No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons

Oh, boy. As a fan (obviously) of your work, of Bakker’s fantasy, and of acrackedmoon’s brand of incendiary performance-rage analysis, this whole back-and-forth has left me feeling positively disoriented.

I love Bakker’s engagement with neuroscience and philosophy, and I love many things about Prince of Nothing. I have qualms with some of his handling of gender — not, mind, with his bleakly misogynistic world, because he clearly intends to attack that misogyny and show how pervasive and devastating it is, but with subtler missteps that he agrees are present. I don’t think these missteps make him a bad person, just a human being. I know my work going forward will be subjected to some of the same criticisms, and I’m ready to admit a few of them will probably be valid — nobody’s perfect, and gender gets everywhere. I don’t think Scott is subhuman, I think he’s a good guy.

I love acrackedmoon’s willingness to slaughter sacred cows and get at the ugly readings in a text. She may be a pessimist, sure, and she may go for readings that would never occur to the rest of us, but it’s always good to have a devil’s advocate. And while she’s merciless in her blog moderation and utterly disinterested in a bilateral exchange, I don’t mind how unapologetic she is. I like to use her blog as a source of parallax, a new angle on works I really liked. Under the performance rage she’s actually very level-headed in her arguments; she just comes from an angle foreign to most of us.

Just like with Scott, I have qualms with her blog — it’s tuned to draw the ingroup together rather than to appeal to any outgroup, it probably pushes her opponents even further away, and of course she goes really, really far in her personal statements about authors. Maybe she could do a better job of saying what she does if it wasn’t delivered in such an incendiary fashion. Maybe not.

I hope that people coming into this argument from Scott’s side try to really consider the heart of acrackedmoon’s arguments, and maybe take away things they can use to improve their own writing and reading. (Scott, as open to self-examination as he is, is hopefully going to do this.) And I hope that people coming in from acrackedmoon’s side are willing to give Scott’s writing a chance — even if I have quibbles with the way he handles women sometimes, he doesn’t endorse what he depicts.

It’d be great if both sides could actually hear each other over all the yelling.

” I reduced a fellow human being to the status of a mentally-diseased animal.”

…WTF? Mental illness (not “disease”) isn’t a low-status thing, or something to toss off as an insult – you’re insulting a great many people by implying it is, and you ought to know better.

You’re right, Mr. Watts, and I shouldn’t have implied otherwise. There’s no question that acrackedmoon’s rhetoric is more incendiary and potentially damaging. Scott’s familiarity with the psychology literature has translated into admirable restraint. He’s even gone on record as saying that he thinks he’s made missteps — a concession that acrackedmoon hasn’t returned and probably never will.

I think I’m reacting to the accusations I sometimes see that feminist readings in general are worthless and full of false positives. It’s such a charged issue, it sometimes feels like there’s no ground between ‘there’s nothing to see or think about’ (which, mind, Scott has never said — this is a reaction that comes up more often in forum communities or blog commentariats) and ‘you are a sexist subhuman roach’.

Mental illness affects at least one in four of us, probably more. Many people don’t realise or won’t get help because they are afraid of the stigma or have been fed this bullshit that they are of a lower status. Supposedly intelligent, educated writers ought not be contributing to this belittling of their fellow human beings. Regardless of who threw the first stone, using mental illness as a stick to beat people with is unacceptable in civilised society.

Yo Peter. This is a tough one for me, because as a straight white guy who only within the past few years became aware of the very real privileges granted therewith, I am increasingly interested in minority views on SF. There are people who infer a lot about you based on the torture and rape that crops up at the end of the Rifters sequence, and while I feel that you weren’t excusing Desjardin’s actions (or secretly being aroused by them, as some suggest), I also don’t want to write off the feelings of people who’ve been through that kind of abuse, or who live in fear of it.

acrackedmoon does tear into things with zeal, but sometimes she’s on the mark. Her dissection of The Windup Girl really nailed a lot of things that bugged me about it, and her perspective as a woman of color illuminated some wonky stuff I didn’t even notice the first time around. Paolo’s probably not a bad guy either, but that book was problematic.

Ultimately though, she’s an anonymous blogger. I can’t imagine her going off half-cocked about Bakker is going to hurt anything more than his feelings, and drawing attention to a months-old internet flame fight doesn’t seem likely to affect a happy resolution. If the inevitable shit storm discourages any women from reading your work, I think it’d be a real shame.

There are a great many bloggers who read too much into things. Attempting debate with them is so futile as to be comical.

It’s really not worth the effort (unless that blog is in fact huge, and can swing opinions against people, but after having skimmed it I doubt it).

Source of this great wisdom; Years and years spent shouting at my computer.

Internets 101: Do not pay attention to the attention whores. Best thing to do in these situations is stick your fingers in your ears and hum very loudly. This clearly very psychotic man/woman/whatever is some sort of crusader and those are best left alone.

Considering that we’ve hung out at a convention too, I hope you won’t take offence when I offer a piece of my humble opinion, which is that “I drank with him at a con, which was nice, so I cannot conceive that his works would ever [insert outrageous allegations here]” should be outlawed as an argument.

In the vein of trading anecdotal evidence: I’m acquainted with two popular SF writer (no names, ’cause I’m a gentlewoman like that) who are a pleasure to hang out with at cons, and come across as genuinely nice, kind-hearted people in most cases, but I would never, ever use that knowledge to argue that they aren’t being blatantly misogynistic and/or homophobic dicks in their works. Because I’ve read them, and they are.

I admit that things are a little different in this case – I’m not familiar with Scott Bakker’s works, and neither side of the argument is doing much to win me over. Arguing one’s point with expressions such as “aaaaaaaaaahahahaha” or “Hahaha, no” is an automatic yellow penalty card bordering on red, but so is the old chestnut “I’m persecuted because of my lack of political correctness”. It’s practically a rule of the thumb – whenever an author brings up political correctness in response to critique, they invariably end up being an obnoxious douchebag.

Nevertheless, I decided to give Mr. Bakker the benefit of the doubt, went to googlebooks, and read the aforementioned six pages. In my opinion, the infamous rape scene – heavily implied rather than described – leaves no doubt that the author does not condone (ie. fap to) this sort of behaviour. No misogyny has been detected so far, but to find out more, I’d have to get a hold of the whole book, and when I do this thread will have gone cold *sigh*

Just try not to have too much fun while I’m gone.

Don’t feed the trolls, someone who admist having read 5 pages of a book before casting aspersions of it does not deserve your or anyone’s time.

Webcomics attract a lot of this kind of hater, I guess it’s writer’s turn now.

R.Scott Bakker has gained a new reader…

I don’t take anyone who accuses anyone of either racism, sexism or misogyny seriously.

I mean.. remember racefail in SF? Where some black drama queens raised enormous amounts of drama on LJ?

Christ… talk about people who don’t have enough problems of their own and need to butt into someone elses stuff and be all self-righteous…

Hmm…

Read through this post, your wife’s, the one she links to and a large number of comments. The argument seems to be that “he’s a misogynist because we say so and he’s white and male, everyone who defends him is either privileged and nothing they say matters, or if they’re not privileged they haven’t been oppressed enough, or are just acting as mindless tools of the privileged”.

It’s interesting that based on race and gender they are declaring that someone can’t have an valid opinion on a topic, or insight, or speak for it, nor comment about it, or even simply understand the merest thing about it. There’s a word for that, isn’t there? What was it again… Ah, yes, they call that “bigotry” and/or “racism”. The topic itself being that of race or gender doesn’t somehow exempt the application of what they’re doing. It’s still demanding that someone be placed as a “lower human” or “less a person” than another.

To be clear, I say this as a “privileged” white male. I suppose by their “logic” my breeding and random chance erases the validity of my previous paragraph. I’m not actually enough of a person for them to dare be allowed to speak. No, having fought against the brutal oppression of apartheid in every way I was capable of from the age of four or five is irrelevant. That I was beaten when I stood in the way of racist attackers and would not move is meaningless. That I got into confrontations with authority figures of various shapes and sizes demanding they accept everyone was deserving of equal treatment is, at best, a footnote. Having quite literally bled for a cause I believed was mine because of the whimsical thought that all of humanity deserves respect and fairness must have just been an application of my “privilege”. When I finally left Africa for Canada, that I was not permitted to have a name for two years because I had an accent, could only have been a dream.

Except for, hell fucking no that’s utterly ignorant and stupid.

Gah, damnit Watts, trying to keep calm while responding to this crap you highlight is a freaking trial sometimes…

But, yeah, we had a word in South Africa for people who tried to “create equality” through bringing down others based on race, gender, etc, or requiring holy vengeance for crimes they did not commit, or might have, or must have because they were the same “group”. We called them, “idiots.” And then we ignored them.

You erase hatred through reconciliation and forgiveness, you create understanding through mutual respect and open communication, you create harmony by embracing each others differences and appreciating them, you create equality by accepting that beneath those differences we are all one and the same.

In the end, trying to crush the people you oppose leads to nothing but endless war. Stand against them, but not over them. Show them the balance between the horror that is and the good that can be.

It sounds like Bakker is showing them the horror and instead of acknowledging the warning, they can’t see past it because of their own picture of what the monster looks like.

Like any race, gender, or such, has ever had a monopoly on oppression or an exemption from it. These events are just the never absent proof that the monster is within us all and it’s best work is done when anyone denies it exists within them. You can’t overcome what you don’t accept is there.

Bah.

Some people just want to watch the world burn. The institution of academic Feminism, which (I think) has groomed such eloquent and dispassionate voices as acrackedmoon and a bunch of Bakker’s other detractors, is a grand attempt to revive the techniques of biblical literalism and apply them to, well, anything. Because nothing roots out social injustice better than witch hunts.

Having read all of Bakker’s books, I’m always amused when people latch on to just one specific aspect of human barbarity. Really, misogyny? No love for the pedophilia, the ubiquitous keeping of slaves, the caste societies, the absolutely disregard for human life from the point of view of the rulers? There’s so much good shit going around, why settle for just one of them? And I’d like to add that even men are raped in his books. Savagely, sometimes by other men, most times by monsters halfway out of a 4chan hentai marathon.

But this kind of confirmation bias shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, academic Feminism is championed by individuals like Luce Irigaray, a tenured academic who famously claimed that the pain of childbirth was merely a “social construction” forced upon women by the patriarchy that is the white medical establishment. There’s no arguing with that kind of logic, essentially because it’s not logic but a glorified circlejerk of certain kinds of words.

Bakker’s true failing here is that he gives those people the time of day.

(Full disclosure: I read Bakker’s “Neuropath”, then Peter’s “Blindsight”, and those books changed my life and made me drop out of the humanities to pursue biological science. One B.Sc. later and I now finally understand half of the words in “Blindsight”. In any case, these individuals have influenced me to believe that fiction has to be exempt from the standards of real-life discourse, because it may contain avenues of thought that really need thinking through. I am heavily biased against the rape card.)

I used to be a lot like that. Then I took an arrow to the knee.

@Lanius:
“I don’t take anyone who accuses anyone of either racism, sexism or misogyny seriously.”

Right. Because we all know that none of those things exist any more. They all died back in the twentieth century – or maybe never existed at all – and the words only stuck around because self-righteous drama queens keep bringing them up for no good reason. The horrendous pay gap between men and women is a natural result of our different biological adaptation. The escalating racial violence in France has nothing to do with racism, and the massive evictions of gypsies are not an expression of an inherently racist policy. The bomb attacks against the Bangladeshi in London was just the skinheads having some good-natured fun. A restaurant an hour away from me explicitly banning gypsies from entering the premises unless they’re with the band, is not racist. 90 percent of Hollywood blockbusters failing to meet the Bechdel test are not an expression of sexism internalised so deep in our culture that decades of women liberation movement didn’t even make a dent in it. The SF writer Elizabeth “Many Muslims Have All the Virtues of Civilized Persons” Moon is not a racist tool. People who complain about any of this just “don’t have enough problems of their own”.

You’re really not helping Scott Bakker in this. Drop the universal quantifier, take ten paces backwards and maybe no one will get hurt.

OMG, I just read the original post and scanned through the comments and this is multifoliate idea-controversy bomb! Lobbed into our midst! I hope I get a break today to go over and check out Acrackedmoon’s rage-blog and the other links so I can at least follow, if not really engage.

Love ya, Peter, you human incendiary device! heh heh.

I think the major question is: do we need to read Bakker’s book to really understand the discussion?

Have people just never been on the internet before? Don’t feed the trolls. There’s an entire class of bloggers who drive traffic and ad revenue by making incendiary statements and attempting to rile their targets into long and pervasive, controversy-filled drama bombs.

Unless they can mount a calm and composed argument without the vitriol, don’t bother to pay them heed. Any response is what they want.

@Lanius
“There is no thought or emotion of mine that doesn’ deserve to be slowly impaled on the burning stake of merciless self-examination!”

Then you can probably start with your baffling penchance for judging people’s right to speak on the basis of whether they’ve ever shot, killed and gutted anything.

Normally, I’d be curious about why you try so hard to undermine my very basic right to complain about the racist restaurant who would admit me in, but keep my relatives from my father’s side out unless they bring some fiddles (“I don’t take anyone who accuses anyone of either racism, sexism or misogyny seriously”); unfortunately, you’d probably consider me unfit for this discussion, as I’ve never shot anything in my life. Killed – yes, gutted – yes, shot – no. We have very strict gun control.

I would actually be interested to see a Requires Only Hate review of Mr. Watts’ work. I’m not as perceptive of these problems as acrackedmoon, but I’ve always felt Mr. Watts did a decent job with race and gender — and with writers like Nalo Hopkinson, who I believe acrackedmoon enjoys, advising him, he’s got some help to cover notional blind spots.

I was impressed by Watts’ willingness to use women in incidental, background stormtrooper-type roles in Crysis Legion (Requires Only Hate does not sneer at licensed fiction). The usual dual-component-stereotype complex regarding women and violence means that authors rarely allow women to be background soldiers or spear-carriers, so I was impressed that Watts had egalitarian goons.

Women characters drive the narrative in a lot of Watts’ work. I’m sure there’s room for criticism regarding the Meltdown Madonna archetype in Starfish, but the story included not just an abused, hurt woman but a powerful CEO who did her job effectively. Gay characters got a pretty positive inclusion too. I came away from Starfish feeling pretty good about Peter Watts and gender, and while I had issues with Maelstrom and (particularly) Behemoth, they weren’t issues that drove me to think Watts was a raging misogynist — just a man tackling difficult matter, with varying success but definite good intent.

I’ve no doubt that a Requires Only Hate review would be less positive than I am, but — perhaps naively — I think that acrackedmoon would probably see at least some worth in Mr. Watts’ work, even while she found other areas to attack. (I’m guessing the sexual torture in Behemoth might be a sticking point, not because I think acrackedmoon will blanket reject all depictions of sexual torture, but because it probably offers readings which I’m blind to.)

What I guess I’m trying to say is that I think Peter Watts is definitely not blind to issues of race and gender, that I think he has had conversations about privilege with people like Nalo Hopkinson, and that I suspect he has a much better awareness of these issues than some of the commenters on his blog.

Holy, I managed to miss Lanius’ comment: I mean.. remember racefail in SF? Where some black drama queens raised enormous amounts of drama on LJ?

This is how one proves that all accusations of sexism and racism are false and cannot be taken seriously, gentlebeings. What is Lanius, the poster boy for Redneck’R’US magazine?

@Seth: Oh come, Watts is reacting very badly to critiques directed at another writer; I can only imagine how he’d react to my review of his own. The apoplexy would be amazing.

ACM: I agree wholeheartedly with your discomfort at the ‘black drama queens’ remark, as well as — well, a number of other things that often pop up in blog comments on this topic.

I can’t speak for Peter Watts, only for myself. I suspect that a lot of the apoplexy is a reaction to your choice to use performance rage, rather than a reaction to the content of your reviews. (I know what a tone argument is, and I promise not going to make one!) From a utilitarian standpoint, I understand the choice you make; I’m sometimes uncomfortable with your ad hominem style, but I know you intend to evoke discomfort, and I know you don’t want to apologize or take an ingratiating, conciliatory stance about issues that affect you personally and powerfully.

My concern with your performance rage is that I fear it alienates those who might otherwise be allies, conflating your ad hominem arguments with your (really powerful, for me) arguments about racism and sexism. This is a personal qualm, and I suspect you’ve thought about it more than me, and decided quite firmly how much you care about these allies.

I’m a white straight guy. I’ve only had one story published, and it included lesbians, institutional homophobia, and POC. I think I probably screwed a few things up. I’ve asked myself what I would do if you reviewed it, called me out on my mistakes, and called me a roach. I like to hope I’d acknowledge the review and try to take something away from it. Maybe I’d react like Bakker did; I hope not, but I can’t be sure.

If you reviewed Watts’ work and critiqued it, I suspect he would acknowledge your points and take issue with your tone. I hesitate to speak for him on his own blog. But I stand by my faith in Mr. Watts’ awareness of privilege. If Nalo Hopkinson’s willing to read his work and offer him advice, he’s got to be doing something right, doesn’t he?

e: I’ve seen Mr. Watts’ latest post and liked it. I may not be able to stay involved in the discussion because I’ve enjoyed the work of every party involved in this dispute, from ROH all the way to Caitlin Sweet, and I don’t want to make any enemies.

The idea that Damien Walter can recognize mediocrity: Not enough lols on the internet.

@requireshate,

Oh, come now. If there is one thing more misleading than judging an author based on a personal encounter at a con, it’s judging them by the people who comment on their blog. For all my claims at tolerance and love of free speech, I’d be sorely tempted to moderate the hell out of anyone who’d try to purport that racims and sexisms weren’t real contemporary issues. In that respect, Peter Watts is a better man than me.

I admit that I didn’t care much for your post on RSB (my rock-like motto has always been: “If you want to criticise their works, read their works. If you don’t read, you cannot know if their defence makes sense in context or not”, and performance rage isn’t really my thing), but I found some of your other – less rage-y, more analytical – reviews to be nothing if not brilliant.

@Aaron

Someone in the sub-culture explains it to you.

There’s a persistent misconception that acrackedmoon’s vitriol is bad because it makes people who disagree with her not want to engage with her. But I don’t think ACM writes for people who have no problem with Tolkien, GRRM, Abercrombie, Bakkar, et al. She writes to express her dislike of certain elements common in speculative fiction and she writes for others who are sick of racism, sexism, and homophobia in their stories.

While there are people like Larry who are willing to take the time to explain Requires Hate to those who disagree with her or dislike her style, and that’s great, no one is obliged to do so. Nor is she obliged to make herself accessible.

Hahaha – well my comment was a day late and a dollar short. The race is definitely to the fastest typists.

“…aaannnnddd, no:
requireshate: So Peter Watts didn’t actually ask/get permission before basing a character on an abuse survivor
ACM just posted the above tweet to her elite corps of 88 followers.”

So, mr. Watts, you did get permission first, right? Because from what you have written below that quote one can understand that you really didn’t, because you thought she was dead. Is that so? You made a wrong assumption and a mistake, requireshate pointed it, and this means she is trolling?
I found that your interest in engaging with her arguments very heartening, especially considering you don’t agree with them. But why are you giving up simply when she pointed a mistake you did?

And here I thought Valerie Solanas was dead.

Peter:

Whatever one’s opinions on Moon, it’s hard not to be troubled when people don’t shift priorities to call out those who use her as an example of why minorities, women, or other historically marginalized groups can be dismissed out of hand.

It feels to some, however unintentional this might be, as tacit agreement that one only wishes to tolerate such groups when they behave themselves.

I don’t read it that way, but besides race I benefit from an incredible number of privileges so that is my luxury. But if the interest is to engage something bigger than the reputation of SFF authors, one has to encourage a safe space to at least some extent.

-Sciborg2 aka Saajan Patel

I’m confused. How much due diligence is supposed to be necessary to gain the consent of someone with whom your prior associations have given you (what you take to be) insight into some facet of human experience such that you base part of the behaviors of a character in a work of fiction on them? Should Watts have engaged a private investigator to confirm that she was, in fact, dead? Whether she is flattered or not has little to do with it, I think, because it was something Watts could not have known one way or the other when he did what he did. However, I also think her consent is irrelevant. Writers base aspects of characters on people they have known all the time. I sincerely doubt they go around soliciting consent from these people first.

You’re confused because you have the idea that this is a discussion, instead of an attempt to make some angry Internet radfem bones out of taking cheap shots at a published author.

You know, I seriously can’t take someone who uses that much profanities in a “review” and claims to make up their mind after several pages seriously.

No sirs. Can’t take her seriously.

Also, I can’t take her “OMG GUY WITH FUNNY SURNAME MISREPRESENTED THAI CULTURE UNO UNO ELEVENTEEN” rants seriously, even though I kind of assume that she is mostly accurate in terms of cultural authenticity (despite not citing a single source. How hard it is to link your readers to a nice and accurate book about Thai culture ?).
A foreigner is inaccurate and uses your country as mostly a source of exotic vibe ? Cry me a river, m’am.

Also, I have a problem with feminists who roll racism, classism and any other -ism (except maybe priapism, but even that might not be entirely immune) that doesn’t manage to get away into some kind of horrendous rhetorical Katamari. I am aware that it is a proud tradition in feminist literature, but is there any solid evidence to back it up? Or is the evidence for gluing the -isms together on par with (recently harshly debunked) “evidence” of gross differences in male/female wiring ? (that, BTW, was perhaps even more embarrassing for the NeuroVoodo crowd than the salmon necromancy).

I mean, there’s gotta be some very strong reason to lump divergent -isms of varying ill-repute in one huge mess… well, other than trying to recruit stray political aficionados from other camps to your team, right ?

All in all, she seems like a token representative of Feminism’s less nice, less palatable underside.
You know, everything has an unpalatable underside, and this woman is Feminism’s. Alongside with crooks like Farley and the inventors of “Angry Vagina Craft Time” (yes, that is an actual thing. No, I am not making this shit up)

To wrap up, I think best policy in regards to people like moononcrack (that was easy) and her sycophants is same as with “forever alone” PUA crowd preaching crazy evopsych just-so-stories.

This policy is “contain and ignore”

P.S.: gotta pick up that “this is your serial killer, on neurosurgery” book 🙂

I’m also disappointed in ACM regarding that twitter post.

Not that comments like Jack’s aren’t also infuriating, Christ.

So. um, who here has actually read the book in question? Anyone, anyone? Bueller?

A little bird is telling me that the alleged female minority blogger might be neither female nor minority.

I hear crows are smart and knowledgeable birds.

Just letting you people know.

Seth, ok, I’ll bite. I would really like for you to present an explanation on the importance of second and third wave Feminism beyond the victimisation of roughly over half of the human population.

First, though, let me say that my own political paradigm is that of Good-Ol’-Marxism, as teached/defended on a third world country; now, I’ve never managed to read much on later-day feminism and have actually avoided interaction with women of such political disposition, on the grounds that any time I’ve seen an XY-chromossomed individual try to engage in debate with them it always end up with the male in question being dismissed as “mansplainer” and/or “oppressor”.

You see, the thing that has always impeded me from taking such theories seriously is the sugestion that all the evils of the world derive from The Evil Menz, aka “Patriarchy”, which is pretty fucking hilarious for me, as I’ve always taken the instrument used to oppress the lower classes to be the capital, NOT the penis. In fact, I daresay that if you kill every single penis-having Bourgeoise and substitute him for a female equivalent, not a single thing would change for the proletariat.

Which is not to say that mysoginy doesn’t exist: one needs only to look at the war on women’s reproductive rights waged by every single conservative party and most religions on the world right now to see that it is still present; as is racism, and classism: but I regect any theoretical framework in which a rich white woman, by her gender alone, is part of an oppressed minority, whereas a poor white man that is part of the proletariat is viewed as part of The Patriarchy.

tl;dr: Feminism, as practised by people like ACM, is nothing but superstructural junk that ignores the real medium in which oppression is created and perpetuated (the control of the forces of production).

@ Damien G. Walter

And if anyone else says “huh, rape and violence…Bakker has a new reader” I will personally find them and make them read Gor novels until their brain implodes.

challenge…accepted, creature of flesh and bone

huh, rape and violence…Bakker has a new reader ;-P

Of course, I am cheating a bit – even if you’re good enough to find me, due to having encounter with a woman from “gorean” “fandom”, I am now 100% immune to Gorean “Ethos”. Yes

@ TheEchoInside

From where I sit (not US of A), the US electoral process is exactly that.

@01

I sit close enough to be made very uncomfortable by the US electoral process.

Though not sure it’s limited to just the process, I was quite literally yelling at my computer earlier this week because of what’s happening in Virginia. The cognitive dissonance of “small government” conservatives passing (it seems assured to go through their senate/be signed) what by definition seem institutionalized rape via medical procedure (they voted down an amendment to require consent) left me flailing, for all the obvious reasons.

And then there was the whole commentary around the same time over the high rates of sexual assault/rape in the US military and the increase of front line positions for women. Where it was stated that women should just expect and accept being victims if they’re going to be in close quarter situations. And men were relegated (and excused) as being nothing more than the product of what the thing between their legs tells them to be. With the extra dash of the infrastructure to care for victims being a “leftist” pork barrel. I also flailed at all of that.

It’s a worse reality show than “temptation island” or “toddlers and tiaras”. I wish they’d cancel it already (as in the shenanigans, not the country itself, for clarity =P).

So far, my suspicion that moononcrack is full of shit appears to find third party circumstantial support.

P.S.:
Is saying that alleged woman of color is, metaphorically speaking, full of shit racist or misogynistic? ^__~

“Ask yourself why acm chose to omit that fact from her tweet. She was not pointing out a mistake; she was not even talking to me. She was deliberately concealing relevant information in order to make a false and incendiary point about (I can only imagine) some kind of psychological appropriation.”

OK, maybe she did that.
I interpreted it differently, as pointing the attitude you had by acting on belief and not checking first. I thought she was pointing a mistake because it’s the kind of mistake she usually points. So based on that feeling of familiarity I stick to my reading.

I understand the circumstances. I would have done the same thing, probably. And I am sure many people would consider me a shit for doing it. And I kind of see their point. Even if they’re biased, or angry, or lacking patience. Even if I don’t agree.

I don’t see Requireshate as someone in need of medication, or terminally ill, but as someone with a strong perspective that is completely different than my own, and pretty consistent too.

So I still think you’re wrong to dismiss her as a troll. You should have given her that benefit of a doubt, not me.

@ Mirik Smit

Yeah.

If vampires existed, Peter would try filming a Steve Irwin style movie about them.

…at the very least.

@M.S. Patterson

Is that feel good hit, or it’d feel good to hit them? ;P (Not that I actually believe violence is an answer, just letting the lizard brain have the joke.)

@Radu Romaniuc

I’m wondering, what are these unwritten rules on the subject of writing and consent, that would accord this as a mistake?

Effectively, what variables require that consent be obtained? Are the variables related to the individual’s attributes, or how many of their attributes are to be included in a work, or both?

What are reasonable conditions for search (internet, phone book, private detective?) or implied consent (death seems to be one?)?

Does this apply to fiction alone, or non-fiction as well?
(And I ask these questions, genuinely curious as to what the answers are)

And on your last point, I’m concerned about fair/equal treatment in regards to “benefit of the doubt”. If we are to say Watts should give her the benefit of the doubt in regards to intent for the tweet, should she not have given the benefit of the doubt to him in including his intent within it(the belief the subject was deceased), as well?

@01

Hmm, not sure if your question is rhetorical or not, but naive creature that I am, I certainly do try to appeal to those who appear insane to me, through what I believe is sanity. (Though ironically, that is perhaps an insane course of action in and of itself?)

There are certainly some people I’ve seen who seem to be beyond consideration for change. But, I’ve also had a lot of experience with people who simply grew up in the wrong place and wrong time who are just following their localised culture. If we can’t find the means or effort of appealing to them, that seems a form of resignation to the inevitability of it occurring. And while it’s still anecdotal, having lived through a country changing that (to varying degrees of success) makes me hopeful it’s possible everywhere. =)

@Bastien

Urgh, it’s certainly disgusting. One hell of a way to “support the troops”.

And that example relates back to my first post, really. In that no group has a monopoly over or an exemption from, bigoted suppression. Everyone, no matter who they are, can be racist, or sexist, etc.

In that case though, I think she had misogyny and misandry both going on in a horrible kaleidoscope. Anti-woman in that she expects woman to just accept/be fine with some sort of inevitability of being victims. And anti-man in that she indicates men are sub-human(animals who cannot control their desires). It manages to make victims “not really” victims, excuses perpetrators from responsibility and condemns every other male as a perpetrator in waiting, all at the same time.

It’s damn ridiculous and surreal.

Acrackedmoon is very North American in her views. All her insistence on “white men” as a uniformly privileged group and on “People of Color” or “Asians” doesn’t reflect so much the point of view of the rest of the world. I would have expected to see at least a passing mention of class, language, ethnicity and religion, which are usually much more important.

I can see what Moon is saying, that it’s unfair to appropriate someone’s experiences if one directly represents them.

I think the confusion was in the idea of “basing” a character on someone versus having a real person serve as inspiration. It seems to me that what Peter actually did was the latter.

I’d be curious to hear her thoughts on the whole thing if she came back here.

-Sciborg2 aka Saajan Patel

Oh, some people seem like they want to talk about the books. If you’ve finished up to WLW (or don’t mind spoilers) feel free to check the thread at Westeros:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/59833-white-luck-warrior-viii/page__st__220

Bakker’s books have certainly moved way up on my reading list.

:Would you kindly elaborate on the distinction ?:

I think “based” sort of implies that if the person read the book they’d recognize themselves and the private details of their lives on the page. As someone who knows the true story will recognize it when the movie “based on a true story” is seen.

Inspired means taking perhaps a small bit of RL and using it as the seed from which to grow a character. There might be recognition, but not on the level of feeling like your privacy was violated.

As far as I can tell from what Peter wrote he did the latter, not the former.

-Sciborg2 aka Saajan

Let’s try this again, since the last comment apparently got censored. [Ed. Insert: Oh, for Christ’s sake. It did not get “censored”. I went to bed. Your comment arrived at 11:30 pm. I woke up. I’m working through the queue. Sorry if that doesn’t fit the narrative.]

01: the references to Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist (what you’re posting) had a number of people, Pat included, completely unaware of who acrackedmoon was or what her blog was about. Most – including Pat – assumed that she was a white male from the US.

Which made it especially ironic when stating how it was clear this person had no idea what Thailand was compared to Pat’s experiences.

I suppose it’s possible that acrackedmoon is a white male in the US. Reading most of her posts on RoH I find it exceedingly unlikely.

01, that’s kind disingenuous. All we have is one dude (who did actually make some racist and offensive fuckups) saying ‘he’ a lot, there. Let’s assume for reasons of basic decency that she is who she says she is.

I don’t really think I need to weigh in on her argument, either. It stands on its own merits, and sometimes lack thereof, and nothing my faggy white-boy ass throws in about it will benefit anybody (except to say, love that ‘Me’ ‘phobe you’ve got trailing you – classy company you keep).

What I would like to know is – how do you react to unambiguous genre-author fuckery? I mean, there’s clearly a fucking ton of wiggle room in this one, so let’s pick some targets nobody sane and bathed would argue aren’t shitbags:

– Piers Anthony (misogyny, rape apologism both child and adult)
– Jerry Pournelle (racism, misogyny, various forms of right-wing political crankery)
– Tom Kratman (seriously, I gotta tell you? Google, I’m not even going to try.)

Now, I’m not asking you for some kind of asshole common-ground thing where we both agree to hate the same easy targets – I want to know if you go up to eleven. If a midlister whose scumbag credentials are debatable deserves to be called a roach, what do those guys get? I’ve got no problem with any of the things you stand for, but I think your outrage scale is poorly calibrated.

@Hljóðlegur:

As a further data point (because I’ve also read most of Bakker’s books):

Do you think they are well-written?

I think they are very well written. The main characters are (in my experience) all completely unique in fantasy literature, the world is well-built and the prose (while rambly in places) is good. In my mind, “The Darkness That Comes Before” is a sort of modernised, more accessible and fucked-up version of Delany’s Dhalgren.

Your impression – do you think they portray women badly, either intentionally or accidentally whilst trying to make a point about misogyny?

They do. Despite the the impression one might get from the recent kerfuffle, IMO that’s not the point of the main serious criticism Bakker receives. Scott readily acknowledges that the world he has created is wildly misogynistic, women are “objectively” worth less than men. It’s the world of the Old Testament made fact. And naturally, in such a setting, his female characters will come across as inferior. What he’s trying to do (I think), is show this fictional situation in as harsh a light as possible, to make his point. The criticism is that, by doing so, he unintentionally makes the case for real-life misogyny. He responds to this criticism in many places on the web (though, unfortunately for him, not always in an easily accessible way).

I’m still not sure whether this criticism is justified. I’ve read the available Second Apocalypse novels twice now. After the first time, I bought TDTCB for a good friend and told him “You have to read this, but be warned, the depiction of women is pretty unpalatable”. After the second reading, I’m willing to wait until the series has ended before I pass judgment.

Just my two cents.

Alerted to this post by 01, I can’t help but wonder whether Acrackedmoon will soon claim (either publicly or via private exchange with Peter) that she’s a rape survivor and that ugly blog posts and internet trolling are her ways of coping with trauma.

I find that likely. Very. Likely.

After reading the comments and posts on Requires Only That You Hate I started getting angry particularly at her censuring of comments when it hit me , she is right . she told us at the beginning ( Requires Only That You Hate ) so its not a place for discussion or debate of points of view or ideas different from theirs.they don’t want to argue and frankly its pointless so for the love of god stop arguing with them and don’t mention or link her blog ever.

Another fun internet flame war! Free entertainment for all!

All I can say about “acrackedmoon” / “requireshate” is that she needs to grow up. She comes off as an immature individual whose mouth is much larger than her brain…frankly, I would have a hard time believing that she is not still in High School.

We can leave it at that, and ignore her, and give her the obscurity she deserves — being ignored is to loudmouthed arrested adolescents like “acrackedmoon” like garlic and silver bullets are to a vampire.

“Superficial googling further indicates minor evidence that alleged Thai alleged woman might be neither Thai nor woman.”

Heh. I don’t know about that, but it certainly indicates that the post in question about Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist was lazy, lazy, lazy.

@ Sean Wills

Dear alleged Sir,

Please be so kind as to pay attention to the word “minor”, which is provided for your comfort and indicates a kind of evidence along the lines of one claiming that “he didn’t do it” without provocation upon sudden encounter.

In the thread provided, the question as to the alleged femininity and alleged ethnic origin of the cracked entity has been brought up, and to the best of my humble observational ability, the most coherent response was “Last I checked she lives in Thailand”, from a similarly nondescript internet denizen (no offense, Mr. Saajan Patel, but you have to understand that to the people reading your comments, you are a nondescript genderless entity at most generous. Much like myself. That’s the nature of our communication channel.)

Given that cracked entity justifies a significant portion of her extravagant outpourings through allegations of her gender and origin, such adamant avoidance of providing any credible proof that said allegations are indeed the case and opaque, one-line deflections of her equally anonymous peers are themselves ground for suspicion.

Good day to you, alleged Sir.

@Hljóðlegur

Bakker’s trilogy is an epic. A bit unfocused in my opinion, but a very decent read. Being a sweeping faux-historical kind of tale, there are lots of characters, covering a lot of angles. Bakker was channeling artistically; there is no preachiness, no hidden “philosophical” underpinnings. There are lots of female characters and they do lots of things and many things happen to them. The same is true for the male characters and even the inhuman characters of no discernable gender. I did not see a weird gender fixation like in the Gor boooks.

The one obvious angle on the book is that it’s a kind of weird transposition of the story of the 1st crusade to a fantasy setting. That’s where the meat is, if you want to go at the books critically. By contrast, the attacks on Bakker referred to in this thread are surreal ravings. I feel nothing but dismay at this kind of BS and nothing but sympathy for Bakker. All the more so since the trilogy is definitely worth a look, and even a second read. It’s big, and a bit uneven, but also highly original and very very entertaining.

“(no offense, Mr. Saajan Patel, but you have to understand that to the people reading your comments, you are a nondescript genderless entity at most generous. Much like myself. That’s the nature of our communication channel.)”

Actually, I take it as a compliment. 😉

I’m also going to second the books being worth the read. There are problems, but on the whole the books have ideas that are compelling, some refurbished and some of which I’m going to dare and say are original.

If you don’t care overly much you can start with The Judging Eye, as in some ways it is more standard fare and more accessible though I’ve been impressed by the ability Bakker has to improve his prose.

-Sciborg aka Saajan the genderless. 😉

Don’t get me wrong – I mean it feels more like epic fantasy. A clear supernatural threat that will be warred against.

But the important thing to realize about TJE is that it is, if anything, an introduction to the next book WLW.

If nothing else, the uphill movement on the prose style – before the end of his career Bakker will be writing “literature”. Trust me.

I don’t think anyone would predict some of the stuff that happens there, and why people are chomping at the bit for Unholy Consult.

I miss when this blog was fun.

Hey, do you have any pictures of when the inner workings of your leg was opened up and exposed to the air that you’ve neglected to share so far?

Hey Cracked Moon —

Another thing I have to say to “acrackedmoon” — by your attacks, you have probably vastly increased the sales of Bakker’s books. So far from stopping his “misogynism,” you have contributed to his success.

In fact, if I was him, I would be thanking you for the free publicity.

Haven’t heard of such a counterproductive strategy since the US embargo on Cuba…are you a sock puppet hired to covertly promote sales of his works…no, that would be just to contrived…

@ Thomas Naue

That was a mighty countertroll, sir.

Heh.

Six years of interrogating and trying to outsmart brave men teaches you many things about human nature. I greatly enjoyed the work, and considered it a failure if I had to use actual physical torture on those.

Mind games are so much fun.

Cowards I tortured. And told them why. I can only hope those that survived the camps have learned a lesson there. Cowardice does not pay off.

@Mr. S

in light of your comment, allow me to change
“philosophical underpinnings” to “ideological underpinnings”

To my eye, the trilogy does not impose an obvious set assumptions about what is right and what is wrong. For example, military themes are heavily emphasized, but I din’t get the sense that Bakker’s worldview is militaristic, or that his intent was to glorify the “way of the warrior”.

There was a general sentiment that survival of humanity in the face of alien onslaught is a good thing, but there is a price to pay for this survival, and that price is Kellhus, a creature of human stock, but no longer quite human. Should “adapt or die” be considered an ideology?

Certainly, the book is not a simple action–thriller; it’s an intelligent read. But I couldn’t identify any “didactic” principle. Ultimately, the book praised nothing and condemned nothing. Questions where asked, no doubt. But I saw no “conclusions”.

3rd Google result for “R. Scott Bakker” is that slander post of ACM. Does he realize what she is doing to him? I would slap her with a libel case.

Wenn Herr Naue waren, wie er behauptet, er würde dies beantworten und meine Grammatik korrigieren. In seiner Muttersprache.

“You are worried about fair/equal treatment, but her point is that you can’t have it because she speaks for those who had no share of equal or fair treatment for too long: women, LGBT people, abused people, non-whites. These people were and still are tormented all over the world, and they want to have the opportunity to be vocal and to shout and to point the finger at those who, even unintentionally, keep propagating hurtful attitudes.”

Who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do _she_ think she is? What makes you think that she can arrogate herself any kind of representative role? Who the hell gave _you_ the right to decide who someone can or cannot represent? I’m _sure_ all those tormented people feel better now that someone finally can be obnoxious on the Internet in their place.

Get down off your high horse, ACM is a privileged woman from a privileged background (a Thai Chinese!) who speaks a very good English and is completely steeped in North American culture in a country where only 10% of the population speaks any English at all, who has access to Internet in a country where only a quarter of the population has any kind of connection and apparently has a lot of free time she can spend reading fantasy books and maintaining a constant Internet presence.

If _she_ can represent someone, I surely can decide that I’m the voice of billions of farmers and factory workers and as such I’m happy to tell her that she’s an obnoxious bourgeois and should start thinking about doing something productive and useful to make up for the history of prevarication and oppression who gave her her role in society.

Thomas Naue – is that you Avneendra?

@Radek, who wrote in-part: the whole debate seemed to assume that the contents of a fictional series should be automatically applied to its author. As gospel. [ … ] Maybe I just don’t know enough about literary criticism, but I think that premise should have stopped the debate in its tracks.

I guess you haven’t ever before encountered Mary Sue Theory before. More or less, Mary Sue Theory implies that the more unusual the scenario or character, the more it is to be viewed as a wish-fulfillment construct reflecting the intentions, the inner life so to speak, of the author.

So many people seem to believe this — I think they teach it in most Liberal Arts Colleges in crossover courses combining Psych 100, Literature for Fuckheads 102, and Law Enforcement Methods at the Masters level — that I personally decided to never again write fiction sometime back around 1997. To certain types of reviewers and bloggers, Stephen King intends to release Super Flu and furthermore is the antichrist, and Larry Niven believes himself to be not merely a 400-year-old Chinese-American, but also a paranoid three-legged hyperintelligent vegetarian as well as a quarter-ton of easily-annoyed starfaring war cat. That the technical medical term in both psychiatry and literary-criticism for persons holding such beliefs is “idiot” does nothing to reduce either their numbers or willingness to post vast reams of idiocy, and the best you can hope for from them is also the worst thing to fear from them: that they learn to refine and develop their technique so as to not be so obviously idiots.

The way to deal with “acrackedmoon” and their ilk is generally to call them a “Mary Sue Theorist” and to point out that there’s actually some genuine term for their disorder which will be listed in the new DSM-V, filed alphabetically under “a.s.s.h.a.t.”.

wait, I thought there’s like, one person who survived rabies and the process needed to make that happen included experimental induced coma

Learn new things every day, huh…

So the voice of farmers is called Giorgio? That’s cool. But I don’t understand your point. You say the author has Internet access and speaks English therefore she can’t speak from the perspective of a woman, LGBT, abused and non-white person?

So someone who doesn’t know English, doesn’t have Internet access (and also no time to read sf books) should write her blog in English, about genre books, on the Internet?

Well, fine. You convinced me. But then you can’t be the Voice of Farmers anymore because you first need to become mute. Sorry. Get off your high plow.

01,

Dear alleged Sir,

Yes, you’re terribly clever.

What your’e saying, if I’m parsing you correctly, is that ACM has to justify her claims of being both Thai and a woman; that, at the very least, they can be held suspect so long as no corroborating evidence is forthcoming even though nobody has said anything to cast doubt on what she’s said about herself. Her word isn’t enough; she needs to prove it.

You…don’t see the problem with this, do you?

No, I’m guessing you don’t.

Dear alleged Sir,

when the argument does not hinge, in any way, on whether the speaker is a man, a woman, or a murder of genetically engineered ravens pecking on a Macbook’s keyboard, then of course, this line of inquiry would be superfluous. However, the cracked entity and associated speakers deem necessary to construct arguments that, one way or another, rely on allegations of her Thai origins and allegations of her gender.
Under those conditions, inquiring as to whether she indeed is a Thai woman is perfectly justified, and the opaque deflections the other side of the argument are quite suspicious.

That just comes with the medium, kind alleged Sir.

Welcome to the Internet.

@Da’Schmeef, who wrote in-part: My impression of of the original post is that peter was hoping to spark some honest discussion on the nature of sexism/misogyny and why so many people have these mems/behavior patterns stuck in their heads.
But instead we have a typical troll/countertroll flame discussion going on, Its a shame that it is so hard to have a reasonable discussion about sex and society and the damage that we inflict on one another.

Well, sexism/misogyny/”misandrony” is one of those things that’s almost impossible to discuss reasonably. The issue seems to be one of those “all or nothing” emotionally laden issues. Some might think that a person is either blissfully unaware of such a concept, or one must rise to seek and destroy all such sexism etc., else be seen as being an active part of The Oppressive Patriarchy, etc.

One could take the position that the best way to not perpetuate something is to simply fail to feed into it. Yet that is another hazard. For example, in the 1960s in the US, there were those who remembered “Rosie the Riveter” and knew that she won WWII as much as anyone else did… but some took a “moral position” that it was unfair to have women working such jobs because there were men who were out of work and they should be hired first, and there were those who took a position that it was unfair to have women doing such jobs because a woman ought to be doing a job (home-making etc.) at which she would be better than any man could be. (Both are somewhat sexist but I submit that the latter position is the more sexist while the former position is more about protectionism.) Yet even without actually considering either position or articulating such positions, society itself had such notions deeply embedded in it.

Having grown up in that time-frame and having a mother who was extremely capable and determined to break the glass ceiling, and having a father who came from a US frontier tradition and a family that seems for generations to have produced mostly females (they can plow fields and harvest crops, too), I didn’t see a whole lot of that embedded sexism that society had in those times. I did see more than a bit of reverse sexism, so to speak, and while I see far less of the Old Boys style of sexism embedded in society, the subculture of Fight The Power seems to be no less vocal and determined. Yet in some cases, there is an attitude of someone walking around with a chip on their shoulder, looking for a fight in the public library or some other such quiet place where a fight was the last thing anyone expected or would want.

But enough of preface: there’s a certain crew who seem anxious to bowdlerize literature as well as perhaps doing a bit of revisionism or perhaps suppression of bits of either or both of human nature and history. It has only been quite recently, and in fact still in evolution, that males and females are in positions of anything like equality. One faction seems to have the notion that so long as anyone remembers injustice, inevitably injustice will occur, either from a harking back to the way things used to be, or from seeking vengeance for former inequities. There might be some truth to that, but I doubt that it should become policy to pave over the past to the point where one can’t even satirize it. How much less should anyone quail from pointing out that institutionalized inequity is alive and well in many (if not most) nations and cultures. Yet it might be suggested that however you might feel about religion, a certain legendary figure once suggested (paraphrased) “physician, first heal yourself before you practice on others” and “how is it that with a plank in your eye, you hope to see and remove a mote from my eye”.

My point being, I guess, that while certain people might believe that we just dare not have anyone creating fictional worlds in which the worst excesses of our own are revisited, I’d suggest that our energies would be better applied to the task of ridding our own real world of those excesses as a priority.

@Lanius: “***original post deleted at editorial discretion***”

Do the world a favor, crawl back under a rock, you despicable excuse for a human being. And don’t address me again, I don’t want anything to do with someone who can write that sort of things.

@Giorgio
It was just my idea of a joke…;-)

Awwww, 03 won’t be able to deploy her “rape tripmine” trolling shtick here :'(

@ Peter Watts

“If I got mugged in Bucharest, I’d hope you wouldn’t defend my actions if I went around spitting on every Romanian I encountered because “Romania hasn’t been fair to me”.”

But it’s not the same. Requiresonlyhate doesn’t attack every white man. She lashes against those writers (women included) who make light of abuse topics. The equivalent would be you getting mugged in Bucharest and then spitting on the Romanians who consider a triviality that foreigners are mugged. I would defend your actions in that case, if you’d need someone to translate curses in the native language.

“But this isn’t about demographics: this is about one-on-one.”

I got that impression too. But to me it isn’t, and I suspect there are many others who are not personally involved. This is how I see what happened:

Requireshate happened upon a book, read a few pages, discovered it made light of rape/sexual abuse, and attacked it as that blog does to books like that. Even, as I said before, books written by women authors. Some months after that, the author of the book decided to retort and he wasn’t convincing and stirred a storm of comments.

“I find it rich that she can so easily discount the views of those who actually know the person she’s attacking, on the grounds of “white male privilege” (which is, I suppose, more respect than she accorded Caitlin’s views, which she simply ignored). I find it rich that you can excuse this behavior on the grounds that “life hasn’t been fair” to her.”

I can believe he is a nice guy, or that Requireshate is written by a privileged person, but that doesn’t mean anything to me in the context of the discussion about his book, how he uses rape narratively, and how he decided to talk about it.
I work in theater. It’s not a solitary thing, like writing. Theater is lots of people spending lots of time together. We make friends, lovers, etc. But I never hear someone saying hey, X is a nice guy to have a beer with, has a good personality, this means he can’t screw up a project. It doesn’t work as an excuse. In theater. How is it different for writers?

If I wrote somewhere that I’m excusing her behavior I expressed myself wrong. I wouldn’t do that because it’s not my place to do that. I was only trying to explain the perspective of the blog. I understand you find what Requireshate does as being unfair, but Requireshate finds what some writers do with topics of sexual abuse as unfair too.

Just curious, Peter – do you seriously see nothing wrong with telling the world that a character in your books was modeled after a real life person who was a victim of abuse and that you [Ed. redaction after the horse has fled the barn], all without requesting or receiving her permission?

Does she know you’ve done this? That you connected ‘abuse victim’ with [Ed. redaction after the horse has fled the barn]? Because that seems to be a lot worse than not asking her permission to model a character after her; that’s basically telling the world that this specific person was abused or victimized without their consent.

If she did tell you that it was fine to connect the dots to your audience, that’s another thing. I hope that’s the case; many people do not want that kind of publicity or discussion about their abuse or surviving it to the general populace, much less from a third party – and from my completely uninformed position that’s exactly what it looks like happened, albeit inadvertently.

something akin to that sort of Tourette Syndrome that causes people to not merely curse, but to utter the worst possible curse at the worst possible time to the worst possible people.

This is high praise.
Thank you sir!

I pride myself on my ability to outrage silly people!

Peter,
Welcome to my world. Sometimes, doing what you KNOW is the “right” thing just blows up on you, and you find that in your defense of what you know is an injustice opens you up to trolls and personal attacks. Just hold your head up high and keep on keeping on. Don’t take anything too seriously, because it will just make you crazy. The real world is just this… people suck. It’s easy to sit back and play armchair quarterback. It’s easy to read comments, dissect them, and criticize for the sake of spite. The secret, my dear friend, is to keep in sight the fact that you proactively did the right thing. The shitstorm that befalls you after the fact is irrelevant. You have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning. You have to live with you. It’s easy to sit back and do nothing. I could have walked out of a certain courthouse and never looked back. That would have been EASY. It wouldn’t, however, have been RIGHT. People might not have liked what I had to say, but how can they judge fairly, not having been there themselves? You have a personal relationship with this man. You KNOW him. How can someone have the audacity to even attempt to judge the man having never even met him?
Dude, you do have the tendency to attract some real winners, don’t you? Good luck to you.

@Peter: I hope you informed her that this happened as well; it’s good to know that you’ve been outed, especially for safety’s sake.

@03 – There is alot of space between prudent and being overly -scared.

If you would, please do not tell women that they are being little silly worriers for having a careful clear eye about the capacity and desire of men to do violence to them. It does a disservice to everyone. Thanks!

“Yeah. Because the fact that Caitlin and I (oh, wait, that’s right — you folks keep forgetting that Caitlin weighed in on this first, for some reason) both actually know the man in question is completely irrelevant to any defense of his character. Someone who’s never met Bakker — someone who, it turns out, lives on the other side of the world — is more qualified to assess Scott’s character by simple virtue of not being “white” or “Canadian”. Or “male” (ah, but there’s Caitlin again, fucking with the narrative; better just ignore her). The only valid character witnesses are those who’ve never met the defendant.
Also, I didn’t know acm was either Thai or lesbian. All I could infer from her blog, at the time I wrote the post, was that she was full of hate. All I’ve inferred since is that she’s an asshole given to lies and personal attacks.”

@Peter Watts

There are problems here. I’m interested in a clear dialogue, so I hope you’ll be patient. If I err on the side of verbosity, it is partly because I’m not willing to cut corners.

I haven’t commented on Caitlin, because I’ve not read her post and she is not *you.* She is not a he, in fact, and that’s important. I’ll be happy to discuss her points, after I’ve read them.

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that knowing someone in real life can cause both bias in favour of supporting them or even failing to see their faults, and more importantly, is only *at best* of secondary importance when discussing whether an author’s work contains problematic elements. Such the misogyny in Bakker’s books. I don’t think it can be argued away. Explained, perhaps, as authorial intent, a thought experiment gone wrong (or right if you see if from Bakker’s point, I don’t, nor is it all that’s wrong with them), but not expunged. I don’t feel that using misogynist writing and world building in the form that it takes in Bakker’s books, is either a logical or an effective way to fight it – which has been my primary understanding of his own explanations for the not unfrequent and persistent reading of these issues in his text. Not his *life* but his text and in his comments on his own blog and elsewhere, regarding it.

Proportional reaction vs. positions of authority here are fundamentally unequal. There is not parity between you and acrackedmoon. Even if we can not validate beyond doubt (and *needing* to is another issue, which I’ll touch on in due time, because it is important) acrackedmoon’s ethnicity, nationality, or gender – we certainly can in the case of you, R. Scott Bakker, and Pat of Pat’s Fantasy Hostlist. All three of you are male, white, and North American. Two of you are successful authors with a sizable following, the third has a huge and popular website with many vocal followers. At to this the well documented inequality among genre fans, and you no matter what invective is flung your way, however personal you view these attacks on a fellow colleague or yourself, are in a superior position.

Therefore it behooves you to tread very carefully. To err on the side of caution. Not to demand that someone who if their identity is as claimed, is far more liable to suffer rape threats and ill treatment from a far larger potential group both in RL and online. Someone who is in fact well aware of this inequality in power and whose very modus operandi screams out ample anger and pain about this situation. That they’re not willing to “take crap” or speak politely or softly, or post their photo and home address, is not only understandable, but necessary if their voice is going to come close to getting out there, over your own.

Under such circumstances, and where some posters have used all these points to attack acrackedmoon in ways you wouldn’t see if they were for example, you, I think your wading in defending Bakker should be seen with a large caveat. Not that you are not *entitled* to speak your mind, but any declarations that Bakker’s detractor in this case is a diseased animal, is really at least as repulsive if not more when we consider the lack of parity, as anything voiced by acrackedmoon, I believe.

I have some more to say, but I’ll have to continue this later. But I do hope you’ll at least read and think about the points which I’ve raised.

N.B. May contain all sorts of typos.

Decided to repost (since it kinda vanished)

If doublepost happens, may Peter delete it 🙂

Hljóðlegur, I have specifically quantified “get under your skin to the point of considering a perfectly safe verbal transaction to be a form of “encroachment” in order to avoid this (sadly, all too typical) response.

I do, however, disagree with your characterization of response outlined in the “Shrodinger” post as “clear” since the list of alarming characteristics of males and locations does not appear to be informed by modern research (at least by modern American research I am aware of).

Also, the whole concept of “shrodinger-anything” reeks of paranoia.
By same token males could treat their same-sex peers as “shrodinger murderers” and “shrodinger gay-rapists” (and while obliviously dropping the soap in an obviously tense situation is of course unwise, there obviously has to be some reasonable limit on concerned behavior)

Full disclosure:
I grew up in a criminalized neighborhood in a non-Western country. Also was a member of, shall we say, “physical goods relief” service for quite some time.
Also, to a very large degree, I, shall we say, lack psychological aversion to pain.

That might greatly color the way I perceive concerns of my American sisters ;).

03: Don’t take this the wrong way, but there is nothing reassuring about having a former criminal advise me that I need not keep my wits about me so as to avoid becoming a victim of crime. If you see what I mean?

Hljóðlegur key word being former, why not ?
You sure lack the ability to think like a criminal :p (Though for such discussion, a former rapist might be of more use than me…assuming that a rapist can, at some point, become “former” of course)

Some notable pullquotes in my estimation:

Hljóðlegur: “Personally, I don’t see why anyone should be required to scrape off an abuse layer to get to an argument kernel beneath, on the perky hope one exists. It’s one thing to state poorly, to let emotion or hyperbole overcome you when you’re typing, but is the whole rage critique thing even about pearls of wisdom? Or is it about letting someone else express our uncivil thoughts so we don’t have to?”

Saajan Patel: “Whatever one’s opinions on Moon, it’s hard not to be troubled when people don’t shift priorities to call out those who use her as an example of why minorities, women, or other historically marginalized groups can be dismissed out of hand. It feels to some, however unintentional this might be, as tacit agreement that one only wishes to tolerate such groups when they behave themselves”

Hljóðlegur: “So. um, who here has actually read the book in question? Anyone, anyone? Bueller?”

Saajan Patel: “Inspired means taking perhaps a small bit of RL and using it as the seed from which to grow a character. There might be recognition, but not on the level of feeling like your privacy was violated.
As far as I can tell from what Peter wrote he did the latter, not the former.”

In other news I hate you all: “When you write for an audience, you must do so with the expectation that some people may not enjoy your work.”

Saajan Patel: “So, to even enjoy a problematic work is to believe you yourself are being accused on something. Which, possibly, you are. But I think this pariah status towards -isms gets people to earnestly defend themselves, while sometimes the better thing to do is to ask if the charges make sense.”

Peter Watts: “I’m surprised that you seem to have forgotten what this whole thing was originally about, which was not the book (again; Caitlin commented on that). This was simply someone who knows someone else, defending him from unjustified character attacks leveled by someone who didn’t. And I stand by that defense.”

Peter: “I was angry because someone had accused me of trivializing sexual violence; I was trying to show that I didn’t do that, and I fell for the feint. I should have put more thought into it.”

gah…examine fiction from a variety of different perspectives!

For a general taste, here’s winterfox arguing that all of YA is ‘dumbed-down shit’, which she knows because she’s never read any YA.*

*Correction: Rarely reads any YA

It all seems so much angels on the heads of pins..these discussions. Nothing of real value.

Why care about feelings of other people?.. if you can make them obey you?
Why care about justice, if order is easier to achieve and does almost the same?
Why take care not to offend people, who are not even wrong?

How about you commenters stop counting them, get back to your work, eh?
Procrastination is not a good habit.

Do you have evidence women pre-emptively mace men? Like, on a regular basis? I’ve never heard of that happening, actually. I don’t carry mace anywhere I would ever expect to use it on people, myself.

And, my worldview doesn’t include being preemptively afraid of men…as discussed above. Did you read that part? So, I guess it is possible to agree with this stuff without being afraid of one’s own shadow. YMMV, which again, the point of this whole thing.

I notice that you haven’t answered my question about hitting on strange women in public. Too bad, I’m kinda interested in that, actually.

It’s true that proto-rapists probably aren’t going to change their ways in response to this, but if you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that this is a response to men who…just…don’t seem to understand why women might not like/be comfortable with/feel they should have to deal politely with the attentions of men 24/7. It also contained some humour/hyperbole. Men whose behaviour doesn’t set off women’screepometer? Are unlikely to need this advice. Hint: I posted this because someone suggested that criminal prosecution of men caught sexually harrasing women was somehow a slippery slope that would lead to any (all?) men being punished (by jail?) for “crassness”. He didn’t provide any evidence that happens, but if you have some, by all means…

As for rape prevention, try google…people have been telling women things THEY should do to stay safe from rape for a very long time. This hasn’t worked out very well, makes women overly fearful and contributes to the idea that women are somehow responsible for their own rapes/unsafe in public. I think it’s pretty interesting that you think cautioning men is somehow going to cause the same problems when it’s pretty much the opposite approach.

Do the world a favor, crawl back under a rock, you despicable excuse for a human being. And don’t address me again, I don’t want anything to do with someone who can write that sort of things.

@Giorgio
Humanity is overrated. Here at Neue Sparta we found out that merciless & rational inhumanity yields far superior products than old-fashioned humanity.

@PW

Reposting Naue to ROH. For lulz and experiment.
Does the troll have enough guts, or will she delete it?

Will she try to out-troll Naue? In that case, she is utterly, utterly screwed.

Um, I’m a little slow sometimes, and it only just now occurs to me that I may have unintentionally misled people with my chosen moniker (which was meant to accompany my silly first post and picked in commemoration of a certain wordy blacksmith from Whiterun ). So, for the record, I am a white nerdy male and you may now call me Adrian. Sorry if “Adrianne” confused anyone.

Yukon Val wrote:

Do you have evidence women pre-emptively mace men? Like, on a regular basis? I’ve never heard of that happening, actually. I don’t carry mace anywhere I would ever expect to use it on people, myself.

Humor/hyperbole. Her ball, which I picked up rolling and shot through the same hoop, as is good form.
Apologies, should probably had sprinkled some smileys around, I wrongly assumed the tongue-in-cheek in my comment was obvious.

And, my worldview doesn’t include being preemptively afraid of men…as discussed above. Did you read that part?

Yes, I even went out of my way both in starting and ending my post to make clear I didn’t get that ‘preemptively afraid’ vibe off your own comments, hence my being surprised you’d endorse and recommend this article that most certainly does sings that tune (to my ear).

So, I guess it is possible to agree with this stuff without being afraid of one’s own shadow. YMMV, which again, the point of this whole thing.

Yes, I guess it’s possible, since you do, yet I can’t quite figure out how, and I’m not sure I can explain much better than I already did the obvious (to me) clash in worldviews I perceive between yours and those advocated in this article.
I guess we won’t be able to help each other resolve that apparent contradiction, then.

I notice that you haven’t answered my question about hitting on strange women in public. Too bad, I’m kinda interested in that, actually.

I thought I did (assuming we’re talking about cold unsolicited openings and out-of-the-blue offers/requests for the nasty), but I’m willing to go out on a limb and expand a bit on that.

First, some people seem to come with an either/or switch between self-awareness and horniness, and I’m in fact surprised we don’t routinely witness more cases of dry-humping lamp posts, mailboxes and public benches.
Second, since many/most people are taught (explicitly and/or mimetically) that men are expected to take the initiative in all inter-gender things (prince rescues the potted princess, guy falls on knee in restaurant to propose, they ride into the sunset on his conveniently double-seater horse, add any other cliche you love to hate), there is (typically) less cultural inhibition at play to stop a man from making a move, which means that, at equal horniness/drunkenness, many men will start making fools of themselves way sooner than the ladies.

Also, in some cultures, where socialization across genders is discouraged for all purposes but mating, cisgendered individuals on both sides of the aisle tend to have little clue and clumsily play by rote, ensuring the reinforcement of stereotypes and misconceptions by the repetition of horror stories (both told and experienced).
Add to that poor understanding of statistics, and you get such gems of wisdom passed among dudes as: “Hit on every woman you can, you’ll get told to fuck off 99% of the time, but you’ll nail the 100th chick.”
So one must assume there are guys out there who’re just out to kill ten rats, ten times, and who save that last, heartfelt blow for a very speshul womin’.
Who knows, really ?

It’s true that proto-rapists probably aren’t going to change their ways in response to this, but if you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that this is a response to men who…just…don’t seem to understand why women might not like/be comfortable with/feel they should have to deal politely with the attentions of men 24/7.

Well, I’m not a woman, and I’m not attractive enough as a guy to get hit on without some warning signs (like having been interacting for at least a few minutes with whoever is starting to consider making a pass at me), so I only know from hearsay and as third-party witness about the experience of women being routinely hailed like they were a street-food cart, and I suspect it would get old fast for me, too, were I in their shoes.

The problem with this article as I read it is it doesn’t do anything to help intergender relations by explaining men (or women) that women aren’t to be seen as ‘intercourse dispensers’, but rather tries and teach them better ‘customer etiquette’, like not banging on the bell when the rack isn’t on display.
I find that both counterproductive and focusing on the wrong message, but that’s just because I don’t endorse the preconception that men and women have to be in a state of war and the best a civilized society can hope for is a Geneva Convention on how to treat each other like morons according to rules.
Yes, I blame the self-help book culture.

It also contained some humour/hyperbole. Men whose behaviour doesn’t set off women’screepometer? Are unlikely to need this advice. Hint: I posted this because someone suggested that criminal prosecution of men caught sexually harrasing women was somehow a slippery slope that would lead to any (all?) men being punished (by jail?) for “crassness”. He didn’t provide any evidence that happens, but if you have some, by all means…

I don’t remember weighing either way on this specific argument, which I took to be both lacking and possibly trollish, but if I have to… I recall suggesting earlier to tar and feather those jerks who harass women, and while that was kinda in jest, I really do believe those individuals could indeed benefit from a good sit-down and remedial courses about not being a jackass and acknowledging their fellow humans as such, and not commodities or prey (see above).

Now, what exactly constitutes harassment is the crux of the issue: when is it good enough enough to tell the creep to bugger off, and when do you call the police, Alice ?
I suspect your take would be ‘the moment a woman feels harassed’, and I can grok that view, although I’d probably disagree with the leap between having cause to call for help, and being entitled to vindication, which is the (flawed) rationale underlying the crassness=>jail argument you rightfully took exception to.

As for rape prevention, try google…people have been telling women things THEY should do to stay safe from rape for a very long time. This hasn’t worked out very well, makes women overly fearful and contributes to the idea that women are somehow responsible for their own rapes/unsafe in public. I think it’s pretty interesting that you think cautioning men is somehow going to cause the same problems when it’s pretty much the opposite approach.

I didn’t argue, nor think, that cautioning men is going to ’cause’ problems, but I do think this article is counterproductive by its endorsing a gender war mentality and assuming the best we can do as people is tell mean they’re Shrödinger’s rapists and shouldn’t go out without a muzzle “for their own safety”.

To maybe shed a slightly different light on that discussion:
I won’t presume to know about your personal upbringing and grownup experience, but assuming you’re talking from a US resident perspective, I can see how my views could seem suspiciously naive and borderline idealistic to you: coming from a background where the boys vs girls mentality isn’t as ingrained in the culture, it was quite a shock to find on my first time in the US of A that merely hanging out with somebody of the other cisgender wasn’t on most people menu unless one party was very obviously gay or both were close relatives — something I found counterintuitive and frankly speaking, broken.

And yes, I do realize this, more than most other tired cliches, makes me a member of a privileged group, but I’d sooner see more people enjoy that privilege than feel guilty about my luck (which I don’t).

Hope this helps.

@Peter Watts

Ah, apologies if the comment threads were hard to follow. I know that LJ is kind of labyrinthine in its comment structure. The difficulty of the situation is that winterfox/pyroffenec deleted her Dreamwidth and LiveJournal.

When she deleted her LiveJournal, she selected the option that removed all of her comments and posts to communities from the site. So, every single post or comment she ever made is gone. So, since the wank was pretty big and recent over at LJ in fandom circles, people just *remember* that winterfox was also ‘Requires Only That You Hate’.

Luckily, I can prove the pyrofennec/winterfox/acrackedmoon link, because Dreamwidth does not auto-delete comments/posts.

Go to http://fantasy.dreamwidth.org/7242.html

The post is by pyrofennec. In the last two paragraphs of the main post, there are three links, which are links to “[her] review it in two parts”

“If this book is feminist, then I’m the Witch-Queen of Sparklepoo.” goes to

“Silver Phoenix and Fauxminism

Posted by acrackedmoon on February 4, 2011”

“On top of that, Cindy Pon can’t write.” goes to http://winterfox.livejournal.com/230505.html

“quotespam” goes to http://winterfox.livejournal.com/230948.html

In the comment thread of https://arsmarginal.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/silver-phoenix-and-fauxminism/ she replies as pyrofennec, speaking as the author of the post, which was labeled as posted by ‘acrackedmoon’. I’m assuming that what happened is that she was using a general wordpress ID to log in to make these posts, but replying under another name she goes by.

Googling pyrofennec brings up

http://www.blogger.com/profile/08287909874278102916

Googling pyrofennec also brings up this twitter exchange with Jim Butcher

https://twitter.com/#!/longshotauthor/status/89985714997051392

Which originally says @pyrofennec, but the top reply to now says @requireshate

I think that means a twitter rename.

So, that, I hope, provides some better linkage between the identities. 🙂

CAW! that’s some detective work there. Respects fly off 2 Red Fish

People here keep using the phrase “passive aggressive” in a weird way.

I’ll quote Cecil Adams here:

It’s true that if you look under “passive-aggressive personality disorder” (PAPD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the older editions–more about that below), you find the syndrome solemnly described as a “pervasive pattern of passive resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance.” But once you delve into the history of the term, you realize that–at least in the eyes of its critics–it’s mostly useful as a high-flown way to call someone a pain in the ass.

The term “passive-aggressive” was introduced in a 1945 U.S. War Department technical bulletin, describing soldiers who weren’t openly insubordinate but shirked duty through procrastination, willful incompetence, and so on. If you’ve ever served in the military during wartime, though, or for that matter read Catch-22, you realize that what the brass calls a personality disorder a grunt might call a rational strategy to avoid getting killed.

Is that what we mean here?

Ah, one more bit of evidence. Here’s a link to a requireshate blog post, which states

“Silver Phoenix and the Fauxminism
Sep19 by acrackedmoon

Note: this was originally posted at Ars Marginal, but I’m keeping a copy here for archival purposes.”

https://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/silver-phoenix-and-the-fauxminism/

So, that’s the acrackedmoon at requireshate @ wordpress claiming ownership of the blog post on Ars Marginal. So, the acrackedmoon @ requireshate is the same acrackedmoon @ Ars Marginal, and at Ars Marginal she was also posting as pyrofennec, which is the same person as winterfox.

So, that’s the last of my linkage that acrackedmoon = pyrofennec = winterfox

Best of luck to anyone who runs into her.

I meant even the part about [Ed. redaction].

Re: Adrianne

LOL don’t sweat it.

Arguments should not rely on one’s penis or lack thereof 🙂

Silly season.

Breaks my rotary pump heart to find out there is a bunch of people who agree with Ms.Cracked on something…

Lanius

How does your heart feel about “Sarah” 😉 ?

@ Peter Watts

Well, perhaps you might want to consider registration (I believe that you can manually create username/password pairs, which is about the same amount of fuss as approving comments, but has to be done once)
However, being ITSec dude I am uneasy with that, since that would mean you will need to take care with what privileges (lol 😉 ) the users get, and expose the login page which is considered a “fuck no NO NO” in wordpress circles (such attitude is somewhat justified, given how flakey and jury-rigged this thing is)

Alternatively, you might want to consider changing your spam countermeasure plugins.

I hear that a combination of Akismet (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/ ) and BWP ReCaptcha ( http://betterwp.net/wordpress-plugins/bwp-recaptcha/ ) works pretty decently. Cursory examination suggests that they are well maintained, and Gray Lines theme should work with BWP ReCaptcha out of the box.

P.S.:
Also, expect an email from the address I currently use for commenting fairly soon.

Well, whatever ACM might have intended with her vitriol, I’m pretty sure I just did the exact opposite: I bought one of Bakker’s books, and if I like it (and it seems that has a very high probability) I will be giving a lot more of my hard-earned money to the man.

To Above:

Without exception, I have found acrackedmoon’s criticisms of works I have read to be valid. That’s not to say I’m always in total agreement with her. I think the political interpretation of work can be limited. But all criticism, from
whatever angle, is limited. As is writing.

I wish you have grown up some place where men are not metaphorically emasculated by society in puberty or whenever.
You think it is okay for her to slander and insult other women on the net?

Imagine if a male writer did so.

Is Ms.Cracked a misogynist?Or a racist. Damned hard to find her being nice to anyone not ‘other’.

Think about that, and think about the utility of hate.

Ms.Cracked is a hateful purveyor of toxic insults with no original insights.

I have no issue with her criticism. Let her criticise.

I have issue with her being a vile, nasty person, whose writings are as hateful as the best bile Ms.Rand has ever vomited out through her typewriter.

Ya know, I think the reason why Lan dislikes ACM so much is because they have lots of traits in common. I won’t be surprised if he eventually turns out to be a Thai lesbian posing as Czech male or something…

Also, I am reasonably confident that I did not sink down to calling people names around here, even when said people are douches. So please don’t sweepingly over-generalize 😀

Moon and some of these other people are neoliberal as is the notion that if you eliminate something from language it will disappear in *real* fucking life in full goddam defiance of genetics and learned behavior that has nothing to do with godsdam SFF but rather sonny taking his cues from dear old dad (who provably never picked up a SFF book in his life). Let’s just call rape “rapid reproduction” and be done with it (a neoconlike solution that’s really close to being the same thing). Those are both Orwellian.

And anything she says is justified because it attacks white males (observe the continued discussion in the Bakker thread over there…Assange is guilty of rape without trial because he’s a while male, for example). That’s both racist and sexist.

(That said, when the neoliberals get 1/10th as much influence as the neoconservatives, I’ll worry about the “word police.” It’s like another faux “even” kind of thing that shitty journalists enjoy inflicting on thinking people, eg, climate change science vs. climate deniers getting equal coverage even though the latter has denial, stupid and greed as it’s three main ingredients. Ralph Nader wanting you to be forced to wear a seatbelt just doesn’t compare to David Koch wanting to be free to give you cancer as a by-product of doing business. Or does it?)

Red fish has done an outstanding job of outing ACM as other personalities to be the troll entity it is. As did the person who linked the screenshots where the name differs (a trick she herself has used on her blog).

I’d like to add to the debunking: If you are quick and she doesn’t change it…go back to her very early posts on the ROH blog…the one about AVATAR and Jim Cameron (where she seemingly actually threatens his life) should suffice and I do believe the pyrofennec (or some variation thereof is how she/he/it caps off the post.

Scratch that, she’s changed it now. It used to be signed off in the early days of her blog like ~pyrofennec or some such. I noticed it around the time of the Pat’s hotlist thing as I dug for info on the trolling.

At any rate, like someone way upthread said…some people just want to watch the world burn. The reason you can’t find any decent arguments with the ACM entity where she/he/it refutes anything in a proper debating type of way is that is not the goal at all. The goal is to cause upset. The equivalent of an internet terrorist, ACM exists to cause panic, upset and anger. The best 4Chan troll ever is MHO.

I will leave ACM and her sub-personalities like Sean Wills and Sanjeel (who we are aware are also ACM, you’re not fooling anyone) with the following wisdom from Morgan Freeman:

“Morgan Freeman says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is “ridiculous.”

“You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

Black History Month has roots in historian Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, which he designated in 1926 as the second week in February to mark the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Woodson said he hoped the week could one day be eliminated — when black history would become fundamental to American history.

Freeman notes there is no “white history month,” and says the only way to get rid of racism is to “stop talking about it.”

The actor says he believes the labels “black” and “white” are an obstacle to beating racism.

“I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” Freeman says.”

Morgan Freeman = so much win.

@PW
Encyclopedia Dramatica has an article about winterfox and her kin..
http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/index.php?title=SF_Drama&oldid=228676

@Kalon. Doesn’t fly? You truly believe that I need your approval to make a statement in which I believe that ACM has alter ego’s (a number of them have already been exposed and proven with evidence, see upthread)?

What on earth?

How are you even allowed to use the internet with a mentality like that? I’ll tell you what, those britches might be a tad big for you. You can keep digging your hole here, but the further you go the more you are revealed and dissembled.

I have my belief that ACM is using MANY alter ego’s in her “narrative of rage” (I love how Peter noted that is what it is) and quite frankly if you don’t like that, you can lump it.

Oh, but I must note the huge plot hole in your arguement about her not being Sci as an Alt…and I bloody well quote…”he openly has disagreed with “her” ” Excuse me while I fall off my chair. While it is clear that ACM has constructed a troll identity, she would also need a foil to go up against, keep discussions going where her main alt of ACM won’t go, and so Sci is introduced as a dissenting voice (who still agrees with her). It’s all part of the “narrative” and it’s fairly ridiculous and transparent at this point. Like I already said, I hope ACM has enjoyed its 15 minutes, because it’s over now.

My second fave thing today. When this Watt’s post started ACM had 88 twitter followers….she now has 60. It would appear as if 28 people came to their senses. That just made my day.

@PW
Was a decent nude picture, not naked. (lol)

Spoofing IP’s is possible. Easy to do.
With a little effort and a little cash, one could have private relays all over the world so one would be able to sit at home and post stuff that would appear to come from different parts of the net…

Also, my manic state is dampening, so I won’t be filling up your server drives with superfluous posts..

@03: “Generally, refusing to read past a certain point but still implying possession of an informed opinion is silly. There are books I never finished. I don’t comment on them. That would be just stupid.”

I agree. And ACM didn’t. She stated she had read only the first few pages, found a rape there, had heard there were problems with rape in the rest of the book and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. This is very explicitly stated. And it appears that you do object to talking about that too; to me, that doesn’t make sense. A lot of people happily commented how they couldn’t get past the rape in Thomas Covenant, and I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. It isn’t the same thing as saying that the books are horrible or the books are…well, anything. Just that you didn’t read past a certain point because it bothered you and you moved on.

“There might be Thai-specific context I am not aware of (maybe Thai people only use “rabid” and “animal” as descriptors for women), but where I sit, neither “rabid” nor “animal” is a gender-specific or ethnospecific slur.”

Comparing PoC to animals is a very old slur. I’m actually kind of shocked you don’t understand this. Here’s the first google result I found for googling ‘black people as animals.’ It’s a pretty big website.

“I’d say calling someone misogynist without proper evidence being laid out is pretty much as bad as a racist slur, if not worse.
Being target of racist slurs does not itself constitute any kind of “character flaw” when viewed by a non-racist third party. Being ascribed misogynistic properties kind of does. It’s like a very mild form of libel.”
So is being called an asshole. Or a dick. Or a douchebag. None of them have the cultural or emotional baggage that racial slurs have.

And I’ve seen no reasonable claim put forth that being labeled a misogynist by an internet blog causes any actual harm, financial or otherwise. Plenty of misogynists get tons of money – some BECAUSE they’re misogynists, others because people don’t care. And in this specific case many people commented that they hadn’t heard about Bakker until this but now will be picking up his books. So…yeah. If you want to equate any sort of namecalling to libel but are fine with people using racial slurs, I simply don’t understand you.

“I think Mr. Morgan Freeman addressed it best.
Racism against whites does not in any way counteract racism against anyone else.

You either judge people on the merit of their performance, or you’re some kinda racist/sexist/etc. animal (see what I did there?) ACM happens to be on the racist/sexist side of the debate, just has somewhat atypical preference groups. ”

And here’s the privilege argument. Racism without power is not as big a deal. When she calls a white person a honky, do you think that person thinks about a time they were beaten? Or denied a job? Or when their parents were terrorized? Probably not. She does it to provoke, but the central notion that all racial slurs is equivalent is not in my mind reasonable. It is reasonable when we’re starting at the same point, when there isn’t institutional and systemic prejudice, when everyone can be judged on their merits and there isn’t that baggage. That’s not where we are, and ignoring that – thinking that the fight is won, that we’re all good now – is a problem.

This is a very common argument – one detailed heavily in derailingfordummies.

“Oh, but I must note the huge plot hole in your arguement about her not being Sci as an Alt…and I bloody well quote…”he openly has disagreed with “her” ” Excuse me while I fall off my chair. While it is clear that ACM has constructed a troll identity, she would also need a foil to go up against, keep discussions going where her main alt of ACM won’t go, and so Sci is introduced as a dissenting voice (who still agrees with her). It’s all part of the “narrative” and it’s fairly ridiculous and transparent at this point. Like I already said, I hope ACM has enjoyed its 15 minutes, because it’s over now. ” yeah, this still strikes me as hugely paranoid. I guess if you want to believe that every troll also has an army of commenters that are disagreeing with them or agreeing with them, that’s on you.

Subhuman is a pretty loaded term. It was applied by Nazis and others to Poles and other Slavs as well as Jews. If ACM goes around throwing it at random white people, she might just end up being a “real” racist despite her best efforts to only injure those who “deserve” her abuse.

@Karon – Sigh.

A. I’m not scared of anything, or even paranoid. How my assumption that a person like ACM has aliases (which it does have in Pyrofennec and Winterfox) somehow equates, in your head, to me being “paranoid” about it sort of baffles me. I simply assume ACM has aliases and uses them to advantage (perhaps even from different IP addresses)…nothing further. Let’s get one thing quite straight, what ACM does or doesn’t do…affects me IRL not one bit. That doesn’t mean I’m going to keep quiet when I think it’s going on.

B. ANYONE who claims that they can establish the meaning behind/story told of a book they read 6 pages of…is standing on a house of cards. Not having actually read TDTCB in its entirety REMOVES any and all notion that ACM has a right to claim anything about the work as a whole other than “I read the first 6 pages and was offended by a rape” That is all ACM can feasibly, and honestly say about the work or its perceived notions of the author. That would be like watching fight club and stopping it 10 minutes in and then crafting a blog post about how Jack associating with Tyler Durden in a club where they punch each other is a bad idea. That would be beyond silly and pointless to do because other than missing the KEY point about the characters, said person would also miss the point of the entire film (which only comes at the end). I would understand someone who said, “I couldn’t watch fight club, as I was bothered by *insert complaint hear*”…but if that same person attempts to GUESS what the point was, and make baseless assumptions on hearsay and write a blog post about it…you can be DAMN sure I’ll take that person to task, because that is idiocy of the highest rank.

C. ACM uses a certain tone and quote various websites AD NAUSEUM, amongst those are things you’ve said like “derailing for dummies”, or the notion that “When she calls a white person a honky, do you think that person thinks about a time they were beaten? Or denied a job? Or when their parents were terrorized?” those are ACM’s arguments. So either you are ACM, or you are a very good parrot who peddles the same tripe in the exact same way, with the exact same arguments. Either way, congrats on being the worst kind of follower.

D. I enjoyed how you quote the thing about Morgan Freeman, and then pointedly ignore what it stands for in your rebuttal. Classic politician-style avoidance there. For someone who claims to be educated, you are certainly in the dark about what “privilege” actually is. Probably as blind about it as ACM is. ACM absolutely loves to talk about “the West” or “westerners”….meanwhile many Asian countries China and Japan being big examples, are VERY developed, and in some cases are even more developed than North America. Japan has developed socially light years ahead of North America in fact. Japan is NOT the West. Though it is developed. They have virtually eliminated poverty in Japan, because even the poorer places in the country are still living a middle-class type of life. Hell, I know a guy who’s job was simply cleaning streets, and he made next to nothing…but he still found a way to live happily. China rides a different line due to its gov’t, but it is no less developed or privileged. In fact, it could not be the superpower it currently is without being so. So how about ACM tells me again about “The West” being privileged and the East is not. Look, everyone strives to live well. Everyone tries to be happy, and yes in some situations people have to live shitty lives due to location or circumstance, but a truly educated person would be aware that this sort of thing happens all over the world in every country. It is the attempt to rise above it that should be championed. Look at Martin Luther King. One of the smartest and most influential men to ever walk the planet, and if someone slapped him in the face or called him names, threatened him or denied him things he simply stood it, rose above it and acted peacefully. Because he was smart enough to know that violence and retribution was not the answer.

From an MLK speech about the Vietnam war:

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight
Because my conscience leaves me no other choice
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war
This way of settling differences is not just
This business of burning human beings with napalm
Of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows
Of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane
Of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields
Physically handicapped and psychologically deranged Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.”

Here was a guy protesting one of the most heinous wars that the U.S. ever got involved in (something they should not have done IMHO), but does he do it by being vengeful, or calling people names, or using slurs against those that would slur him? No, he certainly does not. He does it by using his smarts, by appealing to basic human decency. Did he stop the war? I thin he had an effect on the U.S pulling out…but most of all he is now a yardstick (like Ghandi before him) of a human being being clever enough to see the way forward is not through violence, nastyness or retribution.

So do me a big favour and stop trying to use “privilege” as an argument. It simply doesn’t work. Worse, it makes you no better than those you attempt to rail against. It makes you biased to a point of view that is so skewed, it baffles me.

Again on Morgan Freeman’s point…using the short form “PoC” is the worst thing ever. This abbrev. and the phrase it stands for is EXACTLY what is wrong with your and ACM’s entire schtick. The minute you mention color at all, you immediately load the argument. It’s a tactic that is on purpose in ACM’s case (it’s also 1st year textbook psychology for anyone willing to look it up). For someone to argue about racism and attempt to come across as legitimate in that argument dismisses themselves entirely by noting color at all. The whole point is we should be trying to get rid of color as a descriptor. I don’t care if people are vermillion of skin, I don’t call any of my friends by a color (I have a diverse group of friends). So when ACM attempts to sound altruistic and further attempts to stand on some sort of high ground, but then uses the abbrev. PoC every few sentences (and ACM uses the term to denote themselves)…to me that simply shows the type of person ACM is and that is the type who loads their statements to get a rise, and is actually worse for the fight against racism than those ACM rails against.

Probably ACM’s favorite thing in ACM’s arsenal of hate is the fact that she is nasty about men in general…but enjoys pointing out that a lot of her followers are men. What I say to that is: There are a lot of idiots in the world, she found a few to follow her.

Lastly: I don’t know if ACM needs to inform herself of her own country, but Thailand has always had a monarchy (if that’s not privilege, I’m not sure what is), and has been home to some of the greatest (and wealthiest) empires the world has ever known. It was so rich in the middle ages that the Khmer Empire (which occupied parts of Cambodia and Thailand, most notably at the compounds Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom) was sought after by Western explorers for its wealth and culture. Thailand (like China and even Korea and Japan) comes from a rich history of culture and wealth. Hell, Mongolia ruled by the Khan’s is to this day the largest empire the world has ever known, and beget the Yuan Dynasty, and the latter Chinese dynasties. If anything, those Dynasties are some of the most exorbitant and wealthy era’s that have ever existed in history. Empires and wealth ebb and flow, wax and wane. It’s the way of civilization. So to stand and complain that the “west” is “privileged” and therefore we ought to all be roundly and frequently chastised for being born into a country in an era where we are experiencing a modernity and a wealth (similar to those of the ancient past), is the most ludicrous notion ACM perpetrates as justice.

What if they made an excuse, a straw man out of fear of and relative lack of education about Islam, turned it into the 21st century version of the Salem witch trials?

You are not saying on the ‘crawl that Islam is not a bunch of dangerous bullshit that is especially hard to reform since it’s adherents categorically state it is the word of god, no matter how badly translated and incomprehensible it is. (read somewhere that people do not understand 20% of the verses)

Here, a German scholar on it

My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Koran claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or ‘clear,’ but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims—and Orientalists—will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—if it can’t even be understood in Arabic—then it’s not translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not—as even speakers of Arabic will tell you—there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on

I think that we should establish that MLK pointed out when he was alive that he was happy with his own existence. He was striving for change and was seemingly willing to be a martyr to do so, which was a partial reason that he (like others) refused to go about with bodyguards everywhere. I think that MLK was actually what psychologists would deem as self-aware. He was at the top of that pyramid of existence where he knew what was required of him.

t’s similar to how the Japanese view death. They view it as a part of life, but don’t treat it the way the rest of the planet does. To the Japanese, death is a part of life and they accept it. You would be hard pressed to find a Japanese citizen who had not already come to terms with their own existence and its inevitable end at an early age. It’s one of the reasons a film/book/manga like Battle Royale has no problems with the censors over there, since they don’t view death or violence as something that they need to prevent people from seeing, as those are both parts of life. I mean, in feudal Japan the ultimate way to show simple “shame” or “dishonor” was to kill yourself. Only self-aware people who accept death can do that sort of thing and not think twice.

MLK is not with us today because he died a martyr’s death and is a huge reason that the civil rights movement in the US has actually progressed to where it is today. Is there still racism in the States? Yes, but it’s more pockets of people in every town/city, than this carte blanche canvas that someone like ACM seems to want to paint the world with. Quite frankly I think MLK would have seen his own sacrifice in the name of the civil rights movement as a small, but terrible price to pay to get us here.

Sadly, when it comes to Islam, the US and other places allow the local media to embellish and lie about it. Politicians are no help either in that regard. What IS great is that I see our youth actually informing themselves of Islam and its tenets, as well as other religions and cultures. This is something their parents flat out refused to do. We have bred a generation that no longer takes Newspapers, and the nightly news as the de-facto information source of truth. No, these kids are going out and learning about other cultures. I have a few friends that are Muslims and they are always bemused by the way the NA media paints them a lot of the time, and I actually get into the same discussion with people about how MOST Christians haven’t the foggiest clue that their religion is essentially the same religion as Islam, and Judaism (aka they all believe in the same master god …(God, Allah, and Jehova are all the God Of Abraham) and the ONLY difference is the prophet who brought the tenets to the people (Jesus, Mohammed, or Moses). It seems ridiculous then for the politicians and media to find zealots and showcase them. My advice to all of NA would be to do themselves a favor and get Al-Jazeera as an untainted news source.

It’s funny, one of my best friends is from Barbados and never in the 30 odd years I have known him and his family has race even entered into our lives. He’s not a black man, hell he’s not even a Bajan man, he’s MY FRIEND, and I don’t give a crap what anyone says, nothing stops him being that. He’s one of the best people I know and came from one of the most impoverished Caribbean countries, but you know what? Not once has he ever been someone to comment about “racism” because like Freeman he feels that drawing attention to it is part of the problem with making it go away. No, he simply lives his life. When he encounters racism I am sure it bothers him inside, but he never ever allows it to dictate what he does and who he is. He brushes it off and adds those people who show him a truly racist side to a list of people to ignore. Because fighting a truly “racist” person is not going to accomplish anything. It really isn’t. It’s funny, but no one ever asks where the whole idea of not feeding the trolls on the internet comes from…I am of the mind that it is an offshoot of the MLK, Medgar Evers, Ghandi type of passive act. Ignore the truly ignorant. Attempting to change the mind of , let’s say, a southern American racist person about black people…you will 99% of the time get NOWHERE. Anyone who thinks they will change that mind will be wasting their time. No, the young is where you need to stop it and the BEST way to achieve that is not in any anti-racist banter…no it is in educating kids on a worldly scale. You know why I became some interested in the civil rights movement? It’s because a teacher in highschool told me about a man named Fredrick Douglass, and gave me the quote I use to this day “Without struggle, there is no progress.” that statement is more true than anything when it comes to this topic. Douglass was one of the first to stand up and say no, but he wasn’t of the mind that violence, or retribution was the answer.

did you know that the majority of cities in the U.S. has some form of Martin Luther King Blvd.? There is also the holiday. One has to surmise from that sort of thing that not only is the public aware of the man, but respected him enough to have an effect. A black man is currently president of the U.S. and we’ve gotten to that in what? Less than 50 years? in a country where it took 100 to challenge that status quo of inequality and have it be noticed by a large portion of the U.S public. I’d say that someone IS listening, and that those that have died to support the cause…MLK included…achieved more than you give them credit for. That we could go from “cannot sit at the front of the bus” and “cannot use the same toilet” to “Leader of the U.S.” in less than 50 years is not only impressive, it’s staggering! Think about how progressive that is in comparison with 400 years of the Roman Empire where slaves were not only common place but utterly accepted en masse. I think it says something about the men and women who have died to prove the point. Yes, it’s horrible that they aren’t here today to celebrate that achievement, but we deify them in their absence and say “Thank you” to their memory.

I doubt that Galileo is aware in his grave what he gave us about our planet, as I doubt that William Wallace was aware at how fully he would unify his country and how they would not only overcome Edward II, but that Scotland would stay free for 800 further years from British rule. Martyrs are martyrs because of their sacrifice. More often than not the type of person who dies for a cause does so without the knowledge that what they do will have as big an effect as it does.

If I could be frank. I will not discuss rape in fiction. Rape in fiction is just that…fiction. Just because a man writes about something, does not mean he endorses it. that is as ludicrous as it gets. I don’t personally like Bakker’s work, but I’m not begrudging him telling the story he tells. why? Because it is just that, a story. The idea ACM puts forward about her notion that the only GOOD fiction on the planet addresses non-white and gay characters is ridiculous, and holds no water. Just becaus an author chooses to make character’s white and hetero does not make him racist or sexist. Just like when an author like Richard Morgan writes with a gay male protagonist in his fiction, he himself is not necessarily gay. He simply show that sexual orientation for the protagonist. Choice is choice and if ACM is going to harangue people about NOT putting in other ethnicities or sexual orientations, and complain about rape being present then ACM is deluding themselves about the state of the world. Rape exists, it has for centuries and still exists today. Is it horrific? Absolutely, inhuman even in my opinion…but that makes it no less a realism of the world we live in. ACM seems to loathe rape in fiction…a real and terrible facet of those sickened in humanity…but seemingly has no issues with murder or war being in fiction. Both are widespread in fiction but there is no issue there? why? Why is it okay to write about war and murder but not about rape? It seems counterproductive and even selective to single out rape in fiction simply because it has a sexual component, but be quite okay with death, murder and war.

I am not afraid to call someone out on racism ever. If it is true racism. In fact I once left a dinner with a family member after shouting down a racist family member on their blind and uninformed notions about the ethnicity of which they spoke (in this case, Islam). I told them in no unequivocal terms that if they EVER spoke to me again about that subject in any way, or I had heard that they voiced those racist opinions to my nieces and nephews that I would really come down on them. I don’t tolerate uninformed opinions ever, but I especially don’t come across as nasty for nasty sake, and I certainly wouldn’t bother to slur someone who had slurred. There is a dfifference between being passive and ignoring idiots and letting them know you won’t tolerate that behaviour. it’s a fine line, but I’m not going to pretend that what ACM does is helping the situation, and in fact ACM comes across as one of the most ignorant, and racist people I have ever heard of. It’s all there for everyone to see, and those that defend ACM simply reveal that they are unintelligent enough to buy into the rage.

“Why is it okay to write about war and murder but not about rape? It seems counterproductive and even selective to single out rape in fiction simply because it has a sexual component, but be quite okay with death, murder and war.”

Requires Love, this is because rape tends very strongly to be a gender-specific crime. It doesn’t have to be, and you don’t have to bring up all the studies of various places that men get raped – we can both acknowledge their existence and possibility and threat and move on. My view is that it’s used quite a lot, lazily, to define either a victim’s characteristics in a really lazy way (IE, a woman was perfectly normal and sweet and kind, but then rape happens and now she’s a ninja) or more often it’s used to define the protagonist through that victim – that a man’s girlfriend was raped, and now He Is Seeking Revenge, or He Is Really Sad. The complexities of rape experience and behaviors are glossed over. It’s just there, like flavor.

Now, we tend to be pretty happy about seeing warfare and whatnot and violence and whatnot. Not everyone – many people have that as a trigger – but most people judging from what humans seem to like in their entertainment. So it makes sense to depict warfare and violence. Does it make sense to depict rape the same way? Because if I’m reading you right you’re comparing the two and saying they’re equivalent, which doesn’t fit at all with my worldview.

@Peter Watts:
“His response was that you had to look at the work in its entirety to make that judgment. acm’s eat shit remark was explicitly designed to ridicule that argument: not to say I’m not up for it, or yes I might be missing out but I found it too unpleasant, as you’re suggesting. ”

Actually he was suggesting you have to look at the SERIES in its entirety. Not the single book. Because Bakker has stated repeatedly that there are twists to come, but until they do things are pretty grim and shitty for women. And we’re 5 books in. I know this because that was originally a response directly to me on the Westeros boards. The first book doesn’t get much better as far as misogyny and rape than the prologue, honestly. I know you haven’t read it, but it’s pretty horrible from that perspective.

Do you think that you need to read 5 books before judging? That seems completely absurd to me. That argument needs ridiculing. Yes, some people will be around for the payoff, but many won’t because of the choices he’s made to make the worlds he writes about so unrelentingly misogynistic. When you have child rape in your prologue, you have to accept that some people are just not going to want to read further. And yes, some will even call it a piece of shit, because their view is that books with child rape in them are pieces of shit. I don’t think that’s all that bizarre a concept.

“Okay, so the more the epithet separates the target from “Humanity”, the worse it is. Got it. Had it before, actually. Which brings us back to my original point: where does that leave us with a term like “roach”? ”

No, you’re still not getting it. The problem is that using animal terms from a white guy to describe PoC is problematic and has a lot of ties to racism in the US. As an example – both Bush and Obama were compared to and drawn as a simian; Bush to a monkey, Obama to a gorilla. One of those cartoons showed regularly in political commentary; the other was passed around via email and never was officially published. Why do you think that is? Which causes more offense?

As to insults: Bakker calling a woman ‘dude’ is another wonderful form of smackage from men towards women; there’s a long history of denying women their gender in that sort of thing (down to pronoun use). It’s a stupid thing for him to say and even worse to keep harping on like it doesn’t matter.

“It’s a completely different thing to state that it’s okay for one person to hurl whatever vile invective they like at another person and the other person has to just stand there and take it simply because they belong to different groups. One’s a statement of fact; the other’s pure bigotry. ” I don’t state that. You don’t have to take anything. However, you certainly also don’t have to stoop to various slams that are tied to privilege – I’ve stated multiple times that neither you nor Bakker deliberately intended to offend this way at least to start (Bakker certainly did and doubled down once he found out how demeaning it was, which again – stupid). By all means, call ACM an asshole. Call her a rude piece of shit. Call her a shitstain. None of these things, to my knowledge, have any specific connotation with privilege – just like her insults about you or Bakker did not.

“Not quite sure why you’re addressing this to me, Kalon. I never made any such claims. And to any who might be interested, judging by the IP addies Kalon is not acm and never has been. But FWIW it doesn’t really matter to me who makes these arguments, whether it’s a dozen people or eleven sock puppets; it’s the arguments themselves that matter.”

I addressed it to you because you can easily refute Requires Love’s paranoiac views; you can easily check and see if Sajaan’s IP is the same as Sean’s is the same as mine is the same as ACM. And I think it’s important, because honestly having many people argue the same point tends to be a lot more useful to understand than dismissing everyone as ‘that same guy’ and then suggesting that they’re just one crazy person.

@01: are you really the guy that brings in dictionary definitions to defend this? Are you really telling minorities that they don’t get to tell you when specific comparisons offend or are problematic?

Who said anything about urging people to die? I certainly didn’t. You may have missed my point. MLK became a martyr, not because he openly chose to…no my point was that his martyrdom was achieved after the fact. No one sets out to die, but there are those who are accepting of the fact that they may (if they continue the courser they are on, simply due to its inherent dangers). A man who goes into the mountains to take on a group of Guerrilla’s to save a hostage is aware that they might die. This is not a choice like your bizarre analogy to Bin Laden who sends men out to die as suicide bombers. First of all the mastermind is a coward, and those he sends out do not do it because they ACCEPT..they do it because if they did not then Bin Laden would have assumed they weren’t as attached to his cause of terror. The key difference is in the choice. MLK deciding to move forward with what he was doing, but being fully aware that it might cause his death, was selfless and brave. He caused no other direct deaths from this selfless act at all. If you truly feel that we are not that far ahead (seeing as you ignore my comments about Obama’s presidency) then I flat out DARE you to walk into a mall in the states and start screaming racial obscenities…and see how many of the public (white or otherwise) will take you down, or at least belittle you… you talk a great game about politicians…but ACM’s argument (and seemingly yours) is that the entire Western world can be painted with that brush. I’m saying that the MASSES have more sense than that these days. I’m saying that if you lined 20 people up at random, the amount of them who would tolerate viewing, or hearing racism would be a VERY small percentage. Compare that with 100 years ago and that number would be much bigger.

1930’s Germany…?! What the hell? I’ve been rather calm up to this point, but I’m sorry I see no genocidal madmen running a country. I see stupid policitians, but no genocidal madmen. that sort of thing simply COULD NOT happen today. Look at Guantanamo Bay. The horrific treatment of those POW’s lasted what? a few months? The very minute it got out, the entire place nearly got shut down. The public’s voice is louder than you think. We don’t live in a society that allows that sort of shit to go down. That you even think you could compare 1930’s Germany to now baffles me. Are the GOP hunting down one race, placing them in camps, gassing them, torturing them, experimenting on them? Sweet gods, no they aren’t

So do me a favor, don’t come in here and pretend for ONE GODDAMN second that today is comparable to the state of the world during the second world war! By doing so, you BELITTLE every last on of those men and woman that died in that war to bring about change. If you think we are no better off today, then I’ll simply point out …you aren’t living in a police state, you aren’t being gassed, you aren’t living in fear that your gov’t could hunt you down if you ever associated with another ethnicity. So my grandfather (who died in the war) will thank you for shutting your mouth about things that you clearly don’t know the first thing about! I’m frankly astonished that you would even ATTEMPT to say that today is anything like that. In a few sentences you prove that those people died for nothing in your mind, that who gives a shit because we aren’t any better off. Eff that, we are better off… simply by the nature that WE DON’T LET THAT SHIT GO DOWN anymore. If ANYONE on the planet attempts to behave like Hitler and the 3rd Reich did, the U.S. and other countries immediately stamp down on it. I hope you’re proud of that statement. I’m officially done with you, since you don’t even have a proper grasp on reality.

@ Kalon

I am tired of folks who just go and grab a word because they want.
I am not telling anyone about how they should feel about anything, but I bring up a dictionary because I am under no obligation to take non-dictionary definition seriously. Alternatively, I shall reserve the right to talk to people in my own fucking dialect of English and call them racist bigots (or perhaps squirrel-cabbages) when they roll their eyes at me.

If someone was abused in a manner that makes the word “animal” specifically problematic, they should sort this out with some kind of PTSD specialist, not demand that I accept a de-novo definition of a well-established word.

P.S.: Maybe my people should start calling themselves “kittens”. A lot of people have some kind of antisemitic shit going on, but majority of same people love kittens. If we call Jews kittens, maybe we will be more liked (at least by people who are not allergic to cats).

From now on, every time I mention a kitten, I may be very well referring to a fellow Jewish individual

So… Naue wasn’t all trololol after all ? 😀

Did you know that the Pope at the time issued a decree stating that the tenets of National Socialism (yes, at least it’s an ethos) were NOT INCOMPATIBLE with Catholicism?

And do you know that a still living former archbishop of the catholic church, a guy who snitched for the commies and then embezzled $25 million to pay off his former handler .. publicly fondly reminisced about the wartime Slovak clerofascist state?

The only state I know of that not only allowed Nazis to kill it’s jews.. they actually paid for each Jew that was transported away.

With money that was presumably confiscated from the Jews themselves.

And this man was for years the highest ranking member of the CC in Slovak Republic!

Actually, 01, let’s go with that dictionary stuff.

Let’s look up gay. Right now it’s often being used as a slur for something bad, and fairly heavily so. It’s also used as a way to call offense. Yet shockingly the dictionary doesn’t have that as a definition.

Do you think that all those folks out there using it are actually wrong? Or could it be that the dictionary does not capture all the euphemistic usages of words?

Finally, can you understand that who says a word matters as much as what it means as far as understanding the connotations? I know you despise the trick and think it’s widespread, but you also understand that it does, ya know, happen. Right? That no matter how much you dislike it, it still exists?

@Kalon

(Why? Why, am I doing this to myself I ask you…)

I think the dictionary folks are trying to do what some people are saying R. Scott Bakker should do (censor so that “it will all just go away”) and that it isn’t working. By not acknowledging that usage of the word, they are attempting to not give it legs.

But it has legs. Southpark uses it, IIRC. But I neither take much offense from Southpark using it nor do I think they should stop because *it’s fiction* and freedom of speech. It holds up a mirror to real life (and shows it be absurd at the same time) and that is one of fiction’s jobs.

Alternately, when I hear someone use it in real life in mixed company, I cringe. Still freedom of speech, but so is saying, “That’s offensive to me, please don’t use it around this gaming table because, for one, you are outnumbered… breeder.” 😉

Can you understand the difference between “in fiction” and “in real life”? Because that’s key. Besides, there’s the urban dictionary if you want to know the definition of, for example, ‘Hawaiian Bubble Fuck.’ Insults Hawaiians and women? Could be.

Maybe noting the words we use (instead of censoring them) is the important thing. It’s history and sociology. Censoring it in fiction is whitewashing it (and that’s a loaded term too).

(btw, kind of surprised that none of you have called out acm for using the term “cockroach” given that people are talking about terms applied to poc in the past. I don’t know if she did it in ignorance, or as a rhetorical device)

This is a good tactic for countering gay slurs:

TROLL: Counter-trolls are gay.
COUNTER-TROLL: …and?
TROLL: That means you like it up the ass.
COUNTER-TROLL: ..you have no idea how good that is..
COUNTER-TROLL: …and?
TROLL: That means you have a boyfriend you faggot.
COUNTER-TROLL: Of course I have.
And you’re a guy who has a restraining order against him and a porn stash the size of a mattress. Your point?
TROLL: …
TROLL: Fuck you.
*TROLL has signed off*
COUNTER-TROLL: Awesome, now I can wrap up my activity here in peace and quiet, go home, and sleep with my wife.

I think I speak for us all at this point, when I ask the one question, the thing that we all must be wondering right about now… How DID Lanius look naked?

“I think I speak for us all at this point, when I ask the one question, the thing that we all must be wondering right about now… How DID Lanius look naked?”

Um, pinkish? I think? Maybe?

@PW

Oh..blast!

So, from the defense of authors accused of misogyny to artsy photos of naked people in, what, only 287 posts?

I’m impressed in a weird way. Which in the end is really the best way to be impressed.

Yeah…. I’m sorta dating a brainy triathlete with ironman aspirations…. If I’ll train strength half as hard as she does endurance, I’ll be able to use these neat .50 BMG semiautomatic rifles with ease. (and even without much training, I can keep pace with her in running… perks of being male and tall)

She seems really keen to motivate me in other ways. I’m surprised. Who’d have thunk it?

For the lovers of baroque women, here’s London Andrews…

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fJytYNyWS8E/TslvyYMwjFI/AAAAAAAACnQ/plfucOCzN1A/s1600/london_a_3093.jpg

Those who like skinny artsy photos of nicely tattooed females…

Hope I won’t get banned for this..(@PW…. after all the crap from acm.. we really need a break.)

And here’s a nicely muscled young brunette who hasn’t mastered the art of camera timer..

———————————————————————-

So, what next? Seems like cracked people have left, what shall we do now in this thread?

Any loose ends worth discussing? I’ve been watching this thread.. but it’s kind of ..used up. More soot in here than in a crematorium chimney..

@ Y.T.

“So, what next?”

Post some more cute male pics ? Ya know, for equality and all that jazz

…sorry.. not NCO. An officer.. my guess is 1st Lt or something. Currently deployed to Hell..sorry.. Afghanistan.

@Kalon:

You assume I’m white.

I KNEW at one point someone who sided with CM would assume I’m white if I opposed their arguments.

I’m half Japanese.

So tell me again about ASKING a person of colour.

You think I wasn’t persecuted in Highschool for my background? You think I wasn’t threatened? My mother was phoned on a daily basis and her life was threatened because of racists at my school.

And yet I come down on the other side of the argument don’t i? Don’t assume that because I don’t endorse the type of insanity that people seem to be spouting here that I will support it just for having dealt with racism in my life okay? I dealt with racism in my own way, and that was NEVER the way ACM approaches it.

@Whoever:

I see you didn’t bother to read my post. I noted Gitmo because the minute it got out what was happening there it was SHUT DOWN. I’m not saying the US policitco’s and military leaders are blameless…I’m saying that the MASSES don’t allow that shit to go down once THEY find out about it. As a society we are no longer inclined to simply allow our govt’s and militaries to run ragged….we check them at every moment we can. That is the power of the age we live in, and THAT is why the atrocities of WWII won’t happen again. Because Gitmo and even Iraq and Afghanistan prove that the world is watching. In WWII the nazi’s got away with things because the world didn’t find out a lot of things till it was long too late. It was that very twitter trending that STOPPED Gitmo from existing. It was the public saying “No! That is NOT how we handle things” Are humans capable of atrocities? Absolutely. Are the billions of normal, well-rounded people on the planet going to allow that to happen now? no, not if they know about it…no.

Look at the riots in England. Entitled, shitheaded kids causing havoc and wreaking damage and injury everywhere…but because the world was immediately watching the British gov’t had to reign themselves in and not bust out the rubber bullets and fire hoses from the outset (something they probably should have done in hindsight) and don’t kid yourself that the ONLY reason that happened is because of the fact that if they had the media (and therefore the world populace) would have eaten them alive. It wasn’t until the thing had been raging for 4 days that they began to allow the prospect. That’s a progress, in a wold where only 30 years ago they’d have thought nothing of water canon trucks in the first ten minutes.

So DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT THINGS AREN’T DIFFERENT from WWII. To say so in the same paragraph where you mention twitter just makes you irredeemably naive.

IIRC, there was a now-deleted thread during the old LiveJournal firefights in which Winterfox (back when he was still calling himself Winterfox) came right out and ADMITTED that he was, in fact, a guy, who was deliberately trying to hurt feminism by taking kernels of legitimate complaints and acting like a gaping asshat just to make people with legitimate complaints look bad by association.

Of course, Winterfox doesn’t realize that MRAs/racists/Libertarians don’t NEED this kind of ammo in order to marginalize and dismiss feminism at large, they’re going to do that anyway, and forcing them to invent excuses would barely qualify as an inconvenience for them, so Winterfox is preaching to the choir.

Look at the riots in England. Entitled, shitheaded kids causing havoc and wreaking damage and injury everywhere…but because the world was immediately watching the British gov’t had to reign themselves in and not bust out the rubber bullets and fire hoses from the outset (something they probably should have done in hindsight) and don’t kid yourself that the ONLY reason that happened is because of the fact that if they had the media (and therefore the world populace) would have eaten them alive.

Speaking of that, would it have been ethical to allow shopkeepers use the same means as in LA during the ’90’s riots?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs

That is the power of the age we live in, and THAT is why the atrocities of WWII won’t happen again.

Gitmo was only Red Fish.. pardon me.. Red Herring. CIA still operates a deniable, secret network of prisons worldwide.

They still ‘torture’ people, though not that it’s not ‘torture’, if the aim is to extract information. And the torturers are not US gov’t employees but either some other country’s, or outsourced.

…but because the world was immediately watching the British gov’t had to reign themselves in and not bust out the rubber bullets and fire hoses from the outset

Gun owners whom I know spoke quite eloquently not in favour of rubber bullets, but simply shooting people who do so.

Because, frankly, looting and setting buildings on fire is attempted murder. I doubt the rioters checked whether no one was inside.

And nothing makes runaway, special snowflakes with delusions of immortality melt away faster than the sight of brains splattered all over the pavement.

Ordinary people, were scratching their heads and wondering where the hell is the British army, and how the fuck can they allow such kind of chaos in their cities..

I know, I spent some time asking. In no way a proper study, I just asked random people what’s their take on the UK situation.

I doubt any of you are familiar with the Roma situation in eastern Europe, but my bet is that once there is some kind of breakdown in government control(say, bankrupt state, riots against gov’t, economic crash), there will be well.. small scale, locally organised genocide against them. Or they’ll be rounded up, put onto cattle trucks and sold to whomever will pay, or whomever will take them.

Although most central Europans are decent people(look at the crime statistics), you’ll find very few people who would be willing to defend Roma, whom they don’t like, to the death.

Roma themselves are not able to unify. It’ll all end up in blood, because, there is no way in hell anyone is able to fix the situation before some gov’t runs out of money, antisocial Roma stop getting welfare and start freaking out, like a parasite that’s been deprived of it’s host.

By then, US will no longer be able to ‘project’ power, Roma don’t have no oil or geopolitical value. I expect everyone will tutt-tutt, huff and puff, but Germans nor the French won’t send troops to stop something most of their population would secretly applaud.

@Peter Watts: “I understand legacy issues; I agree they’re relevant. But honestly, I’ve seen and heard “animal” applied to people my whole life, and my best recollection is that it’s mainly been to folks who are white (southern rednecks, mainly). I have to agree with others who’ve posted here: it’s a pejorative that gets used way too often, in way too many contexts, to justify the race-specific weight you’d apply to it. “Roach” is also vile and dehumanising no matter who uses it (the Hutu/Tutsi thing being an extreme case in point).”

I think that’s reasonable. I think that if someone says that ‘this offends me because of its connection to terms x’ that perhaps instead of spending 50 posts using dictionary defintions to refute their offense you could simply apologize and use a different term?

Because here’s the thing, Peter – ACM is attempting to troll you when she does something like this. She isn’t interested in any special discourse with you. She’s not interested in your dialog while you’re questioning her. She just wants to provoke you into revealing what a racist you hypothetically are.

So why step into it? Why double down? Why not when confronted with this say ‘okay, I’m sorry I offended you; I didn’t mean to based on any racial connotations. You’re an asshole. Is that better?’ and just leave it at that. There! Problem solved.

Similarly,
“I too am a bit perplexed as to why he would keep using it, but not because I find it offensive; I find it entirely neutral. I frequently address mixed groups as “dudes and dudettes”, or even “fellow mammals”, and I know that “dude” generally connotes male, but then, so does the singular “guy”; and I often say “you guys” when I’m talking to a mixed group. I would have just assumed that “dudes” could be used the same gender-neutral way.”
Sure, it could be – against some random person. But it was clear that Bakker did know the sex and chose to do this because it would offend, and when it was brought up that this was problematic by people he kept on doing it.

I guess that’s the main point I keep bringing up in these things – who says something matters as much as what they say. The meaning of a word or a phrase has as much to do with who is saying it as the context it’s being said in. And yes, saying ‘the dude’ to refer to a woman isn’t necessarily bad; saying it to refer to a very aggressive feminist with anger issues is clearly a lot worse.

“Such words don’t gain their power because oppressors adopted them; oppressors adopted them because they dehumanise. The offence predates the group; and to my way of thinking, that makes them offensive no matter who slings them. I do not give acm a pass on this. ” I disagree completely. Words without power are just words. They’re just insults. That’s…well, that’s insulting, but it’s not powerful. Black people using the n-word is not the same as white people using it, and this is a core reason why.

I agree that they’re all attempts at dehumanization; I just don’t see them as equivalent. I don’t see a white guy being called honky to be equivalent to the n-word because of this. In a perfect world they would be equivalent, but again – context and personal statement matter here. It’s not a perfect world, it’s not a vacuum.

Tell me, Peter – do you feel offended as a white person for ACM’s views? Does it hurt you to be called white racial slurs? Were you beaten up as you were called these things? Were you denied entrance to a location because you were white? Were your parents marching on Washington to gain rights for white people? Similarly –
“Uh… Kalon, have you read that woman’s blog? Even the titles use terms like “Privilege” and “White Man’s tears” as epithets. The very fact that she expresses such outrage about my use of the term “animal” hails from the fact that it was used by a “nerdy white boy”. She denigrates entire demographics as a matter of course.” I read it quite often. It’s pretty funny at times. Yes, she absolutely denigrates demographics. Skin tones, even. Ethnic groups like neckbeards, who apparently are a protected group somehow.

Do you think that a Thai woman calling white people white slurs is the same as a white man calling a black man racial slurs? I’m not asking if you think it should be equivalent – I’m asking if you think it IS. I do not. I would like it to get to that point, at which point racism is a pretty stupid thing in general (it’s much like the ginger kid hate or something like that). But it’s not there.

Now why she does it is to get people to respond in kind, I think. except that when they do that, it’s a hell of a lot worse.

“you really should read that blog post I linked to a while back, Kalon; it quotes you, actually”
I’ll see if I can find what you’re talking about. I’ve found engaging ACM to be fairly easy, actually; I’ve commented several times on her blog without any issue. It’s not that hard provided you have some notion of where she’s coming from.

“I’m having a hard time reconciling the first and last parts of that quote: the point is dehumanization in both cases, which to my way of thinking makes them entirely comparable. There’s no functional difference between black/white and tribeX/tribeY: it’s all ingroup-outgroup stuff at the base. I’m actually kind of astonished that you’d think it was somehow different because it was used black-on-black in that case; surely you don’t really think that this kind of hatred only counts if it crosses some kind of melanin threshold?” I had to do that one quickly, so I apologize. You’re right – it has nothing to do with hot PoC on PoC action.

It does, however, have to do with who said it. I’d imagine calling someone a cockroach would be fine normally. If you were calling a Tutsi person a cockroach, that’d probably be pretty offensive. If a Hutu was calling a Tutsi a cockroach, that would probably be grounds for a beating. Does that make more sense?

@Requires Love:

“You assume I’m white.

I KNEW at one point someone who sided with CM would assume I’m white if I opposed their arguments.

I’m half Japanese.

So tell me again about ASKING a person of colour.”

Actually, I never assumed anything about you, one way or another. If I did I apologize. And I didn’t say ask A PoC – I said ask some. Talk to a few. Get some opinions. They may differ from yours. I’d even suspect that the experience that you have is very different from other PoCs. That doesn’t invalidate your experience, but it doesn’t mean you speak for everyone either.

“And yet I come down on the other side of the argument don’t i? Don’t assume that because I don’t endorse the type of insanity that people seem to be spouting here that I will support it just for having dealt with racism in my life okay? I dealt with racism in my own way, and that was NEVER the way ACM approaches it.”
Yep. So does Morgan freeman, apparently. that doesn’t mean your opinion is invalid. It also doesn’t mean others’ opinions are invalid.

And it doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. It just means I need to listen to you and shut up a bit more.

“You see by that silly rationale, if I (as a non-racist person) call a white person an “animal” for behaving like a supreme shithead, then by the terms laid out by Kalon I have offended no one and animal means simply animal, its oxford dictionary definition. Right? But that same word, when used (again BY A NON RACIST person) to describe someone of a different ethnicity who is being a supreme shithead, it all of the sudden becomes a racially charged slur?”
You realize that you basically just summed up the situation with the n-word, right?

Again, who says what to whom matters. I just don’t see how this is remotely at odds with reality and how this is at all confusing. A black guy calling another black guy an animal? Probably not a big deal. might even be a positive thing. A white guy doing the same thing? Really depends on the relationship. Rush Limbaugh doing it? Almost certainly incendiary.

How is this remotely confusing? I’m genuinely connfused here. I understand that all words should always have the exact same meaning and connotations, but they don’t. They can’t. Linguistically and psychologically this just isn’t true to humans. We don’t work that way.

(Note: the Greece incident was six or so years ago. Not an Obama reference, more like Keystone Cops).

Wow. Naked Lanius (probably fake, but who knows). Peter’s blog is evolving into a dating site 😀

Anyways, as to subject matter, I kinda don’t get when Thai folk were routinely called “animals” and beaten by white people, but maybe USA used Thai slaves at some point and I just failed to get the memo. Or is ACM a Thai-afroamerican now ?

@03

How many ounces of gold would you bet on it being fake? I’d bet at least five 😉

@Whoever
Tough love connection. And I so really wanted to like Romney’s Mormon privileged hide… 🙁

Anyway..that’s his finance co-chair. Personally, I don’t think it matters. What matters is someone restoring fiscal and security sanity to the US.. tough love camps for rebellious belter’s kids are not that inportant..