Tag: SFWA

Ideology of the gatekeepers

Amanda at the Mad Genius Club notes the connection between the rise of the Left’s ideological gatekeepers in publishing and the alarming discovery that boys no longer read books:

I’m happy with just writing stories folks want to read. After all, isn’t that really what we’re supposed to be doing? Writing
stories that entertain? If a story doesn’t entertain, folks aren’t
going to read it — or at least not finish it. If they don’t read it,
then what good is any message we might put into it? That message will be
lost because it was never read.

But that isn’t enough for the literati, for all too many editors and,
unfortunately, for the boards of too many professional organizations
these days. No, you have to be socially relevant and enlightened in your
writing. You have to promote what is “right” — as is defined by those
who have the loudest voice. Heaven help you if you write something that
might offend someone else, especially if you are a male of a certain
age.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned (and I know that means I have the wrong
beliefs and should probably be silenced now. Sorry, I’m a loud-mouthed
woman who isn’t afraid to exercise my First Amendment rights). But I
still feel that the story is the thing we should be concerned with and
not the message. As I said earlier, folks won’t read the message if they
don’t read the story. The corollary to this is: why is publishing in
trouble? Because it forgot that readers, on the whole, read to be
entertained and to forget about their troubles….

Don’t believe me, ask yourself why so many in publishing are trying
to convince us that boys don’t read….

Then we have those publishers and editors and writers who feel that
we must address all of society’s ills with our writing and “educate” our
readers so there will never be any racism or sexism or any other ism
they don’t approve of ever again.

She’s merely pointing out the readily apparent, but in light of how some writers have nevertheless attempted to deny there is any ideological bias in the SFWA and in SF/F publishing, and it is either a) one’s imagination, or, b) just a complete coincidence to observe that the field is now policed by gatekeepers who assiduously work to prevent the publication of any makehurt or crimethink, I think it is useful to have a look at what sort of works the publishers are actively seeking:

Here is an informative example from one publishing house that freely admits it is “of a progressive bent”:

What are we looking for?

As mentioned above, we’re now considering submissions within any
genres. We’re specifically looking for novels or collections which
demonstrate a significant crossover between genres – as the name or our
press suggests. CGP has always been a press with a progressive bent. Bearing that in mind, here are some things we want to see MORE of:

  • Queer Main Characters
  • MC’s of Color
  • Women MC’s
  • Disabled MC’s
  • Science saves the day!
  • Far future
  • Stories set outside North America

Beyond that, there is no hard-and-fast rule; any story that follows the above guidelines will be considered.

What are we NOT looking for?

  • Stories based off the assumption that any particular religion’s beliefs are real
  • Weak women being rescued by macho guys
  • “Science-as-villain”
  • Vampires, zombies, werewolves, Arthurian retellings, Eurocentric faeries, or ghost stories
  • Time travel

Though it should go without saying, any submissions promoting
discrimination, misogyny, bigotry, and/or hatred will be deleted without
notice or consideration.

Now, consider how many works of the Golden Age are unpublishable by these standards, particularly in light of the opinion of the majority of SFWA members that using the term “lady” as an adjective is competely unacceptable misogyny. And notice how the publisher is not only expressly anti-religious and anti-American, but is actively looking to publish secular science propaganda.  Religion can be the villain – so long as its tenets are shown to be false – but science cannot be.

Obviously, this is a small publisher, but don’t deceive yourself.  The major genre publishers may be much more open to vampires, zombies, and time travel than this one, but their standards, the books they have been publishing, and the books they are looking to publish, are all based on the same ideological standard even though they are less open about it.

Speaking of gatekeepers, if you’re submitting for ing-game publication, please keep in mind that we’re focused on action and story uber alles; the objective is most certainly NOT to become the mirror image of the conventional gatekeepers.

B&N totters

It was interesting to notice during the recent SFWA campaign how
completely clueless most of the authors were about the present state of the publishing industry.  They
genuinely believed that the status quo remains viable, which was part of why
Random House was accused of creating Hydra simply because they are obviously wicked and evil.

Nor did they rethink their position when Nightshade Books went under.  As I said at the time, it would probably take the bankruptcy of Barnes & Noble and the concomitant effects on the genre publishers to get them to realize that the traditional publishing game is all but over.  But that could happen sooner than even a skeptic like me had imagined:

Barnes and Noble has not had an easy go of it. The brick-and-mortar stalwart has seen its revenues and profits steeply decline as we’ve entered the age of the e-book. In fact, profits haven’t just shrunk; they’ve disappeared. During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, the company suffered a net loss of $118.6 million, down significantly from the already poor showing it posted in 2012 when it lost $56.9 million in Q4. For the year, that put Barnes and Noble’s losses at $154.8 million — more than double what it lost in 2012.

It’s somewhat of a pity, as some of my favorite memories include spending Friday evenings wandering through the stacks with Spacebunny.  The only book signing I ever did was at Barnes & Noble and I was told it was one of the most successful ones that branch had ever had.  When I first graduated from college, I used to set myself a $50 monthly book budget that I would spend there; I’d usually manage to spend it by the second or third week.

But then, I still recall my last visit there, and walking out without buying anything.  The SF/F section was full of media tie-in novels and fantasy novels with badly Photoshopped covers, the history section had all but disappeared, and most of the remaindered hardcovers were picture books.  So perhaps the structural rot that is now apparent had already set in.

I imagine the executives at Barnes are already trying to figure out what sort of pitches they can make to Amazon and Google.  Anyhow, if you’re an SF/F writer who writes actual SF or epic fantasy, feel free to contact me about publishing through our in-game store.  We’ve already got some excellent original works of fiction, including a few set in Selenoth, but we’re looking for about 20 more.

A novel excuse

The SFWA’s Damien Walter has produced a novel excuse for not being able to defend his beliefs in public:

You’re only as intelligent as the cretin you’re arguing with on the
internet. Remember that the next time you’re tempted to debate Vox Day.

His excuse makes no sense at all. If one is arguing with a cretin, it is very, very easy to demonstrate that he is a cretin and to point out the flaws in his arguments.  And it is even easier for unbiased third parties to not only observe whose arguments are better, but which of the two interlocutors is more intelligent.

This ease of observation, in fact, is why most people, including more than a few who are not terribly well-disposed towards me, readily acknowledge that I am extremely intelligent.  Not so much because I can successfully defend my own positions, but because I am usually able to demonstrate that I understand my opponent’s position much better than he does himself.  That’s one of the things that has rendered the inflation/deflation debate so interesting in comparison with past debates; both my opponent and I are reasonably well-versed in most of the arguments on both sides.

People like John Scalzi and PZ Myers don’t run away from public debates with me because I am insufficiently intelligent, but because they know, on the basis of their past encounters with me, that I can easily shoot down their arguments while they cannot even scratch mine.  Such individuals are intellectually careless and their positions are largely emotion-based, which makes it very easy for any logically-minded individual to detect the flaws in their argument and exploit them.

Remember, it was only last week that I publicly humiliated PZ in his very own field of biology, and moreover, did it in passing.  Although I have to admit, that was a surprise to me.  As as low as my opinion is of the man, it never occurred to me that anyone with a PhD in biology could possibly fail to recognize that “human” and “homo sapiens sapiens” are not perfect synonyms.

The “crackpot” excuse doesn’t hold up well in the eyes of anyone who has read my blog for more than a week. And, of course, the “platform” excuse rings increasingly hollow because my own platform is already considerably larger than most of my critics. So it’s interesting to see this has resulted in new and increasingly nonsensical excuses being produced by the likes of Walter.

Notice that for all the posturing and shrieking of the crowd that Mike Resnick described as “screamers”, not a single individual, not a single white knight, has dare to even attempt to defend their equalitarian position or substantively address my inequalitarian one.  They have a growing panoply of absurd excuses, but the real reason is they don’t because they know they can’t do it successfully.

UPDATE: It’s amusing how the Left is so convinced that their views must be the popular perspective that they retreat to delusional positions rather than admit the obvious:  “I think a half decent data analyst could also prove that most of VDs followers are sock-puppets as well.”

He most certainly could not.  First, I have no followers, I have readers.  Second, none of them are sock-puppets.  Unlike numerous lefties, I have no need to sock-puppet because a fair number of people enjoy reading my opinions, and some of them, over time, come to agree with a few of them. But neither my readership nor my wife are fictitious. Just deal with it. Denial only makes one look insane.

Mailvox: Mike Resnick clarifies

One of the chief targets of the SFWA pinkshirts corrects two misconceptions and explains a few things concerning Bulletingate:

A couple of corrections. I -asked- Laura not to get involved in this. I
know how much vituperation can get spewn by the hatemongers.

Also, I had nothing to do with the Campbell Award. I never created it, administered it, or won it.

For
those who haven’t read the offending articles (in which case, you have a
lot in common with the screamers): in issue #200, at the request of our
(female) editor, we wrote a very complimentary article about editors of
that gender…but we had the temerity to call them “ladies” rather than
“females”, and to state that Bea Mahaffey, who edited Other Worlds 63
years ago and died a couple of decades ago (and was a close personal
friend of mine) was beautiful. Those were sins #1 and #2. After the hate
mail began appearing, we committed Sin #3 in issue #202: we defended
our right to call Bea Mahaffey beautiful, and our (female) editor’s
right to run a generic, non-naked, non-bare-breasted warrior woman on
the cover. They’re still screaming for our deaths by slow torture. 🙂

It
got so bad that our editor, Jean Rabe, resigned, not just as editor but
as a member of SFWA. And for the record, I hired her as my assistant on
the Stellar Guild line of books 5 minutes later.

Corrections duly noted. Although one can only imagine the shrieks of outrage when Mr. Resnick’s shockingly sexist paternalism becomes known to the pinkshirts.  I think it goes without saying that neither Jim Hines nor John Scalzi would ever be so appallingly sexist as to attempt to silence a woman’s voice in this oppressive and demeaning manner.  They’re much more inclined to hide behind, or wear, a woman’s skirt than to protect her.

Mr. Resnick, on the other hand, is sufficiently old school to wish to shield his daughter from the hatemongering pinkshirts, for which one can only commend him.  And his Stellar Guild line promises to be a significant step up for Ms Rabe from the Bulletin. The idea of publishing collaborations between established writers and their proteges is a good one and something I can fully support, having been the beneficiary of a similar collaboration with the Original Cyberpunk in the early days of my SF/F career.

It is amusing to note that despite SFWA being an organization originally founded to professionalize the relations between SF writers and SF publishers, this latter-day parody finds itself engaged in furious attacks on new model editors and publishers like Mr. Resnick and myself.  One suspects that one factor contributing to the pinkshirts’ unmitigated rage is their shattered dreams, as Judith Tarr describes in the following manner:

Now, of course, there are so many more options. Chances are the
author will still go broke–all those stories of ebook gold mines are
exceptions, not the rule, especially for authors without large
followings or very up-to-date, popular, trendy subject matter. But the
books will see the light of day as ebooks, print-on-demand books,
audiobooks, even games or graphic novels. That doesn’t help the authors of ten or twenty or more years ago who
saw their hopes crushed, their dreams shattered, and their books
rejected by the one standard that validated them in publishers’ terms:
money and sales.

It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of SFWA members who Mr. Resnick describes as “screamers” are complete nonentities in the field, most of whom have published little more than the bare minimum to qualify for membership. They’ve taken over the organization just as it has become entirely irrelevant to the wider SF/F market.

Devouring their elders

Instapundit urges support for Malzberg and Resnick and quite rightly suspects “that the real ‘radioactive aura’ is more likely to attach to the SFWA”, while Andrew Fox excoriates the recent attempt of the SFWA’s pinkshirted stormtroopers to mau-mau their feminist forebears in considerable detail:

I feel compelled to point out, or at least suggest, that a vocal and
very cyber-visible portion of the SF pro and fan community have not been
covering themselves in glory recently. In fact, they have been acting
like a mob. A cyber-mob. And a mob is an ugly thing….

Given the prevalence of academic jargon from Cultural Studies or
other Studies departments in their comments, I imagine a goodly number
of the criticizers on the SWFA discussion boards and the broader
Internet are either university instructors or possessors of an advanced
degree from one of those programs. For many individuals under the age
of forty who have been through the university system, mau-mauing may
seem normative, or at least unremarkable. They have seen it at work
through divestment campaigns of various kinds (divestment from Israeli
companies or U.S. companies which provide goods to Israel which might be
used in security operations against Palestinians, or from companies
involved in fossil fuel production, or from companies connected to
certain figures active on the Right, such as the Koch brothers) and
through shout-downs and other disruptions of speakers invited to campus
whose backgrounds or viewpoints are contrary to those favored by student
activists.

Many of the criticizers may not consciously realize that they are
mau-mauing Mike and Barry, but mau-mauing is what they are engaged in.
Some commentators have pointed out the criticism is not censorship.
True; but in this instance, rather irrelevant. Other commentators have
stated that freedom of speech does not imply a right to a paid platform
(such as that enjoyed until now by Barry and Mike with their quarterly
columns for the Bulletin). Again – true, but irrelevant. For
what the protesters either seek to do or end up abetting is not
censorship, but what can be called shunning and shaming, an application of a radioactive aura to these two men which will make not only the future editors of the Bulletin
but also editors at other periodicals and publishing houses, organizers
of conventions, literary prize juries, and media outlets shy away from
wanting any connection with these two and their works. Remember, this
story has now broken out into mainstream outlets such as Salon and the Guardian;
people who previously had never heard of Mike Resnick or Barry Malzberg
or any of their books will now have their initial (and most likely
only) impression of them branded with a scarlet “S” for “Sexist,” as
detrimental a negative label in our time as “Adulterer” was in the time
of the Puritans. As Barry himself stated in the column “Talk Radio
Redux,” the most potent form of censorship is self-censorship,
the type that occurs in a writer’s head before he or she sets fingers to
keyboard. The mau-mauers, consciously or not, are using Mike and Barry
as cautionary examples – “Look what we’ve been able to do to the
reputations of a WorldCon Guest of Honor and to a man who has written
close to a hundred novels and over 250 short stories, several nominated
for Hugo or Nebula Awards. If we could do this to them, what do you
think we could do to you if you commit ThoughtCrime?”

The virtually thoughtless piling on is perhaps the most appalling.
So many of the criticizers whose comments I have come across admit they haven’t even read the columns in question. Once the ball of shunning and shaming
got rolling, hundreds of onlookers, alerted by social media, jumped on
the bandwagon, attracted by the enticing glow of participating in shared
moral outrage. Moral preening is on overload; industry professionals
and would-be professionals frantically signal to each other that they
are right-thinkers. According to the mau-mauers, Mike and Barry did not
merely misspeak (miswrite?); they did not have decent-enough intentions
which were ruined by Paleolithic habits and blinkered upbringings; they
are morally suspect, malign and vicious and evil. It’s burn the witch! all over again, but this time on a pyre of blog posts and Tweets.

I mentioned before that I completely understand the vehemence of
Barry’s reaction to all this. One sadly ironic aspect of this brouhaha
is that Barry is a lifelong man of the Left. He was staunchly antiwar
during the Vietnam era (see early stories such as “Final War”), and his
dream president was (and remains) Eugene McCarthy. I fully believe,
based on his writings about Alice Sheldon and Judith Merril, that Barry
considers himself a feminist, and an avid one. Condemnation from one’s
“own side” always burns hotter in one’s craw than condemnation from “the
other guys,” which can be easily rationalized away; just as criticism
(especially when viewed as unfair) from one’s own family hurts much
worse than criticism from relative strangers. Forty years ago (and in
all the years since), Barry was a fierce advocate of the New Wave in
science fiction, whose practitioners (with the sole exception of R. A.
Lafferty) were all politically aligned with the Left, as opposed to
old-timers such as John W. Campbell and Robert Heinlein. Now Barry must
feel as though the children of the Revolution are eating their elders
(as so frequently happens, it seems).

The amusing thing about this is that the SFWA folks involved, from Scalzi on down, genuinely believe that it was Mike and Barry making the organization look bad.  But they’re doing a fabulous job of doing that all on their own and they just keep digging the hole deeper… especially in light of the recent announcement of a 5-Year 4-Step Plan in which the SFWA Bulletin has been put on hiatus for up to six months while the pinkshirted task force ideologically cleanses redefines the “goals and mission of the magazine.”

As for devouring their elders, Fox may not realize quite how literally that has been true.  Although, to be fair, if Laura Resnick has not deigned to publicly defend her father, she has at least refrained from throwing in with the pinkshirted maenads.

Mailvox: time-preferences and civilization

JC is is wondering at the intrinsically anti-scientific bent of the SFWA:

I’m a white, Christian, American male of slightly above average
intelligence – but far from a super intelligence.  I’ve been ejoying
your writings since the WND days.  Since you left them, and I was forced
to discover and follow your Vox Popoli blog – my mind has been quite
blown away by the content.  I eagerly digest (or attempt to follow) the
economic posts, and love the cultural posts.  The science fiction
generally doesn’t interest me, but this latest uproar re: SWFA makes me
sick.  I just wanted to drop a note of thanks and support.  Between you
and Ann Barnhardt, I truly feel blessed to be able to see the examples
you set in steadfastly standing for Truth.
Thank you.
Now for a question.  I may have missed it, but your “h8ers” seem to
imply you’ve conferred a superior/inferior distinction to the various
human sub-species.  I don’t recall seeing anything of the sort, I
thought you just noted that they are provably different.   I
would personally assume that different groups should have nothing
approaching “equality” for quite a number of characteristics, in general
from a statistical perspective.  An overall ranking of
“superior/inferior” doesn’t seem like it would make any sense at all
unless we are discussing specific characteristics.  For instance, a
Jimmy the Greek foul in discussing fast twitch muscle fiber and athletic
performance, or perhaps predisposition to certain hereditary medical
conditions.  Or demonstrated contributions to advanced science.  
There’s nothing in my mind that would necessarily judge one of
God’s children as better/worse from an overall intrinsic value sense
simply by noting a particular subspecies (or intermingling thereof, such
as with my mixed heritage children), but it’s absurd to say we can’t
talk about relative comparisons of discrete characteristics.  I’ve
wandered a bit here, but I assure you I’m no rabbit or troll.  I guess
my question was about the conclusions drawn from the variations in
subspecies:  you never made any claims that the homo sapiens sapiens are
just dirty pieces of shit with no worth, as your critics seem to be
claiming, right?  I don’t know how you put up with these clowns without
having their insanity rub off on you just a little bit.

I have repeatedly stated that it is absolutely meaningless to claim general superiority or inferiority for any of the various human subspecies, (or, if you prefer, genetically distinct population groups), because it completely depends upon the specific metric involved.  Is a Great Dane superior to a Siberian Husky?  Is a bluebird superior to an eagle?  It all depends upon what the basis for comparison is.

Now, the reason that the SFWA pinkshirts are upset is because if one chooses the metric of “civilized”, by which I mean “the ability to participate in, maintain, and build a complex, technologically advanced civilization”, one can both observe and explain which subspecies are more and less capable of it than others, and therefore it is possible to claim that Group X is superior to Group Y on that particular basis.  As it happens, that particular ability is largely predicated on time-preferences, as longer time-preferences are required in order to a) practice self-discipline, and, b) build wealth, which are two of the primary prerequisites for maintaining and building civilizations.

One can even go so far as to say that the civilizational process, which I observe appears to take around 1,000 years on average, is largely the result of artificially selecting for individuals with longer time-preferences.  If a society regularly gets rid of its short-preferenced, hot-tempered predators and its non-savers, it will eventually find that it has built up considerable wealth as well as a population capable of cooperating and living together in relative peace.  And with cooperation and wealth, a society has the wherewithal to begin advancing technologically so long as it has entrepreneurs and elects to foster them rather than crush them in the interest of established parties.

Having shorter time preferences doesn’t make anyone “dirty pieces of shit with no worth”, any more than being physically shorter does, it simply makes them human beings with the same intrinsic human value as everyone else who happen to be less able to participate in, maintain, or build an advanced civilization.  The pure savage lives entirely in the moment and does not control his impulses. The entirely civilized individual is self-disciplined and is always capable of putting off for tomorrow, or next year, options that are available today.  This may explain why Christianity tends to be a civilizing force, as it reinforces longer time preferences by extending them beyond one’s lifetime, and why atheism, despite the higher-than-average intelligence of atheists, tends to be a barbarising force. Intelligence, while not entirely irrelevant, is somewhat of a red herring in this discussion.

The idea that there are meaningfully different time-preferences between genetically distinct population groups is a testable scientific hypothesis, although aside from some very small-scale studies on children, “the Stanford marshmallow experiment”, I am not aware of any studies that have been done in this regard.  In order for it to be useful, I would recommend a study with randomly selected adults, (corrected for income and debt), who would be offered a choice between receiving $200 in cash immediately and a check for a randomly selected amount between $250 and $1,000 in a randomly determined period of time ranging from three months to one year.  A second study would then test the ranges of the time preferences of the various population groups based on the information from the first study, and a third would test children to see if the range of their time preferences were consistent with the adult ranges.

Perhaps the hypothesis that pure homo sapiens sapiens have shorter time preferences than the various homo sapiens-homo neanderthalensis blends would hold up, or perhaps not.  But that is the primary purpose of science, to formulate and test hypotheses.  It is, I think, more than a little ironic that so many self-professed “science fiction” writers are not only horrified by a scientific perspective, but are openly and avowedly anti-science whenever science threatens to upend their cherished ideological beliefs.

Anyhow, it is because the entire concept of a racial supremacist is intrinsically nonsensical that I occasionally describe myself as an “Esquimaux supremacist”.  Having grown up in Minnesota, and having lived through more than a few bitterly cold Minnesota winters, I have a particular appreciation for the obvious and undeniable superiority of that noble people of the north.

Ideological cleansing

In much the same way Sami Abu Al-Ala was recently calling for ethnically cleansing Egypt of Jews, a pinkshirt by the name of Amal El-Mohtar was calling for the ideological cleansing of SFWA the other day.  She appears to find me insufficiently enthusiastic about the equalitarian jihad and is obviously hoping to make use of Twittergate in order to expel me from the organization   I didn’t bother responding to her call initially, since El-Mohtar’s opinion is no more important to me than Al-Ala’s.

What was amusing about the post with which she followed up that call, however, was the shock and dismay it reveals about her discovery that many sane and intelligent individuals actually tend to agree with me rather than with the fascist pinkshirts of the SFWA.  A number of my critics quite clearly do not recognize how the numbers line up; they’re still babbling about the problem of giving me “a platform” and clearly failing to recognize that I already have a much bigger platform than most of my outspoken critics.  For all that the pinkshirts are desperately trying to pretend something else is at stake, this is a very clear test of where one stands on the freedom of speech and expression.

Anyhow, this brave pinkshirt is feeling drained and wearied and constrained in her speech and expression by the fact that people actually disagree with her about “the horrors” of my opinion, despite the fact that I paid her no attention at all.  So, clearly, that is a situation that requires rectifying:

There are roughly seven thousand things I would rather be talking about
right now, but nevertheless. This is very important to me.

On Wednesday I called for the expulsion of Theodore Beale,
aka Vox Day, from SFWA. The reasons and proposed methodology are
detailed in the link. In brief, he very obviously, knowingly, and
deliberately broke the rules over what kind of posts could be tagged for
inclusion in SFWA’s promotional Twitter feed by posting a racist attack
on N. K. Jemisin. This is not a one-time occurence, but part of a
pattern of behaviour that shows malicious contempt for the organization
as a whole.

While the vast majority of responses — through
pingbacks on the post, in e-mail, over Twitter — have been positive and
supportive, over the last few days I have seen the following in various
places on the internet:

– people refusing to acknowledge that there was anything racist or misogynistic about Beale’s post
–
people wringing their hands over how we shouldn’t ban people from
organizations for their opinions (when that is not the argument I am
making)
– people saying we should just ignore him — that banning him from the Twitter feed is enough of a reprimand
–
people being more outraged at the idea that I would call Beale’s post
racist than at the fact that he called a black woman “an ignorant
half-savage” who couldn’t possibly be “fully civilized” on account of
her ethnic heritage.

I have also seen people belligerently
questioning or deriding my command of the English language, my religion,
my ethnicity, and my nationality, as a consequence of having made that
post.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that like NK Jemisin before her, El-Mohtar is lying about me.  I did not deliberately break the rules concerning the Twitter feed, I simply forgot them.  Nor do I have contempt for the entire organization, as my contempt is reserved for the current set of SFWA officers who are steering the organization into self-parody and complete irrelevance, as well as for the pinkshirts, who are mostly relatively new and unaccomplished members attempting to ideologically cleanse the organization of dissenting opinions.

UPDATE: Since I hadn’t read the woman’s entire first post, I didn’t realize quite how cognititively handicapable she is.  Check out her bolding-for-emphasis:

Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal. (Emphasis mine.)

The woman obviously doesn’t realize that “removal” does not mean “expulsion from the organization”, but rather, “removal of the offending blog from the Twitter feed”.  Which, you will note, has already taken place.

El-Moron also lies again when she claims that I have “repeatedly and aggressively used SFWA platforms to
broadcast and disseminate these views with obvious malicious intent.”  I used the Twitter feed once.  Ever.  And I never used any “SFWA platform”, because the Twitterfeed guidelines clearly state: “While SFWA does maintain the @sfwaauthors Twitter feed for the benefit of its members, ultimately the posts that appear in the feed are the responsibility of the authors of those posts, and are in no way endorsed by SFWA, nor do such posts reflect the opinions or policy of SFWA.”   It’s not as if I spoke as an officer of the organization, hijacked the SFWA Twitter account, posted anything on the SFWA web site or published an article in the SFWA Bulletin.

Finally, she doesn’t so much lie as display outright neuroticism by claiming “This last reads to me very much like a threat, especially coming from a
white man to a black woman in a country where public lynchings are a
matter of living memory.”

This last bit certainly helps explain why people have been deriding El-Moron’s command of the English language. First, it’s obviously not a threat.  I’m the only one who has actually, and repeatedly, been threatened here. Second, Jemisin made her speech in Australia.  Third, I live in Europe, not in the Americas.

Let rhetoric be silent when the readily observable facts gainsay its blather.

Rejecting the Lie

A few people, both sympathetic and otherwise, have asked me why I am willing to hold and defend such controversial and upsetting opinions as I have done of late.  And providing more evidence that rabbits simply do not have the capacity to understand not-rabbits, the SFWA is absolutely rife with various theories concerning my supposed mental instability.

After all, who but a deranged lunatic would think to challenge the received wisdom of the warren’s long-accepted consensus goodthink?

As it happens, the reason is fairly straightforward.  If you will not stand up for the truth when pressed, you will not stand up for the Truth when persecuted.  Now, I may be wrong about the process of civilizational development and the extended period of time I believe it requires to fully transform tribes of primitive savages into an advanced and civilized culture; I have no problem changing my mind when a compelling case contra my position has been made.  I have, as the regulars here know, done precisely that with regards to free trade and open borders, among other things.  But I have not seen one single person, not one, even attempt to demonstrate that I am incorrect in any way.

I’ve seen rants, I’ve seen outrage, I’ve seen anger, I’ve seen insults, and I’ve seen assertions that certain subjects are beyond debate. What I have not seen is anyone make a case, let alone a coherent or compelling one, that opposes the logic and observations I have presented.  This is because the Lie cannot compete with the Truth, it can only attempt to obscure it and silence those who dare to speak it.

But the Lie never wins in the end.  The ongoing controversy somehow reminded me of this passage from Panzer Commander, a war memoir written by one of Rommel’s favorite officers, Col. Hans von Luck, which I found moving in the way it showed how even enemies at war can find common ground in the light of the Truth.  More importantly, it shows how even a rage that burns hotter and more violently than the rage of the SFWA’s delusional members cannot destroy the hunger of the human spirit for truth and Truth alike.

“Smolensk looked as though it had been abandoned. Destruction in the industrial quarters and of the bridges over the Dnieper was immense. In the midst of the ruins, Smolensk cathedral pointed to the sky. It appeared largely unharmed. I followed the women and the old men and as I entered the cathedral, was deeply impressed by its beauty. It looked intact. The altar was adomed; burning candles and many icons richly embellished with gold bathed the interior in a festive light.

As I went up to the altar with my companions, an old man, poorly dressed and with a flowing beard, spoke to me in broken German.

“Gospodin officer, I am a pope who used to preach here before the Lenin-Stalin era; I have been in hiding now for many years, scraping a living as a shoemaker. Now you have liberated our city. May I say a first mass in this cathedral?”

“How is it,” I asked, “that your cathedral is in such good condition?” His answer surprised me. America in tsarist times bought the church and all its treasures “Immediately after the Revolution, Russians who had emigrated from the Russians who, at the time, were in urgent need of American dollars. The cathedral is American property, which is why everything is-almost-unchanged.” 

I have never been able to verify his statement, but it was not very important to me. Without referring to HQ, I gave the pope permission to celebrate mass the next day, for which he wanted to bring in an additional pope.

The following day, I went to Smolensk again, having informed the divisional commander in the meantime; as a precaution, I took along an armored patrol.

The sight that met our eyes when we arrived was breathtaking.

The square in front of the cathedral was full of people moving slowly toward the entrance. With my orderly officer, I jostled my way forward. Already, there was not a corner left in the cathedral in which people were not standing, sitting, or kneeling. We remained standing to one side to avoid disturbing the service by our presence.

I was not familiar with the Russian Orthodox ritual, but the ceremony that now began drew me more and more under its spell.

Invisible behind the altar, one of the two popes began with a monotone chant, which was answered by a choir of eight voices standing in front of the altar. The chanting of the precentor and the choir filled the vast space of the church. The acoustics gave the impression that the chanting came from above, from heaven.

The people fell on their knees and prayed. All had tears in their eyes. For them, it was the first mass for more than twenty years. My companion and I were greatly moved.”

In rejecting NK Jemisin’s call for reconciliation within the SFWA, I declared there can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.  Still less can there be any compromise between the Truth and the Lie.

The liars can ban the services. They can revoke memberships, they can deny access, they can reject publications, they can close their eyes, and they can put their hands over their ears. But one thing they cannot do is make their lies real.  And sometimes, it is necessary to imitate the marshwiggle, stick one’s hand into the fire, and raise a stink capable of penetrating their illusions.

Mailvox: the undead corpse

FeministX offers her condolences, rather less sarcastically than I would have expected:

Vox, I can see that your membership in SFWA was meaningful and important to you. I am sorry that you are being sidelined from an organization that was valuable to you because you expressed an intellectual opinion. I know this must be very frustrating because even good arguments will not help you gain understanding from your opponents.

Thank you.  I very much enjoyed SFWA back in the day, and having the opportunity to get to know writers such as Gordon Dickson, Joel Rosenberg, David Feintuch, Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Wrede, and Raymond Feist.  I belonged to it for nine years without so much as exchanging a cross word with anyone.  Even then, however, there were some signs that the equalitarians in their midst were fitfully stirring and seeking to take control of the organization from those they derided, and still deride, as “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys”.

Looking at the organization now makes you think of seeing your cousin lurching toward you with his hands outstretched, his throat gashed open and his head lolling down on his chest, moaning “braaaains”!  It’s rather ghastly.

SF vs science

Shattersnipe would appear to favor a rhetorical approach to the seemingly indisputable observation that not all human population groups are equally civilized:

And there is white-hot anger, so fierce you become the eye within the
maelstrom of your own rage, calm as your pulse exceeds the beats of a
marathon runner, calm as your fingers grasp and clench, calm as you grip
your aggressor’s throat and squeeze.

This last I feel for Theodore Beale.

Recently, I blogged about sexism in the SFWA Bulletin.
I wrote that piece as a self-declared comic rant, the tone inspired by
anger at men who ultimately meant well, however offensive and outdated
their efforts at showing it. I received a lot of support for having done
so; but of course, there was a flipside. My anger, said some, was
unseemly and unprofessional. My arguments were poorly reasoned. I was
preaching to the choir. I was the gendered pejorative of choice. But the
thing is, I can shrug that off. I deal out enough criticism that I
expect to receive my share in return, and whatever form that pushback
takes, it very rarely shocks me. By the standards of women on the
internet, in fact, I’m pretty lucky. I’ve received a minimum of rape
threats, I rarely get called a cunt, and if some of my detractors are
uncivil, then I can usually dish it out in return. I was bullied,
harassed, attacked and assaulted enough at school for being forthright,
female and unfeminine that written threats just don’t chill me the way
they used to. (They still chill me, of course. And I didn’t suffer
nearly as much as others. Nonetheless, the comparison stands – and no,
this isn’t an invitation to try harder.)
The point being, I have privilege, and that
privilege protects me. I’m a middle-class, well-educated, straight white
ciswoman with a functional, middle-class white family, and however much
the misogyny gets to me at times, I can draw on that privilege – on
that firmly entrenched sense of self-worth and the emotional, social and
financial safety net which supports it – and fight back. I belong to
the second most privileged group of people on the planet, and whatever
abuse I still suffer regardless of that, I have the cultural status to
counter it and be heard. As an individual, therefore, I’m hard to
oppress. I have privilege. I have resilience. I have opinions.
And I have anger….
I feel poisoned even typing that. Sickened.
Trembling. I cannot even imagine how Jemisin feels. Nor am I attempting
to speak for her. She is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant
women – one of the most brilliant people and writers, period – active in
SFF today, and my voice in this matter is not a replacement for hers.
I am speaking because it would be a crime against conscience not to.
I am speaking because a world where men like
Theodore Beale are left to speak unchallenged by the weariness of their
opponents is not a world I want to live in. I am speaking because my privilege affords me a chance to be heard.
And I am speaking because of the bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence I feel for members of my
own race, both now and throughout history, who speak of savages and
lesser beings, of civilisation and the right to kill those outside or
perceived to be incapable of it; who speak, as Beale does, as though
people of colour are a genetically different, inferior species of human
when compared to his Aryan ancestors.
This is my Reconciliation.
The passion of it all just gives you shivers, doesn’t it?  It’s hard to decide what is the most amusing part of this hysterical “dabacle”.  It’s a little subtle, perhaps, but I think, in the end, my favorite part is where she declares the “bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence” she feels for the idea that “people of colour” are “genetically different”.
What is so funny about this is that it all goes back to 2005, and a WND column when I pointed out that women don’t write much hard science fiction because they have little aptitude or inclination for science.  And now, eight years later, we see a spelling-challenged female SFWA writer who is frothing-at-the-mouth furious at the idea that Africans are a genetically distinct population group, a group that therefore must necessarily be either inferior or superior to other population groups.
In other words, she is a science fiction writer who is deeply and violently offended by science.  This should suffice to explain why science fiction has qualitatively declined over the years.

But we shouldn’t be too harsh on her.  After all, she does an excellent job of proving my original point in my response to Ms Jemisin, which is that there can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.  This isn’t a challenge to my views, but rather, an exemplary underlining of them.