You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds
Some of you might not get the context of this next post as I have mostly been blogging about it at my personal site. Click here if you want the backstory.
Can someone please explain to me how one makes the leap from “We no longer want to honor this person” to “Book burning and censorship“? You people do not even understand what censorship means, do you? And to this asshole who threw up the Heinlein quote: since when was WisCon ever a government or a church?
Do you people even read? Do you have brains that work in a logical manner? Or do you just simply wander through life parroting the things you read without any understanding or absorption of them?
Goddamn you stupid, ignorant troglodytes. I am ashamed to share a planet with you, much less a community.
Also, can I just point out that at no point has anyone said Elizabeth Moon can’t come to WisCon. At no point has anyone said that there can’t be a discussion about the issues raised by her post, with or without her. Hell, it’s WisCon, there is going to be a lot of fucking discussion. But I love how theseuseless wankers run right to that mission statement and declare that there obviously won’t be any of those things because… apparently because they’ve imagined it in their tiny minds.
Your tiny, dirty imagination has no bearing on actual fact. And, you know what, I am hella glad you all won’t be coming to WisCon. I wish you would refrain from coming to World Fantasy, Readercon, or any other con I happen to attend. People like you we don’t need. But thanks to the free speech you so loudly claim no one at WisCon has1, you can spread your bullshit in public places and at public events. All the while whining about how you’re being oppressed.
I have reached a real breaking point with the cowards in this community. The sad, pathetic people who wish to stir up shit just for the sake of pageviews or getting well-known as crusader against people who think racism and sexism are bad2. I am tired of this utter bullshit that comes up Every. Single. Time.
The bottom line is this: you are wrong. You’re just wrong. Bigotry: is wrong. Elizabeth Moon: was wrong.
That doesn’t mean that things or people or ideas or thoughts can’t change. But this is immutable: Bigotry has no place at any con, and I can only be thankful that many of the people who run and attend WisCon work very hard to eliminate it from that one. And that starts by not honoring someone whose bigotry is not in question and who does not, apparently, feel she’s done anything wrong nor has shown any proclivity to dialogue that would lead to something valuable. Therefore, it was the right decision to remove her.
If you feel differently, then say so. But do it out in the open.
- Because of RaceFail, doncha know. It’s just so hard to be racist when all of your friends are totally against it! [↩]
- I know people think the same thing about me — that I say what i do just to stir up shit and get attention. Because it’s so totally fun being an activist and working to eliminate racism and sexism. It is just too, too exciting feeling all the time like there is a giant group of people out there that thinks nasty thoughts about me, or wishes harm on me, or thinks I’m less than nothing because I’m a black person or a woman or queer or any combination thereof. I absolutely love that! And if I open my mouth even a little bit to say: Hey, that’s not cool, that is hurtful, that is fundamentally wrong, suddenly I am the problem? What even worse: I am not the only person in the community to whom this paragraph could apply. [↩]
I wish there was more honest and intelligent use of the phrase “free speech.” Getting called on saying things that are stupid or bigoted does not mean you do not have free speech. The police arresting you for saying things is when you stop having free speech.
Hear, hear!
Tall white guy back again. I found this blog back at the tail end of the ‘racefail’, er, discussions and find your comments generally insightful in subtle ways I have not previously considered. And from my few posts I think I’ve validated that I’m not an explicit racist scum although probably not much of an activist. But on this topic there is so much jargon and in-crowd references, I just can not figure out what you are talking about. I think there may be an important issue, perhaps a short summary for civilians would help?
There’s a good summary over at Femanist SF.
Only background missing there is that WisCon is a feminist SF/F/H convention help in Wisconsin every Memorial day. The concom (convention committee) is the group of volunteers the organises it. SF3 is the financial entity that backs WisCon.
You are right, and I’ve been meaning to post one for a while. I will, but tomorrow.
Boo on the knee-jerkers who don’t know what freedom of speech means. I couldn’t afford WisCon, either way, but I will go to FoGcon with a slightly lighter heart. Slightly. The struggle continues every day, when people choose to not only ignore their privilege, but slap us on the face with it repeatedly.
That Heinlein quote is directly responsible for seven paragraphs of ranting I did on DreamWidth.
Seriously, your go-to Authority On Things is the dude who wrote books that idolised vigilantism, incest, violence, cannibalism, and the revocation of democratic franchise from the majority of the population? *Really?*
I’ll give him “one of the first successful mainstream science fiction authors to feature non-white protagonists”*, and I actually really enjoy his books, but ideologically the dude was horrendous.
* – Viewpoint character in Starship Troopers is probably from the Philippines, since his native language is Tagalog. His name is Juan Rico. Viewpoint character in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is multiracial in background, and his family is very multiracial as well. And “racists are stupid” is a plot point. It’s not much, but it’s something, at least. Given the previous paragraph I feel the urge to defend him from being unredeemable.
So many of us white people cling to this busted, fucked-up notion of “free speech”, and I feel like it’s not out of ignorance or confusion, but outright entitlement and defense of same. It’s not something that we can legitimately fob off on “Repubs / conservatives ruining political discourse and undermining the constitution”, cos liberals and leftists do it too, just as bad if not worse.
Same goes for other axis of oppression, of course, but it seems that we white people “excel” at that.