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megwritesI'm nervous about this topic, because I really feel that I should do like 100000 years worth of listening and learning before I speak, but I felt that I needed to be sure that I stood up and said that I'm not quitting this topic, because I don't want anyone to think I'm participating in Elizabeth Bear's Two Months of Useless Silence or that I agree with it.
Let me be clear:
Yes, I'm talking about this post from Elizabeth Bear and a lot of the events surrounding it. And I do not agree with her at all. I think she was wrong in what she said.
Her post really saddens me and saddens me deeply. It saddens me that she thinks not talking about it, that all of us just "shutting up a bit" will somehow solve anything. I remember her saying something a while back: "entropy requires no maintenance". I wonder if she was thinking about that when she called for ceasefires and silences.
It saddens me that she either didn't consider or doesn't care that while for the white, established people in the SF/F, shutting up for two months is just fine, but for the people who have been hurt, who have been marginalized, saying we should shut up for a couple of months is like telling them to put up with being slapped in the face for another couple of months.
What's worse? I get that sometimes everyone needs to disengage from something going for personal reasons. And I'm wondering why she didn't just silently disengage and let the internet debating go on with out her. After all, it seems like things were better off when she just said nothing at all and continued posting pictures of her feet.
I'm reminded of the old adage: Better to keep quiet and let people think you're stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
All the best and most important social leaps towards equality were made because people refused ceasefires and calls for silence, because people kept digging in and pushing forward until they got what they needed.
What if MLK had decided that he would retire from the cause of civil rights for a while because it got hard? I'm sure a lot of white people, not just virulent racists, but even ones who considered themselves progressive and liberal, would've loved to say, "Hey, Martin, can we just stop all this protesting and troublemaking for a couple of months, it's giving me an ulcer" and probably did say things like that.
And if anyone had reasons to want to just go home and give up, it was him. You think you got it hard because some people said unkind words about you on the internet?
Try getting sprayed with a firehose, or chased by dogs, or arrested for just marching down the street with a sign. Try having the Klan breathing down your neck. Try being beaten up and assaulted. Try having activists on your side murdered and their murders completely ignored by the police.
That's what it really means to get assaulted. That's what it really means when somebody attacks you for your views. That's the kind of history that people of color in America have been living with. And it's not something that's far distant in the past for them, either. This is not a long distant memory that they can discount as part of the past. Just like rape and sexual violence and sexual harassment are not something women can say is part of the past, not while 1 in 4 women in America is still the victim of a sexual assault in her lifetime.
So when a person of color speaks out and a white person tells them to shut up, there's always that awareness that white people are willing to back up their demands for silence with police dogs and batons. There's an awareness that white people, because of their privilege, have power and means to enforce their desires, means that people of color do not have access to.
That's why racism = POWER + prejudice and not just prejudice. Let's say prejudice is a gun. Everyone has a gun. But some people have BB guns and some people have fucking automatic weapons with a ton of ammo for reloading and a high powered scope and a laser sight. The person who handed out the weapons was, apparently, a lunatic with a bad sense of fairness - but that's a whole other post.
Sure, people of color have their prejudices, but they don't have the caliber to enforce them. Because they have the BB guns. They can shoot pellets, and pellets can put out an individual eye, but they can't mow down entire groups of people in one fell swoop the way white privilege can.
Which is why you need to be so careful with white privilege if you're a white person. Because not only is it a powerful, horrible weapon, but it's a got a hair trigger. You can accidentally set it off just by goofing around.
The only wise course of action to prevent people from getting shot is to step away from the gun entirely and not to touch it or use it. Because it's a gun. It's not like a knife that might be used for carving or cutting meat. No, it has only one use. To hurt people.
And if that weren't enough for you, this metaphor is also useful for understand why it is so abysmally stupid to assert that PoC's can be racist, or that there's reverse racism. You just cannot do the widespread, profound damage with BB guns (no matter how many you have) that you can do with automatic assault rifles.
Nor does it make sense to act like you're in as much danger from a bunch of people with BB guns as they are from you when you've got a goddamn Howitzer at your disposal. Oww, you got shot in the ass with the BB gun. It's a bee-sting. Try being on the business end of what you're holding and see how getting gut shot feels.
See how getting gut shot repeatedly feels.
Which, coincidentally, is why outing someone's identity is so heinous. Because it's like taking away their helmet, or their bulletproof vest when you have that high powered weaponry. The only reason you'd do that is so you have a better chance at shooting them fatally. In situation where you really honestly want peace and progress, you may ask people to disarm, but you don't ask them to give up all defenses.
And if your point is so valid, you don't need to know anyone's name. You just need to know their words.
The sad thing is? I don't mean the whole "getting shot" thing all that metaphorically. You don't out someone because you want to reveal their face to the world, you out somebody because you want to paint a target on them. Because you want them to have less security, because you know that if they have to choose between protecting themselves and arguing with you that they'll, very logically, protect themselves. You out them because you want to make it easier for them to get hurt.
It's a very vicious, horrible tactic, and it's a good way to stop arguments when you're losing because you're wrong or because you can't take the heat.
I think I've milked the gun metaphor for all it's worth, don't you?
Anonymity and cowardice aren't actually all that interrelated. If you stayed awake for sixth grade history, you'll remember that most of the people who participated in the Boston Tea Party remained anonymous (or at least tried to, and tried to frame Native Americans for it, BTW). Tank Man, also, is anonymous, but I'd hardly call him a coward because he didn't wear a name tag while standing in front of a tank.
You can be a coward while telling everyone your name.
This long ramble is all to say that the post EBear made is just made not wise and just not right, and I wonder who wrote it. It is not the Bear who's books I once loved, who I once admired. It's not the Bear who reinvigorated my love for SF/F at time when I wondered if I was still into the genre. It's not the Bear I once fan girled over.
I hate looking at my shelf and wondering if I can keep those books there or if it would be too adverse to my beliefs, to the good of PoC's everywhere who have been hurt, to do so. I hate thinking that maybe I supported someone who wasn't as good as I thought they were. I bought all her books new, because I liked her that much once upon a time, and I was once proud of that.
It's kind of a sickening feeling now.
I feel like I'm writing an elegy for a good writer.
What's worse, is that my feelings are nothing. My little white girl crocodile tears are just not even the point or even important. Wah, wah, poor me. What-frakkin-ever.
However bad I feel about this, I can't imagine what the fans, bloggers, and writers of color must feel in this discussion. I'm trying to imagine the frustration, anger, hurt, betrayal, sadness, depression, and utter despair this whole mess is generating for them and it's sort of colossal. Because they are the ones who matter. This is about THEM.
It's not about me or my feelings, because I'm a white, privileged person. I got mine and I got it up front with all the advantages that got handed to me for NO GOOD REASON. I repeat: no good reason. It's time to make sure that they get theirs.
Which is why not talking about this topic is just inviting entropy, it's inviting regression. We either fight for every step forward or we fall back. There is no standing still, because, essentially, we're on a really fast moving treadmill.
The thing that disappoints me most is just how unproductive her entire post was. Nobody was helped, not even herself, certainly not her friends. The things that need to get done, the creating of diversity by encouraging authors of color, the making of safer spaces for fans of color and people of color to talk, the encouraging of people to come together and make things better? That was not done at all.
No practical good was had.
I have very real if not terribly specific goals for what I want for my genre.
I want, one day, to look at a list of the newest SF/F releases and see that at least half, if not more, of the books coming out in a month are by and/or about people of color. Preferably by. Because I know that not only would that be the right thing, but it would mean that the width, depth, and scope of the stories would be better than they are right now. Let's face it, some tropes and subgenres are just tapped out and we need fresh blood. There's always been fresh blood available, but SF/F just doesn't want to tap into that vein, and that's really depressing.
More than that, I want to see that these authors of colors are trendsetters and power players in the genre. I want to see that their words carry as much weight as anyone else's. I want to see them getting the masses of fans and the devoted followings from fans of ALL colors.
I want to see presses and publishing imprints that are dedicated to people of color, and are commercially successful. In Meg's Dream World they're wildly successful and somebody writes something spectacular with a lot of Vampires of Color and a whole other world I hadn't thought of and it sells like hotcakes and I solve two problems in my life at once and finally find The Perfect Vampire Novel and can die happy.
I want to go to a convention where the demographics of the attendees looks a lot like the actual demographics of the place where I live, the place where white folks are quickly becoming a numerical minority (though not a social, economic, or legal one, let me make that clear) and there's so much color it's like a frickin' rose garden of humanity and nobody has to feel unsafe or watch themselves or feel like they're the representative of everyone who is like them. I want to go to a convention where the Open Source Boob Project would never happen, where things like Racefail are unthinkable, because people have changed their thinking, finally.
I want to see a meteoric rise in the amount of fans of color and the safety they feel to discuss things that affect them in their fandom and their lives. I want to attract fans of color who previously dismissed the SF/F genre.
I'd love to recruit as many new fans of color to SF/F as I can, but I realize that I have so little to entice them with. What can I promise them for coming to conventions, for trying to publish books, for writing, for blogging, for taking place in discussions and panels where the opposition and difficulties are legion? I can't say that this an especially safe or open genre just yet, I can't promise them they'll be rewarded or even respected.
I can't promise that if they go under a pseudonym that they won't be outed. I can't promise that they won't spend most of the time on a panel defending themselves when they say they've been hurt instead of getting people to listen to what hurts them and how it can be stopped. I can't promise there will be a big community of others like them. I can't promise they won't be harassed.
How do you convince someone that this really is a good genre when you can't convince them that the people in it are good people? A genre is only as good as it's creators. What kind of message do you think is being sent, especially to the younger folks who are watching this all go down?
Because right now, I'm getting the message that talking about a little bit of diversity and race is fine, as long as everyone is nice and agrees that the white folks are doing a good job. If we make nice little gestures and talk about Octavia Butler every once and a while and maybe invite a few people of color to a panel or a workshop to make ourselves feel better, then we'll play ball with you.
But if you get angry, if you point to something that's been a thorn in your side for a long time say that you want it to come out, if you refuse to be gentle about it, if you refuse to back down or give out cookies or congratulate people on bare due diligence, if you expect more than politeness from people calling themselves allies, if you demand the respect and fair treatment you've deserved all along, if you expect people to come to the party with their pants on or not come at all, well, then things get nasty. Then there are the rants and the outings and the people flouncing off in a spectacular fashion.
What am I supposed to say to someone who sees Elizabeth Bear's post or any of the others which have been so troublesome, when people look at the white editors and writers who are such big deals and have said these things and then looks to me any asks, "This is who you want me to be in the same genre with? This is what you want me to deal with?"
What am I supposed to say to a PoC who's a potential SF/F fan when one of the writers I once thought was one of our best just said that she wishes we'd stop talking about race and racism for two months because she's so uncomfortable?
More than that, what am I supposed to say to make it better for them, to make it hurt less? Because this isn't about whether I look good or bad, it's whether PoC's in SF/F feel safe or unsafe.
And I think the message is clear: PoC's don't feel safe, and there's a group of white editors and writers who are more concerned with staying friends with each other than addressing that.
That, friends and Romans, is the real problem. When you defend a friend or acquaintence who has said and done deliberately and repeatedly racist things, you're not standing up for your friend, not really. It's actually saying: "Look, this subject is not important enough for me to sacrifice the benefit I get from being this person's friend (or at least friendly with them). The benefits of their friendship are more valuable to me than (insert issue). So could you please fuck off now, because you and (insert issue) are less important than this person is to me."
I just want to make sure that people know, above all else, that I won't tolerate racism here or in myself. I want people to know that I'm going to listen, and that I'm going to try my best. I want people to know that they can come to me and say if something is hurting them that I'm doing or saying, and that I will do everything in my power to make it right.
As with this same topic posted about in other journals I have, I would ask three favors:
1) If you're coming to disagree with me about something I've made it perfectly clear that I'm not backing down from, do us both a favor and just don't waste my time. Questions are fine, and even debate on the smaller issues or debate on how best to achieve the goals I want achieved are fine.
2) If you're going to comment, debate, or discuss with other people, please don't just be polite. Be thoughtful. REALLY think about what they're saying and what you're going to say. Consider what it is you want and why you're making that comment in the first place and whether it has any potential to be productive.
3) No cookies. Please. I'm on a cookie free diet. If you want to say you agree with me, I guess that's okay - but honestly? If you want to go give someone kudoes and brownies and goodies, go find the people who have been enduring harassment and ugliness to speak out and give them your support.
Let me be clear:
Yes, I'm talking about this post from Elizabeth Bear and a lot of the events surrounding it. And I do not agree with her at all. I think she was wrong in what she said.
Her post really saddens me and saddens me deeply. It saddens me that she thinks not talking about it, that all of us just "shutting up a bit" will somehow solve anything. I remember her saying something a while back: "entropy requires no maintenance". I wonder if she was thinking about that when she called for ceasefires and silences.
It saddens me that she either didn't consider or doesn't care that while for the white, established people in the SF/F, shutting up for two months is just fine, but for the people who have been hurt, who have been marginalized, saying we should shut up for a couple of months is like telling them to put up with being slapped in the face for another couple of months.
What's worse? I get that sometimes everyone needs to disengage from something going for personal reasons. And I'm wondering why she didn't just silently disengage and let the internet debating go on with out her. After all, it seems like things were better off when she just said nothing at all and continued posting pictures of her feet.
I'm reminded of the old adage: Better to keep quiet and let people think you're stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
All the best and most important social leaps towards equality were made because people refused ceasefires and calls for silence, because people kept digging in and pushing forward until they got what they needed.
What if MLK had decided that he would retire from the cause of civil rights for a while because it got hard? I'm sure a lot of white people, not just virulent racists, but even ones who considered themselves progressive and liberal, would've loved to say, "Hey, Martin, can we just stop all this protesting and troublemaking for a couple of months, it's giving me an ulcer" and probably did say things like that.
And if anyone had reasons to want to just go home and give up, it was him. You think you got it hard because some people said unkind words about you on the internet?
Try getting sprayed with a firehose, or chased by dogs, or arrested for just marching down the street with a sign. Try having the Klan breathing down your neck. Try being beaten up and assaulted. Try having activists on your side murdered and their murders completely ignored by the police.
That's what it really means to get assaulted. That's what it really means when somebody attacks you for your views. That's the kind of history that people of color in America have been living with. And it's not something that's far distant in the past for them, either. This is not a long distant memory that they can discount as part of the past. Just like rape and sexual violence and sexual harassment are not something women can say is part of the past, not while 1 in 4 women in America is still the victim of a sexual assault in her lifetime.
So when a person of color speaks out and a white person tells them to shut up, there's always that awareness that white people are willing to back up their demands for silence with police dogs and batons. There's an awareness that white people, because of their privilege, have power and means to enforce their desires, means that people of color do not have access to.
That's why racism = POWER + prejudice and not just prejudice. Let's say prejudice is a gun. Everyone has a gun. But some people have BB guns and some people have fucking automatic weapons with a ton of ammo for reloading and a high powered scope and a laser sight. The person who handed out the weapons was, apparently, a lunatic with a bad sense of fairness - but that's a whole other post.
Sure, people of color have their prejudices, but they don't have the caliber to enforce them. Because they have the BB guns. They can shoot pellets, and pellets can put out an individual eye, but they can't mow down entire groups of people in one fell swoop the way white privilege can.
Which is why you need to be so careful with white privilege if you're a white person. Because not only is it a powerful, horrible weapon, but it's a got a hair trigger. You can accidentally set it off just by goofing around.
The only wise course of action to prevent people from getting shot is to step away from the gun entirely and not to touch it or use it. Because it's a gun. It's not like a knife that might be used for carving or cutting meat. No, it has only one use. To hurt people.
And if that weren't enough for you, this metaphor is also useful for understand why it is so abysmally stupid to assert that PoC's can be racist, or that there's reverse racism. You just cannot do the widespread, profound damage with BB guns (no matter how many you have) that you can do with automatic assault rifles.
Nor does it make sense to act like you're in as much danger from a bunch of people with BB guns as they are from you when you've got a goddamn Howitzer at your disposal. Oww, you got shot in the ass with the BB gun. It's a bee-sting. Try being on the business end of what you're holding and see how getting gut shot feels.
See how getting gut shot repeatedly feels.
Which, coincidentally, is why outing someone's identity is so heinous. Because it's like taking away their helmet, or their bulletproof vest when you have that high powered weaponry. The only reason you'd do that is so you have a better chance at shooting them fatally. In situation where you really honestly want peace and progress, you may ask people to disarm, but you don't ask them to give up all defenses.
And if your point is so valid, you don't need to know anyone's name. You just need to know their words.
The sad thing is? I don't mean the whole "getting shot" thing all that metaphorically. You don't out someone because you want to reveal their face to the world, you out somebody because you want to paint a target on them. Because you want them to have less security, because you know that if they have to choose between protecting themselves and arguing with you that they'll, very logically, protect themselves. You out them because you want to make it easier for them to get hurt.
It's a very vicious, horrible tactic, and it's a good way to stop arguments when you're losing because you're wrong or because you can't take the heat.
I think I've milked the gun metaphor for all it's worth, don't you?
Anonymity and cowardice aren't actually all that interrelated. If you stayed awake for sixth grade history, you'll remember that most of the people who participated in the Boston Tea Party remained anonymous (or at least tried to, and tried to frame Native Americans for it, BTW). Tank Man, also, is anonymous, but I'd hardly call him a coward because he didn't wear a name tag while standing in front of a tank.
You can be a coward while telling everyone your name.
This long ramble is all to say that the post EBear made is just made not wise and just not right, and I wonder who wrote it. It is not the Bear who's books I once loved, who I once admired. It's not the Bear who reinvigorated my love for SF/F at time when I wondered if I was still into the genre. It's not the Bear I once fan girled over.
I hate looking at my shelf and wondering if I can keep those books there or if it would be too adverse to my beliefs, to the good of PoC's everywhere who have been hurt, to do so. I hate thinking that maybe I supported someone who wasn't as good as I thought they were. I bought all her books new, because I liked her that much once upon a time, and I was once proud of that.
It's kind of a sickening feeling now.
I feel like I'm writing an elegy for a good writer.
What's worse, is that my feelings are nothing. My little white girl crocodile tears are just not even the point or even important. Wah, wah, poor me. What-frakkin-ever.
However bad I feel about this, I can't imagine what the fans, bloggers, and writers of color must feel in this discussion. I'm trying to imagine the frustration, anger, hurt, betrayal, sadness, depression, and utter despair this whole mess is generating for them and it's sort of colossal. Because they are the ones who matter. This is about THEM.
It's not about me or my feelings, because I'm a white, privileged person. I got mine and I got it up front with all the advantages that got handed to me for NO GOOD REASON. I repeat: no good reason. It's time to make sure that they get theirs.
Which is why not talking about this topic is just inviting entropy, it's inviting regression. We either fight for every step forward or we fall back. There is no standing still, because, essentially, we're on a really fast moving treadmill.
The thing that disappoints me most is just how unproductive her entire post was. Nobody was helped, not even herself, certainly not her friends. The things that need to get done, the creating of diversity by encouraging authors of color, the making of safer spaces for fans of color and people of color to talk, the encouraging of people to come together and make things better? That was not done at all.
No practical good was had.
I have very real if not terribly specific goals for what I want for my genre.
I want, one day, to look at a list of the newest SF/F releases and see that at least half, if not more, of the books coming out in a month are by and/or about people of color. Preferably by. Because I know that not only would that be the right thing, but it would mean that the width, depth, and scope of the stories would be better than they are right now. Let's face it, some tropes and subgenres are just tapped out and we need fresh blood. There's always been fresh blood available, but SF/F just doesn't want to tap into that vein, and that's really depressing.
More than that, I want to see that these authors of colors are trendsetters and power players in the genre. I want to see that their words carry as much weight as anyone else's. I want to see them getting the masses of fans and the devoted followings from fans of ALL colors.
I want to see presses and publishing imprints that are dedicated to people of color, and are commercially successful. In Meg's Dream World they're wildly successful and somebody writes something spectacular with a lot of Vampires of Color and a whole other world I hadn't thought of and it sells like hotcakes and I solve two problems in my life at once and finally find The Perfect Vampire Novel and can die happy.
I want to go to a convention where the demographics of the attendees looks a lot like the actual demographics of the place where I live, the place where white folks are quickly becoming a numerical minority (though not a social, economic, or legal one, let me make that clear) and there's so much color it's like a frickin' rose garden of humanity and nobody has to feel unsafe or watch themselves or feel like they're the representative of everyone who is like them. I want to go to a convention where the Open Source Boob Project would never happen, where things like Racefail are unthinkable, because people have changed their thinking, finally.
I want to see a meteoric rise in the amount of fans of color and the safety they feel to discuss things that affect them in their fandom and their lives. I want to attract fans of color who previously dismissed the SF/F genre.
I'd love to recruit as many new fans of color to SF/F as I can, but I realize that I have so little to entice them with. What can I promise them for coming to conventions, for trying to publish books, for writing, for blogging, for taking place in discussions and panels where the opposition and difficulties are legion? I can't say that this an especially safe or open genre just yet, I can't promise them they'll be rewarded or even respected.
I can't promise that if they go under a pseudonym that they won't be outed. I can't promise that they won't spend most of the time on a panel defending themselves when they say they've been hurt instead of getting people to listen to what hurts them and how it can be stopped. I can't promise there will be a big community of others like them. I can't promise they won't be harassed.
How do you convince someone that this really is a good genre when you can't convince them that the people in it are good people? A genre is only as good as it's creators. What kind of message do you think is being sent, especially to the younger folks who are watching this all go down?
Because right now, I'm getting the message that talking about a little bit of diversity and race is fine, as long as everyone is nice and agrees that the white folks are doing a good job. If we make nice little gestures and talk about Octavia Butler every once and a while and maybe invite a few people of color to a panel or a workshop to make ourselves feel better, then we'll play ball with you.
But if you get angry, if you point to something that's been a thorn in your side for a long time say that you want it to come out, if you refuse to be gentle about it, if you refuse to back down or give out cookies or congratulate people on bare due diligence, if you expect more than politeness from people calling themselves allies, if you demand the respect and fair treatment you've deserved all along, if you expect people to come to the party with their pants on or not come at all, well, then things get nasty. Then there are the rants and the outings and the people flouncing off in a spectacular fashion.
What am I supposed to say to someone who sees Elizabeth Bear's post or any of the others which have been so troublesome, when people look at the white editors and writers who are such big deals and have said these things and then looks to me any asks, "This is who you want me to be in the same genre with? This is what you want me to deal with?"
What am I supposed to say to a PoC who's a potential SF/F fan when one of the writers I once thought was one of our best just said that she wishes we'd stop talking about race and racism for two months because she's so uncomfortable?
More than that, what am I supposed to say to make it better for them, to make it hurt less? Because this isn't about whether I look good or bad, it's whether PoC's in SF/F feel safe or unsafe.
And I think the message is clear: PoC's don't feel safe, and there's a group of white editors and writers who are more concerned with staying friends with each other than addressing that.
That, friends and Romans, is the real problem. When you defend a friend or acquaintence who has said and done deliberately and repeatedly racist things, you're not standing up for your friend, not really. It's actually saying: "Look, this subject is not important enough for me to sacrifice the benefit I get from being this person's friend (or at least friendly with them). The benefits of their friendship are more valuable to me than (insert issue). So could you please fuck off now, because you and (insert issue) are less important than this person is to me."
I just want to make sure that people know, above all else, that I won't tolerate racism here or in myself. I want people to know that I'm going to listen, and that I'm going to try my best. I want people to know that they can come to me and say if something is hurting them that I'm doing or saying, and that I will do everything in my power to make it right.
As with this same topic posted about in other journals I have, I would ask three favors:
1) If you're coming to disagree with me about something I've made it perfectly clear that I'm not backing down from, do us both a favor and just don't waste my time. Questions are fine, and even debate on the smaller issues or debate on how best to achieve the goals I want achieved are fine.
2) If you're going to comment, debate, or discuss with other people, please don't just be polite. Be thoughtful. REALLY think about what they're saying and what you're going to say. Consider what it is you want and why you're making that comment in the first place and whether it has any potential to be productive.
3) No cookies. Please. I'm on a cookie free diet. If you want to say you agree with me, I guess that's okay - but honestly? If you want to go give someone kudoes and brownies and goodies, go find the people who have been enduring harassment and ugliness to speak out and give them your support.
