George Martin responds to my offer of honest dialogue and a debate:
So… I post here about how pleased I was to enjoy one good night, away from all this Puppygate shit, and you feel the need to drag Vox Day into it?
What would be the subject of this “debate?” Whether women should have the vote? Whether black people are savages or only half-savages?
Perhaps after that debate, I could debate Requires Hate on whether writers should have acid thrown in their faces, or just be raped by dogs.
We can debate whatever issues are so important that you claimed you wanted to be able to debate when you said: “Can’t we just debate the issues?”
I am giving you that opportunity. The opportunity you said you wanted.
We can certainly debate whether women should have the vote if you wish. We can debate whether black people are savages or half-savages, if that is a subject that is of particular interest to you.
I think it would be more interesting to debate your demand for no tolerance of hatespeech and the proper limits of free speech. There is also the strange contention that Requires Hate and I “are twins. Mirror images of one another.” You made the assertion. You have neither recanted nor apologized for it. Therefore, it seems a reasonable subject of honest dialogue and debate, given that I very much disagree with the assertion. Alternatively, we could debate the long term ramifications of the No Award tactic, the quality of the 2015 Best Novel shortlist compared to past Hugo shortlists, or any other aspect of Puppygate that you might find interesting.
The point, Mr. Martin, is that you said debate and honest dialogue are important. You are one of the biggest and best-known figures who claims to be on the side of those you call “the good guys” in SF fandom. I am the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil and a rising figure in science fiction. If you cannot bother to engage in honest dialogue with me, then why should any of the less famous, less notorious, less influential individuals on either side of the ideological divide in science fiction bother to do so either?
I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of an open, all-out ideological war. War-War is intrinsically more entertaining than Talk-Talk, after all. Are you?
Now, it’s possible that you didn’t mean what you wrote. It’s possible that you are just another posturing SJW, who puffs and preens and bluffs until he is called out, then promptly runs away. Many of my readers, who are also your readers, believe that. But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you transparently were not willing to give me.
If you want to run away and claim that you are too busy doing Very Important Things to engage in what you said was required, that’s absolutely fine with me. I can certainly use that to my advantage. I have with others who ran away in the past. But because I have enjoyed some of your work since “Sandkings”, I will violate Napoleon’s dictum and point out that you will likely end up hearing my name a lot more often if you run away than if you do not.