Tag: SFWA

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.

SFWA Forum: the “moderated” posts

Since the freethinkers at the SFWA Forum are presently debating whether my comments can be permitted in the very place where I am attacked with the most badthink words the rabbits can produce, I hereby give myself permission, as per the SFWA Forum guidelines, to quote my posts here before they are disappeared again:

1. Posted Today, 03:41 AM
 

Her speech is ridiculous, her call for reconciliation is impossible, and, it should be noted, MS Jemisin is lying about me:

“For the past few days I’ve also been observing a “kerfuffle”, as
some call it, in reaction to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’
of America’s latest professional journal, the Bulletin. Some of you may
also have been following the discussion; hopefully not all of you. To
summarize: two of the genre’s most venerable white male writers made
some comments in a series of recent articles which have been decried as
sexist and racist by most of the organization’s membership. Now, to put
this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new
president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In
this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of
the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so we’re
talking less than 50 people.”

I am not “a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few
other flavors of asshole”.  It is John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden,
and Theresa Nielsen Hayden who have described me that way.  I merely
posited that even if their false claims were true, I would still be the
right choice for SFWA president given my industry connections and
executive experience. Nor have I ever made any active efforts to take
away the woman’s “most basic rights”; I am in fact a libertarian. NK
Jemisin’s speech is not only ignorant, it is blatantly and provably
dishonest with regards to me, with regards to the history of science
fiction, and with regards to Florida and Texas state law.

I hereby demand a public apology from Ms Jemisin.

Moreover, based on the particular nature of her false claim, Ms Jemisin has clearly violated the Forum rules, which state “The
SFWA discussion forums are for SFWA members only, and all posts made
here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted outside these
forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”  Her false statement was clearly based on my announcement which was posted here in the forums by Lawrence Schoen.

I therefore also request that she be given a warning point by a Forum moderator.

2. Posted Today, 07:52 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

She did nothing of the kind.  I have never described myself anywhere
as misogynist, racist, or anti-Semite and a search of my blog will prove
that.  The only time I’ve even bothered to address such stupid
accusations together is here, in the Forum, which is why it is obvious
that she violated SFWA confidentiality.  I have zero interest in
debating with you, Mr. Sanford. I enjoy challenges and you’re not half
as intelligent as people I’ve crushed in three exchanges.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

I should certainly hope so.  I was warned for violating SFWA
confidentiality once because I was unaware even partial quotes were not
permitted.  I expect Ms Jemisin to be similarly disciplined.  If not,
well, then we’ll know just how impartial the moderators are.  Anyhow,
20x more people will read this on my blog than will read it here.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford.  Neither is history.  They simply
are.  And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and
about the state laws of Texas and Florida.  As some of my Australian
readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s
talking about concerning Australian race relations either.

3. Posted Today, 08:15 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

So, if I’d simply written: “That post on her blog is one of the most
racist attacks I’ve seen in a long time.”, that would not require
moderation?  Who are you trying to kid?

Meanwhile, the President-elect, Steven Gould, notes: “Lots
of people calling for the expulsion of this guy. With reason.”

Well, my lawyer and I would certainly enjoy seeing them try to expel a paid-up Lifetime member for the thoughtcrime of expressing his opinion.  You see, I’ve already got the entire SF Forum on record, so it would be fascinating to see them attempt to defend various statements by certain authors while claiming that mine were worthy of expulsion.

A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation

NK Jemisin is publicly lying about me and a few other things in Australia as she blithely advocates the continued self-destruction of science fiction:

Right now American politicians are doing their best to roll back
voting rights won during our own Civil Rights movement. They are
putting in place educational “reforms” which disproportionately have a
negative impact on black and brown and poor white kids, and will
essentially help to solidify a permanent underclass. Right now there
are laws in places like Florida and Texas which are intended to make it
essentially legal for white people to just shoot people like me, without
consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence. So:
admitting that the land we live on was stolen from hundreds of other
nations and peoples? Acknowledging that the prosperity the United
States enjoys was bought with blood? That’s a pipe dream.

I want you to understand that what you’ve done makes me want to weep with envy, and bitterness, and hope.

So: segue time. Let’s scale down. Let’s talk about the community — the microcosmic nation — of science fiction and fantasy.

For the past few days I’ve also been observing a “kerfuffle”, as some
call it, in reaction to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ of
America’s latest professional journal, the Bulletin. Some of you may
also have been following the discussion; hopefully not all of you. To
summarize: two of the genre’s most venerable white male writers made
some comments in a series of recent articles which have been decried as
sexist and racist by most of the organization’s membership. Now, to put
this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new
president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole.
In this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent
of the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so
we’re talking less than 50 people. But scale up again. Imagine if ten
percent of this country’s population was busy making active efforts to
take away not mere privileges, not even dignity, but your most basic
rights. Imagine if ten percent of the people you interacted with, on a
daily basis, did not regard you as human.

Just ten percent. But such a ten percent.

And beyond that ten percent are the silent majority — the great
unmeasured mass of enablers. These are the folks who don’t object to
the treatment of women as human beings, and who may even have the odd
black or gay friend that they genuinely like. However, when the ten
percent starts up in their frothing rage, these are the people who say
nothing in response. When women and other marginalized groups respond
with anger to the hatred of the ten percent, these are the people who do
not support them, and in fact suggest that maybe they’re overreacting.
When they read a novel set in a human society which contains only one
or two female characters, these are the people who don’t decry this as
implausible. Or worse, they simply don’t notice. These are the people
who successfully campaigned for Star Trek to return to television after
25 years, but have no intention of campaigning for Roddenberry’s vision
to be complete, with gay characters joining the rainbow brigade on the
bridge. These are the people who gleefully nitpick the scientific
plausibility of stopping a volcano with “cold fusion”, yet who fail to
notice that an author has written a future earth in which somehow
seventeen percent of the human race dominates ninety percent of the
characterization.

Let me be perfectly clear.  I do not describe myself as a “misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole”.  John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Theresa Nielsen Hayden, among others, have described me that way.  Of course, John Scalzi also describes himself as a rapist, Patrick Nielsen Hayden took his wife’s name when he got married, and Theresa Nielsen Hayden is dumb enough to have claimed a prominent Game blogger with three Billboard-charting club hits “is not acquainted with actual women.”

Granted, Spacebunny and the fat frog that is Nielsen Hayden don’t look as if they belong to the same phylum, let alone the same species, so perhaps the key word is not “women, but “actual” in the sense of “grotesquely malformed”.

I therefore suggest that their assertions should be taken with at least a small grain of salt rather than credited to me. And it should be obvious that, being a libertarian, I am not actively attempting to take away anyone’s “most basic rights”.  Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not.

She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too.  The laws are not there to let whites ” just shoot people like me, without
consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence”, those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.

Jemisin’s disregard for the truth is no different than the average Chicago gangbanger’s disregard for the traditional Western code of civilized conduct. She could, if she wished, claim that privileged white males are responsible for the decline of Detroit, for the declining sales of science fiction, even for the economic and cultural decline of the United States, but that would not make it true.  It would not even make it credible.  Anyone who is paying sufficient attention will understand who is genuinely responsible for these problems.

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males.  If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance.  These things take time.

Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into irrelevance. Nor do the back-patting Samuel Johnsons wiping their eyes and congratulating her for her ever-so-touching speech understand that.

There can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.

UPDATE: It may amuse some of you to know that in making her false claim, NK Jemisin appears to have violated the SFWA Forum rules, which state: “[A]ll posts made here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted
outside these forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”   I am confident the moderators of the SFWA will be swift to deal with this violation of the organization’s rules.

UPDATE 2: The Spitefully Fascist Writers of America are on the job!  This post was resulted in the following email:  “Your blog feed has been removed from the @SFWAauthors aggregator due to violating of the policies of this service, specifically:  “Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal.”” 

UPDATE 3: Now the SFWA moderators have, at least temporarily, wiped my comments off the SFWA Forum thread while leaving the attacks on me untouched.  What a pity that 20x more people will read everything here instead.  Keep this in mind when you’re trying to argue that there are no ideological gatekeepers in the SF/F publishing world.  They desperately want to silence all disssent, and they’re tremendously frustrated that they don’t have the wherewithal.


UPDATE 4: As always, I am quite willing to publicly debate Ms Jemisin, Mr. Sanford, or any other member of the SFWA concerning the issues raised here, be it on the SFWA Forum, this blog, or any other written venue.  And if all these passionate champions of human equality are afraid to defend their views in public, as were Messrs Myers and McRapey in the past, well, everyone knows perfectly well what that signifies, their protestations notwithstanding.


UPDATE 5: McRapey has the perfect solution to the Problem that Must Not Be Named.  He’s going to give money to ANOTHER charity. That will show me!  When did “donation” replace “education” as the left-liberal solution to all evils?

Stampeding the herd

Sarah Hoyt contemplates the bovine thinking that led to the SFWA’s recent “storm in a B-cup”.  After all, it’s hard for the older members of the herd to keep up:

I got very – as opposed to a bit – worried in the eighties when women
started claiming that men talking them into sex was “rape.”  The
reasoning seemed to be that men had awesome talking skills and a mere
woman could not defend herself against all those double-slick words.

I thought “OMG, they’re going Victorian.”

Since then we’ve gone to lookism (the ugly girl’s attempt to take
attention from the pretty one) and to a man even looking at a woman too
long, or asking for a date being considered “harassment.”

In fact, any man NOTICING another person is female is now harassment
(witness the offense at “ladies” in Barry and Mike’s article.)

I feel for Barry and Mike.  I’m sure they were full supporters of the
initial feminism which only wanted to give women access but assumed
that evolution was not going to be reversed in a generation, and if
women wanted to work alongside men, they’d have to endure men being…
male.  And if they used a little of female wiles to get what they
wanted… well, that’s how humans are and they go two by two.  This was a
somewhat rational idea, and if it had stopped there…
It didn’t.

Their articles were salutes of the women who made it in (at that time) a very hostile male environment.

Barry and Mike had no idea that the herd had changed step and that
the mooing signals from the top had changed.  Cattle are very stupid
animals.  They identify their herd by a series of not very rational
signals.  Fall out of step, and you risk being mistaken for an intruder
and gored.  And people who didn’t realize there was herd behavior going
on, and who got to their positions by rational thought, are more than
likely to get that treatment.  I know, it’s happened to me.

And meanwhile the herd of tough grrrl Victorian maidens, “don’t call
me slut” but “I’ll sleep with guys I’m not even interested in, and I’ll
call myself slut,”  “asking me on a date is sexism” and “I can’t
understand where all the good men have gone”, “we’re just as good as
men”, “it’s rape if a man talks a woman into sex because men have
awesome men neurons we can’t compete with” goes on its merry way
changing directions as the leaders change rationals and demanding more
government intervention to handicap men more, because otherwise, how can
they compete with wonderful male superpowers?  They who are fragile
flowers who get peristaltic disturbances because someone mentions most
top scientists aren’t female?

The irony is the lesson being taught to younger men who have watched the Resnick-Malzberg debacle is that my way is the right way.  Kowtowing to the feminist cows only leads to being trampled, but standing up to them, challenging them, and contemptuously exposing them for the pathetic intellectual frauds they are will send them stampeding away, mooing in distress, every single time.

Barry and Mike were full supporters of the initial feminism.  Most men of their age were. Having been steeped in it my entire life, I’m a full-fledged enemy of it.  And I’m very, very far from being alone in that regard.

Equality in the SFWA

A German university points the way:

The University of Leipzig has voted to adopt the feminine version of the word for “professor” as its default. In German Professorin refers to a female professor while Professor is the male equivalent. Under the new measures, written documents will use the term Professorinnen when referring to professors in general. A footnote is to explain that male professors are also included in the description.

This solves so many problems!  I’m sure the likes of McRapey and McRacy will be delighted to henceforth be known as science fiction authoresses.  They’ll probably throw on pretty dresses to celebrate this bold step forward in gender equity. 

You know McRapey is just dying to break out his little red pumps again.