a racist genderphobic man-hating lake dedicated to one species of “literature,” and that’s not including being a cult of liars who change the meaning of words from one day to the next.
It’s just weird. People seem desperately eager to make science fiction into something it never was just so they can claim it’s got to be something else. The most important and most ignored thing is… it’s 2015 and it’s possible for every audience, no matter how small a slice of the population, to get books that talk to them. Instead of being excited and positive about this people like Wendig imply that we can (and should) stop having the stories that pull in as large an audience as possible because a “heteronormative white dude” doesn’t need any more books.
Everyone needs more books.
Everyone.
Of course, I don’t believe that books that appeal to heteronormative white dudes are books that aren’t for me. I don’t believe that whitewashing and male-gendering the history of a diverse genre does a service to anyone because untruths never do. Some of the stuff I’ve heard that publishers (and Hollywood) say won’t sell is based on the bigotry of those white people saying them against those *other* white people who they hope to sell to. (You know, the mythical racist person in Kansas who refuses to see movies staring Will Smith.) That BS has got to be opposed, but it can’t be when all the “activists” are busy enforcing the stereotype by pretending “those people” insist on pushing people out, on actively excluding some segment of authors and actively refusing to serve some segment of audience. Because for every story about a publisher being an idiot about what supposedly won’t sell there is another story about a publisher or editor or agent who is pushing and overtly favoring any author who might be *interesting* in some non-white-bread sort of way. Which is just good marketing. I just wish this was acknowledged by anyone because if *I* was trying to make diverse people feel welcome in the genre that’s what I’d be saying to them. I honestly can’t see the purpose of shouting non-stop that everyone is out to get you. The supposed Bad Guys have to be purposely misrepresented in order to support that message but the message of hostile territory ahead is just that important? What?
Who’s doing the most to make the territory hostile?
I’d give a hint to any new writers out there… anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t write for heteronormative white dudes is trying to sabotage your career. The only good advice is to either write as loudly as you can for a specific niche market understanding that it’s a niche market but that you can find it and probably make a good living… or to write for as many and as broad of audiences as you can, absolutely and including heteronormative white dudes. Look at the best sellers and who they put in their books. The answer is almost always going to be *everyone*. Look at past “greats” and examine what made some space adventure or another appealing. I can almost guarantee that it wasn’t the pallor of the cast.
It’s this idea that humans need to racially-sexually see themselves in media and pop culture that is so stupid. The idea whites are somehow the only ones in the world who can’t do that is doubly stupid and also racist.
It’s pretty evident the reason American pop culture spread throughout the world is because it appeals to a shared humanity. The idea Indonesians, Indians or Brazilians held their noses while listening to The Beatles rock, watch Dallas, Woody Woodpecker cartoons or Hitchcock films is moronic. At the first Rock in Rio in 1985 the Brazilians knew the words and sang along to 10 days of Euro and American rock bands from Rod Stewart to Nina Hagen to Queen to Iron Maiden and they were as happy as fucking clams, despite the unending rain and mud. The largest crowds were 250,000.
The truth is this is pushed by a few racists in SFF who claim (by race) some shared and representative global insight they don’t have and doesn’t exist together with naive do-gooders who have no idea what’s been going on in foreign nations; they just make assumptions. The truth is far different.
If you don’t know what kids were listening to in Argentina in 1955 or what Cine Universal and Luchomania and Lucho Gatica is nor that he posed with Nat King Cole and Elvis back in the ’60s then that would be the time for “butting out.” You are being lied to by ignorant and provincial racists who have a hard on for whites and who claim all global pop culture historic knowledge and in fact don’t know jack shit.
There is no lack of Mexicans, Brazilians, Chinese or Egyptians in their own films and TV and nor has there been for decades and decades. The Chinese have had female stars they featured in their own movie mags since the ’60s and beyond, some of them famous for martial arts films where they beat the crap out of 20 guys at once. The same is true for many countries. The myth that is not true is created by ignorant agitators who take one slim genre like SFF and smear it all over everything.
That aside, is it India’s fault they lead the way in cricket or Brazil in Samba or are they somehow a “hegemony for that?” Oh dear, do I have to listen to that Lusophone Samba… again? Imagine me as a Norwegian samba musician visiting Rio bitching about that and then imagine all of Brazil telling me to fuck off. Why aren’t we doing that to these asshats in SFF who don’t even live in America? Imagine me in America telling Fabio Fernandes in Brazil to stay out of his own Brazilian SFF convention as Fernandes (in Brazil) did to Jonathan Ross in the U.K.
The arrogance of these people is stunning. Is there a Brazilian Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi calling other Brazilians “shitlords” cuz they object to anti-Brazilian racist remarks? Oh, dear, not another Brazil-dude parade. Honey, it’s fucking Brazil!!! And yeah, there’s a lot of white dudes in the U.K. and it’s not your fucking country anyway. That was the time for “butting out.” Instead a mental case had a psychotic breakdown on Twitter and Ross disappeared from his own culture in part because of some shit who lives an ocean and a continent away on the Pacific coast.
Guys like Wendig and Hines got their heads up their asses. Are they going to recuse themselves from trial juries based on race, sex and sexual orientation and #JustListen and are “butting out”? Why do they dare even have an opinion about gay marriage? What on god’s green earth are these people even talking about? What weather vane of logic or a principle are they using?
None of these complaints even make any sense. Egypt leads the way in Arabic-speaking films in the Middle East and has for decades; so what? Is there a half-Vietnamese, half-Arabic Aliette de Bodard living in Iran bitching about the “hegemony” of the Arabic language and the lack of east Asian characters? Are there Indians living in Nigeria slapping the black majority around? What a fucking con this all is.
So American and European culture is popular. Oh, dear. Did I colonize an Indonesian kid into having a shag haircut and wearing a Scorpions t-shirt in 1986? What’s the complaint; that everyone didn’t invent the electric guitar simultaneously? Is it my fault Turkey has pro basketball or that kids from Aswan go to Cairo to play in basketball tournaments? They seem to like it. Are they too stupid to know their own minds? Why would that be anyone’s business anyway; just because a psycho like Requires Hate and her fuck cronies have declared themselves the portal through which all whites must pass?
I have a challenge for this crew of naive retards: go one year talking about SFF. The truth is there are so many small fry agitators and obsessives in SFF they couldn’t handle that. Their footprint would dry up like it was water on cement in the sun. What are these shits going to do without being able to bitch about whites and men? Oh dear, they’d have to write about their own fucking genre, the one that so self-evidently bores them so much they’ve turned it into a gossip rag being lorded over by bigoted drama queens with minimal to non-existent artistic talent but plenty of OCD.
Screw the Hugos and screw the Nebulas and screw their “diversity” and “marginalized” and screw the idiotic con game they’ve been sold by resentful man-hating anti-white racists with personality disorders.
I have always seen SF as a type of warning literature in a way no other genre is. Even the simplistic visions of Edgar Rice Burroughs had constant warnings about modern civilization and how it could go awry. Tarzan’s distrust of the West was deeply seated. SF has had far more sophisticated versions of that ranging from Heinlein to Bradbury to Dick.
If SF is America’s canary-in-a-coal mine, what happens when SF itself becomes compromised? Instead of Orwell’s ironic warning titles about the Ministry of Peace we now have anti-abuse initiatives run by toxic abusers. We have anti-harassment initiatives advocated by serial harassers. We have anti-racist campaigns run by vicious racists. We have anti-sexism campaigns run by supremacists. We have diversity initiatives advocated by intolerant bigots. We have pleading essays against group erasure and calls for justice written by ideological paranoiacs and sociopaths.
SF needs to wake up, because you have turned your own literature into a laughing stock and a shit hole.
As a conservative and a Christian, I don’t believe God hates gay people. I don’t believe He has a prohibition against them getting married. I don’t believe they’ll go to Hell.
Why? Because I read comprehensively, and I hate when things are taken out of context.
Here’s context for Leviticus (as one example): it’s a set of social rules, laid down for people WHO LIVED IN TENTS IN THE DESERT. Thousands of years ago. With sand, and the nearest river, as their only options for maintaining hygiene.
Most of Leviticus is about prohibiting acts that, in such an environment, create major disease vectors.
Gay sex, under these conditions, tends to spread both blood and feces around the encampment. Blood can also get spread around after sex with a woman who is within a certain number of days of her period, which is ALSO prohibited, carrying the SAME penalty. For that matter, it’s just as much “an abomination before God” to eat shellfish, which are bottom-feeders carrying diseases. Fail to cook one properly, and bam, you could get dysentery sweeping through a camp of ten thousand people.
Even in the classic story of Sodom and Gomorrah, one can only conclude “gay sex is a crime before God” if one ignores the entire rest of the story — gang rapes, for example, being so common that the locals are severely offended if you don’t send your girls out to be passed around like party favors. This story wasn’t “God hates fags” so much as it’s “God hates human beings acting like animals towards each other”.
So to me, none of this religious doctrine is about what God wants. It’s about what someone who needs a moral panic wants, to get people scared and sending in money to save their society from Certain Damnation.
Religious nuts are the original Social Justice Warriors. Which is why, when I hear a modern-day SJW talking, I keep hearing the voice of a televangelist declaring who’s a heathen and who’s going to Heaven. How can I respect such a mentality?
“Religious nuts are the original Social Justice Warriors. Which is why, when I hear a modern-day SJW talking, I keep hearing the voice of a televangelist declaring who’s a heathen and who’s going to Heaven. How can I respect such a mentality?”
True.
Two apt phrases… “Holier than Thou” and “Church Lady.”
😉
Also, I missed The Last Ship last year… just watched the first 6 episodes. It pretty much rocks.
They are amazingly like a cult. Instead of asking us to touch a TV screen they utter magic words at us like “marginalized, “Woc” and “privilege” and expect us to go all giddy. Actually the only thing that happens is they reinforce my view they’re an unthinking racist cult of idiots. Not everyone feels the same way. Scalzi and Wendig repeat that shit like parrots. Someday they’ll figure out they’re the wrong skin and sex. John Green boycotts white convention panels and still gets lit up – along with Wendig – as creepy white misogynists and they still can’t figure out what’s going on. It’s like some perplexing mystery.
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne 16h16 hours ago More discussions from Chuck W’s Facebook page. #Privilege #WhiteMaleTears”
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne 17h17 hours ago #LRT Chuck decided to “butt out” by just talk on his Facebook. You’re not slick. We see you.”
“Petra Newman @merlinslaugh 16h16 hours ago @fangirlJeanne so apparently we’re allowed to speak but only under circumstances white cis able bodied men deem acceptable? Good to know… ”
“Jeanne retweeted Sarah Hollowell @sarahhollowell 14h14 hours ago @fangirlJeanne and it’s awful that b/c you dare to do this while being a WOC, this is the shit you get for it.”
“Jeanne retweeted Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens 17h17 hours ago @dancingofpens And white male authors know everything! So I shouldn’t argue! ahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah”
@ juliepascal
“It’s a You-tube video or something and I honestly think that none of the people in it believe it but the idea is… if men had periods they wouldn’t be considered gross…It’s not true. It’s *fantasy*.”
Exactly.
Quick rule of thumb: is it a solid or liquid coming out of a person’s body? It’s gross to some degree. Is it something that stopped a solid or liquid coming out of a person’s body from going everywhere (e.g., bandage, diaper)? It’s gross by association.
@calbeck: I would like to point out that you have managed to miss the fact that most Christians don’t solely rely on the book of Leviticus to determine their proper morality. If that were true, there would be no market for pork in America. The “no gay sex” thing also crops up in a couple of places in the New Testament, and I’d quibble with the “solely to cause a moral panic” notion.
That aside, however, I do agree that most televangelists are profit-seeking piles of garbage, and as you mention it, find most SJW behavior to be remarkably similar.
This story wasn’t “God hates fags” so much as it’s “God hates human beings acting like animals towards each other”.
In addition to the objections 60guilders pointed out, there is one other comment. I can only speak for Catholicism, but Catholic teaching has that sex should only be to a couple in a union sanctified by God (as represented by the church) and should be open to producing children. Under such a rule, ‘gay sex’ falls into the same bucket as ‘adultery’, ‘sex before marriage’ and ‘married couple using a condom’ as a sin. (While I accept the church’s teaching, I believe none of these should be criminally illegal.)
This makes logical sense as a moral teaching if the goal is to produce long term stability in a society by building strong families. If the goal behind entering a relationship is to produce a long term family, you’ve provided for both the children growing up and the parents when they get old. If the goal behind entering a relationship is ‘to have an easy way to get fun sex’, then when sex stops being fun, the relationship is in trouble. I know at least one marriage that broke up with all the messiness for the kids because the relationship lost its early magic. Marriage as a social institution exists for both the long term benefit of the married couple and of society.
The places where exceptions are found tend to actually reinforce the idea that marriage as an institution was intended to produce a long-term family relationship. Societies that practiced polygamy tended to be ones where males were at a high risk of dying early; in those cases, having multiple wives provided a source of support for the excess female population and their kids. While divorce/annulment of marriages was often rarely granted in the past, one of the reasons marriages were annulled was because the relationship wouldn’t produce children; this granted both parties another chance at a family. A lot of unmarried adults ended up in religious orders because those provided guaranteed long term care of their members.
These ideas may be quaint now to many people, but the logic is still valid. The problem is that objecting to ‘sex is fun’ and holding the belief that ‘sex is to produce families’ (as many people still do) is being actively punished.
@60Guilders: “I would like to point out that you have managed to miss the fact that most Christians don’t solely rely on the book of Leviticus to determine their proper morality”
I remind you: context. I addressed the segments on gay sex pertinent to Leviticus, as I was addressing the context of Leviticus. I also addressed the story of Lot, and again did so to demonstrate context. Were I to address the remaining instances of gay sex being mentioned negatively in the Bible, I would again do it in context, piece by piece, and demonstrate the same thing: that anti-gay Biblical rhetoric is the purview of Man, not God.
The short-form reality is that there is no “whole-Bible context” for anything, aside from the existence of God (and in the New Testament, of His Son), so judging gays on basis of piecemeal compilations — especially when doing so removes the context of the actual Books being referenced — is going to end up being misleading.
@Civilis: all of the reasons you have given are mortal, human rationales, which in their own context are certainly acceptable positions for debate on the subject — but my concern is whether or not gay sex is a matter for damnation. It does not appear that it actually is.
all of the reasons you have given are mortal, human rationales, which in their own context are certainly acceptable positions for debate on the subject — but my concern is whether or not gay sex is a matter for damnation. It does not appear that it actually is.
In that it puts short-term gratification ahead of long-term good, sex that does not meet the above definition is sinful to a Catholic. Any sin is potentially a matter of damnation, whether viewed as a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ or in that the sense that one rationalizes one’s own sins is reflective of a disconnect from the will of God (something I myself am not innocent of) and an invitation to further sin. However, we are all sinners and a path to escape damnation is available to all regardless of the sins committed.
Personally, I’d rather have a set of religious rules that function to make a better society whether they come directly from God or they are a set of memes generated by society itself. As such, the idea that God’s rules are issued because they are reflexive of making a better society when viewed on the time scale of generations and thus indistinguishable from mortal, human rationales is a good thing.
James,
It’s been about ten years since I had my first real run-in with the field’s new wave of post-modern moral scolds — the people now being called “social justice warriors” in common parlance — but the lesson was clear, even then: white straight males (of any ideology, no matter how progressive) will never not be second-class citizens on the SJ scale. This is why it’s bleakly amusing watching hetero white male liberals scrape their bellies and fawn over the preachers of SJ doctrine. Because no matter how much they self-criticize and self-demote, they’re going to be accused of “doing it wrong” anyway. It’s just a matter of time. I said it in my Fort Living Room post earlier this year: political correctness is a beast with a bottomless stomach. Sooner or later, it’s going to eat you for lunch. No matter how good of an “ally” you’ve been. Because the very character of the enterprise, is one of endless recrimination that just spirals inward and downward. On, and on, and on.
@Civilis: “sinful to a Catholic” does not mean “sinful to God”. It means even less in terms of damnation, as human beings do not determine what one does, or does not, get damned for.
“sinful to a Catholic” does not mean “sinful to God”. It means even less in terms of damnation, as human beings do not determine what one does, or does not, get damned for.
I can only speak as a Catholic, so Your Mileage May Vary. I look at my (imperfect) Catholicism from the perspective of one who’s job is partially to look at processes designed to improve quality in business. One of the guiding principles is that I can’t judge my own work; I have someone else review what I do, and then we bring in auditors to review what we do and what we say we do and make sure both match and both are as good as we can get. The Catholic Church, though imperfectly, still has spent centuries looking at what is and isn’t sinful; unlike me, priests think about sin for a living, and do so with the framework of all those centuries of thinking. They are necessarily going to get closer to what “sinful to God” means than I am. Personally, I would at least listen and reconsider if a clergy from another Christian denomination came up and told me something was sinful, especially if it was something I didn’t have the Catholic teachings on. I’d pay less attention to the stereotypical Megachurch pastor than I would, say an Orthodox priest (or even a Reform Rabbi), but it would at least be something to consider why they were telling me.
As far as damnation goes, I believe one can only be damned for rejecting God. If your sincere in your desire to repent, God can forgive any sin. There are some sins, such as suicide, where it is hard to reconcile committing the sin with the sincere repentance necessary for forgiveness.
I’ve read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and my interpretation is completely different from the anti-gay interpretation. The men in Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t get in trouble for wanting to have sex with other men. They got in trouble because they wanted to have sex with angels. Lot offered them his daughter instead, but they still wanted the angels. THAT’s what brought the wrath of God down on them. I suppose you could argue that the angels were male, but I still see the story as being a warning about trying to screw (literally) God’s angels rather than other men.
Protestants, in general, have less of an emphasis on sex as reproduction than Catholics, though some sub-sets these days put the Catholics to shame on family sizes. It’s more like, God made sex fun in order to strengthen a bond and confirm a relationship. So purposefully non-reproductive sex using contraceptives *within* marriage is just fine. (Since sex outside of marriage is never “just fine”.) Note that the purpose of this is also the permanence of a family unit over generations. You also don’t get a church approved annulment if you don’t have children.
I can see, perhaps, how scripture could be understood to have room there for same sex marriages. What I can’t see (and this goes to the over-arching general message of scripture related to sexual behavior) is any way that sex outside of marriage is ever acceptable. I think Brad had mentioned this breakdown of social mores? That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, of course, because people sin all the time, but there is a big difference between breaking the rules and not even HAVING rules. Something meant to bind a couple together is now mere recreation with strangers. People get married and then divorced when life becomes hard, or even just less fun than before. Your spouse (see, I’m gonna be inclusive here) meets you at the door with a list of chores and concerns… the cute piece who smiles at you at work has no chores, no bills, no diapers, no in-laws, and no demands. Strong willed people who think things through might resist that. Most everyone else overwhelmed by life? Moral teaching helps us to be strong even when we’re not at all strong. (Deriding religion as a *crutch* is walking down the street and kicking the crutches out from under people who need them and then calling yourself superior.)
Children, in particular, are hurting because of the extreme selfishness of adults who see marriage only in terms of “love” and what they desire. When they desire something else, then they’re supposed to go for it. Any collateral damage is *not their fault.* We fall into love and we fall out of it.
The over-arching message in scripture about morality (not just sexual) is that it’s a struggle to suppress and master our human desires, our human nature, but that we’re supposed to work on suppressing them anyway. The over-arching message of modern life is that our desires ought never be denied. That it’s actually morally *wrong* not to be ruled by passion and whim.
Really, isn’t that the basis of all of this? That it’s morally *wrong* not to support the desires of homosexuals? I mean, I suppose it’s only fair since heterosexuals threw out commitment, self-denial and fidelity ages ago…
@Frank: The Sodom and Gomorrah story also has some very interesting parallels to the story of Gibeah, contained in the book of Judges.
May want to check for Potentially Slanderous Material in this Midwest Media Expo panel: Lily-white panel representing lily-white media decrying the lack of (other people’s) diversity:
EDIT: Sad Puppies stuff starts @ 35:00; WordPress stripped out the timestamp.
@Orgell The woman in the middle is just plain wrong on a lot of things. She’s conflating Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, which a lot of people seem to be doing. And the Sad Puppy slate isn’t all straight white males. And I don’t recall seeing the GRRM post that she’s talking about. I think her rambling is more confused and ignorant than slanderous. The two people she mentions by name are Vox Day and John C Wright. She didn’t really say anything negative about JCW other than she didn’t know who he was, so if you boil down everything she says, it’s mostly just a rant against Vox Day. I think anyone who’s going to talk about Sad Puppies should read the post by Brad Torgersen about the Sad Puppy slate and the post by Vox Day on the Rabid Puppy slate. Then they should read Tom Doherty’s post about the whole thing. THEN you can talk about Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. If you don’t know the difference between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, you probably shouldn’t be talking about them.
Reminded me of Second City’s old sketch about Pre-Teen World.
“If you don’t know the difference between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, you probably shouldn’t be talking about them.”
The truth is, I suspect that many of them know there’s a difference, but go with the slander anyhow.
@Christopher M. Chupik I think that people simply lump them together, because Vox Day was somehow associated with the Sad Puppies. I’ve paid pretty close attention to the whole thing, and I STILL don’t really know how Vox Day is connected to the Sad Puppies. There was a panel at Archipelacon that talked about the Hugos, and one person simply lumped them together, and another panelist corrected her and said that the Rabid Puppies were Vox Day’s creation, whereas he was simply involved somehow with the Sad Puppies. But she concluded by saying, “If you sup with the devil, it doesn’t matter how long your spoon is.” The slates have considerable overlap, so I can see how people mix them up, but if you’re going to be on a panel, you should know the difference.
Well, Vox was a nominee in Sad Puppies 2. This year, however, he rode Larry’s coattails and inserted himself into the Awards by copying most of SP3 nominees. This isn’t exactly classified information, but it has been buried under an avalanche of distortions.
Chupik has the right of it so far as he goes, but the connections do run slightly deeper, although not by much. John C. Wright and his wife apparently consider him a friend, as does Shadowdancer, I think he’s cropped up here a time or two, and he’s also showed up at Sarah Hoyt’s place a few times.
As near as I can tell, the only people who actually like the guy are Wright, Lamplighter, and Shadowdancer. I don’t know why the first two like him, but apparently he helped run someone to earth who was cyberstalking Shadowdance and got a restraining order put on him.
As to supping with the devil (shrugs). The fact of the matter is that his views on race mirror those of a lot of affirmative action proponents–i.e., as near as I can tell he thinks blacks are intellectually inferior to whites, and so do they–his views on the relationship between the sexes flip those of most of his opponents, and I’m sure he’s said jerky things about homosexuals, although the RP slate included at least one bisexual.
He’s the Stalin of the Puppies. The conclusions should be obvious–although Flint is the only ASP who might qualify to be Finland.
@Christopher M. Chupik It’s still not clear to me whether or not Vox Day was involved somehow with SP3. It’s been insinuated that he was involved in the discussions about the SP3 slate. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but a lot of people seem to believe it. I consider Rabid Puppies to be a creation that’s solely from Vox Day, and he appears to have used the SP3 slate as a starting point. I’ve given up trying to understand Vox Day. It seems that you have to have a fairly deep knowledge of GamerGate to understand Vox Day, and I’m just not willing to spend the time to understand it all. I’ve seen a number of fairly nasty quotes that have been attributed to him, but I don’t know the context of them, nor do I know if he really means a lot of the things he says. From a distance, he looks like someone who likes to stir up shit, so I can’t tell if he’s a racist sexist homophobic jerk, or if he just throws out racist/sexist/homophobic statements just to kick the hornet’s nest.
I would also echo Julie’s recommendation of The Last Ship. I just finished Season 1 and it’s great.
I’m grateful that Vox did have Clamps investigated, but the restraining order goes only as far as Vox’s blog as far as I am aware. The individual blog owners of the places Clamps goes to harass me would have to file their own complaints. For example: Brad would have to file his own complaint against Clamps for constantly evading his ban.
The fact is, even if I weren’t here, Clamps would still be trolling these blogs; he was banned from Mad Genius Club, According to Hoyt, and Monster Hunter Nation before I started reading these places or commenting on them. I believe he was banned the year of 2013; at the time I was barely active online because of my grief from my son Damien’s stillbirth. Understand, we’ve already established that non-Left leaning blogs and online venues are Clamps’ hunting grounds for people to stalk and harass – he actively goes to places where people will disagree with him, to find people he will be offended by for his own shallow definitions of ‘offending.’ I am not his only victim, I’m just the one he most openly pursues because of the difficulties in filing a harassment case through inter-national law.
When one considers the evidence of Andrew P. Marston’s behavior, one has to wonder: If Shadowdancer hasn’t been driven offline by his persistent stalking and harassment, and considering that his behavior is clearly not limited to just her, how many other people does he harass, for the most shallow reason of “I don’t like (insert excuse here)”; and how many people has he succeeded in driving offline? And as his reasons for hating people don’t limit themselves to politics, but to not liking their writing, art, hobbies, etc, how many other people’s joy has he ended? Heck, it even extends to ‘your advice to improve my work is stupid and wrong.’ That’s how easy it is to get on Clamps’ ‘You must not be on the Internet’ jihad.
Further, I’m quite a bit more resilient – or stubborn, if you prefer – in that I refuse to be driven off the Internet for the reason of ‘Clamps thinks I shouldn’t be on the Internet’; moreover, I am lucky that I have my housemate David aka Aff/Seda helping me continue to be online as he is a network security administrator. Andrew has been harassing and following me all over the Internet since 2009. Six years; going on SEVEN. Now, consider that he JUST went and evaded Brad’s ban again – my email notifications show he just commented while I was typing this up – his use of proxies and possibly other methods to evade bans would have frustrated the average blogger by now. If they cannot keep him out because they don’t have the technological know-how, and he continues to derail and persist in his harassment, how many communities would he have killed, how many blogs shut down, simply by persisting as he does? How many people have been driven to ‘this isn’t worth the grief, this isn’t fun any more, I’m closing this down’?
Think about it.
Clamps persists in his methods because they are likely to succeed with other bloggers, writers or artists. He has been doing this before I ever ran into him, and who knows how many years before I did has he been doing this. From what I’ve been able to tell he’s been at this at least since 2005, and his targets were children.
Someone who is this dedicated to harassing and stalking is also unlikely to simply limit himself to online stalking.
“I’d say something about Hungary and Brad being manipulated into unfavorable situations but I don’t think Brad’s likely to attempt to bail out.
Maybe L. Jagi could be Hungary.
Of course, any world war II allegory where Vox isn’t Germany is wrong.”
Oh look, Clamps/Marston alert. Buh-bye, little boy!
@Clamps: Sorry, old bean, but Vox’s madnesses are incidental to his primary ideology, and he hasn’t been fighting this thing in the open for very long, which makes him Stalin. Buhlert, Scalzi, Jemison, Hines–their madness is their ideology, which makes them Germany. They don’t have a Hitler, more’s the pity. Their ideological diversity, by the way, is also very poor, which makes them excellent analogues for the Axis, as the three big ones all had race-based collectivist ideologies. Which should sound familiar. Flint gets to be Finland and the Baltic States, because he’s not actively insane, just fixated on old foes. Martin is Ukraine.
Also, Hungary never bailed on the Germans–Admiral Horthy tried, but he got thrown out by Otto Skorzeny.
Torgerson is Roosevelt, Correia is Churchill. Sarah Hoyt is Free France, while Jim Hines is Vichy.
Anyone else want to help carry this metaphor, which is based on things I have read elsewhere?
@60Guilders (my long arse comment was meant to be a reply to you.)
Hmm. I dunno, they seem to like them their pedophiles… Breen as the Hitler equivalent?
@Shadowdancer: Ah, I see. I thought the restraining order extended to “wherever Shadowdancer hangs out.” That does explain why he doesn’t go anywhere near Vox Popoli but runs around here. As to the rest…prince of a guy, and a credit to the ASP cause. sarc/
I think Walter Breen would have to be their leader to be Hitler, as opposed to being a pedophile who got hitched to Marion Zimmer Bradley. (Spits) That this fight is causing more ill-feeling than the revelations after Bradley’s death says it all. At most, he gets to be Horst Wessel.
For the neutrals reading this, my sticky has by necessity expanded from documenting Clamps’s harassment of just myself, to his harassment of others, and other incidences and examples of him stalking people, along with examples of other harassing behavior such as slandering and defamation. Recently it seems that Clamps is himself stalking the individual known as Emma, who he frequently accuses Vox of stalking (when in fact this is not the case.)
https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41
One of the frequent behaviors that I’ve documented is Clamps’ tendency towards projecting his crimes and harmful acts and behavior towards those he doesn’t like.
Another we frequently witness here: namely how Clamps, aka Andrew P. Marston of Massachusetts will evade bans to continue his crazed crusade of irrational causes and ‘social justice’ bullying. At present he is commenting under the pseudonym ‘Nick Furious’ – until Brad bans him again.
“Hence the Bees retweeted Maverynthia @maverynthia Jun 30
Authors like @jimchines is why I refuse to read male authors at all, especially ones that seem to want to fly a “FEMINISM” banner.”
“Hence the Bees retweeted Maverynthia @maverynthia Jun 30 I thought @jimchines was a cool author but it looks like he’s one of those abuser/stalker types that only pays lip service to feminism”
That’s Requires Hate. Here’s her Twitter line-up of “you may also like”:
Gayyem et kadkadua
@rcloenenruiz
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
@silviamg
Ann Leckie
@ann_leckie
Sofia Samatar
@SofiaSamatar
Aliette de Bodard
@aliettedb
That is quite a line-up.
Here’s Hines’ line-up:
John ScalziVerified account
@scalzi
Mary Robinette Kowal
@MaryRobinette
Ken Liu
@kyliu99
Elizabeth Bear
@matociquala
Seanan McGuire
@seananmcguire
He may as well be banging a window sill down on his head.
It’s not like we haven’t warned these guys for 3 years. When you’re white straight and male to a supremacist racist heterophobe, what you do means nothing; it’s what you are. Straight white men can expect the exact same treatment from SFF’s sociopathic “feminists” black folks can from the KKK. Jump through all the hoops you want. Signal boost the “marginalized” all you want. You’re dealing with sociopaths. RH’s pal @fangirljeanne has 100 Tweets a day for 6 1/2 years, and she never shuts up about men and whites. Think about that level of obsession. Think of Nebula nominees talking smack about men and whites every single day for months in a row. These people have crippling mental health issues.
The entire crew of SJW white knights Tweets with these morons. They cry about “neo-Nazis” and then run to neo-Nazis for advice and then get nominated for Hugos. The entire core of SFF is a dysfunctional cult.
You’re dealing with sociopaths.
Both Breitbart and the Federalist have several good articles on the continuing Culture War coming from the Social Justice activists, and the damage this is doing to real people.
See, for example:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/06/29/harping-on-the-hypocrisy-and-lies-of-twitters-most-notorious-anti-abuse-activist-randi-harper-part-1/
+1 another recommendation for “The Last Ship”. Lots of action, plus it has Adam Baldwin on it.
@Civilis – Would you mind giving a few links to the articles you mentioned? If you do, I’d appreciate it (as well as I’m sure other people would be interested in the links.) I’d like to read them; but I’m working on an art piece right now so have been busy. In fact I’m kinda staying up until I’m finished with this one.
I admit to being quite biased towards the following conclusion, repeated at length, because it echos my own belief that treating any culture as a zero-sum object is both wrong and destructive:
Culture wars are at their best when both sides have to rely on persuasion to win people’s hearts and minds. Culture wars are at their worst when they turn into an excuse for censorship and conformity. So maybe it’s time to divert less of our energy into outrage at the backward values of the other guy and more of it into making the case for our own values, competing over who can provide the most appealing, inspirational, and profound cultural vision—who can best serve humanity’s deepest spiritual needs. Instead of having a culture war, let’s turn it into a culture competition. At the very least, we might produce some enduring cultural achievements, and this era might be remembered for more than just the acrimony of its divisions.
This is the hopeful side of the culture wars—a call for engagement, not retreat. Religious believers weighing the option of withdrawing from a culture increasingly hostile to their values should redouble their efforts to cultivate their ideas within active subcultures that influence the nation and the next generation of Americans. Those who share a commitment to the freedom to think, speak, associate, publish, and express their beliefs may not have the American Civil Liberties Union in our corner any more—but that just means that we get to take up the noble cause, and the moral authority, they have abandoned.
Yes, this can be a dangerous time to be active in the culture. But it’s very hard to make speech codes, safe spaces, and other anti-thoughtcrime measures work in the long term. Sometimes all it takes for the whole apparatus to come crashing down is a handful of people brave enough to speak their minds without fear.
From http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/06/welcome-to-culture-war-4-0-the-coming-overreach/
Thanks for that quote; it’s absolutely true and everything said there is correct. I’ll read the article while I’m having my morning coffee; for the moment it’s probably best if I sleep. I’m almost done with that art I was working on though; just one more part of it and I’m done. =)
One of the reasons I tried to engage with calbeck above is that, for me at least, part of the problem is focusing on specific rationales for why people hold a belief, which is often very hard given the nuances in various aspects of culture (especially religion). I believe it must be enough that it can be established that there is a logical reason for a position (such as opposition to gay marriage) for those that hold that position to be granted the benefit of the doubt towards freedom of conscience, whether or not that logical reason is the specific reason they use.
It is not enough for these Americans to say: “I have had my day in court and prevailed.” In effect, they now add: “You do not have the right to hold a different opinion, even if you lose in the public arena. You may not hold on to your belief as a minority view, or even as a private thought. And if you persist and still disagree, I will attack you without quarter and set others on you to deprive you of your status in your profession, of your standing in your community, and even of your livelihood.” Even after losing, you will be forced to admit the error of your ways.
This attitude promises social warfare without end, because there is no peace to be had until the opposing side offers a sincere and unconditional surrender.
From http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/06/the-new-totalitarians-are-here/
One final article, about why freedom of conscience is so important.
Is that the America we want to be now? One where people are forced to shutter their businesses to preserve their personal integrity? Where they’re silenced and bullied by the law for the sake of humoring the hypersensitive? It’s something to reflect on, as we think back over the nearly 240 years of our republic. Freedom is hard sometimes. Some of our compatriots seem to have had enough.
From http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/06/judge-to-bakers-no-free-speech-for-you/
I think The Federalist got it wrong with the 4.0. The precise reason I often talk about this as the mainstreaming of hate speech is because this is not something we’ve seen in those previous 3 incarnations. The precise reason that mainstreaming is so dangerous and beguiling in this instance is it does indeed piggy-back off of the three great anti-oppression movements of the 20th century: women’s, civil and gay rights.
This is not a culture war per se, but a thing which hides within the culture wars in the same way anti-Semites hide within anti-Zionism. The reason this social justice movement is able to do that is because men, whites and heterosexuals benefitted from actual laws. Where the con game comes in is perpetually acting as if those laws and institutions are still in place by the simple act of redefining words like “systems” and “institutions” as well as “racism” itself. “White privilege” is a perfect example of that, mainstreamed into SFF with the help of a useful idiot but based on the hate of a current gender feminist building on the work of a bigot like Audre Lorde. The fact these people adore anything by mid-listers like Joanna Russ and Octavia Butler shows the con game and it’s not love of art but hatred of men and whites. Am I to believe a person interested in social justice would use a phrase like “the gap of black ignorance” like Lorde did with “the gap of male ignorance? How about “the gap of female ignorance?” With principle destroyed, there are no longer simple comparisons like that – only race and gender as right and wrong.
In all prior incarnations activists attacked laws and institutions. This group attacks men, whites and heterosexuals. That is what all social justice crusaders in SFF do. It is what Randi Harper, Brianna Wu, Arthur Chu, Anita Sarkeesian, Laurie Penny and Amanda Marcotte do. Were one facing actual systems and institutions, there would be no reason to make up lies about rape and crime stats while ignoring others. A principled movement would attack violence in film, not violence against women in film.
I admit to shock at how easy Americans are gulled today. I have no explanation other than they are far more naive than they used to be. This is not a culture war, this is a war of principle vs. identity. To win the latter one must do away with the former. In other words there must be no “compared to what?” That is how social justice crusaders in SFF revile Vox Day according to their standards of racial incitement and then lovingly flock to 50 others who are in principle just as bad or worse.
They do that by using feminist power/privilege “principles” that put the straight white male at a permanent disadvantage where they are always racists and bigots and their opponents never are. Are we surprised feminists on college campuses across America are throwing due process for men out the door and lying about rape stats to do it? There is only one reason to do that: sheer hatred for an identity. The real crime there is in being a man and that is the real “oppression” the “marginalized” lie about every single day. No one is stopping them from writing great SFF. If you want to talk about a “culture competition” why aren’t their “great” stories winning us over instead of boring us to death?
The truth is modern feminism will destroy anything it touches. From 1939-49 Astounding produced 5 classic stories a year. Has that happened in the last 10 years in a country with almost twice as many people and far more SFF writers? In fact the mechanism in core SFF which once produced such writers – a principled meritocracy – is dead. The far larger mainstream is still out there producing SFF but unless you want to read Star Trek spin-offs, Hunger Games and Halo garbage you’re out of luck. How does a Walter M. Miller, Jr., Ray Bradbury, C. L. Moore or Jack Vance emerge from either? They easy answer is they don’t.
My own opinion is that a country that naive deserves what it gets. You cannot mandate common sense. The idea of “let’s turn it into a culture competition” is a shill. That competition has already been decided and won. Do you see any of the social justice crusaders leaving their white neighborhoods, moving to Africa? Which way does immigration flow? What kind of “feminist” movement protects the far more dangerous Islam while reviling the actual institutions which protect them? Only mentally addled sociopaths do that and that is precisely what a person is who hate-Tweets 80 to 100 times a day across 5 to 6 years while relentlessly targeting men and whites. That is not a “culture war,” that is a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a KKK in all but name. Their ideology swept both the Hugos and Nebulas last year.
@Civilis: If you’ll note, the Puppies got a shout-out in the Culture War 4.0 article.
Also, Clamps, screencaps or it didn’t happen.
Wow, contacting someone is stalking now? Maybe I can get the police to take care of some of those pesky sales phone calls.
LOL, the best part of that screencap is that it makes Clampsy look so much worse than he thinks.
Let me rephrase, Clamps. We all know about that little kerfluffle. I’m referring to your claims about Shadowdancer being all racist and sexist.
I would say our days of not taking you seriously (especially with any claims of not being a stalker) are coming to a middle, but let’s be honest here. Several years of not taking you seriously isn’t much when compared to an eternity of doing so.
Oh thanks, Clampsy-poo, I needed a good laugh today!
Anyone know when Brad is supposed to be back from deployment? I don’t know how much longer I can stand the troll fumes. May need to put checking this blog on hiatus.
Because, as we all know, there’s no way that’s a cultural thing rather than a race thing, right?
As to sexism–(shrugs). I don’t think much of punching someone for an insult, but it seems like he was treating those women like he’d treat a man who’d do the same.
As to the rest–screencaps, buddy. Or it didn’t happen.
And sorry, but as to Vox and Shadowdancer being buddies…you have done that yourself.
LOL, Marston, your stupidity is amazing. Trying to bring the Subway Slap into it? BWAHAHAHA, you just kill me!
The woman was charged with Felony Assault for trying to take out the guy’s eye with the stiletto heel (a weapon, which with she did attack FIRST and the heel wound was visible between his eyes in his press conference). All charges against the guy were DROPPED.
You Fail yet again. Epically.
ROFL, Marston, submitting a link only matters if it actually supports what you’re trying to say.
I’d ask if you had any more, but really…. I don’t care! 😀
Hands up anyone who wondered why the game models of someone making a name by complaining about the sexualization of women in video games had really really big, prominent boobs? I liked the style fine but wow it was just… BOOB! BOOB! BOOB!
Hands?
Yeah, thought so.
Again, not clear on how someone noticing the amazing BOOB thing is an example of anything negative to the person who noticed it, Marston.
Yeah, I’m not sure either. I think he’s trying to claim that she’s somehow transphobic. Maybe racist, too.
Still. Fail.
I’m not wasting any more breath than this in explaining that “phobia” means “fear” and you don’t get to change the definition of it just because you want to. Silly troll!
Now Requires Hate and the “marginalized” are going after TNH, because science fiction and literature. TNH linked to a page which outed RH cuz this pack of drama queens love art.
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s 1h1 hour ago
I’d rather interact with Vox Day than Teresa Nielsen Hayden.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s 1h1 hour ago
I mean, sure he’s a white supremacist and everything, but she’s also a white supremacist, abusive bigot, and rape culture apologist.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s 1h1 hour ago
And Vox Day isn’t someone the ‘community’ respects. TNH is. VD doesn’t have industry power; TNH does.”
Translation: the entire crew – all of them on both sides – are nothing more than a KKK having an argument about the color of the drapes in the clubhouse they use to attack straight white men. And the white knights still aren’t aware of how they’ve been defrauded into racial and sexual attacks on straight white men for no reason whatsoever, even though these chump fem-defenders are also being attacked one by one. In only one week the sad big-eyed “marginalized” announced informal boycotts on Hines, Wendig and John Green. That’s their reward for attacking straight white men. It turns out “shitlord” is femspeak for “normal.”
And the Hugo and Nebula awards have had their reputations gutted for this: a fake war started by xanax-imbibing creepy racist man-hating “feminists” who love Twitter like heroin addicts love their shot.
Seeing radfems/SJWs/lefties eat their own never gets old. Never.
The fact that the title is tangentially related to the actual comment is…impressive. Way to represent, anti-GGers.
Bwahahhhahahaahhahahahaaha
Clamps is taking so many things out of context as usual it’s hilarious.
He’s been trying for a year or so now to paint me as a victim blaming rape apologist because of that woman who tried to say ‘rape is rape if the victim feels it’s rape, that is all’ and then wanted to have the definition of rape smudged to allow the victim to feel it was rape, then said that such a loose definition shouldn’t be prosecutable. This was on Larry’s blog. This was a woman who was using her ‘I am a rape victim’ status to prevent men from questioning her or protesting against her ‘rape based off of feels, forget consent, forget prosecution’ bullshit, but couldn’t deal with it when those questions were done by women.
Oh, and I found the whole ‘glitterdust on the brain’ argument.’
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/
The starting comment was this – larry’s new blog system doesn’t really allow for linking to comments directly any more.
MY RESPONSE:
Yama HAS to take it completely and totally out of context out of a MUCH MUCH LARGER conversation across several comments, in an attempt to make me sound like a victim-blaming rape apologist, when in fact, this was a bunch of us FACEPALMING against an insanely stupid ‘argument against being self-responsible.’
The part about Africans and Arabs with regards my brother? Was in reference to their extreme greed and laziness. Imagine being assigned to do work for companies run by them, when you’re in a completely different country. Your job is to audit their accounting. In order for you to do so, you have to get the information from the client. They waste your time holding meetings and empty, pointless discussions to berate you endlessly for not having results… but haven’t given you the information you need to actually do your work. The meetings were done by the client to give the recorded semblance of ‘actually doing something because a meeting was held on this date’ The African and Arab clients would then complain, and the African and Arab part of the company that my brother worked for at the time would blame the Philippine branch who was actually SUPPOSED to do the work, but did NOT have the data needed TO GET IT DONE.
So yes, it’s a special kind of stupid to expect that work is done when the person doing it needs the basic information to actually get it done from the people requesting the work. My brother had to move to the night shift in order to handle these clients, and basically ended up wasting most of his time. The information they NEEDED was finally given to them mere weeks before the deadline, and he had to pull 15 hour workdays to get it done on time. Further, the work they were assigned to do? Would have taken my brother’s team only a month and a half from start to finish, instead of having to waste months plural. The reason why the departments were lagging on giving the information needed was because that way they got paid MORE while ‘work was ongoing’, and my brother and the rest of his team were effectively being kept from being moved to different assignments because the clients’ finance department wanted more kickback for themselves – none of which would go to the company they hired, naturally.
The clients my brother loved working with the most? The Japanese. They had everything ready for him when he was sent to work with auditing a Japanese-run hotel’s accounts, and later on, a business’ run by Japanese. If he needed clarification or more information, it would usually take an hour at most to get it (and he said he only had to do this twice) – he never had to work overtime, and he still was able, in both cases, to submit the results of his work a week early. Impressed by his diligence and efficiency, the companies requested for him again the next year.
Clamps outright believes that Brianna Wu isn’t a male to female transgender. Brianna Wu IS a talentless hack who would have been jeered out of the industry if he’d stayed male, but as a transgender and woman, could scream DISCRIMINATION WAAAAAAAAH *sue sue sue* *send SJW attack dogs* – like what happened to The Fine Young Capitalists. But hey, go ahead and keep trying to white knight for a grievance monger bitching endlessly about ‘omg sexualization of women’ after he had his balls chopped off, and shut down a contest to finance a video game produced by women by screaming that it was ‘discriminatory against m-t-f transgender’ when it WASN’T, probably because he wouldn’t win against more talented individuals, and did so that he could get the patreon bucks rolling in.
If a woman is ‘allowed’ to slap a man for insulting her appearance, then by the concept of ‘men and women are equal in treatment no matter what’ as per radfeminism, a woman is supposed to be allowed to be slapped for insulting a man’s appearance. Yama’s effectively making the argument that men and women are not equal after all, because women ‘are weaker’ and thus he is misogynist. So, yeah…
In fairness to the idiot, Shadowdancer, it should be pointed out that these sentences…”The part about Africans and Arabs with regards my brother? Was in reference to their extreme greed and laziness…” are…easily misinterpretable. By which I mean, it could be easily taken to mean generalizing from a band of idiots to everyone of a particular ethnic group. Don’t think you meant that, mind.
The rest…I knew Clamps was being stupid, but he’s outdoing himself.
Here’s Brianna trying to manufacture victimhood – except BriWu forgot to log out of her own account.
BriWu…and those ‘feminist approved’ characters from ‘revolution 60’
More evidence of Bri’s hypocrisy about sexualized protrayals of women. I guess it doesn’t count when done by a male to female transgender?
As someone points out…
LOL the best part about that? I know @charlessatan because he used to hang out at the Roencarnation net cafe / mini anime shop near Miriam College / Ateneo de Manila. Charles Tan is a rich kid and is the LAST person who should be complaining about privilege. I’m actually rather sad about that because we were all gamers, nerds and otaku united by several common likes, but Tan’s riding the whole Asian victimhood thing. He’s a good writer, and frankly I don’t think he should have to. Didn’t know that about Mark Kern though, nor did I know he was half-Filipino.
“Now you’re just making shit up.”
*snrk*….. *snort*….. *giggles uncontrollably*
(Glares at Dave) Control yourself, man. It’s unbecoming of a grown man to giggle at foolishness.
Guffaw loudly, yes, but not giggle.
@60Guilders – Why bother pandering to the PC when the skim till offended are going to do it anyway? The people actually reading will see that it’s differences in culture and work attitudes that brought about my brother’s rant.
I didn’t even mention how the Arab/African side of the company and the clients basically ran roughshod over the breaktimes for meals for the Filipino side of the company, but in contrast the Japanese companies were VERY strict about the employees having to take their breaks and go eat. That efficiency I mentioned my brother having is also why he got repeat contracts with Coca-Cola and Proctor and Gamble.
The other comment went into moderation so here’s a picture of BriWu’s game:
@Shadowdancer: I like precision in language. It’s a personal thing, and the less easy it is to misunderstand what I’m saying, the better. Also, turning stuff on people is fun…i.e.
“So, the problem with ghetto culture is…”
“Ghetto is code for black! Racist!”
“White people can be ghetto too. Who here is claiming that culture and skin color are the same?”
Seriously, THOSE HEADS. Anime characters have better grasp of anatomy.
Wow, I love how realistically proportioned and non-objectified Wu’s women are.
“(Glares at Dave) Control yourself, man. It’s unbecoming of a grown man to giggle at foolishness.
Guffaw loudly, yes, but not giggle.”
True, true, my deepest apologies…. :-p
“I didn’t get a “harrumph” out of that guy!”
“Give the governor “harrumph”!”
“Harrumph!”
“You watch your ass.”
@60G – normally I would too (re precision in language) but I’m dealing with Clamps here. I used to waste hours dealing with him honestly, but I’m not caffinated enough to bother right now. I should get up though; need to finish that art piece.
LOL okay, waiting for Yama to post pictures demanding a comparison between me and BriWu in 3…2…1…
LOL Chris!!! Sarcasm mopup in aisle C!!
Furious/Clamps/Yama has been trashed. (wipes hands on coveralls, climbs onto the back of the truck as it drives to the next block)
Thanks Brad, keep your head down!
Thanks Brad! =)
So, where we we? Oh yeah.
@Civilis – I’m looking to probably have a spot of time tonight and get a chance to read the articles you so kindly linked.
“You may also like” says Requires Hate’s Twitter feed:
Gayyem et kadkadua
@rcloenenruiz [Strange Horizons writer]
Skiffy and Fanty
@SkiffyandFanty [Hugo nominated]
Ann Leckie
@ann_leckie [Hugo winner]
Sofia Samatar
@SofiaSamatar [John W. Campbell winner]
A. Dally MacFarlane
@foxvertebrae [Tor blogger]
Gee, how did anti-white, anti-male bigotry and hateful intersectionalist gender feminism get institutionalized in core SFF? And now they’re all arguing with each other whether 9 out of 10 white men are privileged sexist racists or just 8. And GRRM was startled I use curse words at seeing a KKK suddenly embedded in SFF. How could you not use curse words reading this crew of shits? And still they don’t quit, preferring to double down on the hate speech while people like Wendig stare in horror at the monsters they created by inviting these racist shits into SFF:
*
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne I’m a stay-at-home mom who blogs for fun. I’m not a published author. I have NO power. I am NO danger to anyone.”
[What she means by that is 6 1/2 years of 100 Tweets a day of anti-male, anti-white hate speech]
“BenjanunSriduangkaew retweeted Jeanne @fangirlJeanne @ChuckWendig you directed these people at me? You made me a target. You did this to me. What did I do to you?”
[@fangirlJeanne screen capped Wendig’s private Facebook and put them on her Twitter feed]
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s @sschinke Said something mean to a white girl this one time.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s The funny part is, if I was a white woman? I could have kicked a puppy to death and people would still say doxxing me is wrong.”
“samir h. @ap0cryphal @benjanun_s does hurt feels render white people sociopathic i wonder”
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne So at the end of the day, all these white cis people feel hurt and threatened, while actual marginalized women are in very real danger.”
“Logically Anna @FakeRobotGamer rh did less “horrible shit” than her mostly cis/white/male copatriots on rpgcodex but shes the only one to suffer consequences @fangirlJeanne”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew retweeted Penny Schenk @galoot Oxford, England
This is why I loathe the rah-rah vigilante ride-em-out-of-town attitude of self-appointed white women police of SFF. Now they’re doxxing.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s Don’t kid yourself that this isn’t about white supremacy. TNH is acting in white solidarity. She can’t claim to be my ‘victim’.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew retweeted Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat One thing abso-effing-lutely not allowed in SFF? Real talent from a non-white. (They don’t like it from whites either but let some in.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s So when the fuck do these white women finally leave me alone? When I’m assaulted? When I’m dead?”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s ‘Will this be me next?’ because they aren’t Will Shetterly, who’s married to a well-liked white woman and friends with same.”
“Imperator Spiderosa @spidey_j @benjanun_s it’s clear that status + whiteness == clemency in perpetuity”
[Given this tiny representative sampling of Tweets from only today and only one Twitter feed, if Vox Day is a racial supremacist and racist, he’s an amateur who could learn a lot about such things from the core community which ostracized him. Let’s all thank non-shitlord John Scalzi for opening the tap, letting these shits in, and giving them the credibility they now have.]
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s Never mind the puppies, this is where the genre’s real rot is. I’m sorry, but ‘progressive’ SFF is way worse than Vox Day.”
[Hahahah. Their twisted rhetoric eventually stumbles onto the truth by accident.]
“Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” – TNH
[I can’t tell these people apart. Both sides use anti-white, anti-male rhetoric that never shuts up for even one day, but guess who the “neo-Nazis” and “misogynists” are? When it comes to racism and gender-hatred, it’s not Sad Puppies; you’re staring at them and their thousands of quotes over 3 years, the one’s Mike Glyer miraculously couldn’t “round up.” What he could round up is a group of disingenuous commenters who talked bullshit every single day using their Newspeak dictionaries where words whirl around and around.]
“Sunil Patel @ghostwritingcow You are now following the newest member of @sfwa! My welcome packet… [is] in the mail.”
[You damn well better believe Patel’s “welcome.” Ironically, he’s welcome for the exact same reason he’d be kicked out if his habitual targets were the opposite race and gender. Meanwhile, if your interest is in science fiction, fantasy, art and literature, you’re there but obsolete. You might as well be a potted plant. If you’re white and male, you can start writing up your 10 Our Father’s and 10 Hail Mary’s right now: “Bless me Father for I have sinned, etc., etc., etc.]
Requires Hate versus Teresa Nielsen Hayden?
Popcorn time. 🙂
Yeah, popcorn time!
BTW, test-driving a new theme for the blog; in prep for a wholesale makeover of the blog and the website alike. I’ve licensed some delightful retro-futuristic art from Marianne Plumridge. Can’t wait to showcase it as my “signature” graphic(s).
It makes your blog look like File 770. 😛
I was using Twenty Ten. Glyer is using Twenty Eleven, which is also a free WordPress theme. I didn’t realize until I swapped to Twenty Eleven that Glyer’s using Twenty Eleven pretty much “out of the box” and he didn’t even customize the header graphic. Don’t worry, this place will have a different look by the time I am done tweaking.
I’m not overly fond of how this setup seems to put in so much empty space on either side of the comments or post – it really hurts my eyes. I suppose it’s friendlier for browsing via tablet or phone (that’s my guess anyway.) OTOH, a slightly larger icon is kinda nice.
Some things I am stuck with. Sorry.
Yeah, I understand. I think I’m also due for new glasses, so that might be contributing to my eyetwitch ow.
I’ve also been thinking about how to make my own site / blog look nicer. I’ll have to look and see if there’s a way to put a graphic in the background that doesn’t move and can be aligned to the bottom; but I guess there’s issues with that given variable screen sizes and resolutions to consider. Also, there’s the whole ‘mobile access’ thing to mind as well.
“Sasha @sashapixlee 3h3 hours ago
What I’m saying, to be 100% clear, is that !ChuckWendig, !tnielsenhayden, and !gmskarka are engaging in white supremacist violence.”
“Sasha @sashapixlee 3h3 hours ago
Just in case white liberal SFF writers can’t bring themselves to be decent for the sake of decency, I buy and recommend a lot of books.”
“dilettante @dilettante 3h3 hours ago
Repeating myself but this is textbook Male Feminist/Mainstream White Feminism. White men “defend” WW from “abuse” (i.e. criticism) from POC.”
“dilettante @dilettante 3h3 hours ago
What stays in place is the white supremacy power structures that keep white men & women on top. But they think they are doing Feminism.”
“dilettante @dilettante 3h3 hours ago
This is why Feminism has to be intersectional. Has. To. Be. You are not doing Feminism if you are maintaining white supremacy.”
“dilettante @dilettante 3h3 hours ago
Again, this really is where SFF (& YA apparently) is toxic. BC it’s not just VD and his ppl overtly cheering white supremacy. It’s ppl who+”
“dilettante @dilettante 3h3 hours ago
Would call themselves anti-VD. Your TNHs, who had (has?) a “liberal” personal blog for yrs, your Wendigs, who calls himself an Ally… ”
As insane as that sounds, that’s only a ruder version of the fundamental mission of the social justice community. The calm version is “white privilege,” but it’s the same thing, and shows the paranoia and hate underlying what drove last year’s Hugos and Nebulas. The only real argument going on is who is the greatest fighter against straight white males and jockeying for who is the least racist. Somewhere buried in all of that is SFF literature which has been intersectionalized and affirmative actioned into the ground.
These idiots have turned SFF into a hysteric version of the National Enquirer. Why people stay around a genre which so self-evidently bores them is a mystery. What isn’t a mystery is how these sick and naive people have destroyed the viability of core SFF to produce art. If that old core was an analogy to a museum then it has been burnt to the ground in favor of gossipy old fish-wives starting at their own shadows about PTSD and “violence.”
The reason I detest 770 is Glyer swept this madness under the rug in favor of a narrative where we’re not against this madness and hate but are ourselves racist, hateful people. Contrary to the routine ignorance and even lies of his commenters, this all started in May of 2012 when John Scalzi and Anita Sarkeesian – both disciples of third wave feminism – decided to signal boost that hate movement. It is a hate movement because it doesn’t oppose laws like the old civil rights and feminism did but instead uses will-o-the-wisp social “theories” about “white privilege,” and that heterosexuality is an ideology created by men to oppress all women and gays. Third wave feminism is fakery because it opposes men, whites and heterosexuals themselves, as you can see from those Tweets above and 10,000 like them.
Since May, 2012 our social justice crusaders have honored the most disgraceful and even insane people with award nominations, because it is “justice” to have a public psychotic break with reality over a TV comedian, claim Nebula nods “strangle” careers, have public day-dreams that people punch you in restaurants and want to drag you behind pick-ups. H. P. Lovecraft looks like the benchmark for sanity compared to that, aside from the fact he was a far greater artist than this whole crew of mental cases put together.
When I was a teenager, the thing that turned me on about SF/F was the adventure: new worlds, new civilizations. Including our own, extrapolated into the future. This is why I tend (even to this day) to be a bigger fan of Star Trek than Star Wars. Simply because Star Trek offers a remarkable vision of humanity “Boldly going,” whereas Star Wars really is Science Fantasy, versus straight-up SF.
I am not sure how or why 21st century lit SF decided to become an Inquisition driven by racial, sexual, and gender politics. It’s like we’re all trapped in the TOS episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Probably it’s because SF (as an artistic field) tends to attract social misfits anyway, and now that we have the internet, the social misfits with an axe to grind have discovered that blogs and social media afford them a voice (aka: “power”) they never had before.
The sadly predictable part has been watching the partisans eat their own. This is not something you’ll find on the other side of the fence. Almost all of us (aka: Puppies?) just want to be left alone to enjoy what we want, without being judged, or without having ourselves or our enthusiasms ditched by the accolades. We’re not interested in “purifying” ourselves.
SJ partisans seem to do nothing but seek purity, at finer and finer detail, until practically nobody is immune from accusations, slander, and worse. If someone like TNH can’t satisfy the zealots (TNH herself being a zealot) that’s a very telling canary in the SF/F coal mine.
I should think it well-established in SF/F (as well as anywhere else) by now, that “Clamps Said It” is sufficient proof to dismiss any given claim. So long as it can be shown that he actually said it.
As to the Social Justice culture: I have said many times that it closely parallels Scientology.
First, it presents a rigid belief system, which also creates a ranking system by which adherents constantly compare themselves and each other.
Second, this system is never to be questioned. Any deviation from doctrine may provide excuse for ostracism, first by adherents observing the deviation and then from any adherents who hear about it down the line. Once ostracism begins, failure to support it can be (and often is) treated as excuse for extending the same ostracism to the failing party.
Third, anyone being ostracized comes under the equivalent of Scientology’s old “Fair Game” policy: doxxing, harassment, censorship and any other form of social-media attack is acceptable. In extreme cases they become non-persons who are told to kill themselves, or who are even SWATted in hopes police will effect a killing by proxy.
All it really needs is some crappy sci-fi for the faithful to.. rally… around…
>^>
<^<
…well, shit.
““Sasha @sashapixlee 3h3 hours ago
What I’m saying, to be 100% clear, is that !ChuckWendig, !tnielsenhayden, and !gmskarka are engaging in white supremacist violence.””
LOL, after all the crap Wendig’s spewed very recently, this is delicious. Watching SJWs turn on each other never gets old. 😀
@ Calbeck …yeah, it really IS like Scientology huh? More than expected. Well done.
@Brad – I like the textured blue you put in. It hurts less for some reason that way.
Those folks certainly deserve each other. After nearly 3 months of getting attacked by them, it’s satisfying to watch them attack themselves.
Chuck Wendig, white supremacist and violent?! Chuck, we hardly knew yah! (snort) In seriousness, I do have to wonder if there’s a breaking point in Chuck’s future — where even he throws up his hands (at the SJs) and exclaims, “You people are impossible!” Chuck’s not a dummy. He may think Sad Puppies is crap, but he’s not a dummy. How much more does he have to be maligned by “his” side before concluding that he was never, ever on “their” side to begin with — because he’s got the wrong equipment between his legs, and the wrong pigmentation in his skin?
That was my question, from the very beginning: how much would be enough?
As soon as I realized that “enough” was a set of goal posts forever receding at the horizon, I knew that trying to be on “their” side (despite my marriage, despite who I am, despite my choices in life) was a fool’s errand. There was never, ever going to be a “win” for me. Because I’d always have an asterisk * next to my name. Making me a target for future flensing. Just because of my demographics.
I think the people going after Chuck Wendig are a relatively small clique of die-hard acolytes of Requires Hate plus one or two useful idiots.
There does seem to a growing realisation amongst people who consider themselves liberal and progressive than these zealots are a menace to any creative scene, and we’re starting to see some pushback.
It could still get very messy before it gets better. A lot of major figures are still sitting on the fence.
Seconding Shadowdancer’s comment on the texture. Looks much better.
Requires Hate is angry over this, apparently:
https://winterfraud.wordpress.com/
The short version: she’s rich and privileged. Shocking, I know.
In only one week, the same N. Y. Times best-selling John Green who helped create this atmosphere by boycotting all-white or all-male convention panels is attacked as the type of creepy pedo who lures little girls into his van. What did Green actually do? Nothing. For defending himself he’s reminded of his “power” and “privilege” by this fake shit hole which uses the word “feminism.” Yes, Dr. Frankenstein – “It’s alive!” I don’t care two shits for Green because there is no more wrong with an all-white all-male convention panel than there is an all black or Latino boxing card or NBA playoff game.
Wendig uncontroversially defends Green and for the second time in one week (after also innocuously defending E. L. James) is reminded of his “power” and “privilege” as a white and a man and accused by many of being a white racist providing cover for white supremacy in America. I don’t give two shits about Wendig because I am not a shitlord or racist for standing up against social justice crusaders and their creepy third wave feminist ideology of race-hatred and sex-hatred. Yes, Dr. Wendig – “It’s alive!”
The same T. Nielsen-Hayden who claims she can tell someone is “white and male” over the internet just by their attitude is now a doxxing white supremacist indistinguishable from the violent terrorists of Gamergate. Yes, Dr. Teresa – “It’s alive!” I don’t give two shits for TNH. Her reaction to Sad Puppies increasing disgust with third wave feminist SFF sweeping awards as proving we’re all right wing neo-Nazis is the same proof that makes Green, Wendig and herself white supremacists – NONE.
Sunil Patel got bitch-slapped for Storifying a women’s words without permission and escaped with a humiliating apology. Saladin Ahmed got bitch-slapped for making an innocuous rape-joke about King Kong and escaped with an apology. Kameron Hurley got bitch-slapped for misgendering something and escaped with an apology. In other words they did nothing more than violate extreme radical feminist principles. GRRM’s been attacked, Flint’s been attacked, Kowal’s been attacked, Hines has been attacked – all for what SP did – nothing; the difference is we fight back. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take lessons in humanity from this retarded KKK.
We’ve warned them – we’ve warned them for months going on years. A Jew is still a Jew to a neo-Nazi and a black still a black to the KKK. A white or male or heterosexual can never change their oppressor spots for third wave intersectional feminism.
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne @Finickii I have anxiety and bi-polar depression. I think a lot of us suffer from mental illness either because of this kind of social conditioning or it just makes pre-existing conditions even worse.”
That’s a woman with 100 Tweets a day over 6 1/2 years which are obsessively anti-white and anti-male. She adds “If anyone knows an essay that talks about this very specific forms of PTSD related to racist misogyny, please link me.” I’d say 240,000 Tweets is its own explanation.
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne 16h16 hours ago PS Thanks for reminding me why I had GoodReads’ notifications turned off. Whitesplaing ignorant motherfucking bullshit!”
It’s always about the genre.
“Sparky @sparkymonster Jul 6
I’m dealing with depression, anxiety and PTSD pretty much every day. About 1/3 of the year I have SAD (fuck winter). #noshame”
“Veronica Schanoes @schanoes Jul 6
@sparkymonster RIGHT? And when I have a reason, it’s not the real reason. The REAL reason is that my brain chem is fucked up.”
“Shanley @shanley 19h19 hours ago
MAYBE i will give a shit about YOUR mental health when you can stop CAUSING AND EXACERBATING MY MENTAL ILLNESSES 24/7.”
Guess who Sparky, Schanoes and Shanley go after every day. Along with SFF, live and let live won’t be in the cards until these “feminists” and their sick racist cult of an ideology are kicked to the side of the road.
I just finished reading through that. If s/he is indeed related to the some of the most powerful and wealthy families in Thailand, it explains how she basically acts like she can get away with everything she does. (S/he because I don’t know if male or female, honestly.)
That she came from a wealthy background was an open secret. Not that she was the Thai Paris Hilton, though….
K. Tempest also comes from wealth. Hmmmmm . . . (wink)
I have always been of the opinion that everyone should work in the service industry (waiting tables, phone support, etc.) for at least a year. They would be much more considerate to others and I think we would hear a lot less of this ‘privilege’ BS. Never having to work a menial or difficult job is never having to deal with reality.
bassmanco, you took the words right out of my mouth!
GRRM seems confused about the difference between using vulgar insults and racial defamation. Just as a primer George, the Southern Poverty Law Center, GLAAD and the ADL don’t go after people for using the “F-word” or the “C-word”; they go after people for racial and sexual defamation, no matter how politely phrased or plausibly presented.
When I was a kid the group I hung out with was very large and of all colors. We cursed like sailors. We also beat the “S-word” out of anyone who went on about how blacks were this and Indians that or the Jews.
Got it? If you have a problem with telling the KKK to fuck off then that’s your way, it’s not mine. I’m not apologizing for jack shit to a bunch of yowling bigots.
“… the Puppies are not a group per se but a shifting alliance of individuals. Any answer you give, one of them will stand up and say, ‘I never said that.’
“To my eye, however, the majority of them have proved that this is mostly about ‘sticking it to the SJWs’ rather than promoting work that they like. They want to tear down rather than build up; the Tor boycott is proof of that.” – GRRM
That is all bullshit, George. Quote me and I’ll explain. Make up lies I’m an “internet racist,” target PoCs, listen to Rush Limbaugh, am a right winger or hate women and yes, I’ll tell people to fuck off. I only wish these jackasses would quote me instead of making up lies and saying I don’t name names out of fear and then when I do lie about that too.
Ironically this story as concerns myself started when when I was showing some guys from another country SFF – “promoting” it – and we ran into Scalzi’s moronic post about “white privilege” and Liz Bourke and N. K. Jemisin at Tor talking smack about whites and men. I was deleted and banned within minutes. From there it was game on. Don’t tell me I’m tearing anything down; it wasn’t me who turned SFF into a racist gossip rag powered by xanax-addicted mental cases. SFF went 100 years without that bullshit and were it up to me would still be doing so. Now it’s non-stop moaning about the “privileged” and “marginalized” and “underrepresented.” If you want to talk about lies, start there.
“Irene has apologized and so has Tom. That should have ended things. The outrage is a tempest in a teapot, stirred up by the worst elements of the Puppy movement.” – GRRM
That is more bullshit. This started 3 years ago when morons started mainstreaming fuck racist shits like bell hooks and Audre Lorde into SFF and gaming via “white privilege” posts and sexism in gaming. They have never once quit – not for one day. I have never ceased telling them one and all to fuck off, nor will I ever. There’s a simple reason for that, George; they are what we used to a call a “fuck.” I’m sorry that hurts your ears while Tor hires racist bloggers who in turn hang out with other racist bloggers. Were you starting out now you wouldn’t stand a chance in hell unless you stayed as far away from this community as possible. See: Peter Hamilton.
Thing is, “white supremacist violence” ISN’T hyperbolic to these people, because they have redefined amongst themselves what these terms mean.
According to the graphic I recently posted, “all of the -isms” are caused by “power + prejudice + privilege”. You’ll note that’s being taught at a college, where to pass the class you have to agree that it’s true.
Well, all such classes have as part of their curriculum that white people — as a group — have all three factors by default. This is why they call it “systemic racism” and not “individual”. Even if an individual person is lacking one of the three factors, the group is still considered to be indelibly tarred with all three.
Therefore, goes the theory, the whole of white culture in society is inherently supremacist.
There’s your white supremacy. It’s not just for Stormfront neo-Nazis anymore, it’s any white person by default. Which is why someone “in good standing” (like Wendig) can suddenly come under fire — it’s because they “backslid” into being a white supremacist again.
It’s the social equivalent of tying leaden weights to someone’s ankles as they try to swim the Channel. And they can never reach the opposite shore because it’s not allowed to exist.
Meanwhile, “violence” has likewise been redefined to include anything “hurtful” — including emotionally. These same college classes cover this base by declaring that if someone takes offense to anything, it IS offensive, and the offending person carries the onus of any amends.
This means that only the offended person has the right to determine if they are correct in being offended. Absolutely no one has the right, under this theory, to tell anyone “grow a thicker skin” or “that’s a silly thing to be upset about”.
Ergo, if you are a white person (especially male, as these are more oppressive than females per the theory), and you say or do anything which hurts the feelings of someone who is higher up than you on the Progressive Stack, then you have committed White Supremacist Violence.
I highly recommend reading this entry on GeekFeminism regarding “Oppression Olympics” — it shows much of the in-the-wild rationale behind intersectional theory, and confirms that yes, it’s considered a linchpin to Modern Feminism.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Oppression_Olympics
Also, from a link in that wiki, some very telling specific language showing that this is an Eternal War by Design:
There is no oppression that you can eliminate that will wipe out all of or even most of the other ones. They may reduce some elements of those oppressions, but each and every single one of these systemic oppressions have integrated into the social consciousness of each of the societies they are a part of. They can and will continue in the absence of their sources and of their aggravating factors.
So by all means, bring up intersectionality and sourcing. Make it clear that colonialist racism, sexism, classism and etc caused these various oppressions to arise and influence to extremes each other. But don’t forget for a second that none of them are keystones. That eliminating racism, sexism and classism will not eliminate any single other oppression.
And that if you expect even one fucking person to drop their work and fight on these other oppressions or allow fuckery from others on these other oppressions to work on these so called keystones, you are an oppressive piece of shit and need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
Bolding mine — it’s a lovely example of how dissent, or merely departure from the playbook, isn’t remotely tolerated.
Does this mean we can start complaining of the white supremacist violence of John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Aaron Pound and Natalie Luhrs against Sad Puppies? 😉
Shadowdancer absolutely can, as can Larry and anyone else who is a Person of Color or female.
What these anti-Puppies really don’t get is that if we WANTED to harass anyone, we’d just adopt SJW tactics as our standard across the board per Rules For Radicals.
The reason we don’t is that we think SJW tactics are inherently scummy.
It’s fascinating to see how these people think. FangirlJeanne apologized to Wendig for posting screencaps of his Facebook but which wasn’t really the point. The point was why she did that in the first place, and in the rest of the apology she doubles down on insane bullshit about “the trauma of being a woman of color.” Really? Trauma? Imagining trauma isn’t trauma, trauma is. These are the racist sociopaths the entire core SFF community has allowed itself to be buffaloed and conned by. Her entire apology is a nuthouse:
“Jeanne @fangirlJeanne 4h4 hours ago @CandaceB_ Thanks again. It’s amazing what two nights a great sleep, thanks to xanax, can do to put things into perspective. Lol”
Yes it is, because she goes right back to work:
“Jeanne retweeted Indigo ☪ @_indigomoon 4h4 hours ago You don’t have to worry that your white children will get gunned down by police who mistook him pulling out his phone as pulling out a gun.”
“Jeanne retweeted
Indigo ☪ @_indigomoon 4h4 hours ago You do not have to hear that you’re ugly, disgusting, unwanted, and vile ALL DAMN DAY LONG just b/c your skin is dark.”
“Jeanne retweeted
Indigo ☪ @_indigomoon 4h4 hours ago You do not have to deal with frequent death threats from white people who hate you merely for the fact that your melanin is so pronounced.”
Etc., etc., etc. throughout all eternity. No, there’s no gay mentally ill supremacist racist feminism stinking up the joint – it’s all my imagination, like heterosexuality and science.
Social Justice Crusader in SFF: “We are committed to ridding SFF of group defamation, discrimination and harassment according to sex and race. Whites, men and heterosexuals are the biggest stumbling block.”
Getting rid of group defamation, discrimination and harrassment according to sex and race. By defaming, discriminating against and harrassing people because they are male and white.
O_o;;
Patrick, my brain twitched painfully trying to parse that SJB logic. Ow.
Well, that’s the rub: the self-styled fighters against terribleness, have themselves become terrible. Always, there is this thing in the back of my brain which wonders: does the actual cause matter to them at all, or is it really about having a free pass to be an asshole, while cloaked in the guise of higher purpose?
Regarding GRRM, he never needed an excuse to dislike Sad Puppies. He disliked Sad Puppies from the get-go. He’s an old liberal who remembers Worldcon from the days when Worldcon really could be said to contain the whole field. SF/F hadn’t yet taken over the popular culture. Then the period from 1977 to 1997 happened, and everything got turned upside down. Worldcon mattered less and less every year. The keepers of genre purity mattered less and less every year. The SF/F djinni was out of the bottle, and would not be put back in. The irony being that George is now more rich and famous than he could have ever dreamed in 1972 — when he went to his first Worldcon — precisely because SF/F went mainstream, and ignored the keepers of the field who hold court at Worldcon. In other words, George wants you to read his books and watch his TV show, but don’t vote on his award at his convention.
White Australian YA fantasy author Justine Larbalestier teaches the 15 yr. old American black girl C. Garret who lit up “creepy” John Green and Wendig at the HuffPo how to properly crap on whites:
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @theloonytuney Ugh. On one hand I’d love to move to Australia, but on the other I’m trying to see if it’s more or less racist than the US.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @theloonytuney Oh, that’s so nice! It sort of reminds me of NY – which can totes be racist but is so diverse…
Justine Larbalestier @JustineLavaworm Jul 6 @dancingofpens A huge part of what’s waking people is the overwhelming evidence of how systemic racism is. Filmed and recorded.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @JustineLavaworm Exactly. You can’t turn away from that. People try to make excuses, but that’s running thin.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @theloonytuney Totally! Like, I didn’t even know a lot about racism when I first started. I learned from so many.
Justine Larbalestier @JustineLavaworm Jul 6 @dancingofpens Everything *is* about race. But in the case of whites it opens doors rather than slamming them.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @JustineLavaworm So many places were built off of racism, succeed because of it.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @JustineLavaworm I used to say that I wanted to move away to somewhere in Europe to escape the racism. But it’s almost everywhere.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @JustineLavaworm It’s scary that they don’t see it. And I see race affecting me in EVERYTHING. But some people say that I just “make everything about race.” It’s hard for me not to.
Camryn Garrett @dancingofpens Jul 6 @JustineLavaworm because they “hate colored people down there.” And I’m like….well, where don’t they hate colored people?
Justine Larbalestier @JustineLavaworm Jul 5 Exactly. We white people often aren’t even aware race is a thing till much later than POC. Because we don’t have to.
Justine Larbalestier @JustineLavaworm Jul 5 @dancingofpens It’s why in convos about race often white people can’t even here what POC are saying. It’s so outside our experience.
Justine Larbalestier @JustineLavaworm Jul 5 @dancingofpens You shouldn’t have to. Whites like me should be explaining to other whites. I try. It’s a lot of what I do with this account.
Some 15 yr. old kid and some doof from Australia can see into the hearts of 320 million Americans using the internet but can’t figure out how to buy a plane ticket to noble Africa. Once there, all racism would disappear; it’s so obvious. Does it even need to be said Larbalestier doesn’t have jack shit to explain to me or anyone else other than how to be a fawning arrogant moron with a bug up her ass about how smart she is compared to ordinary racist whites?
So the other night, we had a run in with a SJB in game. There’s a level 99 quest that requires you to use global shout a certain number of times, and you only get 3 a day. So David, on his character Seda, cracks jokes in the form of very obviously bad advice: “Constipated? Drink Draino! It’ll clear you right up!”
Someone replies to him in area shout, “That’s terrible advice and illegal to say!”
David, in the same spirit of cracking wise, goes “I’m Australian thus not subject to US laws, and cracking jokes is part of our culture, and if you’re offended by that, you’re a bigot.”
The stupid bint goes “That’s still horrible to say! Don’t you know that if you say things enough times, the person listening will come to believe it and actually do it?”
Aff blinks and goes “Hang on, so you mean if I say to you enough times that you’re supposed to drink draino, you’ll do it.”
Idiot: Yes, that’s called peer pressure.
Aff: If you listen to some random person give out bad advice as a joke in a game I think you have far more serious issues than listening to jokes in a game.
Idiot: You’re a healer! Healers are in a position of trust! People are going to listen to you! You’re the number one cause of suicide in the US!
Aff: …SWEET!!! (In party) Holy crap wtf is wrong with this bitch?
Seth & Me: … *speechless at ‘position of trust*
Gothpixie, who’s in our party, says in party chat: I guess that Lineage II is more popular than I thought.
Seth: Why do you say that?
Gothpixie: Because it means that lots of people play L2 for Aff to be the leading cause of suicide in the US.
*we crack up*
Idiot in area shout: OMG You’re a terrible person I’m going to report you I’m so traumatized by what you said you’re so going to be banned so that people will be safer from you!
THEN a game master suddenly pipes up in area shout and says “Actually no, because he’s not breaking any rules.”
…Seriously I get so much material for my comic, FML, I barely need to edit the dialogue.
Wow. Just wow. -XD
Well, you see, by shifting bigotry from one group to a different group, they promote “justice”. And if you can’t see what’s wrong with that, you may just be a Social Justice Bully.
Duskstar,
Like . . . Damn. Now that raht thar is a prime example of an XTRA-SPESHUL SPARKLEE SNOWFLAKE.
Alas, just because our bodies grow up, it doesn’t mean our hearts and minds do. Especially not when there is so much reinforcement of childishness — passive-aggression and learned helplessness — in modern discourse. And the internet magnifies and enables the snowflakes. In past eras, they’d just be butthurt individually, and ordinary folk didn’t have to notice. Now the internet gives every snowflake a bullhorn, and all the snowflakes are shouting as loud as they can, until the rest of us do what the snowflakes want.
Or not.
I ultimately decided to risk getting shouted at, versus making myself the hostage of people who are both emotionally and mentally arrested.
James,
Looks like another example of bell-ringing to me.
As I noted in the article:
Freddy Foreshadowing = Clamps, guys. Ignore the ban-evading troll.
@Brad – That’s one of the reasons why of late, Aff’s taken to saying “Dude, I’ve played a healer for years, I totally have medical experience and a position of trust,” as part of his snarky “I got this” variations. (The funny thing is, one of the things he suggested was ‘Pressure squashing your brain? Drill a hole in your head, it’ll help’ – which IS pretty much what surgeons do!) Today he was wondering how the hell those speshul snowflakes manage to walk down the street and not get themselves killed. It seems the snowflake also went to harass Aff from various alts, and then complained incessantly to the GMs, because one of them asked “Look… you’re not breaking any rules and we can’t stop you but… could you tone it back a little? Please?”
However, a fair amount of the folks in other clans have heard about the little drama queen’s stupid (Aff’s pretty well liked on the server) and I know of quite a few women who don’t appreciate being presented as a bunch of whiny weaklings. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that snowflake’s playing an MMO. They’re pretty cutthroat and ruthless because of the incredibly competitive aspects of the game type.
Shadowdancer, thank you for the story. It was both amusing and terrifying. I wish I could say it surprised me.
I haven’t played much online since Soldier of Fortune II, but if current games are anything like that one, how are people not constantly being triggered by heads getting blown apart like a watermelon at a Gallagher concert? Seriously, the blood and guts are fine, but ball-busting is the end of the world?
Rhys plays an MMO set in World War II; you pick Allies or Axis, and there are missions, and every group is a random party. It’s bloody and he has fun with it. There are plenty of other wargames, and there are also multiplayer versions of what are normally first person shooter and story games (Like Metro Last Light and the latest Unreal game, which I watch the guys play.) Unreal 3 story mode looks like loads of fun; tempting enough that I might try it. I haven’t really played FPS since… Hexen/Heretic/Doom 2. We’re looking forward to Doom 4.
I keep hearing rumors that Final Fantasy XIV (aka Final Fantasy Online) will go Free to Play at some point. I hope so because that’s probably the only other game I’ve found as pretty as Lineage II. I got to play the 1 month open beta and it was fun for me. I pounced on the artbook and they really poured in a LOT of effort into the design and worldbuild. On the other hand, the Lineage II that NCSoft NA gets isn’t the same as the ones that the folks in Korea and Russia play; it supposedly runs on the newest Unreal Engine, which is GORGEOUS.
*cracks up laughing at the troll trying to compare a console single player JRPG to a MMO, NOT THE SAME THING OMG LOOOOOL* Oh man, if we needed proof that anti-GGers don’t play games… there we go!
I haven’t played much online since Soldier of Fortune II, but if current games are anything like that one, how are people not constantly being triggered by heads getting blown apart like a watermelon at a Gallagher concert? Seriously, the blood and guts are fine, but ball-busting is the end of the world?
Those are men getting killed, which is ok. Seriously, whenever complaints about “how women are treated in [popular game X]” come around, my first response is “have you seen how the men in that game are treated?”
MMOs, which are reliant on interaction between players, will always get a disproportionate number of players that thrive off of the thrill of obnoxious interactions (much like discussion forums).
I play Guild Wars 2 as my MMO distraction of choice. My understanding was the original Guild Wars had sections set in pseudo-African and pseudo-Asian fantasy regions, and when the backstory was consolidated for the sequel, they crammed all the human survivors into one large city, while giving human characters the wide variety of options necessary to create a character of any ethnic background. One of the possible human starting storylines has characters searching for a missing sibling. One player raised a massive stink in the forums because, once rescued, their sibling looked nothing like their character, who was created to be from a pseudo-African ethnicity. Turns out that the game actually bothers to ask players, ‘which of the pseudo-ethnicities is your character (so we can make your sibling look right)’ and the indignant player had not read the question and had just clicked on one of the answers at random (and had ended up with a pseudo-European sibling). When this was pointed out, the indignant player was all ‘but the game should have known!’. When game developers go out of their way to be expressive, it’s still not good enough for some people.
Civilis, it’s totes cool, because #Transracial is a thing now /tongue in cheek /wink they should know better amirite?
LOL frankly it’s those kind of details that will trip up people who don’t bother to read the flavor texts in MMOs. If I had the time I’d go and do some of the Forge missions done by Star Trek Online players; there are some that are virtual in-verse playthrough novels, I’m told. I’ve played some of the affectionate parodies like the USS John Romero zombie apocalypse one, and Six Cups of Codrazine.
Correction to self: FFXIV is FF XIV Online: A Realm Reborn. Title’s way too long; I keep shortening it to FF Online in my head.
Has anyone played FFXIV Heavensward? I want to ask if it’s the latest expansion/installment and if it’s pay to add content the way I hear World of Warcraft does expansions.
Also, someone did this, and it’s pretty!
Civilis’s example of the player determined to be upset with the game, reminds me of the saying: you can make all of the people happy some of the time, you can make some of the people happy all of the time, but you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time. Right now it seems like there is a mini-explosion of people who demand to be made happy by all things, all of the time. This is a race to the bottom, because you’re going to constantly be pegging yourself to the sensibilities of the people who are least likely to be satisfied. It’s the old cereal commercial, “Mikey won’t eat it, Mikey hates everything!” If you strive to satisfy the most dyspeptic, most critical, most fragile consumers . . . that’s like running down a football field with no end zone. You will never score.
Actually, Shadowdancer, I fully support GG. I wasn’t trying to equate, just demonstrate my limited knowledge of recent gaming. And question how anyone playing a game (only MMO I’ve played was WoW, and only for a short time) that is obviously violent has no problem with massive violence, but then can’t take a joke.
This is assuming I am the toll you were speaking of. If not (and another comment after mine was removed by our host), please ignore me. 🙂
Awww, Bassmanco, I wasn’t talking about you! *hug!*
@Brad – Yeah, and honestly, NOBODY can make EVERYBODY happy – the Aesop’s Fable about the man, the boy and the ass / donkey kind of comes to mind…
Frankly though, that’s a good thing. I heard of a Chinese online author who became a very rich man writing fiction for people to read on their cellphones. I have no idea how that’s supposed to work (they didn’t elaborate on it) but fact is, he found himself a nice not-so-little niche market and I think that’s rather awesome. Our household of gamers is a good example: My son loves games like Minecraft, Starcraft II and Warcraft III; my daughter loves Unreal FPS and fighting games; Rhys likes shooting simulations and FPS games, as well as single-player RPGs; I play mostly MMOs and Minecraft; Aff generally plays MMOs more than single player games, but there are some single player games he loves.
So… yeah. Something for everyone.
Right now it seems like there is a mini-explosion of people who demand to be made happy by all things, all of the time. This is a race to the bottom, because you’re going to constantly be pegging yourself to the sensibilities of the people who are least likely to be satisfied.
It’s worse than that, by addressing the people making the loudest complaints, you’re teaching people that if they want their particular problem fixed, they have to yell the loudest. You’re training people to raise a stink. Not that this should be a surprise, as the exact same dynamic shows up elsewhere, such as in the comparison between the way the New York Times treats a caricature of Mohammed and the way it treats a portrait of the Pope made of condoms.
@Civilis – The thing that gets me is how all of a sudden, people are actively being trained to -pardon my swearing but I can’t think of any other way to aptly describe it – be bitchy whiny cunts who seem to be eternally on the rag and are drunk AND high to boot, and stopped engaging their brain at some point to act like lemmings.
…
*snaps fingers* That’s it! SJBs are like lemmings!
George R R Martin needs something to take his mind off this controversy. He should get a hobby. Maybe write a book.
The thing that gets me is how all of a sudden, people are actively being trained to -pardon my swearing but I can’t think of any other way to aptly describe it – be bitchy whiny cunts who seem to be eternally on the rag and are drunk AND high to boot, and stopped engaging their brain at some point to act like lemmings.
The problem is that a lot of the Social Justice worldview is built on self-reinforcing memetic dogma. It’s like a religion that says not to trust non-believers; a non-believer is going to have a hard time persuading a believer that the religion is wrong because the believer knows that the non-believer is untrustworthy.
The best example is the classic kafkatrap (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122), though another good example is the paired belief that opinions that disagree with the Social Justice world view are offensive, and that offensive beliefs are harmful and must be stopped in advance. How do you reason with someone that takes your reasons as an attack and pre-emptively stops them?
There are two ways to build up a strong opinion. The classic way is to refine your opinion against contrary opinions. The second is to not let anyone present contrary opinions.
Civilis:I can see why the latter is preferred by the SJBs. The first sounds like ‘too much EFFORT!!1″
almost 5 am here for me though so bed! *headpillow*
Ah, Guild Wars. I miss that one sometimes.
If memory serves (and it may well not) the Asianesque area and the African inspired one were actually the more popular ones, since they had storylines that weren’t bogged down by as much grinding (level cap was a mere 20 – but it took 3 times as long to get there in the original campaign as it did the expansions) *and* had better stories all around.
The Jade Sea (literally an entire sea turned to Jade instantly) was always a favorite of mine.
Then there was the awesome architecture and really tight in claustrophobic feel of the massive Kaineng City, and the entirely petrified forest of Echovald. (Cantha had some ecological issues, lol. All of the continent’s food is grown on the starter island area with)
Dangit man, I don’t have time to go back and play GW right now. Too much of my writing time gets eaten up by Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic as it is, and one of those I’m mostly coasting along in until they release some new stuff.
(I probably shouldn’t ask, but how is GW2?)
Here’s a great way to sum up everything that’s wrong with “social justice”: they think THIS is a triggering speech:
It is, in fact, my personal views on race, the condition of humanity, and justice. But it has no place in the nonsense-politics of intersectionality.
Thanks for the heads up regarding a STOnline Forge mission with zombies! I’ll have to look for it now (well, during the weekend anyway).
Here’s a primer from Requires Hate and her cult of xanax on how not to break intersectional gay feminist rules, although you will have to deny science and probably have to sniff lighter fluid.
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s @BootlegGirl @sschinke @spidey_j @FakeRobotGamer Athena Andreadis? Yeah, as cis as I am, het as all out.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s @BootlegGirl @sschinke @spidey_j @FakeRobotGamer She’s also the kind of ‘feminist’ who thinks uterus = woman. Yeah.”
“Imperator Spiderosa @spidey_j @benjanun_s @BootlegGirl @sschinke @FakeRobotGamer yeah, a lot of stuff I’ve seen from her is very ciscentric and queerphobic”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s @BootlegGirl @spidey_j @sschinke @FakeRobotGamer Of her fiction that I’ve (painfully) read it’s all cishet all the way down.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @BootlegGirl @spidey_j @sschinke @FakeRobotGamer I wouldn’t call her an outright TERF, but she does do the – super cis-centric thing.”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew @benjanun_s @spidey_j @BootlegGirl @sschinke @FakeRobotGamer She used to stuff my inbox with bizarre, out-of-left-field Islamophobic rants.”
Hahahah. That last one is so funny.
I post this because Andreadis left this comment on a racist post RH wrote about “white man’s tears” about fantasy author R. Scott Bakker: “‘…what we have here are people so embedded in their privilege that pointing it out to them instantly strips away the progressive veneer and elicits poop-flinging that would make a baboon blush. Women and other Others are still furniture – and though furniture is useful and can be decorative, it’s not supposed to move, dammit!'”
Here’s Scalzi’s version of that:
“I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.”
Try running black lesbian tears past Andreadis and you will actually see some tears instead of racist solidarity. Andreadis also commented on a Laura Mixon post taking apart men as “showing misogyny as a toxic gas in the atmosphere we breathe.”
Now, Andreadis is just another one they’ve turned on. If she’d had any principles she’d never have been at RH’s site in the first place, or Mixon’s. Don’t come running to us – that bridge has been burnt. Your fiction may as well have blank pages.
Don’t ever get on the wrong side of radical lesbian feminists and their “special” science and fish-eye world views. All you have to do is figure out what the wrong side is, and if you’re straight, white or male it’s a pretty safe bet just one of those will do you in, because that’s how this “special” KKK cereal works.
Every single one of these “marginalized” intersectionalists are the same; they hide their own race and sex-hatred by saying it’s actually mine, while tens of millions of straight white men live their lives not doing jack shit to anyone. A neat con game. And if I quote their hate speech I’m a creepy stalker, just like GLAAD, the ADL and SPLC.
Intersectional feminism is the most comprehensive hate movement in the United States today and the only one to ever exist in 100 years of SFF fandom. Its proponents make no effort to disguise their anti-white racial incitement and incitement to hate men. They even reach out to other continents and teach hate to teenagers. Let’s not soft soap what that kid egged on by Larbalestier is doing – it is nothing more than hate speech and racial incitement and it is completely condoned in the mainstream public arena on the thinnest of excuses about “diversity,” “underrepresented,” “marginalized” and the misuse of words like “systemic” and “institution.” When that kid writes “I didn’t even know a lot about racism when I first started. I learned from so many,” she is stating an unwitting truth. She has learned that behavior from adults – racist adults. But where are the real adults in all of this? The definition of hate speech is no mystery; in fact intersectionalists claim to be experts on the subject. Well, they are, but not in the way they think.
Both the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD have the word “defamation” in their titles. You’d have to be moron to think they cancel each other out by staking a claim to that word. What they are in fact doing is stating a principle: group defamation is always wrong, a thing too simple for the supremacist cult of intersectionalism to either grasp or care about, since it is an alliance of mentally ill racists and naive idiots.
Last year WorldCon had a chance to take a stand and gave in to a hate group. Now Tor has a chance to take a stand and ditch a half-dozen of their most toxic voices. The job of a blogger, editor or podcaster is to promote excitement for their genre, not resentment. If SFF bores you, get out. Turning SFF into some goofball feminist shithole makes no more sense than doing that to murder mysteries or westerns. Do you really think I want my literature critiqued by the hateful ideological views of bell hooks and Audre Lorde?
I probably shouldn’t ask, but how is GW2?
It’s my first MMORPG, so I have nothing to compare it with as far as its competitors. I’ve found what’s kept me hooked is the social aspects; to someone used to paper and pencil RPGs, I find the combat much better than a game requiring the books to be broken out for every single fight, so the simplified MMO fight mechanics aren’t a hassle (though I loved Skyrim, I understand why the mechanics don’t translate to MMO). As someone willing to try herding cats, I’ve ended up as Guild Leader of a small guild, and I enjoy helping people learn and explore. From what I’ve heard, I would not have fun with a game with open world PvP or the trinity-based gear treadmill; I enjoy exploring at my own pace. The world is a welcome diversion from the Tolkien fantasy norms; I enjoy playing the goblinish magitech mad scientist Asura and the militaristic felinoid quasi-Dieselpunk Charr. The world is fun to explore and in many places beautiful to just look at.
That’s not to say the game has no faults, there are major economic issues, there’s enough drama and politics in even running a small guild to cause stress, the game designers have occasional eye-twitching attempts to appease the Social Justice crowd (not yet enough to break my sense of disbelief, fortunately) and there are always idiots.
I’m looking forward to Disgaea 5, Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 this fall / winter.
And now, Dione, Saturn and Enceladus.
Shadow wrote:
That’s one of the reasons why of late, Aff’s taken to saying “Dude, I’ve played a healer for years, I totally have medical experience and a position of trust,” as part of his snarky “I got this” variations.
This can replace the “I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night” meme pretty well.
*imagines Aff prepping for brain surgery* 😀
! Jared, you play STO? I use Shadowdancer as my name there too =D
Very off topic but…
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/antarctic-vortex-this-colossal-conveyor-belt-of-cold-will-chill-eastern-australia-to-the-bone/story-e6frflp0-1227436412256
Brr…. and people wonder why I stay in Texas even if the summers are bad for me.
Tons and tons of snow are worse.
(Was fun when I was a boy, but driving through it? Eeep.)
Shadowdancer – I go by Rokesmith in STO. I’ve been playing that one since closed beta. I wouldn’t care to guess the number of hours I’ve sunk into it, but it’s probably in excess of 2000.
(What can I say, I was literally raised on Star Trek)
It’s probably the only MMO I’ve actually enjoyed doing all of the end game and group content, though the recent massive emphasis on min-maxing for dps has gotten a bit tiring.
(Okay, playing as a healer in SW:TOR big group stuff can be fun, but getting together a group capable of doing the really hard stuff is massively frustrating)
Aff helped me out with the gear for my ground missions, I’m using non-energy type firearms for my whole away team. Ignores shields ENTIRELY. It’s awesome. Like you, Aff’s played since at least closed beta, since he too ‘grew up on Star Trek.’ Aff has the ability to play while he works (a lot of the work he does has ‘wait while the computer does stuff’ time so…) so he plays L2, or Minecraft, or STO while he does stuff. Me, I’m more likely to log into STO or Minecraft while say, doing art because those two games don’t mess with the gamma. My captain is an engineer; our fleet is called Apathy Squadron; unlike most fleets, we don’t require Teamspeak or Ventrilo. It’s nice to have Vent, but not required. I’ll sometimes just log in to do DOFF missions and diddlybop around Alpha Quadrant usually doing the colonization of the nebula quests for more DOFFs.
I play a buffer type in Lineage II; Iss Bladedancer; but BDs were originally sort of a jack-of-all-trades type – we could do some buffs, heal ourselves through hp drain, and do ok damage; but now we buff, we heal, and can melee alright but not as well as dedicated damage dealers.
Yeah. My ‘fleet’ is just my brother and myself. We’ve managed through dogged persistence to get up to tier 3 in the main stuff, and a bit in the spire (curse those tempting tac consoles)
The TR-116B is a really nice weapon. I have one for my character, but all my away team bofs are using the older end game sets (MACO, Omega, Honor Guard, and another MACO) while I use the new Iconian stuff. (The energy shotgun is a lot of fun)
[For those of your not into Trek it is a sniper rife – with actual bullets instead of a ray gun that has a transporter built onto the end, so the bullet skips from the end of the barrel directly to a few mm away from the intended target. It is actually originally from DS9 and not the game – it featured in a rather fun locked room murder mystery episode.]
Right now my main (Joined Trill science/medic) is finally done with all the missions, so aside from dinking around Risa right now I’m working on leveling the fleet up and getting my primary tactical and engineering characters to end game.
I do tend to end up playing healers a lot – its fun for me and really cuts down on the time it takes for me to find a group for stuff.
I like to do the Solanian Sphere mission too; David and I duo most of them, including the Klingon Weapon and the Planet Killers. ‘We go thataway!’ away from the main force for giggles. When David was testing my new ship he accidentally flew into the planet killer JUST as it blew up and survived with 2% health still remaining! I was watching and went “YEEEAH!!!”
I’ve a little Delta recruit custom alien alt that I sort of ignore and log in to do doffs on every day, the poor thing.
I have a Delta recruit for each faction – the Fed one is the aforementioned Tac alt.
The Klingon one cracks me up though. I played her just long enough to get a ship and get sent after the spy, but thanks to the bonus XP event she was high enough level for doff missions.
At this point she’s halfway through captain, but can’t get new ships or officially get promoted because I haven’t bothered to finish the tutorial missions yet.
Would any of you STO players be interested in a new fleet member? One that usually logs on once or twice during the week to do some DOFF missions and/or advance the Iconian storyline?
I joined a fleet about a year and a half ago, stopped playing the game for more than a year, and recently came back to check out the recent updates.
I wouldn’t mind – but my fleet barely qualifies given it’s roster of 2.
We wouldn’t mind either. =)
Speaking of fleets, I’m really looking forward to the armada feature they’re doing soon.
So Ellen Pao has stepped down as Chairperson of Reddit.
the New York Times is already claiming it’s because of sexism/racism. and one of those reporters is right now holding court in the #GamerGate subreddit /r/KotakuInAction explaining how you can still be sexist even if you call for a CEO’s resignation over her firing of a woman for doing her job.
Here’s my own take on it (includes pony):
[edited for calbeck – Brad]
Link 1 . . . Link 2 . . . Link 3 . . . Link 4
@Luis : sure. I’m ingame right now; wait for five min I’ll hop on my main
@Jared – Yeah, we could join into an armada of wee little fleets. Well, I just looked, our fleet’s level 4. Still working on the starbase, because the crazy folk we picked up built the windows first, over the rest of the base.
@Calbeck that’s freaking awesome news, but one has to wonder: has the damage been done and can it still be fixed?
Justin Landon argues for his own removal and that of others from Tor:
“Justin @jdiddyesquire Jul 9
In the long and storied tradition of sexist reviews by this reviewer… this is, by far, the most offensive — http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2015/07/uprooted.html …”
“Justin @jdiddyesquire Jul 9
This is the kind of review where every publisher should check their distribution lists and take this blogger off them.”
“Justin @jdiddyesquire Jul 9
Not because it’s a bad review. That’s fine. I’ll rip a book apart. But, for Christ’s sake, the embedded sexism is…. en fuego.”
Because of this part of Pat’s review…
“… her thought-process is occasionally akin to that to a teenage girl having her period.”
Paul Weimer Tweets with racist supremacists like Requires Hate but finds that phrase’s “embedded sexism”…
“Paul Weimer Republic @PrinceJvstin Jul 9 @jdiddyesquire breathtakingly so”
If SJWs were any more unprincipled or brainless they’d forget how to breathe, because they seem unable to make the simplest comparisons. Landon complains about an all-white Table of Contents with “All white. Really? And zero people of color. Just saying, there’s not going to be anything new here.” He’d never do that with a black blues album anthology. He also backs authors like Ann Leckie who makes straight up hateful racial and sexual remarks but suddenly finds morals when it comes to Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. This is why I don’t take these people seriously; they’re hypocrites and imbeciles.
I’ve said it before: most of these folks are just bell-ringers who are trying to prove something. They don’t really care about making the world better. They’re in it for the show; and to be self-righteous pricks on a free pass. This shit has been going on, on-line, for a long time now. And it’s not made the country any less ist than it was before. In fact, you could probably argue it’s made the country a lot worse. Which takes me back to my Part 1 point, about growing and tending the connections close to you. Actual hatred can’t be overcome with bell-ringing. You have to do the work close to you. Not for show. Most of these slacktivists have zero interest in getting their hands dirty. They simply want to feel superior.
Presented without comment: Washington Post Writer Who Accused Amy Schumer Of Racism Never Saw Her Standup or TV Show
http://theinterrobang.com/washington-post-writer-who-accused-amy-schumer-of-racism-never-saw-her-standup-or-tv-show/
@Civilis – one thing really stands out to me, is how much white people who yell about privilege really seem to hate themselves… and want other white people to hate themselves for being white. Which is stupid. If people can’t change the color of their skin or their ethnicity, but things like behavior, attitudes, culture and such are can be changed, why is everything linked to the color of the skin, which is unchangeable?
The answer is: so you cannot criticize. Ultimately, all this is to shut down criticism, valid or not. Most common accusations of racism are in fact, directed towards criticism of behavior, attitudes and practices of culture, regardless of whether or not such criticism is valid.
I remember reading some time back about how Mike Cernovich attended the Gamergate gathering in the Philippines, and tried very hard to explain about ‘white guilt’ and ‘white privilege’ to the locals he met, and was met with utter bafflement. I can relate, honestly, because the whole concept is an attitude that baffles me for much the same reason: it contradicts everything we’re taught about equality and meritocracy.
I remember reading some time back about how Mike Cernovich attended the Gamergate gathering in the Philippines, and tried very hard to explain about ‘white guilt’ and ‘white privilege’ to the locals he met, and was met with utter bafflement.
I would think anyone talking about “White Privilege” outside of the US and Western Europe (and those culturally integrated into the educational establishments thereof) is going to run into comprehension issues. I personally can’t speak for the people of the Philippines but I can’t reconcile what I know of the history as a World War 2 buff with the “White Colonialist” narrative.
The answer is: so you cannot criticize. Ultimately, all this is to shut down criticism, valid or not. Most common accusations of racism are in fact, directed towards criticism of behavior, attitudes and practices of culture, regardless of whether or not such criticism is valid.
Part of the problem is that using “Identity Politics” you can play all the games you want with groups to suit whichever narrative you are presenting. It’s how criticism of Islam can be “racist”. Islam is properly a religion and a culture (or, more accurately, a group of religions with some commonalities and a group of cultures with some commonalities). However, “racism” is a more heinous crime, so to defend Islam (or attack the person making the complaint), one ignores the complaints about religion and uses “racism”. Likewise, the Troubles in Northern Ireland are a long-standing ethnic grudgematch, but because the two ethnic groups are most distinguishable to an outsider by the differing religions, the dispute is characterized as a religious war by those looking to bash religion, despite the lack of religious motivations on both sides.
If you’re interested in “winning” by shutting down your opponent, then Identity Politics is a perfect weapon. If you’re interested in debating and understanding what is actually going wrong, it’s a straitjacket.
Shadow wrote:
Still working on the starbase, because the crazy folk we picked up built the windows first, over the rest of the base.
😉
Thanks a million for the edit, Brad! I felt so ashamed being that sloppy.
Of course it’s to shut down criticism and make guilt a one-way street. Here’s Rochita Loenen-Ruiz of Strange Horizons thinking out loud on Twitter, one of the most bitter anti-white voices in SFF. She lives in the Netherlands but came from the Philippines.
It’s a stark glimpse into how the minds of this privilege politburo operate, read this almost unbelievably self-serving racial and sexual supremacist gibberish which would forever put straight white men at the beck and call of this truly sick ideology. The fact it is being presented under a rubric of justice, compassion and empathy makes it all the more sick. This is not compassion but the dead eyes of a shark:
“Gayyem et kadkadua @rcloenenruiz Acknowledged privilege centers on doing the hands-on work of growing, nurturing & ensuring that the other is established in an equal place.”
“Focus shifts to: how can we work together to bring about change? How can we help to elevate the position of the other?”
“Privilege acknowledged means a willingness to focus on the other. A willingness to de-center the narrative. It’s not about you.”
“Unquestioned privilege is selfish and focused on the self. The self is centered.”
“Acknowledgement =/= to being ashamed. Instead, ask yourself how you can use that privilege to benefit the less privileged ones.”
“Acknowledgement is knowing you possess/benefit from institutional and structural biases. The objective isn’t to shame people but to bring people to the point where they acknowledge they do have privilege and power.”
The arrogance it takes to move from the Philippines to Europe and lay down a new racial-sexual morality to all of the West is stunning. It would be different were she talking about the needy and the sick but in this ideology the morally needy and sick are straight white men and all their works.
Calbeck,
No worries. One big reason to ‘port over to the purchased version of WordPress, is that I can (finally) set up a preview/edit option for users.
There’s nothing like a hate movement in SFF to give a sense of drama and meaning to people so self-evidently bored with their own lives and literature.
I recommend going out for a morning jog and having a bomb go off so intense it rattles your brain from a block away and around a corner. You’ll suddenly find an SFF novel provides all the drama you’ll ever wish for.
No one’s being “oppressed” in SFF nor have they ever been. Insane shut-in’s saying so over and over again doesn’t make it true. If horror stories don’t give you a thrill, then go join a rodeo or run with the bulls in Pamplona or go bang a window sill down on your head. There is no need to introduce this retardation into SFF.
What feminists in SFF need to do is not stop reading cis white men but to leave the internet for a year and go live an actual and real life. If you find the thought of doing that horrifies you (and the majority will) then you have problems, not SFF. Peter Hamilton doesn’t Tweet jack shit and he’s doing just fine. We are more than tired of your hysterics and racial incitement. Just go – get out. Many of the worst aren’t even writers so there is no excuse you won’t be able to promote your art. All a lot of you do is promote hatred using childish excuses which “prove” you’re doing the exact opposite. You’re not doing the opposite – you’re inciting hatred.
“BenjanunSriduangkaew retweeted Cecilia Tan @ceciliatan 1h1 hour ago Diane Weinstein: “Some of the early SF writers couldn’t write women.” Kathryn Morrow: “Some of them couldn’t write at all!” #readercon”
“BenjanunSriduangkaew retweeted Kerri Lyn @GoddessKerriLyn 2h2 hours ago Cranston, RI $ earned in endorsements: Sharapova- $22mil Williams – $11mil Sharapova is a white thin blond model=valued more than on-court performance”
“jay, sjw on holiday @jaythenerdkid 24h24 hours ago your greater good doesn’t just ignore us, it actively DEMANDS our sacrifice upon the altar of cishet white feminism”
That’s not justice, that’s just tiresome jealously, incitement and hatred. Of course it would help if high-profile SFF authors didn’t take their marching orders from these baffling dingbats and even nominate them for awards and all of it backed up by the largest publisher of SFF in the world. Readercon’s turned into nothing more than a stupid shithole.
$ earned in endorsements: Sharapova- $22mil Williams – $11mil Sharapova is a white thin blond model=valued more than on-court performance”
Endorsements go to more attractive athletes. This is a surprise why?
More importantly, they know this, even if they won’t admit it. Why is it surprising to people that think that minorities need to see people like them to be comfortable that advertisers are going to spend more of their advertising budget appealing to larger demographics?
Here’s a very good example of what’s wrong with journalism, somewhat pertinent to the ongoing current fracas:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJdYoaaUwAA3OJt.png:large
Hey, it’s Salon. Which — along with Slate — is like the National Inquirer of Leftist intellectualism.
“Cecily Kane retweeted Ethan Robinson @OffVesta Jul 1 In June I looked at 168 science fiction/fantasy stories, from 34 magazines. 3 stories by black women.”
“Ethan Robinson @OffVesta Jul 1 That’s a new record since I’ve been looking.”
Gee, is it possible editors can read SFF Twitter feeds?
“Cecily Kane retweeted jamilah @JamilahLemieux Jul 7 RT if you are a feminist (of any race or gender expression) who learned feminism from Black women”
Shockingly, many people who just want good stories are turned off by that and don’t like being racially insulted by morons. Were I an SFF editor I’d no more publish these shits than I would stock exchange statistics or the KKK. And let’s not forget there just aren’t that many black SFF authors who are women. Even with all the research I’ve done I can only think of 7 off the top of my head: Nkedi Okorafor, N. K. Jemisin, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, Nisi Shawl and Sofia Samatar. Considering all 7 are non-stop sources of anti-white griping, I’m surprised anyone publishes them. And the fact none of them are prolific aside, the average talent there is just that: average. And even reflecting the American demo, only 11 of those stories should be by black women. 3 isn’t exactly the apocalypse of white-hatred. So how do 7 women publish 11 short stories every month?
And yet, there are good reporters here and there in that mix. I can highly recommend David Auerbach, who while definitely not a supporter of #GamerGate is demonstrably invested in the notion that journalism should strive for accuracy rather than spectacle. He’s produced quite a few articles calling out the bullshit, including a splendid piece where he showed that Wikipedia policies on the GG entry resulted in the site eating its own tail.
Well worth looking up and skimming through, even if you don’t check out his GG-related articles.
I think Glyer must’ve set some kind of a record in covering an issue without ever once mentioning what caused the issue in the first place. His commenters should get a Hugo for biggest bullshitters in fandom.
I haven’t seen Okorafor or Due doing what Jemisin does. I’m not saying they don’t have sentiments similar to Jemisin’s, but Jemisin is pretty much a non-stop faucet of complaints and harangues. Okarafor seems far more focused on actual storytelling and being a storytelling artist. Due also spends (so far as I can tell) most of her effort, on collaborations with her husband — to include movies and scriptwriting.
In other words, the art — and being an artist — comes first.
Jemisin pretty much hangs her hat on being Angry Brown Lady Is Angry. That’s been her MO for a dozen years, or more. And I expect she’ll die with that MO, fifty years from now. Regardless of how much the field (or society) shifts, changes, or grows. She’ll still be angry. She’ll still be complaining.
Which (to my mind) is the chief failure of so many extant “movements” which claim to be battling sexism, racism, etc. They too often refuse to acknowledge progress, or goals being achieved.
Because — and this is my personal suspicion, which I’ve spoken about very often — many activists love being activists for the sake of activism, more than they love reaching concrete objectives. It’s an identity — fist in the air, bullhorn to the lips — and they won’t give it up. To give up the identity is unthinkable. So, they keep inventing additional dragons to battle and slay. Except, the dragons are immortal, and there is never a “win” in the end. Just a perpetual struggle, forever. Which suits the activists just fine, really. Well, some of them, at least.
To add: the reason Jemisin (and K. Temopest) get any traction at all, with SWP (straight white people) in the field, is because those SWP so seldom have any contact with anyone other than SWP. That was apparent to me the moment I poked my head in the door of this genre, twenty years ago. SWP who are ernestly trying to “be diverse” will latch onto just about anyone who is not a SWP, because that individual becomes the Magic Unicorn who will mystically bring “diversity.” And in Jemisin’s case, she knows it, and she milks it for all its worth. “Come, SWP, sit at my feet and let me sing you the song of my people . . . which means calling you all racists, sexists, homophobes, and worse — until you learn about privilege and how you have to scrape your belly and rub ashes on your face, and wear the hairshirt of your sin, and become a proper Ally who knows his/her place in the correct order of things.”
As was noted up-thread, this kind of gibberish is confusing and bizarre to many people in other countries, who haven’t been imbibing the doctrines of complaint dispensed from Western university programs. But because SF/F seems to be importing the bulk of it’s non-SWP writers from academia these days, they are coming front-loaded with the doctrines, thus SWP in the field think that the doctrines (and the Magic Unicorns) actually represent widely-acknowledged or universally understood truths about existence.
In other words, many SWP in the field . . . need to get out more! (wink)
@Brad to me, it seems like such an exhausting way to live. I mean, if they really want tragedy to wail and moan and cry about, can they like, just take all my bad luck and traumas? I’ve had more than enough of it, they can have the rest. ^^
Then again, when I really think about it, they probably would have killed themselves from just a fraction of it.
Yup. Exhausting indeed. Anger and resentment are freight on the soul. But a lot of it — especially when it comes from people who grew up with money — seems to be anger-by-proxy. Which I really don’t get. Most of the people I know who’ve experienced true tragedy and genuine privation, tend to be joyous and live abundantly. Without judgment. Every day is a blessing. Because they’ve experienced the crushing trials of life, which make a person value things in a very different way. You and your husband would seem to know these things intimately. And I agree: many of the rage-masturbators fold up like lawn chairs, if ever they have to endure actual problems.
The problem with your idea is that straight white people who are only exposed to other straight white people tend to be more virulently racist.
I honestly don’t get the anger by proxy tendency of the rage-masturbators. There are things to be truly outraged about even if they are not experienced by the person, but most of the things the CHORFs are upset about generally aren’t worth getting upset over from the point of view of other people. For those who have had to deal with the harsh realities of life, whining about one’s problems tends to waste time better used to actually attempt solutions or work one’s way out of trouble. Yes, that usually means taking risks, which most people don’t seem to want to do these days. The slightest bit of adversity, and I mean, the slightest, like mild criticism, disagreement, or even ‘you’re wrong,’ and you have the explosive tears and wailing and flailing. At no point do CHORFs or SJ zealots try to learn from the adversity they face. They simply want it done ‘their way’ and that’s it.
Hm. ‘Sasha’ is a familiar sounding and unfortunately an all too familiar troll. Clamps alert.
No mention of the usual ‘Emmanuel Goldsteins’ of the persistent troll; no quotes taken wildly out of context. Could just be a regular troll.
At this point, is there anyone not exposed to people unlike them? As far as race, almost certainly not. As far as politics or ideology? “Nobody I know voted for Nixon.” There’s no bubble like the self-reinforcing Social Justice bubble.
It’s one of his identified spewdonyms https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?p=55#p55
I was taking a riff off of some of his horribly bad writing.
“the reason Jemisin (and K. Temopest) get any traction at all, with SWP (straight white people) in the field, is because those SWP so seldom have any contact with anyone other than SWP. That was apparent to me the moment I poked my head in the door of this genre, twenty years ago. SWP who are ernestly trying to “be diverse” will latch onto just about anyone who is not a SWP,”
You know, that is so often true. Simple demographics will tell you that the majority in any country hasn’t had as much contact with people who look differently than them.
(How different they actually are remains to be seen. I have a lot more in common with a Mexican immigrant here in Utah than I do, say, an Atheist college professor lecturing on sociology in NYC.)
I’ve seen it at work more than once, and while the goal isn’t a bad one it is all too easy to slip into othering the people you’re trying to bring in, especially with seeing them more as a function of their skin tone than who they are as a person.
I’ve even seen it (a little bit, for the most part I was far too busy working) when I lived in Mexico. There I was the strange and unusual gringo, which definitely colored how others saw me, even after I got a good grasp on the language.
(Also worth pointing out – the people who think America isn’t diverse should look a little closer at the rest of the world. Mexico is far more homogenous than the US is. It isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a thing. I’d go weeks without seeing anyone who wasn’t Mexican, much less born there.)
Really, I think what it comes down to is that Americans need to get out more. See more of the world, go to places where Europeans or westerners aren’t the majority. Spend some time getting to know people as people, not ‘brown people’ or ‘white people.’
It’s funny watching these waves of resentment unfold in real time. The latest which all social justice shits (including SFF of course) have simultaneously agreed upon is that whites have a mass shared resentment of tennis star Serena Williams.
“Mikki Kendall retweeted Dave Zirin @EdgeofSports Jul 11 Racist, sexist, and also a product of fear. They fear Serena because she has beaten them at their own game.”
There is never any doubt as to who “they” are if you believe in racial incitement and imaginary enemies. On the other hand the “they” in my research have actual names and their racial resentment is obvious and real.
The truth is the last ESPN poll I looked at had Serena as America’s most popular female athlete with Lebron James and Michael Jordan at 1 and 2 for men.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out social justice shits think the Puppies are defending their white and male SFF turf. That’s how Irene Gallo comes up with white supremacists. Silvia Moreno-Garcia once wrote:
“As for the speculative scene in general, it has been encouraging to see that despite some calls for the quick removal of the Wimmen and Darkies that are staining the pure speculative scene with their cooties, a lot of people are interested in seeing the field open to a wider audience. Go form your own Aryan Happiness Defense Front for Writers because the darkies and the women they are coming…”
The problem there is Garcia and her buddies are the only ones making racist remarks worthy of a Stormfront and no one is calling for anything like her bullshit quote suggests; she has no quotes to back up her paranoia. What “some calls” is this ditz referring to?
The only thing I am calling for is the removal of hate speech from SFF and the end of rewarding hateful racial and sexual incitement with award nominations to authors and bloggers whose talents are nominal at best. Were both Foz Meadows and Kameron Hurley held to academic standards for their blogging which got them Hugo nods last year they would’ve been censured for unsourced drivel. Meadows had to completely re-edit a HuffPo piece she wrote about Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov because it turns out racial incitement and paranoia isn’t actually research. Hurley’s two Hugo wins for a post which was nothing more than resentment and bullshit packaged to us as truth-to-power is still amazing to me. There has been no conspiracy to erase women from D-Day footage or “thin red lines.” However there has been tacit collusion by intersectionalists to erase “PoC” from any acts of slavery or colonialism while otherwise shoving them into places they never were; only the “good” places.
One of the worst PoS posts making the rounds has this winning quote: “But racism is even more subtle than that. It’s more nuanced. Racism is the fact that ‘White’ means ‘normal’ and that anything else is different. Racism is our acceptance of an all white Lord of the Rings cast because of historical accuracy, ignoring the fact that this is a world with an entirely fictionalized history.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-metta/i-racist_b_7770652.html
This is a hate movement, and that’s all it is, and not a particularly bright one. In short it is its own explanation for failure. I am not cherry-picking this stuff. It is usually the same links smeared all over SJW Twitter feeds simultaneously.
I agree these people need to get out more, Jared. What they call “othering” and “micro aggressions” are just people being naturally curious, normal and friendly. For some reason when I was trekking about Sumatra guys would often good-naturedly call out “Hey, Chuck Norris,” even though I don’t look anything like him. It was the tank tops I guess. I never figured that one out. In Egypt the number one question is “Where are you from?” Number two for some reason is “Do you like Michael Jackson?” In virtually all places I’ve been I’m considered an oddity and a walking ATM machine. None of it has ever annoyed me other than the last, and you get used to the overcharging and find ways around it. Usually I just learn the lingo and ask the person next to me how much something actually is.
These people are looking for resentments, partly because they are themselves racists or man-haters and partly because they’ve learned it pays to play the victim. A lot of them are just plain nuts. Jemisin and Braford would be laughed at and told to fuck off if they tried to run their patter in Brazil, India or Egypt. The whole point of getting out and exploring the world is you quickly learn there is no analogy to this SFF hate group in that world. I think that explains why they can’t figure out my reaction to them. I’ve just never seen anything like it. SJWs in SFF are the nuttiest and most hateful and arrogant people I’ve ever run into. In 10 years and more in Third World countries I’ve only once run into resentment because of my race, and that was in Belize City. Getting out of there and entering the Mayan dominated interior towards the Guatemalan border was like a weight lifted off my shoulders so hostile was the atmosphere in BC. Like almost the entire rest of the world, Mayans are modest live and let live types; they’re never in your face about anything.
Some of the best times I’ve ever had have been in totally bizarre locales and a large part of that was because everyone was so cool. It’s no coincidence you never see SJWs in these places; like all rednecks they are easy to get away from. Hell, I thought it was fun to be the only foreigner in a sea of motorcycle traffic in Singaraja. SJWs would start bitching about being marginalized.
This commentary is still some of the best I’ve seen, regarding the pernicious and cult-like mentality that dominates the present “discussion” in certain quarters of SF/F. The entire thing really is a kabuki theater. Done entirely for the sake of noxious interpersonal power politics.
Apropos to this particular discussion:
“The men and women of the United States Supreme Court might also be accused of arrogating to themselves the seat of judgment, but in this particular instance, they have come down on the side of liberty.”
I fear we have lost much more liberty than we have gained with this decision:
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA joins, dissenting.
The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a “liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic.
…The majority’s inversion of the original meaning of liberty will likely cause collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty.
You really ought to read Thomas’ dissent.
Tobias Buckell retweeted
Gayyem et kadkadua @rcloenenruiz Jul 1
Race, Speculative Fiction and Afro SF. Genre has never been the province of “the West” alone. -@chineloonwualu http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/race_speculative_fiction_and_afro_sf …
“The field of speculative fiction, broadly defined as horror, science fiction, fantasy and ‘weird’ fiction, in North America is in crisis. It is currently facing backlash from groups of angry (mostly) white men from the ideological right who are raging against a perceived loss of power and privilege. Their latest attack has been aimed at the heart of the genre itself and is poised to do enormous damage. However, such anger loses sight of a larger reality: that speculative fiction has never been the province of white men alone… the Sad Puppies seem to believe diversification of the genre, which today features more works by women, people of colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and non-Western writers, is a dangerous takeover by left-wing ideologues that they must stop at all costs… While this may look like a one-off problem in one isolated corner of genre fandom, the Sad Puppies are symptomatic of a deeper issue in America and in many other Western countries. When I look at the Sad Puppies, I am reminded of Gamergate, the violent misogynistic backlash against women in video games. I also see parallels in the brutal waves of state-sanctioned murders of black people across the United States by police… These movements and cries are often led by white men filled with rage at a world that often looks browner than they would like and is somehow withholding the entitlements – power, impunity and the assurances of easy superiority – that they were promised all their lives.”
Fuck Tobias Buckell, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Chinelo Onwualu. I was tired of your childish racial incitement and lies 3 years ago and I’m still tired of it.
There is one truth in that morass of bullshit, “that speculative fiction has never been the province of white men alone.” That’s because unlike you rats, we’re not racial supremacists and narcissists fascinated with our skin. That’s the mystery of the Golden Age you will never solve, and why you write such shit boring SF. Your sole talent is complaint. You are correct in thinking you are not wanted, but it’s not for the reasons you think. It’s because you are pathetic killjoys and racial bigots. I have quotes, and from an entire community of shits; you have squat.
Well, what can you expect from a web site titled New Left Project? Because (apparently) the Old Left wasn’t nearly Left enough. (chortle) I think the audience for that piece numbers in the low hundreds, at best. I am sure it will win a Hugo, though — for Best Related Work.
The Left of SFF assumes that we want to drive them out and destroy them, because that’s what they’ve been trying to do to us for years. All we want is a place at the table again.
Ah, but the war against Pure Evil is eternal, Christopher! No quarter will be given. None. (wink) Of course, the Left of SFF never figured out that they won. Like I’ve said before: how can you claim to be fighting The Man, when you are The Man?
Which explains old-school leftie George R R Martin being the kind of cranky old Establishment figure he once railed against.
“because that individual becomes the Magic Unicorn who will mystically bring “diversity.” And in Jemisin’s case, she knows it, and she milks it for all its worth. “Come, SWP, sit at my feet and let me sing you the song of my people”
This dreadful piece in The Guardian written by the always-ridiculous Tim Jonze is exactly the same sort of drivel, only about music. It’s can be summarised as “If you don’t worship Kanye West you’re a racist”.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/jul/13/kanye-west-why-cant-rocknrolls-old-guard-handle-him
The comments are quite entertaining in a popcorn-grabbing sort of way.
The Guardian does have some decent music writers, but Jonze is not one of them.
The Left of SFF assumes that we want to drive them out and destroy them, because that’s what they’ve been trying to do to us for years. All we want is a place at the table again.
Taking offense to something the left feels is good is wrong, because not unconditionally agreeing with [insert leftist cause du jour] might cause people that agree with [insert leftist cause du jour] to feel bad, which is wrong and must be stopped. Therefore it is good to punish those that disagree with [insert leftist cause du jour] before someone that agrees with [insert leftist cause du jour] can feel bad. With Science Fiction, meaningless Social Justice diversity is so important that those that disagree with it must be driven from Science Fiction for the good of those that believe in meaningless Social Justice diversity.
Of course, the Left of SFF never figured out that they won. Like I’ve said before: how can you claim to be fighting The Man, when you are The Man?
But they believe they can’t be The Man, because if they were The Man, everything would be perfect and happy. They don’t understand that it’s not possible to make a perfect solution, so because things aren’t perfect it means that someone is doing something wrong, and that obviously isn’t them. Furthermore, those that advocate anything other than a perfect solution are obviously misguided if not evil because they haven’t put in place a perfect solution. You can take this model and apply it to just about any Social Justice cause and see it in action.
“Strange Horizons @strangehorizons Jul 8 ‘by focusing on older work, what I’ve rediscovered is the subtle pressure to read books by men’ Renay and the canon…”
No such pressure exists. That is called feminist paranoia. When it’s daily, it’s incitement to hate men.
“Kate Elliott @KateElliottSFF 2h2 hours ago @MiriamAnneW Strangely no one ever flags me as an ‘innovator’ which in sff is a label overwhelming reserved for men, I guess”
That’s false. Repeating it 500 times over 3 years won’t make it any less false. However it will amount to incitement to have irrational suspicions of men as an entire group. It’s possible you simply aren’t innovative.
“Justin @jdiddyesquire Jul 10 The female CEO of Reddit is ousted for a dude. Filed in most unsurprising news ever. lol”
That is an innuendo you’ve made up out of your head. It’s nothing more than the same irrational incitement to attack men as an entire group so common in SFF.
“Voodoo Veerender XXL @Veeren_Jubbal 17h17 hours ago Please, cry in my mug, white people. These tears are what help start the week.”
How about if I just ignore you forever?
“Damien Walter @damiengwalter 4h4 hours ago I sense a disturbance in the force…they are the screams of Ernest Cline being rudely reminded non-white dudes exist.”
He wrote what he wanted to write. Why engage in incitement he’s a casual racist?
“Saladin Ahmed @saladinahmed 7h7 hours ago The Father Of Our Country, standing on stolen land, writing with indignation about ‘his’ escaped slaves. There’s US history in a nutshell.”
Because no Arab, Berber or Turk ever did that exact thing ever in Spain, Sicily, Egypt or the Balkans; at least, not if I listen to Saladin Ahmed tell it. Memory-Holing history=racial incitement.
I have an idea: instead of not reading white cis men for a year, how about social justice crusaders in SFF go one year not reviling them? Or I could just not read the “marginalized” for a year and achieve the same effect.
I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again: considering the genre, this obsession with race and gender is bizarre, hateful, paranoid and creepy. It’s a bunch of people bored with their lives, their own work and that of others and who basically sniff paint to make the world seem more lively. When you’re reduced to talking about G. Washington like it’s today’s headlines while ignoring all those other historic “headlines” you’re not only a racist you’re a liar.
Let’s pretend I’m an SFF writer and I go on day after day talking about how Arabs do this and women do that and all of it unrelentingly negative. “Today in 1962 is the day Saudi Arabia ended slavery. LOL.” “Today marks the anniversary of the first women at the S. Pole… 58 years after the first man… on a plane… built by men… LOL.”
What’s a steady diet of that shit like? Suddenly these morons understand what that is. The thing they can’t figure out is no one’s doing it but them. That double standard is what makes them morons and bigots. “Misogyny”? Where’s the misogyny to match the daily misandry from these rats? Tell us again how S. Puppies is against gays, women and non-whites. We’re against your stupid hate speech. Until you can show culture-wide Tweets like your own, try and control your man-hating anti-white racists. If you’d stop encouraging them by not publishing and Tweeting with them that would be a good start, cuz right now there are no consequences.
I am pretty sure Kanye needs no one to worship him. He worships himself plenty already. (chortle)
“Laura J. Mixon retweeted Nalo Hopkinson @Nalo_Hopkinson Jun 18
@abluegreenunivs Prefer writing that’s aware, thoughtful, compassionate re gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, age, etc.”
Great. I prefer SFF myself.
“Laura J. Mixon retweeted Diana M. Pho @writersyndrome Jun 18
Honoring the dead: These Are the 9 Men and Women Tragically Murdered by the Charleston Shooter http://mic.com/articles/120967/the-9-people-you-should-be-talking-about-instead-of-dylann-roof …”
Great. I prefer SFF myself, but here’s a list of John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad’s victims, the one’s assholes like you SJWs racially memory-hole:
Listed below are the identified victims who were murdered or wounded prior to the Beltway sniper attacks.
Name Age Status Date of Attack Location
Keenya Cook 21 Killed February 16, 2002 Tacoma, Washington
Jerry Ray Taylor 60 Killed March 19, 2002 Tucson, Arizona
Billy Gene Dillon 37 Killed May 27, 2002 Denton, Texas
John Gaeta 52 Survived August 1, 2002 Hammond, Louisiana
Paul LaRuffa 55 Survived September 5, 2002 Clinton, Maryland
Rupinder Oberoi 22 Survived September 14, 2002 Silver Spring, Maryland
Muhammad Rashid 32 Survived September 15, 2002 Brandywine, Maryland
Million Woldemariam 41 Killed September 21, 2002 Atlanta, Georgia
Claudine Parker 52 Killed September 21, 2002 Montgomery, Alabama
Kellie Adams 24 Survived September 21, 2002 Montgomery, Alabama
Hong Im Ballenger 45 Killed September 23, 2002 Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Wright Williams, Jr. 55 Survived September 26, 2002 Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Listed below are the names of the victims who were murdered or wounded in the Beltway sniper attacks.
Name Age Status Date of Attack Location
James Martin 55 Killed October 2, 2002 Wheaton, Maryland
James Buchanan 39 Killed October 3, 2002 Rockville, Maryland
Premkumar Walekar 54 Killed October 3, 2002 Aspen Hill, Maryland
Sarah Ramos 34 Killed October 3, 2002 Silver Spring, Maryland
Pascal Charlot 72 Killed October 3, 2002 Washington, D.C.
Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera 25 Killed October 3, 2002 Kensington, Maryland
Caroline Seawell 43 Survived October 4, 2002 Fredericksburg, Virginia
Iran Brown 13 Survived October 7, 2002 Bowie, Maryland
Dean Harold Meyers 53 Killed October 9, 2002 Manassas, Virginia
Kenneth Bridges 53 Killed October 11, 2002 Fredericksburg, Virginia
Linda Franklin 47 Killed October 14, 2002 Falls Church, Virginia
Jeffrey Hopper 37 Survived October 19, 2002 Ashland, Virginia
Conrad Johnson 35 Killed October 22, 2002 Aspen Hill, Maryland
Now imagine me doing this every single day in the context of SFF and then imagine what sad sacks of shit you look like. Take your bizarre obsessions elsewhere and don’t you dare ever talk to anyone about “erasure” or “honoring the dead.” As for being “aware, thoughtful, compassionate,” that would not be smug SJW shits. Imagine if I were a pig like SJWs and went on about non-white gay racist pedophiles and illegal immigrants, because that’s just what SJW Twitter feeds look like to me. Is this ugly? You bet it is, mirrors sometimes are. Just stop yourselves – if you can.
James,
Speaking as someone who nominally agrees with you on a lot of stuff, you do kinda do this every day. Only you do it from the opposite direction. Kevin J. Anderson once asked me if I wanted to be remembered for being a political partisan in the genre, or a storyteller in the genre. Ultimately, I want to be remembered for being a storyteller — though being a partisan, too, at this point, is obviously inescapable. But when all is said and done, I want a long list of books and stories to my credit. The partisan stuff? Eh. I want that to have been a side gig.
The thing neither of us can change about the dipshittery of the social justice zealots, is that they will never shut up. They can’t make us shut up, and we can’t make them shut up. Ultimately, the only thing any of us can do, is ignore the people who bug us.
Again, I agree: it’s a drag watching this particular form of zealotry invade and take over the field. But really, if they want to make SF/F into a small, petty little enterprise populated with churls and glass-fragile moral scolds, the best way to ultimately push back, is to just tell stories that win the hearts and minds of readers.
This past weekend, author and artist Berke Breathed came out of retirement. His very first comic strip of the new era, drew over 75,000 “likes” on Facebook. This, after Berke said he was taking on the PC humor police on-line. That was music to my ears. Especially since he will do it with humor.
I think we’re reaching the point where the best weapon — against the humorless — is funny.
Otherwise, if all we do is drone on and on about them, letting them know we pay attention to every syllable, they’ve won. Because it signals that they dwell in our heads rent-free. I don’t want any of those morons dwelling in my head like that. I mostly try to forget about them, when I can. Sometimes it’s worth piping up and investing in a fist fight. But even fist fights can’t last forever. They become exhausting, for both the participants, and the audience.
This thread began as a discussion on how to address a serious problem — not by demanding that other people do what we think they should do — but by demonstrating that we care most about what we think we should do. I for one intend to devote the bulk of my time (for the next few years) creating. In response to the churls and the scolds, I shall write my ass off. I shall fly the flag of my enthusiasm, for the things I enjoy. And I won’t care who hates on me for it.
So, can we powder break from the copying and re-copying of the tweets? Twitter is a mental hole. It clearly eats your brain, if the stuff you’ve been sharing with us is any indication. Maybe we need to all pay less attention to that shit, and more attention to the stuff that gives us joy. Which is what Sad Puppies was about too: giving attention to the things that give us joy.
You are, of course, free to use the comments however you want — within reason. I am just putting some thoughts out there.
Playing Devil’s Advocate is not coming from the other direction.
@Jared: hey, where in Mexico did you live?
Something to think about on the opinions of the old and the opinions of the young:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
-Khalil Gibran
Luis – I was in Aguas Calientes for about a year and a half, with about six months in Celaya, Guanajuato.