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Bokhari on the Tor debacle

Allum Bohkari draws some interesting conclusions from Tom Doherty’s statement last week:

Doherty also affirmed one of the Sad Puppies core principles: that sci-fi and fantasy publishers should neither promote nor exclude any particular political worldview.

    We seek out and publish a diverse and wide ranging group of books. We are in the business of finding great stories and promoting literature and are not about promoting a political agenda

That may sound uncontroversial, but prior to the Sad Puppies, it was a principle that was under genuine threat, with astonishing reports of political intolerance to non-progressive authors at sci-fi conventions. Doherty’s blunt affirmation that Tor is in the business of publishing good authors, not politically homogeneous authors, is therefore important.

For the left-wing authoritarians of sci-fi, who previously seemed able to exclude whoever they want from the community, Doherty’s words came as a serious setback. Tor Books was once perceived to be in the grip of hard-line progressives and identity warriors, but now some angry social justice warriors are even threatening to boycott the company.

Naturally, Gawker was also upset.

But such opinions represent an ever-dwindling minority. Everywhere we look, the authoritarian left is on the retreat. As I predicted in January, a chorus of liberal voices has risen to condemn their behaviour. On social media, in tech and on the campus, ostensibly liberal and left-leaning commentators are busy condemning the extremists of their own tribe.

Meanwhile, campaigns like GamerGate and the Sad Puppies are routing them in the culture wars. As in so many other cultural arenas, the SJWs of sci-fi are long past their heyday. And much of that decline can be attributed to the Sad Puppies themselves.

We are admittedly making some minor, if encouraging, dents in the ongoing SJW onslaught. But while we should be encouraged, we should not be complacent or think that what we have accomplished will not be undone in a heartbeat if we stop paying attention and slip back into pushover mode.

And while it’s great to see the Publisher at the largest SF/F publishing house disavowing the SJW thought-policing in which some of Tor’s editors have engaged for the last decade or more, that doesn’t mean that he is absolved of the need to get his house in order. I have heard, from different sources this time, that Tor Books is very much concerned about the prospect of a boycott, particularly one that is supported by SF/F authors.

Which is interesting, because so far they have been unwilling to do the one thing that will end the matter. Indeed, Tor Books appears to have decided to stand by the broad spectrum insults of its Creative Director and its Associate Publisher. So, let’s see what Macmillan will do. And if they won’t do anything either, well, at least we will know that we gave them every chance to avoid what they apparently wish to avoid.

The key to Tor’s intransigence is their belief that the “thousands of emails” they have received are from “bots”. This is the same narrative #GamerGate has encountered to attempt to minimize its numbers. Therefore, we will need to find a way to demonstrate to Macmillan that those “thousands of emails” represent “thousands of bookbuyers”.

UPDATE: Aaron and JJ at File 770 are convinced that we don’t matter.

I don’t think the Puppies realize that they could boycott Tor and Macmillan forever and neither of the companies would ever notice.

Yeah, I was laughing so hard at the comments on the Tor Gallo post that I was almost in tears. The idea that the Puppies (who for the most part, are not huge Tor book-buyers, anyway) think that they are a large enough group to be of any importance to a large publisher — well, it makes me feel a bit sorry for them when they find out that their perceived reality of grandeur is, in fact, merely a delusion of grandeur.

Perhaps not. Although I note that no one at Tor Books appears to be laughing; they even seem to believe they have suffered huge damage to their reputation. Regardless, there is only one way to find out.

UPDATE 2: Then again, perhaps the companies have already noticed. There may be more going on than meets the public eye. Peter Grant has heard from someone at Tor:

Let’s just say that if the information provided so far is correct, there appears to be a fair amount of sturm und drang in Tor’s upper echelons right now, and things are being shaken up to a considerable degree.

Tor Books and the terror bots

I have no idea how legit this is, but it was posted on Reddit today by someone claiming to be a Tor employee:

Tor
employee here: We stand by her too. Legal reacted to terrorist tactics
of the Puppies (who created bots and have sent thousands of threatening
emails to various people in the company) and, without stopping to speak
to anyone else in Tor who damn well better understood the Puppies and
the broader situation, made that statement from Tom go up. What people
read was a draft that hadn’t been vetted by anyone and Tom was horrified
when it went public. The internal handling of this situation has been
deplorable and the community should know that Tor employees are very,
VERY angry at how a respected coworker was publicly dressed down in this
manor.

Our reputation is heavily damaged and both sides
of the aisle have lost faith in us as a company. As for fallout within
the company? Other than a lot of upset employees, loss of faith in the
corporate culture, and a shiny new Social Media Policy; very little. No
one is going to get fired.

Fascinating. So, let’s examine the claims to determine how credible this is:

  1. The Puppies are using “terroristic tactics”. That’s false.
  2. The Puppies have created bots and sent “thousands of threatening emails”. That sounds like a variant of the old “#GamerGate is just 200 people” narrative that everyone in GG knows to be false. We’re expecting 100 for GGinParis alone. In any event, it means that if you have sent an email to Tor Books or Macmillan, you had better send another one with proof that you are not a bot. And “thousands” of emails? I know people are pissed off, but I find that hard to believe. Dozens, definitely. Hundreds, maybe. But thousands? No. And I very much doubt the emails were threatening anyone either.
  3. Tom Doherty didn’t write the statement from Tom Doherty. That’s a fascinating claim. Doubtful. If he was angry about it, why did he leave it up?
  4. Tor’s reputation is heavily damaged. All right, that’s true enough.
  5. No one is going to get fired. If that’s true, then I will publicly endorse the boycott of Tor that many have been urging. However, given the nature of the previous statements, we should probably get confirmation before taking any such action.

If Tor Books is foolish enough to follow the lead of its editors and double-down, I expect they will soon learn that is a tremendous mistake. If they thought their reputation was “heavily damaged” by Irene Gallo’s comments about Tor’s authors and customers, how much more will it be damaged by officially endorsing them through a refusal to hold her responsible for them? I suppose there is only one way to find out.

That being said, don’t forget, one very important thing: SJW’s always lie. This may not even be from a Tor employee. It could be nothing but fantasy. So take this supposed leak with a grain of salt and don’t overreact to it.

UPDATE: The purported Tor employee expands upon her statement:

[Tom Doherty] is an 80 year old man who “doesn’t get social media” and responded to a carefully crafted attack by Vox Day who manipulated a situation that resulted in some of Tom’s oldest friends and most established authors calling him, personally enraged, by what “they saw on them there internets being said by one of his lady workers.” Tom responded exactly how Vox Day wanted him to because he made the bad decision to not pause for a moment and ask other members of his team for their advice. THAT was his error, rather than inherently being racist, homophobic, or greedy (he is none of those things, I know him personally). 

Except she previously said that Tom Doherty didn’t respond at all, that it was Legal that reacted. This description is incoherent and somewhat self-contradictory. If Doherty wrote the draft letter and he “doesn’t get social media”, how did it end up posted on Tor.com without being vetted by anyone? If Legal reacted, how were they not involved in the vetting? Does Doherty actually endorse Gallo’s opinions of Tor’s authors and customers despite having disavowed those opinions in the draft that he a) personally wrote or b) never saw?

This Tor employee makes Tor Books sound even less professional and more haplessly dysfunctional than I’d imagined. If I were the Macmillan CEO, I’d clean house. It sounds like Tor Books needs it even more than Tor UK did.

Do you ever have that feeling

…that you’re being followed? Irene Gallo started Twitter-stalking me today. I feel unsafe. I mean, I’m sure she has a perfectly good reason for cyberstalking someone she falsely labeled an unrepentant racist, misogynistic, homophobic neo-Nazi, but still, it is a little… unsettling. To say nothing of unprofessional.

Seriously, Mr. Doherty, you need to do something about Ms Gallo sooner rather than later. Yesterday, she was calling your authors “bad-to-reprehensible” and your customers “racist” and “neo-Nazis”. Today, she’s cyberstalking me. Do you really want to wait and find out what she’ll get up to tomorrow?

UPDATE: Irene Gallo appears to have stopped Twitter-stalking me. Thank you for the love and support you have all provided during this difficult time. I feel like I can breathe again.

So brave

I want to see the beautiful Godfrey Elfwick on the cover of Vanity Fair. His courage shames us. And there is NO PLACE in society for the cisracist.

And can you believe this ignorant attack on the NAACP officer and transblack woman, Rachel Dolezal?

angelica ‏@lady_angelica
@voxday Caitlyn never falsely portrayed and lied about her transgender identity though. She didn’t make up black fathers and sons and shit.

I denounce her cisracism! Who is she to question Rachel’s truth? If Rachel felt her father was black, then he was. So ignorant! Race is just a social construct.

The courage of the SJW

I somehow get the impression I’m being Othered. Or something:

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
Saying “I don’t care about race, I just care about funny” & then casting almost exclusively white ppl means you think white ppl are funnier.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
This is very, very simple logic and should not be controversial.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
If you think we live in a meritocracy, then, by extension, you think white men are just naturally better at nearly everything.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@thelindywest Well, they did invent a little thing called “Western Civilization”. And science. And computers too. Among other things.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@thelindywest Your logic is neither “very, very simple” nor “controversial”. It’s simply wrong.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
ew, don’t talk to me @voxday

Rowan Kaiser ‏@RowanKaiser
@thelindywest oh god I’m so sorry this happened to you

papadopoulos ‏@pdlmma
@thelindywest I’m sorry you had this interaction and will contribute to a fund for exfoliating scrubs

What amuses me is that Lindy West once asked what made women easy targets. The two-part answer to her question lies in her own actions. One, women often say really stupid and ignorant things in public. So do men, of course, but second and more importantly, women who do so are often genuinely surprised, and not infrequently, more than a little upset, whenever anyone points out that they just said something really stupid and ignorant in public. That is practically the definition of a soft and easy target.

It’s not that hard to avoid being an easy target. First, say something intelligent that is actually defensible. Second, be prepared to defend what you said.

Of course, you can also run away, cry for sympathy, and retreat to a safe space where no one will ever criticize anything you say. That’s an option too. A safe space where the only enemy that will confront you is orange-and-yellow Oreos. SPOILER ALERT: the Oreos lose.

The first to die

But it is very unlikely that Keith Broomfield will be the last American to die fighting the neo-caliphate of the Islamic State:

Hundreds of people turned up in the Kurdish town of Kobani to bid farewell to Keith Broomfield before his body was handed over to family at the Mursitpinar gate, said Idriss Naasan.

Broomfield, from Massachusetts, died on June 3 in battle in a Syrian village near Kobani, making him likely the first U.S. citizen to die fighting alongside Kurds against the Islamic State group.

He had joined the People’s Protection Units known as the YPG on Feb. 24 under the nom de guerre Gelhat Rumet. The YPG are the main Kurdish guerrilla battling the Islamic State group in Syria.

It wasn’t even two years ago when the usual anklebiters were scoffing at the idea of a revived caliphate. And yet, an American has already died fighting it.

All ur SSN are belong to us

It would be amusing if they start thieving government identities now that they have all the data they need to produce them:

Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, saying that the cyber theft of U.S. employee information was more damaging than the Obama administration has acknowledged.

Perhaps the federal government should have abided by the wisdom of the Founders, and respected the Fourth Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No citizen should ever be required to give any information to the government, barring a Warrant. They might as reasonably be required to post it on the front door of their house for anyone passing by.

Day vs Sandifier: the transcript

Upon reading this, I think I made a better case against THE WASP FACTORY than for ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM, but on the whole, I’m content with how the debate turned out.

Day: And this also touches on my third part, which is: this is an idiot plot. I mean, this is what Roger Ebert described as – you know, he said that “the idiot plot is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot.” So, you’ve got somebody who literally has never looked in her pants to discover that she’s got a vagina, you’ve got the father who is beyond idiocy with the whole story about the dog and the creation of the fake genitals just in case she ever asks, and then of course you’ve got Eric, who apparently never figured out that his sister was actually his sister either. I mean, this is an idiot plot. There’s no way around that.

Sandifer: This is grotesque, it’s a grotesquery. I think that the ludicrousness of it is a joke in the same spirit as “killing three people was just a phase I was going through.” I don’t think it’s an idiot plot so much as it is a parody of rural grotesquery that is deliberately at the absolute limits of what is even remotely plausible.

Day: I personally think it’s well beyond those limits, and, you know, I’m not saying that there’s no humor to it, but, you know, I didn’t find it funny, for the most part. The occasional one-offs, like you mention, you know, those were mildly amusing, but just to wallow in that depth of depravity and violence and murder, you know, it’s literally disgusting, and I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t find it edifying. Like I said, the plot is a literal idiot plot. Whether you want to say it’s because it was parody or not, it’s still an idiot plot. I’m not one of those people who finds… What’s that show, the guy from The Office…

Sandifer: U.S. or U.K.?

Day: Ricky Gervais.

Sandifer: Yes.

Day: He has that television show where he pretends to be retarded or something, and every ad he’s gurning, you know what I mean? It’s a relatively new show. I don’t find that funny either. And so, maybe the fact that it’s got an idiot plot but it’s a parody, therefore it’s supposed to make it intelligent, but to me, the plot is still what the plot is, and so I found it very, very disappointing, because the whole plot is totally dependent on the three major characters being and behaving like complete idiots.

And the problem I have when you talk about the whole psychosocial aspect of Frank is Banks, in my opinion, gets the characters completely wrong. Frank is not convincing in any way, shape, or form as a girl who believes she’s a boy, and that sort of thing. I’m pretty sure that Iain Banks never had any daughters, because if you’re a parent, and you’ve got both boys and girls, there is not a chance in hell that a little girl, even if you raise her as a boy, is going to behave like a boy.  This is where I think it goes beyond parody and is a level of absurd that is not credible. I would have found it much more credible if Frank had some female attributes and characteristics in his thinking that he couldn’t explain. But instead, like you said, he’s more of a parody of a hyper-male, and that to me makes no sense whatsoever.

Sandifer: I agree that there’s an element of extreme implausibility, obviously, to some of the plot elements. I do think, going through, I note that Banks takes care to find some explanation for pretty much all of the elements of it, so that he at least has a sort of nice Aristotelian unity, where everything is either made necessary or likely by some other event, even if the characters are certainly very extreme. But it seems to me like your objection is less that you don’t believe that Frank would have physically figured it out – because there is the explanation, for instance, of the male hormones enlarging the clitoris so that it looked like the stump of his penis.

Day: Yeah, I get that, but where did the vagina come from?

Sandifer: I would assume that Frank just assumed it was the mutilated and tattered remnants of the wound.

Day: Well, except for the fact that the urine is not coming of the stump of the clitoris. And the fact that it kind of goes pretty deep. I mean, we’re dealing with somebody who is literally retarded, which we know from his behavior he’s not.

Moshe Feder doubles down… twice

The Associate Editor of Tor Books doubled-down on Facebook:

I’ll be happy to say right now, here on my _personal_ FB page, speaking for myself and not Tor, that I agree with Irene that Vox Day can be fairly described as a neo-Nazi.
– Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

It’s a very strange to accuse a self-declared Zionist who edits and publishes Israeli authors of being a neo-Nazi, but then, these are the same people who insist that Brad Torgersen is racist despite his marriage to a black woman. Mr. Feder then proceeded to double down again:

The approval of Tom Doherty’s statement from those with Puppy sympathies or at least tolerance, and the disapproval of it by those — like most of my friends — whom the Puppies would dismiss as Social Justice Warriors or CHORFs, is hardly surprising. It must be accounted a tactical victory for those who chose Irene Gallo as a target and put Tor in the position of feeling it had to respond. This has gone well beyond the usual purely rhetorical combat of fan feuds to threatening someone’s career status because of their personal opinion. It’s dirty pool in my eyes and sets a terrible precedent.

There’s been plenty of heated commentary in the aftermath yesterday and today, often pretty wild-eyed, some condemning Irene and calling for her to be fired, others condemning Tom and Tor as sexist for singling her out while Patrick and I went unmentioned. In response, I’d like to suggest a calm consideration of proportionality and a return to the practical realities of this year’s Hugo Awards.

As far as I can tell, Irene didn’t start her personal blog page intending to malign any Puppies, either Sad or Rabid. Rather, she responded in a spontaneous, unpremeditated way to a request for an explanation about the Hugo controversy, in the process accurately describing Theodore Beale as a neo-Nazi. Since her answer to the query was so brief, the Sad Puppies were mentioned in close proximity to that description, which understandably left them very uncomfortable. (Eric Flint’s analysis concluding that this was all a deliberate subtle ploy on Irene’s part to use guilt by association against them gives her too much credit. Like many visual artists, she is a spontaneous writer and not a calculating one.)

Irene has never been known for her diplomacy — I say that as someone who’s knocked heads with her more than once on work-related matters — but I think the reaction to her off-the-cuff statement is more extreme and over-the-top than the statement itself. After all, in the end, it was just one person’s opinion, readily ignorable by those who differ with it. (In fact, it went unnoticed for _weeks_ until someone decided to weaponize it.) It’s _trivial_ compared to Brad and Larry’s premeditated, organized effort to violate a social compact of 60 years standing. If you want to express outrage, that’s where it should properly be applied.
– Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

We don’t approve of Mr. Doherty’s statement. We consider it to have been woefully insufficient. And Mr. Feder just happened to leave out the minor fact that Irene Gallo attacked Tor’s customers and described the works written by Tor authors as “bad-to-reprehensible”. The important thing to Mr. Feder, apparently, is repeating and trying to justify the “neo-Nazi” libel of a well-known libertarian.

As for setting a “terrible precedent”, that is downright absurd. Gallo’s firing will not be anything close to a precedent. The SJWs set these ground rules and we have already seen many examples of people losing their jobs for everything from a six-year-old political donation to a single Facebook comment, examples as recent as yesterday.

The principal of North Miami Senior High School has lost his job over his Facebook comment defending the Texas police officer caught on video pushing a teen girl to the ground in an incident at a community pool.

“Miami-Dade County Public Schools employees are held to a higher standard, and by School Board policy, are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values.”

In light of these additional provocations by a Tor Books employee, I sent an email to Tom Doherty, Publisher at Tor Books, requesting that he deal directly with the public misbehavior of his Associate Publisher and his Associate Editor. I trust that he will address the situation in a professional and decisive manner.

It should be obvious, at this point, that I am far from the only individual being attacked by his employee,s and that the unpleasantries are not going to end until those employees are held fully accountable for their ludicrously unprofessional actions.

Darrell Schweitzer 
The Puppies are entitled to their literary opinions and tastes, but to my mind any of them who do not repudiate Vox Day are neo-Nazis by association. You are responsible for who you associate with or take as an ally.

Guilt by association. That’s new. Given that precisely zero Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies have repudiated me, apparently we’re supposed to believe that you’re all neo-Nazis too. Meanwhile, SJWs force a Nobel laureate to resign over a single comment:

    A Nobel laureate has resigned from his position as honorary professor at a UK university after he made comments about the “trouble with girls” in science. University College London (UCL) said Sir Tim Hunt – a Royal Society fellow – had resigned from his position within its faculty of life sciences.

    He told a conference that women in labs “cry” when criticised and “fall in love” with male counterparts.

    He told the BBC he “did mean” the remarks but was “really sorry”.

    A statement from the university read: “UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has resigned from his position as honorary professor with the UCL faculty of life sciences following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.

    “UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality.”