I got into a Twitter fight with author John Scalzi yesterday. There’s no need to write up a blog post detailing that because Twitchy already did it for me. Thanks, Twitchy!
Fun stuff.
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Posted that earlier and got some messages of WTF? For those of you following the continuing balkanization of sci-fi/fantasy and the perpetually outraged Social Justice Warrior’s outrage of the week, it was recently revealed that liberal/feminist icon Marion Zimmer Bradley was a pedophile child rapist, with many victims, whose crimes were known about and covered up by elements of fandom… So yesterday the Social Justice Warriors boldly banded together to condemn conservative author Larry Correia for using the word “pussy”.
Background, yesterday morning Jim C. Hines decided to make up some more stuff about me. This time it was about my post in response to Miss Nevada’s detractors called The Naïve Idiocy of Teach Rapists Not to Rape. Like usual Hines pretty much agreed with what I actually said, all while making up weird things that I supposedly said to rail against instead.
Of course I didn’t see this post through a track back, because it is hard to throw chickenshit allegations about somebody when you link to what they actually said. But one of my readers saw it and posted the link on Facebook. (later in the day, Hines would marvel that Correia’s minions had found it already… Yes, Jim, they have the internet on computers now). Unlike Jim, I’m not an incompetent wimp, so here’s the link to his: http://www.jimchines.com/2014/06/lc-on-rape-and-self-defense/ (I copied the final comment and posted it at the very end of this post because I find it powerful and damning, so if you read anything, at least skip ahead and read that)
Now here is the interesting thing, I had to finish a short story yesterday so didn’t have any time to respond myself, but ten or twelve of my readers went over and started arguing. It mostly consisted of “He never said that, he never said, Larry never said that either.” One guy, who was a fan of both me and Hines, put his post up on my FB and posted it to Jim’s blog comments. It was all reasonable, but mostly concentrated on where Jim’s stats were fishy. It never appeared. Go figure.
A couple hours later Jim locked the comments, because that’s what progs do when people disagree with their disingenuous nonsense. Ironically, my post that provoked Jim is still open to comments, and has about 600 now with people from all sorts of different backgrounds arguing all sorts of different positions. I’ve never closed a comment thread on my blog ever. It’s like I always say, it isn’t my side trying to silence the opposition. It is routine for left wingers to “massage” their blog comments. Meanwhile the right loves when the left talks, because the more they say, the more the world can see just how full of shit they are.
That afternoon, short story is turned in, and somebody else on FB tells me that Scalzi is trying to start some shit on Twitter. So I went over to take a look. You can see how that turned out in the Twitchy link above. Basically the nail that sticks up must be hammered down, but sadly I’m more of a rail road spike and my detractors are Fisher Price squeaky hammers.
There were a ton of other comments on there also, because as usual a legion of poo flinging monkeys descended on me, armed with their Checklists. You had the internet tough guys who didn’t need guns to defend themselves (of course, I’m sure they are total badasses in real life, but their wives and mothers aren’t, which is why I teach women to shoot guns) and the usual how guns were compensating for tiny penises (which doesn’t explain women who carry guns…) Most of it was the usual snide, self-righteous, make shit up, and take whatever you can out of context in order to get offended and give yourself sainted victimhood, nonsense.
Another author, Mary Robinette Kowal, who I have met in person several times, either read the timeline backwards on accident or deliberately, (in reality, I insulted Scalzi, then a woman said she was a rape victim and I was being mean, but Mary flipped it so that a woman told me she was a rape victim and then I insulted her) then used that to show her readers how hateful I was to hurl insensitive insults at rape victims. When pointed out by me and a few others that she got the timeline backwards, she kept with it, because my insulting an effeminate man with a vulgar word related to female genitalia (a type of insult that has been in common usage since at least the Romans) was the worst thing ever.
Meanwhile, one of the Caring Liberals was hurling much viler insults at one of my supporters who was a rape survivor, but that didn’t count, because he was on my side, and thus deserved it.
Mary then told me I was disgusting and dangerous and needed to stay away from her. Yep. Disagreeing or failing to sufficiently cheer lead prog nonsense makes you “dangerous”. SJWs love to hurl stuff like that out there, hoping it sticks. The best weapon in their arsenal is someone unfamiliar with you seeing your name connected to Dangerous, Rape Apologist, Misogynist, Sexist, Racist, Homophobic, etc. and spreading that around. Smear then disengage. Mary’s far smarter than Scalzi.
EDIT: See below, Mary has made a public apology. I’m still disgusting and dangerous… meh… But at least I’m not being portrayed as going out of my way to insult rape victims.
But dangerous? You must have me mistaken with one of the left wing child molesters you guys keep showering with praise. If by dangerous, you mean I’m well trained and used to be a top competition shooter, yes, which is why I took my dangerous knowledge and shared it with as many women as possible so they could be empowered and able to defend themselves. But hey, everybody’s definition of dangerous is different. I hurt someone’s feelings once.
As for the insensitive evil badness of disagreeing with the opinion of somebody who has been a victim, the following was written by one of my regular readers (Shadowdancer) a few days ago and is from the (still open!) comments:
But do rape victims, or, indeed, any other victim of a tragedy or any other trauma, suddenly become sainted, that they become unquestionable? Are they suddenly elevated beyond the rest of us, that their words – especially if they’re incredibly harmful ideas -can no longer be tested or confronted in the arena of ideas? Do people who have been traumatized in some way gain a special knowledge that makes them unimpeachable and beyond criticism if they espouse a point of view that is not only hypocritical, but one that actively will create more victims, encourage social if not actual vigilantism, and remove the protection of innocent until guilty?
No, they’re not. They’re still people, and being a victim of a tragedy and a person who espouses harmful ideas are two separate things, even if they reside in the same person. They are just as capable of having lethally bad ideas as the rest of the population. They are still capable of being hypocrites. And their ideas are just as eligible for testing on the arena of ideas, not automatically segregated from it, nor are these ideas entitled to being given smacked with wifflebats of sympathy instead of swords of reason and scrutiny.
If pointing that out makes me bully, that is no worse than being an enabler who allows the spread of the idea by refusing to confront it simply because the person spreading that idea is put in a special class of social perception of Saint Victimhood.
Pretty much that. I like to judge ideas on their merits and people by the content of their character and not whatever handy sex/race/class/victim box a Social Justice Warrior assigns them to.
So what was the horrible misogynistic thing that I did which was so terribly insulting and awful bad that it caused all these SFWA officer alumni to unite in my condemnation? I called Scalzi a “pussy”. So, the Word Police swooped in, declaring that this was the most hurtful misogynistic trigger outrage this week. (of course, these same people shower praise on, quote from, and give lifetime achievement awards to sci-fi author, Samuel Delany, who praises pedophile organization NAMBLA, so their outrage meter may need some calibration)
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In this section I’d like to talk about “offensive” words in the context of being a writer. Now, personally I think trigger warnings are stupid, but apparently they’re like mandatory to the perpetually outraged crowd, so TRIGGER WARNING: I’m going to talk about body parts, there will be lots of profanity, it is going to get very crude, and I’ll probably hurt some feelings. Most people who aren’t total pussies will be fine.
Now as an author I find it curious when other authors are so quick to declare certain words off limits. Personally, I like words. I like many, diverse words. Words are tools in an author’s toolbox and we use them to create our work. And I really don’t like somebody else declaring which words are good and which words are bad. Especially when the litmus test for determining acceptability is predicated entirely upon it hurting the feelings of the perpetually butt hurt (oh wait, butt hurt may be offensive to people who have actually experienced anus pain).
In this case, let’s talk about the word “pussy”. On one hand it is a slang term for female genitalia. On another it is a common insult usually related to cowardice. That was the manner I used it in. Or it can be a cat. The history of words is fascinating stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy
But the premise here (because they’ve been trying super hard for years now to find proof that I hate SOME GROUP) is that because a pussy is a female body part, calling a man a pussy as an insult is in fact not insulting to the man, but is rather an insult to all women because they have that body part.
Okay, interesting… Now totally disregard the history of the English language and how humans actually talk and interact in the world, the hypothesis is that Pussy, when used in the common vulgar way as an insult toward cowardly, effeminate, worm tongued, physically weak, beta males (like Scalzi or Hines for example) is really an insult to all women everywhere (and thus promotes “rape culture” but I’ll get back to that).
Who uses this horrible word? So your football coaches? Hate all women. The military? Hate all women. Cops? Hate all women. Anybody who has ever had to train or motivate people doing something physically challenging? Hate all women. Most people at every blue collar job? Hate all women. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, truck drivers? Obviously hate all women. The women who use that word as an insult? Hate all women.
Got it? Okay. Let’s run with that. Using that body part as an insult is incredibly sexist. Sure, I grew up on a farm and my mom would tell her kids not to be pussies (usually when we were doing some form of awful backbreaking manual labor) but my mom must hate all women. The Word Police have spoken.
On a personal note, I don’t actually ever use that term for the female body part. Culturally, that wasn’t how I was raised, and even conversationally I can’t recall using that definition since probably high school. A cursory search of my thousands of posts, and my use of Pussy is always for spineless weaklings. Sadly, spineless weaklings takes up too many characters on Twitter.
But this word is now banned as offensive, but why this sainted body part only?
Scalzi kicked this whole thing off and said I was an Asshole. Like Pussy, Asshole has a few common, vulgar uses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asshole It can describe the anus, or it can be used to describe somebody who is crude, unpleasant, or detestable. I’m certain Scalzi and his tribe find me to be all of those things, and I’m not the one trying to enforce rigid group think, so I’m cool with it.
But wait, wouldn’t it be hypocritical to say that Pussy means all females are soft, yet Asshole doesn’t say all human beings who have anuses are unpleasant? Oh, but Pussy is a sainted word, because it represents the female sex organ… But hang on… this same crowd is always harping on ending default sexuality, and lots of people engage in anal sex. Since I was repeatedly admonished that using the word Pussy as an insult promoted Rape Culture, once you include America’s prison population in the stats, anal rape is possibly more common that vaginal rape. As Mary told me, as a self-defense instructor I should know the stats, so by that standard, Asshole could be a trigger word for lots of people.
So we should definitely ban the word asshole too.
But wait… Hines has repeatedly called me a Dick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_(slang) This is another common term with dual meaning, where it could represent a penis, or it could represent someone who is rude, abrasive, or inconsiderate. Once again, since I am often abrasive, the word fits and I’m not the self-appointed guardian of English, so whatever, I’m cool.
Yet if calling someone a Pussy is an insult to all women, by the same exact token, isn’t calling somebody a Dick an insult to all men? Now a few people brought this up on Twitter yesterday and they were quickly dismissed, because Pussy indicates soft but Dick indicates hard (well, duh). But if the prerequisite for banning a word is somebody finding it offensive or hurtful, and somebody finds Dick to be a trigger word, we should ban Dick too. After all, dicks hurt people.
I posted the speech from Team America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32iCWzpDpKs (best social commentary movie ever) but Scalzi didn’t like that, because implying authors are pro-rape and maligning their fans without evidence is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
Any body part that has more than one meaning could be offensive to somebody. Calling somebody a boob is insensitive to women. Talking about having balls to indicate courage? Offensive to those without testicles. The phrase nut up could be replaced with cowboy up, only cowboys were insensitive to Native Americans and PETA doesn’t like how they were mean to cows, so cowboy may possibly be offensive. Pecker-head? Holy shit.
The Guardian’s Village Idiot, Damien Walter showed up, demanding to know how many “bitches” I’d “bitch slapped” today. Of course, that is Damien’s idea of being clever, because obviously if Pussy is an indicator of misogyny, then obviously calling somebody a bitch is the same… Except Damien is like the definition of a whiny little bitch, and not that I want to pigeonhole him in his bold-queer-future-non-binary-gender world, I’m pretty sure he’s a dude.
In America, Bitch is even more common than Pussy, and is used for both sexes, because we’re all about equality. I wouldn’t presume to tell Damien when to bollocks the bloody crumpets, or whatever the hell it is the British do.
Then I had about a bunch of FEMALE readers show up, call Damien a bitch and Scalzi a pussy. 🙂 If only Scalzi could mansplain to these poor women how they’re actually misogynists they’d get their poor befuddled girl brains in order.
We don’t have to limit it to just body parts though. Any word that could cause offense or be insensitive should go. True story, I had somebody complain once that they were so afraid of spiders that seeing the word Spider in print hurt them. Now, Word Cop Scalzi would immediately dismiss banning Spider as absurd, and it is, but why? It causes suffering in this person. How come one person’s outrage is more valuable than another person’s outrage?
Hell, if taking offense is the primary component of determining which words are good and which words are bad, I’d think that authors would be against the concept on principle. After all, you’ve got outraged types who want to ban books with naughty words, or sex, or violence, or too much religion, or not enough religion, or something. There’s always somebody offended by words. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile.
They’d have to weigh each offense carefully to see what is goodthink and what is badthink. That’s why I prefer being morally consistent and thinking all offenses which demand others conform to an arbitrary standard are equally bullshit, and I’m defiant like that. I know that our language is filled with colorful comparisons and odd definitions, which is what makes it awesome. But let’s be honest, the SJWs don’t actually weigh anything. If somebody they don’t like says anything that can possibly be construed as bad they pile on, and when somebody on their side literally rapes children their next blog post is about how women shouldn’t have guns.
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Here is the final comment from Jim Hine’s blog post before he locked it. I copied it because I think Andrew makes a very powerful point.
- Andrew
JUN 18, 2014 @ 17:20:14
Hey Jim,
I’m a survivor.
I’m trying to think of a way to say this that isn’t going to either sound like I’m an MRA or that I’m trying to invalidate the good work you do with other survivors. But I really think the way this issue has become political and how I see you contributing to that is really… uh… not okay.
I think you’re probably a good dude. I can’t imagine you not being a good dude given the amount of work you do with survivors and the depressing toll I know that work takes. BUT (I know you were probably sensing a but, and I’m sorry to have to do this in a thread where you’re already taking a pummeling) I’m going to step on your toes a bit here.
I’m doing it because I think you’ll listen and because it needs to be said.
Okay, here goes:
Why are you focusing on Larry Correia?
I just don’t get this.
At all.
Why are you responding to a piece by a guy who thinks rape is wrong and just disagrees with you on the exact nature of the problem and the solution? I’m not saying those aren’t large gaps. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about rape culture. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about education (another survivor I know actually works in those groups with those people and says its effective and I trust him, although to be honest even giving offenders that much help makes my stomach turn).
But why is Larry Correia a target?
I don’t agree with a lot of what Larry has to say, but I’ll be honest and say I still like him. He reminds me of a couple of uncles I have and some friends I used to argue with at a couple construction jobs I had. He’s really loud and says some shit I don’t agree with but you also see him actually trying to help other writers and doing stuff for charity all the time.
So, I get that you guys have serious disagreements. I get that he’s called you names. You feel attacked and that makes sense that you’d want to focus on him.
BUT (and this is what’s bugging the shit out of me): The community just found out that Marion Zimmer Bradley was a child rapist. As in, she raped children. She put her hands on kids. I’ve just found out that the community knew she was a procurer and turned a blind eye to child-rape for decades on top of all of that. And no one talks about it.
No one in the community who usually talks about this stuff is talking about this.
I was five when I was victimized. That story hit me right in the guts. I figured I’d see everyone talking about it, trying to do some agony origami and figure out what to say about it that might bring some kind of useful awareness to the community. The silence has been deafening.
I get that Larry is loud and he says things that people don’t like. But maybe fandom needs a voice like that? Before you disagree, Larry’s website is the only place I’ve heard anything even WHISPERED about Samuel R. Delany. I can’t quite seem to figure out why that is.
Samuel R. Delany was just honored at the Nebulas and quoted in NK Jemisin’s speech (I agree with a lot of what she has to say, but I just don’t get how this isn’t at least being pointed out) and Samuel R. Delany outright without any kind of doubt or apology speaks up for NAMBLA.
NAMBLA is a group that advocates grown men raping young boys.
That’s so fucked up I don’t even have words for it.
Look at his Wikipedia page. If you can stand to do it, go to NAMBLA’s website. They quote him right goddamn there.
I’m not going to say that being a male survivor is harder than being a female survivor. But I will say that when you’re a male survivor not nearly many people are willing to talk about it. Giving a pass to a guy who supports NAMBLA is not okay. It’s not okay. Focusing on Larry Correia when that shit is not being talked about is not okay.
It is not okay.
I’m hoping you didn’t know. I’m hoping NK Jemisin and K Tempest Bradford and Mary Robinette Kowal don’t know. I saw everyone tweeting happily when he won his award. Because if you guys all know and aren’t saying anything about it and maybe even turning a blind eye because it’s really hard…
Well, I’d even kind of get that.
People talk a big game until that stuff is at their doorstep and then it becomes really easy to look away. We’re all human. No one’s invincible or infallible.
This is about the ugliest thing you can look at as a person.
But it’s still not okay.
I know none of you are under any obligation to condemn Samuel R Delany or Marion Zimmber Bradley. But when you’re going to start attacking people and you choose Larry Correia….
I just don’t get this.
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EDIT: Mary Robinette Kowal post this to the comments:
Larry, I am sorry for misreading the timeline.
I did acknowledge the possibility that my twitter client had the order flipped to the first of your followers, but realized that you hadn’t seen it nor had anyone else. So I posted a public apology today.
Let me say that again. I read the timeline wrong. I am sorry.
I have been struggling for the past two days trying to figure out how to apologize with sincerity, because I was still angry with you for other things in that thread. I did not want to appear to condone them by offering an apology that was too broad, nor did I want to offer an insincere apology that was too narrow.
I can’t offer a sincere apology for the disgusting and dangerous, because it was a previously held opinion and the entirety of that thread angered me. We have mutual friends and I have tried to refrain from comments for their sake.
But I am sincerely sorry that I chose to say something damaging out loud though. Calling you “disgusting” was deliberately hurtful and unnecessary.
I am sorry for that and for misreading the timeline.
One of your commenters renamed the awards the NAMBuLAs. That needs legs.
Anybody up for a round of “caption this” utilizing the Scalzi pic in this post?
-NAMDLA (Just to keep it topical with Mad Mike’s post)
-Dog: “Larry nails it again. Smells like p_ssy to me.”
Anybody else hearing the theme from “Little House on the Prairie” too?
Fuzzy Nation!
“Mary then told me I was disgusting and dangerous and needed to stay away from her.”
Sentiments Ms. Kowal, I solemnly guarantee one and all, never, ever, EVER expressed towards Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Of course. MZB was only dangerous if you were a child.
She’s also dead, so children are now safe.
Until the dead rise as zombies.
But in her case, I’m kind of looking forward to that.
… so long as they aren’t boy children, and Delany isn’t in the room.
Actually, from what I gathered, she also molested her son as well.
So she and Delany would have to throw down.
A vicious, pervert-take-all slap fight between Samuel Delany and the rotting shambling corpse of Marion Zimmer Bradley.
They should put me on the WorldCon entertainment committee. They really, really should. 😉
Hell, I’d do everything in my power to make it to WorldCon if that Ultimate Death Match ever came about. 😀
I saw MZB at a convention once. She was sitting in the dealer room all alone. It was my first convention ever and I was shy and intimidated because she was famous and I didn’t dare just walk up and say hello, but for many many years I thought that I should have done because she looked so tired, so alone, and so lonely.
Now we hear this and I wonder…
I would say thanks for taking me along for the ride on Twitchy, but I don’t exist, so never mind. 😉
I loved that. I’m the misogynist, but any females who commented were on my side were automatically dismissed out of hand.
Scalzi surrounds himself with misandrists, but I guess in SJW world, that is acceptable, because they are victims because penises and men and they are entitled to hate men because men hate women and you all want to rape us with your penises and he tells them what they want to hear so they can revel in their victimhood and not have to deal with things like reality and individual responsibility, and… sigh.
Let’s just say, purely for the sake of argument, that you are, indeed, a misogynist. Even tho your main female characters are smart, empowered badasses who need men like a fish needs a bicycle, let’s roll with that assumption.
Bottom line: this Texas girl would rather give her money to a misogynist like you than a lying, gutless, self-righteous, patronizing pussy like Scalzi.
What I found intriguing by your exchange Spacebunny, was that Scalzi didn’t apologize or even acknowledge that he was wrong in his assumption you were a VD sock puppet.
Yeah, apparently you’re really Vox Day.
As if Vox has any issues speaking for himself.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Vox is a very shy and retiring sort.
And now I’ve spit Coke Zero all over my laptop.
Greeeeeeeaaaaaattttt 😀
Dear Spacebunny, my monitor and keyboard are now awash in Diet Mtn Dew.
I’ve decided to refrain from drinking anything while reading this thread or comments in this post. For the sake of monitor and keyboard.
OK, so that’s two.
She should be keeping score to see the effectiveness of the trap test. /GLaDOS
She’s up to three monitors for the day.
That’s a damn good score by anyone’s standard. 🙂
Sorry.
None of us apparently exist to them. We’re… what, bad dreams? A bad trip?
You’re data points that don’t fit the narrative.
Data points out that these blips in the narrative are quite disruptive to the fabric of their universe.
*smile*
It’s not hard to find out.; a quick Twitter search turns up the answer:
“They’re straight white men (and some token women like S[arah] H[oyt])”
Larry, are you sure you need this many tokens? 😉
I can volunteer to be your Taiwanese immigrant reader. But I’ve learn long ago that I’m not the right kind of minority token. Hell in the University of California, I’m the wrong kind of minority.
I’ve said this before, because I’m popular and sell lots of books that means I have lots of readers. If I was limited to just straight white males I probably wouldn’t sell so many books. When I meet my fans they are a diverse group in sex, race, religion, and most importantly, age. We’re like the Rainbow Fucking Coalition. The pictures of all the old white people on the Diversity Panel at the Nambulas looks like a Klan rally compared to my average book signing. 🙂
None of us are the ‘right minority’ or gender if we’re not kowtowing to the Left party line.
(Filipino migrant to Australia here.)
Hell in the UC system you’re white… or at least a non-minority.
… or at least a non-minority.
This is a correct application of ‘whatever the hell that means’ – It means whatever the hell they WANT the word to mean.
yup, Asians get into college and do well, so the UC system doesn’t classify them as minorities anymore for admissions purposes.
*flail and stomp foot* But what about MY affirmative action?!
Just kidding lmao. On a serious note, Asians totally destroy the meme of ‘poor colored folks need help in school’. Work ethics trump entitlement any day!
I really enjoy the implication that to the Left calling women “token women” is not misogynistic……….
It makes my brain throb following their ever more sensitive scales of delicacy for the proper treatment of ’empowered’ women — and then seeing the vitriol, disdain and unreasoning hatred they heap on women independent enough to ignore their approved consensus.
Eamon, in order for them to seem like they’re winning, they have to artificially deflate our numbers. So, despite the fairly even distribution of gender representation, they have to call the women ‘token’. Or ‘token minority’ – hilarious, given that Larry and Hoyt aren’t white and have repeatedly noted that. Vox isn’t, either. I’m not, and so aren’t a few other folks. But because we specifically don’t fit their narrative or, hilariously, their concept of proper behavior for race or gender, we’re lumped into their lie of ‘outdated white men, and the more visible of us (Kate, Sarah, Cedar, off the top of my head) are relegated by them to ‘token.’
This is extremely hypocritical, given how they will go forth about the ‘restrictive, penalizing, traditional’ views about women; about how women should be ‘free to do or become anything’ … but in truth they’re the ones who will display the most misogynistic, racist, hateful behavior towards the ones who don’t fit their narrative.
Personal example: Recently Clamps said that I should be ‘put in my place’, which has rather sickening implications full stop, because I’m an Asian female who isn’t bowing to his Mighty Whiteyness, and I’m not, in his words, ‘spreading my legs’ for him, but ‘other men’ and this makes him angry.
Nonpersonal example: Witness the vile progs – both men and women- being totally okay with sexual denigration of Sarah Palin, regardless of whether or not you agree with her politics. Or any conservative or liberitarian politician or public person who isn’t white, or male. For example, Michelle Malkin, Condoleeza Rice. Malkin has endured insane levels of truly disgusting sexual threats and outright threats of violence (easily found online) because despite the fact that she’s female and an Asian migrant (Filipino), she doesn’t buy the Left’s narrative and takes it apart on a regular basis.
To them, we’re not women, or even people. We’re ‘out of line’ and therefore ‘acceptable targets’ for their hate, violence, and disgust.
To them, we’re not women, or even people. We’re ‘out of line’ and therefore ‘acceptable targets’ for their hate, violence, and disgust.
Yep. This is losing them the culture war, but I don’t think they’re quite aware of it, as of yet.
Yep.
Oh wow, Clamps? Sorry to hear that. The guy’s like an antibiotic-resistant STD.
Yeah. The guy’s been stalking me since 2009; and will name drop me in various blogs; or twist my words. The usual vileprog practices. *shrug* There’s more but I’d rather not say here.
No worries, I think we all have a pretty good idea what a creepy bottomfeeder he is. Even his posts feel greasy to read.
Not surprised. They love to accuse others of what they do themselves. Can set your watch by them.
If you want to see the vilest, insane hatred possible spewed, follow a black female conservative on Twitter. Caring Liberals pull out all the stops on them.
Seconded. The vile crap that gets tossed on Mia Love’s timeline, for example, is really sick.
Michelle Malkin puts a Hate Tweet of the Day in her daily newsletter for the lolz. They’re usually good for some disgusting lefty bigotry.
Deadcenter – to my knowledge Scalzi (or as I refer to him “The Chinless Wonder”) has never admitted he’s wrong about anything, especially where Vox is concerned. We did have a nice chuckle at Scalzi’s expense though. Vox had mentioned to me that Scalzi would quickly start posting pictures of dogs and whatnot very quickly, so I checked his feed and lo and behold, there they were! When he steps in it, as he so very often does, his MO is to pretend it didn’t happen. His methods of doing so very much resemble most toddlers I know.
SB: he likes his echo chamber to be nice and cozy. After reading Old Mans War, which I liked, I found his blog, which I didn’t after seeing him apply his brand of censorship not just to rude behavior but to any behavior that disagreed with him. In the words of Lucky Jack Aubrey, I’m more “prickly and hard to eradicate”, and found MHN much more to my liking.
And you’re right, he’s definitely showing himself to be much more childish than I expect an adult to be.
…but I don’t exist, so never mind.
I just sprayed coffee all over my laptop laughing at that!
Your posts are always great reads.
The ridiculous thing is that all this started over the silly notion that instead of training women to defend themelves, we need to train all men not to rape. Even the non-rapey ones. It;’s possible that Scalzi might need such training, but most of us have sufficient self-control and decency that rape won’t be a issue for our wimminfolk. Or any other wimminfolk we might encounter.
The other thing is that the people doing all the pearl-clutching over “pussy” don’t have a problem running around dressed as vaginas:
http://twitchy.com/2014/06/18/thats-a-really-grumpy-looking-uterus-its-the-uterus-of-justice/
Or with despicable feminists hosting “Slut walks” and “Cuntfests.” (And if you’re looking for a word to throw a fit over, I’d say the “C” word would be it.)
Teaching people not to rape is about as useful as teaching people to breathe. Everybody knows rape is wrong; some people do it anyway.
There has been a “rape epidemic” in the military that leadership is scrambling to fix. For years they have been trying to address the problem and sexual assault keeps happening. I’m going to go out on a limb and say their approach is all wrong. What could possibly be failing so miserably, you ask. Exactly what the pearl clutching pussies are advocating. I can’t tell you how many times the air force has changed the acronym for sexual assault training that basically consists of telling us what we already know: sexual assault of any kind is bad. Instead of laying the hammer down on those committing the crimes, the rest of us are subjected to new training everytime a colonel puts his hand on some E-2’s ass.
Teaching people not to rape is bullshit, because everybody and their damn dog knows it’s wrong already. The only response you are going to get by subjecting good people to training telling them not to do something they weren’t going to do in the first place is rage. I know this because every time I have to go to SARC or SAPR or whatever the hell it’s called now training to want to punch somebody. Preferably the asshelmet that diddled the private, causing me to have to sit through yet another briefing telling me rape is bad.
And before Scalzi decides I’m just another misogynistic asshole, I’m female. So instead of calling me names he’ll know to just tell me I don’t exist (which isn’t misogynistic AT ALL /sarc).
USAF, 23.6 years and counting here. Every time we do some of that training, I ask why we don’t also include advice/training on scream/kick/punch/claw/stab/club/shoot the vile fuckwad attacker until s/he is unable to continue an attack.
I have never received a coherent or direct answer.
But I’m pretty sure this E-7 isn’t going to make E-8. Even if I wanted to.
Army Civilian here that recently took SHARP training. The old joke that training makes you better at something (like how to sexually harass someone) got a lot less funny when the latest training actually walked you through how a rapist would go about picking, isolating, and assaulting someone. Good to know the tactics of the enemy, but seriously uncomfortable to sit through.
Pavepusher:
We can’t have military folks engaging in violence! What would the pearl clutchers think?
Kit:
Our SNCOs and officers recently had to attend a new version of SAPR and the running joke is now that they’re being taught how to sexually assault someone without getting caught.
Before the most recent sexual assault that caused the acronym to change again, the males who attended one session of the training came back with a hilariously ridiculous tale of the room full of guys being asked to separate themselves based on who thought it was ok to refer to a woman as a bitch and who thought it wasn’t, complete with explanations as to why they thought so.
No, not everybody knows it’s wrong. Whole swaths of World Culture treat rapes as a man’s right. Islam, for example. If you think they KNOW it’s wrong and do it anyway, you have seriously underestimated how fucked up their culture is.
The idea that women should have control over their own bodies is spread mostly by the (originally) Christian West. It is resisted by all those “authentic” native cultures that the SJWs love so goddamned much.
But the SJWs would MUCH rather talk about the small problem of Western society than about issues like child-brides, honor killings, female circumcision and other such charming practices.
Because if they actually looked at the real world as it is, they might have to give up their precious moral superiority complexes. And that’s the only think that makes them go. Take it out and they would deflate like a punctured balloon.
Having actually lived in the M.E., I know how screwed up Islam is. Maybe I should say everybody in western society knows it’s wrong. Even the Muslims who live amongst western society – even if they don’t necessarily agree – are aware at the very least that it is a crime. And anyway, when it comes to the SJWs, if they think something is wrong, you can guarantee that they have white, heterosexual males in mind as the cause. I thought that was just automatically implied. Because they certainly aren’t advocating that Mohammed go through this training. Just Bob, Steve, and Henry. Because only Bob, Steve, and Henry can ever be blamed for anything; they are probably also responsible for the women in the M.E. who are raped (as well as the small boys) because you can’t blame a brown person.
Aw, crap, maniakmedic, you’ve blown my cover as one of the Super Secret Triumvirate Of Evil And By Evil We Mean All Evil Ever In The Entire History Of The World! The title is a tad unwieldy, but when you’ve been responsible for everything evil for at least ten millennia, you’re just not interested in making it easier for mere mortals to remember our title. A storm knocked out Bob’s and Steve’s internet connections, otherwise they’d be here to chastise you, too.
Did anyone notice how I subtly added to the sum of all evil by telling a woman she’d “blown” something? That’s straight out of Evil 101.
Consider yourself thoroughly and utterly denounced!
Also, I should have included Larry, clearly, because he is the Lord of All Hatemongery.
Powerful.
And as for banning words, everyone remember that this is the genre that brought us Farenheit 451.
Cognitive dissonance is a way of life for some people.
Hell, it’s a one-upmanship contest, by all appearances….
Fahrenheit 451 is a right wing lie. No such book ever existed.
Whereas Fahrenhet 9/11 is a left wing lie. 😉
And 1984.
Remember that the authors of Ray Bradbury’s generation – on *both* sides of the political aisle – recently wrote a letter to the SWFA telling them that censorship was wrong.
And the response was that the authors were all right-wing nut-jobs.
Of course they are.
They’re well-read, well-informed, intelligent individuals who come to their own conclusions.
See? Right-wing nut-jobs.
At least, if your idea of “Left” is somewhere past the bleachers.
And anti-woman, and anti-gay, even the ones who were women. And gay.
Regarding the MZB and Samuel Delany kiddy-fiddling revelations…well, I suppose that’s why it’s easier to throw a tantrum over Correia deservedly calling someone a “pussy.”
Can’t really expect SFWA to admit they continue to shower awards and recognition on the truly despicable, simply because they tick all the boxes on the trendy kumbaya checklist of the moment, now can you?
They have become the old joke about the guy who lost his keys in the dark alley, but preferred to search by the lamppost because the light was better.
“Regarding the MZB and Samuel Delany kiddy-fiddling revelations…”
Don’t forget Arthur C. Clarke; it’s SF’s own Holy Trinity of Kiddy-Diddlers.
Wait, what? Clarke?
Word has it that it was an open secret in Sri Lanka or where ever it was he moved to. I don’t know how much evidence there is for it, other than rumor, however.
I’m wondering if it is known if Delany backed his words with actions. Because if it is only reading, funding, and voicing support of NAMBLA, it would seem to fall short of MZB.
Note that the Clarke accusation was found to be without basis.
Bob, yea it is short of MZB, but when you’re always going on about “ending rape culture” and you’re also singing praises to a guy who praises NAMBLA…
RE: “Note that the Carke accusation was found to be without basis.”
“[Clarke then] repeated a phrase often used by paedophiles: ‘I think most of the damage comes from the fuss made by hysterical parents afterwards. If the kids don’t mind, fair enough […] Because pure and simply, [13-year-old-boys] looked reasonably mature. Mature enough for me.'”
Google “Prince Charles, Arthur C Clarke and the paedophile connection.” Read the whole thing… if you can stomach it.
“Without basis,” my ass.
Clarke was cleared of all charges – see here
@Chris Gerrib –
I posted this once with a link, but it got swallowed up, so here it is without a link.
It would be more accurate to say that no charges were brought against him, than to say that he was cleared of all charges. The article linked acknowledges that there were rumors, but the police can’t act on the basis of rumors (quite rightly), and nobody ever came forward and said “Clarke molested me,” so no charges were ever brought.
Which leaves the whole thing at the level of rumor and hearsay, as far as police accusations are concerned. However, see the article that Kent mentioned (link not provided since WordPress doesn’t like it, but Google the phrase Kent mentioned and you’ll find it) and read Clarke’s own words, which damn him utterly. After reading the official police statement, there could be a question about whether Clarke was a sexual predator who preyed on young teens. After reading his own words in that article, there can be no question but that he was guilty, guilty, guilty. Since I can’t link the article, I’m going to quote the most damning parts of it.
Trigger warning: remove all triggers from your immediate surroundings, unless you want to find bullet holes in your monitor. The following may cause the Red Curtain of Blood to descend, and may cause you to go look for Clarke’s grave so you can dig him up and desecrate his corpse.
Like I said, utterly damning. And I apologize for causing the RCOB in just about every decent person who just read that, but there was no better way to refute the “no charges were brought” statement than to quote the man’s own evil words.
I meant the “cleared of all charges” statement. Saying “no charges were brought” (as I did say) is true, but would be misleading if it wasn’t accompanied by the evidence of the man’s own words. The reason no charges were brought is because none of his victims dared accuse him.
…I’ve seen a lot of people claim a lot of things on the internet. Is this real?
@Narf the Mouse –
If by “Is this real?” you’re referring to the large blockquote I posted, I’m afraid it is. WordPress won’t let me link to it because the article URL contains the word “paedophile”, and that’s apparently on WordPress’s list of censored URL words — so if I posted a link to the article, WordPress would dump my comment straight into the trash bin.
However, you can Google the phrase “Prince Charles, Arthur C Clarke and the paedophile connection” for yourself to find the article I’m quoting, which was posted in April 2013. It appears to be a repost of an article in the Sunday Mirror, a London tabloid. There is apparently some question about the authenticity of the damning quotes that I re-quoted, a fact I was not aware of when I posted my previous comment. The Sunday Mirror claims that it sent a copy of the interview tape to the authorities, but the authorities say they never received a copy — so at the moment, the only source for the allegations I just mentioned is a London tabloid. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily false — the only source for several months on John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter was an American tabloid, but the story was true — but it also means that the article I quoted should be taken with a grain of salt.
So here are the known facts:
1) There are many rumors claiming that Clarke was a paedophile (e.g., parents in the area of Sri Lanka where he lived allegedly told each other “keep your boys away from the Clarke compound.”).
2) A London tabloid published an article with an interview with Clarke. The interview, if real, was utterly damning.
3) The tabloid claims to have evidence of the interview, but that evidence has never surfaced.
So this could be an unsubstantiated rumor (in which case Clarke denied it because it was false), or it could be true (in which case Clarke denied it because he wanted to stay out of jail). As it stands, I can’t prove it one way or the other.
Frak, I had no idea. I’m sick that I bought many of his books and put money in his pocket.
Alright; if that gets verified, some books are getting disposed of.
However, in the absence of verified evidence, then Clark must be presumed innocent.
You can do whatever sexually depraved things you want with kids and SFWA is really not worried about it.
Call someone who has attacked you repeatedly a “half-savage”, and you’re gone.
I got called a “subhuman” yesterday by someone who’d never even heard of me before. But scratch a prog and they bleed eugenics. I’ll be waiting for SFWA to rush to my defense.
Make sure you’ve got a few books and a deck of cards, because you might have to wait a while.
I got called a “subhuman” yesterday by someone who’d never even heard of me before. But scratch a prog and they bleed eugenics. I’ll be waiting for SFWA to rush to my defense. Larry, you’re not a paid member of SFWA. Not that being a paid member help Vox Day any.
Nope.
All that badthink Vox has.
It’s funny though. I don’t even like Vox, based on his internet persona, but I find myself sympathizing with him more than I ever could with N.K. Jemisin.
Nazis never change.
Would you care to elaborate? Because that can kind of be read like you’re calling me a Nazi.
Which wouldn’t be the first time this week, but…
re: T.L.Knighton
[quote]Would you care to elaborate? Because that can kind of be read like you’re calling me a Nazi.
Which wouldn’t be the first time this week, but…[/quote]
And we have our Godwin for the thread.
Well, it is always nice to get it out of the way early.
Knowing Kristopher, he’s referring to the SFWA, and the current belief in white blood guilt, ect.
That’s what I’m figuring too.
But it’s been one of those weeks. While I’m done being nice to these turdnuggets, I know Kristopher usually doesn’t fly that way, so to speak, which is why I asked him rather calmly.
If I didn’t know him, I’d probably fly off the handle like I did in an earlier thread. 🙂
This stacking comment system can be… interesting at times.
SJW Logic 102: How to react to bad words used in argument. The most important thing is to determine what the though affiliation of both party held. If SJW calling a non-SJW member bad word, then it’s A-OK as it’s just the truth. If a non-SJW using a bad word to describe SJW, then it’s Holy Inquisition time baby. It matters not what the bad word in question is.
If SJW is calling out an SJW using bad word, one of them will be excommunicated depending on which one of them are higher on the totem pole.
non-SJW calling out non-SJW is just spectator sport, and an demonstration of how bigoted non-SJWers are.
Maybe the thing to do is start pointing out that, because of the phallic nature of the word “dick” that some lefties love so much, using “dick” is not only supportive of teh patriarchy, but also homophobic since it’s a man deriding a man for being a penis.
Just a thought.
As far as I’m concerned, every single one of these Pink SF/F authors is a child rape apologist. And don’t ever consider them anything different until they formally denounce both Samuel R Delany and Marion Zimmber Bradley.
Maybe you should have called Scalzi a child rapist instead. He might have not made a big stink about it because he obviously doesn’t consider it an insult.
As far as I’m concerned, every single one of these Pink SF/F authors is a child rape apologist. And don’t ever consider them anything different until they formally denounce both Samuel R Delany and Marion Zimmber Bradley.
That needs repeating because of the truth of it.
This exactly right there. + a billion thumbs up.
They’re not going to denounce Delany and MZB (at least not in any full-throated way, and certainly not in the middle of a donnybrook like this).
They’re human (or have human-like characteristics), and it takes a big, confident, secure human to admit he/she is wrong. I’m big, confident, and secure – and I *hate* it 🙂
They see themselves as oppressed, victimized, disempowered, marginalized, etc., etc. Their belief in their own rightness and rectitude is a major source of comfort. Numbers and agreement are a major source of safety to them. (Weird for a bunch who claim to be highly-individualistic weirdos, but there you have it.)
Who among them will give up the comfort of rightness and the safety of the herd to admit error?
For extra credit, it requires even more bigheartedness/confidence/security to admit error to a perceived *enemy*.
In their world, responsibility and accountability are highly, highly variable based on perceived victim status and membership in oppressed/marginalized groups. (Call it “affirmative action in all things”.)
Given that MZB and Delany each represent at least *two* victim classes (possibly more) and are regarded as visionary/pioneering artists, their behavior and actions will be judged less harshly than any “ordinary”, non-victim, non-oppressed person.
Here’s the really fun part: They’ll stick up for Bradley and Delany on the basis of their work, but it’s hard for them to say (out loud, at least, and in front of “enemies”) that Bradley and Delany are to be held less accountable for their crimes because of their victim status. That would be too much like saying they aren’t as tough/responsible/adult/etc. as everybody else; i.e., not equal.
BTW, I don’t agree with any of the above, it’s just my understanding of the mental and social processes at work here.
That said, I think it would be useful and illuminating to spend time thinking about *why* they won’t do the right thing, instead of just piling on about their (obvious) hypocrisy.
“I know none of you are under any obligation to condemn Samuel R Delany or Marion Zimmber Bradley. But when you’re going to start attacking people and you choose Larry Correia….”
Damn straight. It’s making the wrong people the ‘enemy’. The enemy is not Larry or Miss Nevada. The enemy is not the person who disagrees with you politically. The enemy is not George Will, much as I wish he would stop yammering on about baseball.
This framing of the ‘other’ side of the political aisle as the bad guys while ignoring the real and terrible evil’s out there is a terrible and poisonous thing for our society. It’s unserious and it gives a pass to the bad guys to focus on the mostly good guys who you have basically tiny disagreements with in the larger scheme of things.
When you get down to it, politically most of us are really just trying to figure out ways to fix the problems, but disagree on tactics. (a few of us disagree on what the problem actually is)
Your comments reminded me of this quote from Babylon 5.
“Every day, here and at home, we are warned about the enemy. But who is the enemy? Is it the alien? Well, we are all alien to one another. Is it the one who believes differently than we do? No, not at all, my friends. The enemy is fear. The enemy is ignorance. The enemy is the one who tells you that you must hate that which is different. Because, in the end, that hate will turn on you. And that same hate will destroy you.”
Seems like the SJW crowd are ‘the one who tells you that you must hate that which is different’.
No, the SJW crowd tells you to hate what is normal. Look up oikophobia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikophobia#Scruton.27s_usage
I agreed with your post on the bs pushback that Miss Nevada got. I think JH was talking past your post more than he was actually responding to it. (And I think that he was correct in pointing out that we should be addressing the factors that support rapists as well as defending against individual attacks. I also don’t think JH would agree with me as to what the social factors were that encouraged rapists to think they could get away with it.) And I agree that Salzi was over the line in both blasting your blog title without reading the whole thing *and* by calling you an asshole.
And yes, MZB/SD/whoever else is being currently covered up for (because I’m sure there are some) is a huge issue that needs attention.
But still, what are you, 12? No need to call Scalzi a pussy. It gave him an opening that you totally didn’t need to give him. So it made Twitchy. Wonderbar. The mayfly-brained crowd sees it and cheers. Yah.
Any chance that someone could take the high road about this? So maybe instead of name calling we-as-a-SFF community can address stuff like MZB/SD/whoever else is out there?
Necessary? No. Accurate? Why, yes. We’re not in grade school and you’re not our mom, so you can stop auditioning for the Word Police, which do not actually exist. If you really agree with all the things that smarter people have said, please ask Scalzi and his fellow freakshows to at least stop taking the low road. Protip: lionizing a child raper is so low I’m pretty sure you can see the river Styx from it.
“no we’re not 12 but we’ll act like it if we wanna”
“you’re not the boss of me”
“you’re stupid!”
…are you done? Got it out of your system? Feel better?
Good. Now, if one actually wants people to listen to suggestions/requests/ect, here’s a protip for you – don’t call them names.
I think it’s highly likely that whatever childrapers currently running about in SFF are more likely to be among the ‘tolerant’ crowd than on this side of the road. But I don’t dismiss the possibility that there are some over here, as well, that have not been discovered yet. And when those come to light, there are going to be some of us who said postive things about those writers.
It might behove us to mind how we talk about other folks, least it come back and bite us hard.
Do you really think Scalzi was interested in listening to Larry, or any of us? He wasn’t. He showed up on Twitter with an axe to grind.
And yes, our side may well have our own MZB’s and Delany’s. The difference is, if we find them, we’ll denounce them very, very loudly. Hines’s only reference was so vague that if one didn’t know about the MZB allegations, you wouldn’t have had a clue what he was talking about.
“…are you done? Got it out of your system? Feel better?”
I’m great at being respectful to people who I’m interested in engaging: but merely implying that you’re a sanctimonious prick whose opinion I don’t care about was being too subtle. Again you’re straining at gnats, and in doing so you’re being a fantastic example of the mindset that leads the Scalzi types into Twitterstorms over words. Which is exactly what I wanted clarified, in a simple (coarse) way.
TLK: you’ve more or less got it in one. I’m not upset that people have liked MZB in the past- though I’m certain quite a few were aware of what she and her husband were doing- but I’m very upset that they’re still praising her despite the number of lives she’s ruined. And many, including personalities at Tor.com, know better- they simply don’t care. For perspective, when you read this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099498/Mimi-Alford-The-day-JFK-took-virginity-wifes-White-House-bed.html
You realize that some people are ready to excuse ANYTHING, as long as the guilty party is famous or skilled enough. Of course, I can understand why Larry scares people like that: I don’t think they want a world in which rapers, no matter their status, get their heads blown off.
Yeah, if I had my way somebody would have shot Roman Polanski or Woody Allen, and then what movies would all those pretentious New Yorkers watch?
Yeah, if you look up.
‘Yeah, if you look up.’
‘It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made.’—G. K. Chesterton
In arguments like this, taking the high road (as some have done in the past) has only given the opponent the nerve and idea that they were winning, and push harder.
Could be. My experience has been different, but could be.
In my case, I’m not caving no matter how hard they push. So better to win over the undecideds rather than chortle about how clever I am at name calling.
You don’t go to Thai House for spaghetti, and you don’t come to Larry’s for understated, subtle and nuanced commentary.
Larry doesn’t do rapier wit, he’s more of the tetseubo type.
It’s insisting to take the high road when the opponent / person espousing the horrible idea has essentially told you to shut up or you’re a bad person/racist/(whateverist) that’s a tactic that actively works especially if the person in question pretty much says “I’m a rape victim/victim of (blank), shut up don’t question me or you’re questioning my rape, / tragedy you misogynistic piece of shit hater!!!!”
They’ll call me a bitch, a minion, a ‘Populi’, a bullying, rape-victim-blaming, rape denying slave of the patriarchy… whatever. They can bleat and shriek it from the slime pits in which they congregate, but in the end, they approve of rapists like Samuel Delany and MZB and screech at the people who are actually doing something about it like Larry. So if they think I’m evil, I must be doing something right.
I would never hurt a child like that… and the fact that they’re okay with overlooking such abuse is something I cannot condone or forgive.
There is no “like” or “+1” for this but… yeah. Exactly this. This is how they play, this is how they fight, and then they bitch and moan when we fight back.
How dare we fight back against the people fighting on the side of the ‘angels’? We must thereefore be evil and thus destroyed.
If they are fighting on the side of the ‘angels’ I think they’re missing ‘fallen’ as an adjective there.
“Oh sh*t! It’s Franks!”
Sorry, couldn’t resist:-).
XD Don’t apologize for that!
As far as I know, there is no evidence that Samuel Delaney ever had sex with under-aged boys. He may have written approvingly of NAMBLA, but that does not mean he’s a “child rapist”; just a creep. While all child molesters are creeps, not all creeps are child molesters.
If I am wrong about this, I will happily accept evidence to the contrary.
Carl, but when you’re railing against “Rape Culture” and don’t speak against him, and in fact praise him…
You’re not serious about rape, you’re using rape as a rhetorical cudgel.
Yeah, here’s my high road: intersectional QUILTBAG feminism in SFF is a hate-group. They easily fit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s definition of attacking groups based on their immutable characteristics, in this case ethnic European, male and heterosexual.
And good luck Fail, getting any of them to agree with you, even when you’re right. Are you interested in having people cheer at your quips, or in undermining the support that the frothing hysterics have, so that no one pays them any heed?
re: keranih Fail Burton doesn’t have to do much. The SJW’s own word is so much more powerful.
Frankly I don’t care what racist and sexist bigots think – about anything.
Have you ever been on a construction site? Worse things than pussy are uttered between the men there. Joking around, I’ve called co-workers worse things. No 12 year old males working there.
“The mayfly-brained crowd sees it and cheers. Yah.”
Is this an insult aimed towards everyone who agrees that Scalzi is a pussy?
“No need to call Scalzi a pussy. It gave him an opening that you totally didn’t need to give him. ”
What opening? It was like watching a heavyweight(Larry) fighting a featherweight(Scalzi.) Scalzi never stood a chance.
Oh, yes, I’ve been on construction sites, and places where the language is worse, and I’ve used it myself.
Doesn’t change that that language is not optimal for engaging people on a serious level. Joking with buds is not what LC and JS were doing.
And if LC was winning by that much, resorting to name calling is even worse.
Was this an insult aimed at everyone who agrees that Scalzi is a pussy?
No, it was aimed at the short-attention span crowd who likes fights and fireworks and will move on to the next fight and firework display with no more sense of dedication to the issue at hand than a sketter has to the pisspot that it laid its larve in.
“Doesn’t change that that language is not optimal for engaging people on a serious level. Joking with buds is not what LC and JS were doing.
And if LC was winning by that much, resorting to name calling is even worse.”
Why isn’t that language optional?
Words are meant to convey something. Twitter only lets a person use 140 characters. Pussy is easier to convey what Scalzi is than multiple words that could be used to describe him.
Why should anyone police their language so as to not offend the special snowflakes and delicate flowers out there?
If you are offended or don’t like it, simply stop paying attention.
What in the world makes you think that Larry was “seriously engaging” Scalzi? More like pointing and laughing.
I’ve no doubt at all that everyone on the planet who is *inclined* to view using the word “pussy” as a terrible crime, something akin to the misogyny of the word “hysteric”, etc., thought that Scalzi was the one laying the beat down. Thus… “opening” I suppose.
Anyone with sense, who *might* have thought… “pussy” is grade school taunting and below you… also got to see the oh so serious accusations that this word is proof of misogyny.
Sort of like naming hurricanes after women… or using the word “miss”… or a father figure seeking to “control the sexuality of a young woman” by giving her cautionary advice about men… in fiction set in 1930s…
Which means that Larry gave Scalzi an opening to expose just how stooopid the “rules” are that Scalzi insists upon.
Pussy, dick, asshole, boob… and women dancing around in flaming pink vagina costumes demanding they be taken seriously.
But you see… the strong words of admiration (in case you never noticed) are the reproductive ones… like balls. The women’s power word is her womb… able to create life itself. But that would *really* screw up the “omg someone said pussy” sorts, don’t ya know.
I see no reason to treat a fundamentally stupid argument with any dignity. Further, derision is the appropriate response to someone who insults a person who takes upon themselves the responsibility for the protection of their own life. Finally, while you may feel it is appropriate to police your speech to appeal to the sort of people that are going to be persuaded more by the use of a vulgar word than concrete actions, but I do not.
I’m sorry, what concrete actions are we talking about here? All I saw was LC & JS exchanging a lot of words.
derision is the appropriate response to someone who insults a person who takes upon themselves the responsibility for the protection of their own life
So, how is that working out for you, in getting people to agree with you? Or do you mock them until they go away, and figure that once out of sight, out of mind?
“So, how is that working out for you, in getting people to agree with you? Or do you mock them until they go away, and figure that once out of sight, out of mind?”
Scalzi will never agree with Larry. Never. The universe will suffer heat death before Scalzi agrees with Larry. By agreeing with Larry, Scalzi’s whole universe would be turned upside down, as would all the SJWs in the world.
So yes, mocking and deriding them is the proper response to idiots like Scalzi.
The words: LC says “pussy”, which Scalzi says is anti-woman.
The deeds: LC advocates and has worked to directly physically empower women.
I suppose you could argue that LC likes people having guns more than he hates women, but women still win in that equation.
Let me break this down for you. In your first two paragraphs you admit that the attacks against me were false.
Yet, you then think I’m immature for fighting back in a manner you don’t approve of… Except see what you just said in that first part there? That’s from the last few DAYS. Because I openly refuse to toe their party line I’ve been attacked like that, or far far worse, just about every day, for years.
Yep. Lies, name calling, uh huh… Except on any given day I can find people making up absolutely outrageous things about me across the internet. I was an outspoken gun rights activist when I first got published, so from the day these people knew who I was, they started attacking me.
When I got a Hugo nomination it took it to the next level, and this crowd told anyone who’d listen that I was a racist, sexist, homophobe, who beat my wife, literally threatened to kill puppies if my fans didn’t vote for me, and wanted to drag gays to death behind my pickup truck. And then they said pretty much the same thing in actual newspapers, attributing words to me that I never said, and even philosophies diametrically opposed to my public statements.
But heaven forbid I mock them… Oh no… That would be uncouth.
I can’t take the high road, because I’ve spent the last five years doing trench warfare. But tell you what. You want to be all reasonable and moderate and stuff, YOU, and people like Greg, can go over to the other side and admonish them like you are doing to me. Go to their blogs and call them on their most outrageous lies. Only I’ll tell you exactly what will happen because I’ve seen it hundreds of times before. They’ll either lock everything down, “massage” you away, dismiss you, or even better turn the hounds loose against you, because by promoting the high road, you’re siding with racist, misogynist, homophobic, hate mongers, who need to die in a fire.
So go for it. It is really easy to tell someone else how to act while they’re being slandered. 🙂
Larry, it’s because you harbor BAD THINKING, and you use BAD WORD that you must be condemn. That trumps whatever bullshit they’re flinging at you.
A person would have to pretty much have not been on the internets or in SFF at all over the last couple of years to not have a clue about what you’ve been up against. And yes, I know what the SJW types are doing, and have done, and will continue to do. I’ve been there, lived through it, shouted back at them, and eventually slunk off.
And that was stupid, because they’ve only gotten worse.
I hate it, I loathe that this kind of dispicable childish behavior is damaging SFF, and I want it stopped.
But I really don’t think that slipping into name calling – particularly when you had him on the ropes on points of fact – reflected well on you, or on what I like to think is the better side of the debate.
And what I’m saying is do better than them.
I’m not saying give up, I’m not saying let them off easy, and I’m not saying don’t engage.
I’m saying, don’t let them force you into becoming the slanderous, childish, nasty little things that they are. At the very least, give them an out, so they have someplace to retreat to. Or run away to.
I don’t care about couth and I don’t care about proprity – what I care about is winning this damn culture war, or at least beating the heathens back to the point where people don’t get labeled hatemongers just because they like things that catch fire and explode. Or like to read books about people running towards things on fire to put the fire out.
I say don’t be like them first because it’s not right, and secondly, its not going to work. They are going to lose, using those tactics. It is not possible for them to win with lies, slanders, and hatemongering.
I want us to win.
racist, misogynist, homophobic, hate mongers, who need to die in a fire
You forgot inbred capitalist rednecks who don’t know their place.
I’ll step out of this comment thread now, and ya’ll can go on lumping me in with the SJWs and feminazis and gun banners and oppression olympics gold medalists. (Really, I don’t mind so much, because try as you like, our side really can’t get a good hate going like the SJW side. It is not in our nature.)
But you might consider if adapting tactics to the terrian might be of use. And if not now, then at least consider when to do so in the future.
You seem to be under the impression that “hate mongers who need to die in a fire” is hyperbole on Larry’s part.
https://twitter.com/beth_bernobich/status/479411745363357696
(That was addressed to “keranih”, in case that was unclear.)
That isn’t even interesting by my standards. 🙂
Compared to the fellow who pings you out of the blue to say how much he despises you—so he can get material for a column? Yeah, “die in a fire” is weak sauce.
“I’m not saying give up, I’m not saying let them off easy, and I’m not saying don’t engage.”
Yes, you are; yes, you are; and yes, you are.
No, Mr. Keranih you do not know what we are up against. This is not he-said, she-said, it is not a back and forth, it is not mutual name-calling, it is not moral relativism.
We have identified an actual and real loosely affiliated hate-group. That hate-group relentlessly singles out human beings as A) heterosexual B) ethnic European C) men. Those 3 groups are singled out and negatively profiled in their millions – today and yesterday, living and dead, all over the West. The “West” is itself attacked as endemically immoral. Within this ideology, no one else is negatively profiled, no one else is asked to diversify. Quite the contrary.
Everyone but white straight males are not only positively profiled 100% of the time, but encouraged to racially and sexually segregate by way of anthologies, actual rooms, dinners, awards, writing workshops and other organizations. How perfectly convenient for a supremacist ideology pretending to be victims.
Any straight white male who does those things, even accidentally, is accused of misogyny, sexism, racism and exclusion. The fact is, no straight white males within SFF are now, or have ever institutionally organized themselves along racial and sexual lines.
The hate-group doing all this shares a very formalized and organized ideology known as Third Wave Intersectional QUILTBAG feminism. It shares an intellectual and philosophical space with neo-Nazis. TIQF is a supremacist racist and sexist group of neo-Nazis in all but name. That hate-groups shares a very specific faux academic language of equally fake social science like “rape culture,” “white privilege,” “male gaze,” “trigger warnings,” and “white saviors” and many others.
What is childish is to be an adult and ignore the facts here. There is nothing slanderous or nasty about insulting neo-Nazis. In my opinion it is impossible to insult a hate-group.
I’ve done my homework. The case against these people is a flood and it is airtight. I am not interested in coddling anyone’s naivete. If you can’t figure out what people are who day after day go after white straight males and negatively profile them 100% of the time, then you also can’t figure out the basis of all law.
WAKE – THE – FUCK – UP.
I’ll be right there in the trenches with you, and know I’m in good company, O International Lord of Hate!
@ keranih:
The “high road” in confronting and/or contesting the rabid dog mindset under discussion here has been the go-to format for decades.
Question: Where are we at now? Has the situation changed for the better, in any way, what so ever?
Attempting to contain ourselves only to the “moral high ground” serves no purpose other than to directly aid and assist the OppFor.
Such a tactical format leads only to our side having nothing more than isolated high points that can be massed upon and reduced, through lies, slander and blatant misinfo in an assault so consistent and unrelentingly refusing of anything even closely resembling actual true fact, that it has always led only to capitulation of that pos through argument fatigue.
This is called Defeat In Detail. It has been our lot since the Long March began. To continue to pursue strategy and tactics of failure is non-competent.
This culture war that we’re currently engaged in, whether we wish to be or not, is for everything that matters. In such battles, the low ground is every bit as necessary as the high.
It is good and decent to be a good and decent person. It is not good and decent to allow innate goodness and decency to require others to refuse to commit to a necessary and viable battlespace simply to maintain one’s own personal goodness and decency.
Ad Triarios Redisse!
http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/Ad%20triarios%20redisse
Not too long ago Scalzi said something reasonable and moderate relating to you and the Hugo and got slammed. Exactly like that.
Perhaps he’s making up for it.
Personally, if it was me, (being female and all), I’d tell them to do that anatomically impossible thing… because I get pissed when people try to control and shame me. Scalzi, being male, might have greater tolerance for it.
Besides, haven’t you been on THR for years? 😀
Oh? I thought you threatened to unleash Manatees of DOOM upon us all.
Or that’s the internet rumor I’d start.
Though I’m amused at the various distressed gasping at your using such naughty words to people who routinely libel and slander you. Because it’s not nice.
Also, it’s absurd to say that you “gave” Scalzi an opening. He would have seized upon whatever you said, or didn’t say, and claimed it was a Cursed Word that automatically made you Totally Evil and your arguments Magically False. If you didn’t say anything offensive, he would have made up something you said. Or ascribed something someone else said to you. He’s done all of this before.
Just checked. Nope. Didn’t see you word policing Hines for his use of the work ‘dick’.
Hmm.
I take it Kerani is perfectly fine with Jim Hines using alienating language. As Larry has said, Twitter fighting is a spectator sport: you want the opposition to show themselves as pusillanimous name-callers before the crowd.
Hmmm. First off, it’s “tone policing”, get it right. Secondly, yeap, missed that, my bad. Alas, JH had long since shut down his comments before I got around to reading his post.
Please don’t assume I am good with the other side being annoying insulting fools. I am, however, far less concerned with their reputation, and as Salomon says, letting them be what they are only hurts their side.
http://blog.synthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/sarahpalin.jpg
^^I am sure that everyone at SFWA was jumping all over each other to condemn this sort of behavior.
Not that I’m equating calling someone someone a pussy – it’s a pretty mild epithet- to calling a woman a cunt. Maybe it’s the southern in me, but I’m just not a fan of certain terms being used. I don’t know why. The only people I’d ever censor would be my children or houseguests because I do expect respect, but for some reason there are some terms that I find worse than others. I know that’s arbitrary and subject to change. (have you noticed that “fuck” has become the new “shit”?) But there you are.
“talking past”? Heck, he was building Strawmen at an industrial rate.
I tend to call it Genocide in Strawmania.
Many Strawmen died to bring us this talking point…
Anyone who gets the vapors at seeing someone called a pussy, is, in fact, a pussy.
Scalzi was being a pussy.
Pointing that out, is a public service.
Amen
Seriously? Scalzi IS a pussy. He acts like some whiny little girl when he’s in fact a full-grown man. That’s a dictionary definition of being a pussy.
Incidentally, this here is the high road. You want to see the low road, just check out that Scalzi twitter feed for death wishes and some pretty repulsive s3x-related name calling.
So I guess you won’t be on Writing Excuses anymore, that’s to bad.
I had no idea that Mary Robinette Kowal, the Yoko Ono of Writing Excuses, was a SJW. Everything begins to make perfect sense now. God, I haven’t been able to listen to Writing Excuses for a long time now because of her. She’s so fucking boring, and the podcast just isn’t much fun anymore. Now we know why, because we’ve got Affirmative Action Girl there to be the wet blanket on everyone’s fun.
Howard, Dan, and Brandon must have been getting crap from the feministas about being a boys’ club, so they chose an appropriate agent from the Approved Social Justice Warrior List to appease them. What a shame.
Count me in as one who used to rabidly follow the podcast, and now am among the “how long has it been?” crowd. Also the “and it started happening before I knew of MRK in any other context.”
In all fairness, she seems to have some knowledge, but the show format is 15 minutes. Adding her in seems to have made the show shallower as four people try to get their insights in rather than three, and so depth seems to have suffered. I don’t believe she’s added something sufficiently different, insightful, or unique to make up for cramming a fourth person into the discussion. I stopped learning from it. It went from “everybody interested in writing MUST listen to this” to “not worth 15 minutes of my time”.
I also feel like the common touchstones of SF are not represented enough anymore. Several topics had come up where there were utterly classic pieces of SF work by major players that would have been perfect examples, and other, unknown to me, authors or stories were mentioned. One such example being a Pournelle work, it later clicked when I discovered she considered Pournelle (I didn’t say it was the person you named, but nudge nudge, you know of whom i speak) one of the “twelve rabid weasels” of SF or some such, and displayed a degree of contempt towards other authors who were far more accomplished than her.
“I’m hoping you didn’t know. I’m hoping NK Jemisin and K Tempest Bradford and Mary Robinette Kowal don’t know.”
Andrew, I hate to tell you but they do know and they don’t care. Your victimhood, and that of Bradley and NAMBLA’s victims, does not advance their cause and so you are invisible to them. My son is an officer with HPD and recently had a call where a husband had been beaten soundly by his wife using a tire iron. This was not the first time this had happened, and in fact the woman had just been released a week before for the last time she beat him. One of the officers was tasked with taking in the wife, while my son went with the EMTs and the husband to the hospital for his treatment and to take his statement. While he waited for the victim to be patched up my son and the staff tried to find him a shelter to go to. There was only one shelter that accepted men, which was oriented toward victims from gay couples, but they were over capacity already. Every other shelter refused saying they take women and children only. This is the fourth largest city in the country, not some podunk burg of only a few thousand. The man didn’t want to go home, because the lovely wife’s relatives had a habit of intimidating him in to dropping charges. The only option my son could think of was the sobering center, which is not a drunk tank by any means, it’s for people who are publicly intoxicated but non-violent, so there is no arrest, just a place with a clean cot, laundry and shower facilities, food and bottled water staffed by police and medical professionals who give you a safe place to sleep it off. But it’s not a shelter because unfortunately, you can’t stay more than eight hours, but that’s where they went because there were no other options.
So Andrew, I’m very sorry for what you suffered, but because you’re male, just like that poor husband, Scalzi, Hines, and the rest really don’t care because you don’t fit the role of victim they want to cast. It’s the reason they only focus on rape, not violent crime in general, because then they’d have to admit the overwhelming majority of victims of violent crime are men and god, or goddess, forbid we could talk generally about reducing violent crime (which we’ve done a decent job of) and realizing all of us are human and can all suffer.
Besides, the children Breen went after were white males, and that privilege means they can’t be raped, since rape is sex with power. White males automatically have power, so it wasn’t rape.
Reminds me of mention I read recently (in Slate, of all places) that the US Department of Justice only started tracking statistics for rapes in which males were victims in 2012. Prior to that they automatically threw out any statistics in which rapes of males were included.
Doesn’t fit the narrative…
Larry, the SJWs got you spending 200 words going on about the etymology of a word defined by them as being “bad”. A useless endeavor. If you want to do something meaningful in the culture wars, make fun of them. Satirize the fools. Make a farce of their arguments.
You’ve got the weapons to do that and it would likely be as entertaining as hell. A “Bill the Galactic Hero” for the post modern age.
” If you want to do something meaningful in the culture wars, make fun of them. Satirize the fools.”
^ THIS ^. As the always estimable C.S. Lewis so aptly put it: “The Devil is proud, and cannot bear to be mocked.”
Uh… Make fun of them… Are you new around here?
He means:
Write it as a book, we’ll -buy- it 😀
As in: I think the new Buckley (or Buckley’s) just volunteered.
Frankly, for a guy who writes ninjas fighting pirates and wizards on airships surrounded by a hurricane while a planet powered super weapon ticks down to annihilating them all, I just think you’ve been a bit tame with the mockery. It just might be that truly great sarcasm and satire aren’t in your writers tool kit. Don’t feel bad if you can’t step up to that plate. Not everyone can be a real satirist. You probably couldn’t really even get much of a laugh on this sort of topic, so best stick to just writing action.
*poke*
*taunt*
“Don’t tug on Superman’s cape; don’t spit in the wind;…”
“Don’t pull the hat off that ol’ Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim.”
Sing it, Wes!
Besides, Scalzi isn’t a pussy. He lacks the warmth and the depth.
You can do better, Larry. I know you’re a good enough writer to unload some weapons-grade biting satire, so why don’t you put it into a book?
It’s pretty classic, after all. Dante’s Divine Comedy is satire, Machiavelli’s The Prince is a giant ‘take THAT’ to the Medici, I could keep going…
You know you want to do it…
michaelzwilliamson… you are darned lucky I wasn’t drinking or eating something and choked to death when I read that because I’d find you and haunt you, promise.
As much as I would like to see that, I don’t think Larry have enough time to do it. Perhaps a short story in MHI universe?
Have you read any of Larry’s blog posts?
There have been some small things included here and there. For instance, the Monsters Rights group in MHL. I don’t think he’s put any major pokes into his books yet, though.
Seeing MCB’s SOP is to either intimidate or kill witness, the Monster Right organization won’t have much to stand on.
To these people left is right and right is wrong. Logic doesn’t signify.
Or as the Tumblr In Action group on Reddit likes to put it: FACTS DON’T REAL, ONLY FEELS.
That’s even less realistic than “four legs good, two legs bad.”
Less garmmatical, too.
Maybe this is a cultural thing. Is it possible there are a significant percentage of men on the political left that do (or did) think that rape was “okay” or “no big deal” in some instances? Enough so, that from the viewpoint of women (and men) living in that subculture, teaching men not to rape actually does make sense? In other words, could their reactions to Mr. Correia’s “Naïve Idiocy of Teach Rapists Not to Rape” post make sense from within their subcultural context because they see much more sexual violence from “normal” men than would be typical among libertarians and/or the political right?
There are some indications, W. Clinton, T. Kennedy, J. Kennedy, C. Dodd, et al. on the one hand, and apparently in certain leftist communities of the sixties women were expected to say yes to anyone.
What about Occupy? That was pure leftism and they had to create safe places because so many people were being raped and sexually assaulted. Yes, rape is a huge problem with players on the left. Just look at Hollywood. It’s rampant.
“…in certain leftist communities of the sixties women were expected to say yes to anyone.”
No doubt a certain amount of that was pure predation of the “god requires you to have sex with the cult leader” type…
But when the whole deal is Free Love on what basis do you say but not with you? When your whole social agenda is destroying the prudish body shaming of your parent’s generation how do you say but not with you?
If there is a “rape culture” it makes way more sense that it would be based on demands for sexual permissiveness because how do you explain that you’ll f*ck perfect strangers at a party… but not *you*.
The perpetrators of this crap are in DEEP denial.
I don’t think it’s limited to “the political left”. Think Steubenville. I very much doubt those football boys had any political leanings whatsoever. And they got a young girl so drunk she passed dead out, and took pictures while they stripped her naked and had sex with her. That’s rape. And given the fact that they took pictures while doing it and spread them around school, they apparently (surely!) didn’t know it was rape.
It is my understanding that this is what the “teach men not to rape” line is talking about. It is my understanding that they get that the sort of “break into your house” or “drag you down the alley at knifepoint” rapists aren’t going to be dissuaded by that sort of teaching. But there’s a lot of rape that doesn’t fit that mold, where it’s quite possible that the men involved in some of it don’t know that what they are doing is rape. (And by the way, the society in which boys like that grow up in that allows them to think that doing that isn’t rape is the much maligned and poorly named “Rape Culture” that Team SJW talks about. Yes, it’s poorly named. No, the fact that it’s poorly named doesn’t mean that the phenomenon referred to doesn’t exist.)
I’m also sure that some idiot on that team really does think you can talk everybody around, even Mr. Rapey McRaperson III. But that person is an idiot, and not really representative of the mainstream, or even the mainstream SJW.
“…they apparently (surely!) didn’t know it was rape.”
Someone the other day asked this question to test for “knowing”… if the girl passed out was the sister of any one of them, would they have “known” it was rape?
Clearly… YES.
The ability to talk themselves into going along with the group, to talk themselves into it… is not the definition of if they knew it was rape or not.
And I do hope (since there is photographic evidence) that they are now in jail.
That strikes me as the kind of thing where you “thought it was a good idea at the time”. But once you come to your senses afterwards, you realize how badly you screwed up. And yes, at that instant, I suspect that they did know it was rape without needing to be told. But “at the time”, so to speak, you’re not really thinking clearly for whatever reason.
Synova: I don’t know for certain that that follows. Guys in our society frequently get defensive about their female relatives, even when everything is clearly and perfectly consenting. They might well have objected on those grounds alone. It does not necessarily follow that they’d have objected because they thought of it as “rape”, but rather simply because it was someone having sex with their sister under any circumstances.
*shrug* That’s speculation, though. I think it’s pretty clear that at the time they most likely were not thinking of themselves as “that guy that hangs out in alleys and rapes women”, though.
Let’s remind people how law works. People at Steubenville get arrested for crimes, not anyone else. Unless you can prove a conspiracy to commit rape exists, there is no such thing as “rape culture.” The promotion of “rape culture” is meant to demonize men, not prevent rape. None of these fake feminists have done anything to prevent rape. They are interested in blame, not solutions.
And did anyone notice Scalzi Tweeted he was donating 1,000 bucks to RAIIN because of LC? That is classic intersectional feminism. LC uses a slur and Scalzi – in true intersectional fashion – links LC to real and actual rape. Did anyone notice Scalzi linked to a PDF some weeks ago asking us to educate ourselves about intersectional feminism?
The PDF lists vectors of oppression “to include age, attractiveness, body type, caste, citizenship, education, ethnicity, height and weight assessments, immigration status, income, marital status, mental health status, nationality, occupation, physical ability, religion, sex, sexual orientation.” And of course this is all set against “the multiplicatively privileged,” the “‘white, thin, male.'”
These people are stone barking mad.
That was a retweet-with-comment; it was someone else who donated the money. (And then complained that RAINN doesn’t like the term “rape culture”.)
The term “rape culture” IIRC was actually created to describe life in men’s prisons. So the SJW’s simply appropriated the term and shove the victims of prison rape (male prison rape) off to the side because they don’t matter to them and they figure it’s an awesome, catchy term and they should have it. Their movement is so lame they have to steal their language from men. They are not feminists.
As for the Steubenville thing, those boys were a part of a much bigger problem that the SJWs do not want to focus on. Their cultural push is causing so much damage to the way teens and young adults see themselves. Heck, people into their 30’s and 40’s feel the pressure of the “all sex all the time” or you’re a freak movement. To try to bring that up, however, is considered shaming and misogyny. A desire to put women back in the Victorian era. Wanting people to cherish their bodies and other people’s peace of mind is for squares. That filters down until people start rationalizing real harm, like those boys did. They were shocked they got in trouble, which seems insane, but they were legitimately surprised. There’s something to that that goes far beyond what the SJWs want to focus on but we mustn’t look too closely in that direction lest we “shame” anyone.
The entertainment industry should take a good long look at itself and consider their influence.
I have never seen a retweet formatted like that and Scalzi is not listed as one of the retweeters. I put it below so people can make of it what they will.
The original tweet is at https://twitter.com/subpress/status/479309034885873664 and Scalzi retweeted adding “Awesome”.
It’s not a “standard” retweet or reply, so it breaks Twitter’s threading. (Which manages to be worse than WordPress’s. 🙁 )
The original thought stands: Scalzi is linking LC to enabling rape.
Scalzi insinuated that Larry Correia was pro-rape. Then he said Mr. Correia was an outright misogynist, along with all his readers, and an idiot. How does being called a pussy, especially when your acting like one, even compare to being called a pro-rape, misogynist idiot? Not to mention insulting your entire fan base. Yet, I don’t see anyone calling to ban the words pro-rape, misogynist, or idiot.
Well, we’re just cutting off our nose to spite our face if we ban words like “idiot.” Then we would be in the unenviable position of having to write things like, “that there-used-to-be-a-word-that-perfectlly-described-him-but-I-can’t-use-it-anymore John Scalzi.” Much easier just to write, “that idiot John Scalzi.”
Where’s my “like” button for this comment?
“I don’t see anyone calling to ban the word…idiot.”
Clearly you haven’t seen the bleeding edge of “social justice”. That is probably good for your sanity.
http://imgur.com/40byxzB — it’s a Huffington Post article, in screenshot form so we don’t have to bite on their clickbait.
Prediction, before looking: Somewhere in that image will be the word “ableist”.
——
Goddamn. I didn’t think I’d get it in the fucking headline.
I could have lived a long happy life without reading that Frustrated. I guess this woman never heard the “sticks and stones” thing. I get that being called names can hurt sometimes, but trying to ban the word isn’t going to change anything.
Also, she said,”That’s like being welcomed as an activist, and as an ally and as a parent, but not as a woman or a Jew.”
As a Jew I just want to say this woman in no way speaks for the people as a whole. Jews learned long ago that crying about being called bad names doesn’t change a thing. I also don’t see how her faith is at all relevant to the topic.
As someone with multiple learning disabilities, that woman is batshit insane.
I don’t get pissed at someone saying they had a dyslexic moment, even though *I* have dyslexia and know there’s more to it than “moments”. I don’t get pissed when people talk about how American society has ADHD, even though I really have it and most of the people using the term don’t really understand it.
I don’t get bent out of shape because everyone knows what they mean, and I do too. There’s no reason to get bent out of shape because they use something that sucks as derogatory…because it sucks. It doesn’t dehumanize me or anything.
So, to paraphrase Eddie Murphy, tell her to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.
wait…you didn’t have time to respond because you were finishing a short story but you had time to write this?! HA…man…when I saw the scroll bar I thought it was because of the million comment posts…nope just Larry calling a duck-a-duck. Hang in there kitty….wait….was that sexist?….I don’t do innuendo well according to Scalzi.
I sent off the short story yesterday afternoon. Oh how I love getting product out the door. 🙂
I hate to break it to you Larry, but you are civilized. What’s worse, they know it. They know that no matter their posturing and claims to the contrary, you’re never going to take the first step toward violence. It’s safe to be afraid of you. It’s safe to “challenge” you. You won’t hurt them. You won’t even call for their livelihoods to be lost. They even know that if ever they are brutally attacked, you, those you’ve supplied, those you’ve trained and those of like mind will side against the attacker.
Unfortunately, they aren’t civilized. They’re barbarians. They have built no culture of their own and are busy at the work of decomposing a single culture built from many people into a chaotic mass of competing tribes. Even now we see cracks where those tribes occasionally turn on one another. Worse, unlike most barbarians, they lack the basic, if brutal, virtues normally imposed by the harsh nature of living within a barbarian culture.
I do not have a good answer of how to deal with these barbarians while preserving the qualities that have made my civilization great. The solution for dealing with the armed invader, violent despoiler or brutal criminal seeking to deprive me of my natural rights is obvious in my view. The other sort of barbarian, who we allow to live in the shelter of our society, seems more problematic.
Sometimes, in defense of civilization, it is necessary to act uncivilly. May I suggest that moment is rapidly approaching
I’m not sure you’re correct. I suspect our definition of civilized may have mutated to the point where it’s destructive.
Bit of Stockholm Syndrome? Oh my, yes. The *real* dangers are, apparently, swept under the rug. Real, vile, terrible things, like abusing children. Were there members of fandom complicit? That appears likely. Hell, even Hines appears to get that.
I wouldn’t call these fools ‘barbarians.’ The epic straw-man battles that are waged by such can be so skillfully executed they receive accolades and ovations by the score from the untutored and new to the world. Until, that is, one notices that the mannequins do not move, the snarling painted faces are a child’s caricature, the blood of slashed and stabbed foes merely grass. What ribbons does a skewered dandelion earn?
They are real, these men and women who perceive such horrors in the hearts of those who all too often protect them, despite their squalling tantrums. Not fiction, fairy-story, or tall tales. *We* don’t deny them this, despite what they would us, if they but could, had they but the courage (and height of foolishness, too). Yet they persist in striking at shadow-things when true horrors are in their midst.
With such awful things now known, I could hope that we could all agree that abusing children like this is beyond the pale, as is rape. Well, all except the rapist assholes that do these things for sick jollies. Personally, I prefer impalement for rapists. But dead is dead, that sort should not suck up one more breath of precious oxygen, nor one more photon of sunlight.
And a tool or good training that gives a potential victim a fighting chance, so much the better. It’s not an ‘I win’ button or a magic talisman, but a solid knee in the balls or swift injection of lead or copper is better than a mismatched fight between a bigger, stronger, tougher perp and an unarmed and untrained woman, or man.
Sorry, bit of a ramble there.
Thing is, I think they probably are barbarian. They’re disdainful of the things that make a civil society possible, and much of their action is toward the destruction of those things. Even in, and perhaps only in, a society that cherishes the idea that you can build your own way to live and invite people along, they are not able to allow others dissenting opinions from their tribe.
Just look at the current argument, LC is accused of being pro-rape, largely because he is of the opinion (I’m making an assumption here about LC’s view) that the best way to deal with rapists is for their targets to shoot the attempted rapist and never become a victim. They don’t object to the results, or even the means (no one is saying it’s wrong to shoot rapists). His idea is “other”, and thus needs to be isolated and attacked. They’ve taken a composite culture and are tearing it into small tribal pieces, because they think that’s a better way to look at the world. In truth, it’s just backward and small.
Would you accept ‘decadent’ as a compromise? Decayed, degenerate, accepting the fruits of a free society while rejecting the toil and vigilance that such a society requires? Barbarians makes me think they are the Visigoths, come to sack Rome. In point of fact, they are more the senators, selling sheep and rotten fruit in the forum where the people once made their laws.
They truly believe they are the final arbiters of civilization and right-thinking (though with a slant to the left so strong it appears horizontal). They snidely imply that Larry is pro-rape, dangerous, and probably kicks puppies to death, yes, because there’s zero danger of any of those things actually happening (as you’ve said). They believe they have such culture, so accepting and open… so long as you nod your head at the right places and mouth the proper catechism, you are one of them: knees at the altar here, statue of Marx there.
It is indeed backward and small, but they can’t admit that. They have to be so very hip, always at the height of culture, all the time. Not for them the courage and daring of the barbarian. They are so het up with their high culture and their nigh-religious politics that they look down on the ‘common’ men with popular appeal. Oh, men who work for a living, do good work, and speak plainly. That screams to me that they think they are the nobility (they so love “class”), and we, peasants.
Just the way I see it. I’ve been wrong before, though.
I’ll accept decadent, but I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive. They’re against the current civilization, and I bet if you asked them, they’d admit their aims are to destroy the current society. They’re sacking the current civilization, generally expecting the loot to last forever.
SJW exhibits the kind of stupidity that only postgraduate degree in non-STEM can manage. Their nuances are so subtle mere plebes like the readers of this blog cannot hope to comprehend.
I sort of suspected that ‘pussy’ was going to come back to you. I also figured that you could handle it in your usual inimitable manner!
I’m amused that the comment system on here has words it won’t allow, including many mentioned in the post.
Or maybe it was just a transient error when I pressed send. Nevermind. Joke is now dead.
Really? I did not know that. Hmmm… I need to figure out how to turn that off.
George Carlin Test:
Shit
piss
cunt
fuck
cocksucker
motherfucker
tits
Seems to work ok from this angle.
Call me crazy, cut didn’t this whole disagreement start when Larry pointed out that men who forcibly rape people are deranged, evil people, and can only be stopped with force? Read Peter Grant’s book about being a prison chaplain and tell me that the average person he profiles just needs to be told it’s bad to steal, rape, and beat people up and they magically won’t do it anymore.
Jim wants to “educate” the problem away, but to actually do so would touch far, far too many of his sacred cows. First, serial rapists are commit the vast majority of rapes. Serial rapists are almost always violent criminals in other ways as well.
If you advocate for harsh punishment for criminals, Long sentences, and the death penalty, lefties get their panties in a knot about criminals rights. or “white Privelege” or how it’s “poverty” that causes crime. So clearly JIm Hines and other lefties aren’t serious abut stopping rapists when they commit other crimes
If you’re concerned only with forcible rape, The left fails on that score too, As George Will pointed out in a recent column, when you define rape is so loose a fashion that “stare rape” is a thing. The word rape ceases to have any meaning. It’s also deeply patronizing to women and denies that they’re grownup human beings and capable of self determination.
Assuming you mean what rape used to mean, i.e. unwanted, forcible penetration of an orifice, usually by a male penis, the left fails yet again.
If you include prison rape,and you should, the vast majority of rapists are black and hispanic criminals (NB not excusing white rapists). How many years of “education” are going to be wiped out by the flood of MS13 members crossing the borders as we speak? Rahm Emmanuel is letting black mobs run around Chi town with police protection. Might the occasional angry mob get out of hand, and an overly enthusiastic young man might mistake being passed out as consent during such an event?
Children of single mothers are vastly more likely to commit crimes than children with two parents. Boys who grow up with no dad and no structure commit rape more often than men with an intact family growing up. Does Jim hines want to anything, in any way, to break up the deranged cycle of broken families, violence and crime from which our criminal underclass, of all races, comes?
Does the left that the ethical and moral framework and sense of higher goods provided by religion should be encouraged?
John Lott has been pointing out for years that the biggest beneficiaries of cheap guns are vulnerable women. Does the left oppose or support ready access to means of self defense for all?
The solution to the “rape culture” is really, really, simple
A nation of well armed, law abiding, intact families, whose women can defend themselves, and whose men can easily provide for their families, because of the abundant jobs available. The general cultural and religious outlook, greatly disapproves of selfishness, minor criminal behavior, abhors violent crime of any type. For the genuinely needy It’s charitable and tries to help people get back on their feet.
For those few percent of the population that’s just broken, swift, sure, and strict punishment for crimes, large and small, generally stops criminals from doing worse after they get away with it a few times. IF someone does commit a heinous crime, they go away, for a very long time, or somebody shoots them while doing something very bad, and nobody get upset at the person defending themselves
In other words, it’s a lot like Yard Moose mountain, and the rest of conservative america.
But because all those redneck hillbilly bible thumper policies are from The Wrong People, we won’t use them, even though they work. Perhaps, maybe especially because they work, and don’t require a vast array of people with “hundreds” of hours of training to get cushy jobs dealing with the results of their own failed policies
Sorry, but I have to pipe in. Czech Republic is one of the most liberal countries in the world. And by liberal I mean the true meaning of the word. And we have one of the most atheistic societies in the world as well. It’s because of history, go read up something about Jan Hus, Thirty years war (started in Bohemia… some guys decided, those taxes are too steep and threw governor from the window on the cowshit heap), Age of Darkness (very poetic name for that part of our history) and after WWI and WW2.
And we have a LOT less crime per capita. Less murders, rapes, robberies and so on.
So it’s not about God or manfolk providing for womenfolk, it’s about something else. I don’t know what, but your post kind of angered me.
I don’t know about USA, maybe it would have helped you. But for other cultures? Not so much. (at least not for ours)
I like the Czechs. I sell a lot of books in the Czech Republic, and they make awesome guns. 🙂
Thank you, Mr. Correia for writing awesome things. I’ve just vocally plugged you on our czech RPGforum, where we RPG fans hang out. Because you know, Grimnoir Chronicles was the best series I got to listen after binging Harry Dresden (narration by James Marsters is soooo great… I can’t even… that part in Changes, even thinking about it now, it brings tears into my eyes).
And I will be my evangelical self on upcoming biggest convention in Czech Republic, where I do some wargaming demos (Dystopian Wars, Infinity, Warhammer 40k and Warzone Ressurection). So during drinking evening I will bring you as much as possible. Because I need ALL your books in Czech and in my library. Like right now. Now. Where are they. Am I throwing my money in the right direction?
My Monster Hunter International novels have been translated into Czech and are available for sale there now. Lovci Monster SRO is the first one. And agreed, Marsters is a fantastic narrator, and Butcher is one hell of a good writer.
Of those games, I’ve really wanted to try out Infinity. Love their sculpts.
Blaine,
I mentioned it very briefly, but the difference in America is mostly due to race. We could ethnically cleanse America of non Europeans, and within a decade or so, our crime rates would be similar. That however is somewhat problematic solution that creates more problems than it solves, IMO. I recall reading last year, that 100% of the rapes in Sweden were committed by Muslim gang members, it’s not the liberal nature of European society that’s the problem, it’s liberalism combined with multiculturalism and excuse making for dangerous criminals.
My main point was that American Liberals are raging hypocrites. Calling Larry names does not change the facts, and what works to lower crime rates and make people safer in the US is what we generally call conservative.
I like Czech people, y’all make great beer, have a lovely country and are very friendly. If Czechs want to be liberal, that’s their business. What I object to is liberals in the US lying about what causes and what prevents rape in the US.
Chris K:
I’d guess it comes down to the culture. We had our problems with religious wars in long past and reaction to this was to turn away from religion. And of course us being part of the Eastern European bloc and under communism didn’t help either. They cleansed the society of undesirables, which included religious people (or they were shunted to the sides of society, like Jews, Romani or people who weren’t ardent supports of the Party). That’s our (my generation I mean) inheritance from the past.
And because I sometime come along people on the internets claiming you need religion to be truly moral, I am primed to debate that particular point. I can look around and see atheistic society functioning as fine as religious one. Because it works in our country, in our culture, I always assume it can work in others. We aren’t some animals without moral compas, it’s not dog eats dog here and anyone who travels here can see that.
But it’s just me and my “triggers” (bwhahaha) in any discussion around ethics, crime rates and conservative vs. liberal societies. I guess it’s just learning about issues people debate on the internet over the Atlantic are really different from what pains us here. My country is sorting out corruption of elected officials who still hold to the communist truism “he who doesn’t steal robs his family”, because to better life situation of your family you had to dip your fingers into “collective wealth”. Such a bullshit.
I learned a lot from just reading discussion in SFF community these past eight months, how the basic view on life differs and so on.
P.S.: Thanks for the praise of our beer, we know we have the best in the world:) and thanks for discussing with me.
Larry, not calling anything into question, but you’ve frequently mentioned the usefulness/need for links and such to demonstrate claims. I’ve read a few times around here about Delany but haven’t seen any links. I’m not really stoked about googling around for stuff related to NAMBLA. Anyone have anything available?
Larry, not calling anything into question, but you’ve frequently mentioned the usefulness/need for links and such to demonstrate claims. I’ve read a few times around here about Delany but haven’t seen any links. I’m not really stoked about googling around for stuff related to NAMBLA. Anyone have anything available?
Well if you want to avoid the cesspool of the actual Nambla page, here is Wikipedia, where Delaney is listed under the supporting individuals and even has some quotes from him praising them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambla Some other folks kept digging and came up with a bunch more, but I can’t remember where I read those at.
I remember watching the South Park NAMBLA episode. In the time before it became automatic to do an internet search for everything I wasn’t sure of, it took me a while to figure out it wasn’t a sick joke. Well, it is, but one that happens to be real. That was an early exposure to what is today called Poe’s Law, that any sufficiently insane ideology is indistinguishable from satire.
I”m just gonna warn anyone thinking about going to this link, yes; it will make you throw-up a little. Click at your own risk.
From Wikiquote: “I read the NAMBLA (Bulletin) fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about. What the issues they are really talking about, and deal with what’s really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.”
And here:
“Samuel R. Delany, professor and author. In extended interviews about his novel Hogg in 2004 he stated he supported a group like NAMBLA because “abuse is fostered by the secrecy itself and lack of social policing”. He expounded that “for thousands of years, relations we assume are abusive by definition (child marriages, slavery, child labor, etc.) were the social and legal norm, institutional and ubiquitous [..] behavior that we [today] find wholly unacceptable—flogging slaves, wife beating, and child beating (in the family, in the school, and at the factory)—was recommended by experts and clergymen as the most efficient and least disruptive way to maintain [social] order. All of these institutions changed, nevertheless, only when they were no longer economically feasible or beneficial to the greater society.”
For the record and to ease additional searches when future claims that our colleagial liberal and progressive scifi fans willfully ignore that their beloved Nambulas celebrate a twisted fellow who happens to align with their worldview:
http://deirdre.net/too-many-things-must-bail-on-some/ (tl;dr – I’m too busy to really think about this)
http://radishreviews.com/ (go to 6/20/2014 entry) (tl;dr – ‘it’s an obscure, decades old interview, and thus old news, and who cares, I don’t… let’s focus on an even older and more obscure interview given by someone is we are aligned against and rail on that instead!’) (later on in links about an MRA advocate).
“We have no time to care about this.” What freaking hypocrites.
Yes, let’s. Delany said he read that pedophile club’s bulletin regularly. For science, he said. Then he went and said he supported it, and of course, he explained why, trying to make it sound oh so reasonable, even adding so-called historical context. What horse shit. And you lot want to excuse this apologist because… it’s old news and you don’t care?! Really? Any decent and reasonable person would care very much. Given the lack of condemnation by the left, I say this news is far from old.
If Scalzi gets the vapors over your use of the word “pussy” he must have been apoplectic whenever Bill Maher would refer to Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann as “c*nts.” I mean, he can’t possibly be silent in the face of such rampant misogyny can he?
As far as I can tell Scalzi is *the* misogynist in this conversation because it appears that he objects to women actually having the ability to defend themselves. Semantics aside, that’s the real issue isn’t it?
No only does Scalzi object to women being able to defend ourselves, he thinks those of us who try are giving up our inalienable right to victimhood. The very idea that women should have individual responsibility, that we are capable of defending ourselves from penis owners, that we do not need to bash men and claim oppression to excuse our shortcomings does not fit their narrative. Per them, I should be in a hug-it-out circle with my sisters, holding candlelight vigils for wymyns’ studies majors who are underemployed and protesting against men who offend my delicate sensibilities with hatey hate speech. Unfortunately, I DO believe in taking responsibility for myself and my own safety. I CAN’T be offended because I am self-confident and strong enough to know that someone else’s words do not define me or my life. And I DON’T have time to join in their protests and vigils and anti-rape training programs because I have a senior level job in a very male oriented industry to go to. A job that I earned on my own merits, with useful college degrees, thick skin, and a ton of hard work. I am the antithesis of everything they espouse, and they have no answer for someone like me.
Well said! I consider myself a woman who is firmly in the same mold though I am a stay-at-home mom– which really seems to baffle and offend the righteous SJW types.
Anyway, he applauded his wife when she kicked (or punched) some guy who was making passes at her, wasn’t taking no for an answer and finally grabbed her.
She was at some bar (Scalzi was somewhere making book tour or something like that) and he wrote about that, how’s his wife is tough.
Or soemthing like that.
As of today he is saying that self-defence… Ah heck I read the damn comment 5 times and still not sure. I think he is saying we need to focus more on teaching people right from wrong before before relying on self defense. Heck I think we would all love to live in a utiopian soceity where there is no fear or need or want for anything.
But till that day I am damn proud of my 10 year old Goddaughter getting her orange belt in taekwondo.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/06/19/a-former-marine-corps-weapons-instructor-on-the-desirability-of-guns-for-self-defense/#comment-700205
In their bizarre little world it’s as if no laws were ever passed against rape, robbery or murder. We’ve all been wandering around with no civilizing force in society just raping and pillaging everything we see and now our betters are going to come in and tell us that we’ve been doing it wrong all this time! We just need to use the proper words and everything will be all better. ((eye roll))
*snort*
The funny thing about self-defense is that so long as the guy with the weapon is properly educated, the guy without the weapon doesn’t really need to know right from wrong. He just needs to know that his potential mark has a gun. That in and of itself will probably keep him from doing anything particularly stupid.
As has been said, “An armed society is a polite society.”
See my SJW logic 102 post above: It’s ok when Bill Maher uses the C word when describing Sara Palin or Michelle Bachmann as they’re acceptable target.
” As far as I can tell Scalzi is *the* misogynist in this conversation because it appears that he objects to women actually having the ability to defend themselves. ”
I think the premise that this is a conversation and that one person in it is misogynist is off base. Scalzi is just throwing poop. He is not doing this because he is a clever trickster god. He is doing this basically because he understands poop throwing better than conversation. Misogyny is just the kind of poop he throws.
This is my big screen adaption:
Poop #1 : “You think women ought to be able to defend themselves? They shouldn’t have to! You’re siding with the attacker then! That’s math! ”
Response: ” Uh huh. Are your good intentions and wishes protecting anybody or helping anybody? Then let the adults talk peanut. Go home Scalzi, you’re drunk. ”
Poop # 2: “You’re a misogynist and your readers are thick, and I’m clever or at least I use a mocking and mercurial tone. Catch phrase! Air guitar! Meme! This Space for Rent! Squirrel! Hadoken! “.
Response: ” ‘Kay. Bitch. ”
Poop #3: ” You just called me an ultra slutty crack whore and said I deserved to be raped by Nazis in a volcano on venus for all eternity. That’s not right. But that’s the kind of asshole you are. You should be polite like me. Dick. I tried to help you by calling you shit. ”
Response: Shrugs, blogs about it, and get on Twitchy. Other people blog about it. (montage)
Poop #4: ” something something something preening something asshole something. ” Who cares. It’s just yet more poop. From a can. A very big can. He saves it. He’s proud of it. He’s tried to monetize it. Your tweets will be graded. And sold. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
What have we learned here? Poop.-> response -> Poop.
I find lots of words you use offensive. I’m betting you already knew that.
These SJW people cannot come out and condemn child rape, including it seems incestuous child rape.
They condemn teaching women to have some ability to protect themselves.
These people are beyond scum. They are beyond uncivilized or “half savage”.
There must be a term to describe them and their disgusting reprehensibleness, but I lack that vocabulary.
Try “gratuitous waste(s) of oxygen.” Season with profanity if/as necessary.
How about “Leftist”
You know, I actually wondered about how there’s a huge divide between how the self-declared leadership of sci-fi treat Larry, versus how they treat MZB, and I’m not sure I can chalk it all up to simple tribalism- even though I’m certain that’s a huge part of it. In the same vein, I don’t think Larry takes the attitude he does simply because he has a short attention span, or is ignorant/ uncultured. One good readthrough of the Grimnoir Chronicles should dispel that.
My theory is the dichotomy between Crab and Crane: people who come here for the Rokugan Game Night posts should know exactly what I’m talking about. The Crab Clan is a pack of militaristic samurai whose sworn duty is to forever battle the forces of Hell from their epically-sized defensive wall. They rarely have time to be decorative, or focused on artistic pursuits: if they relent from their focus on war, people die, and they might even fail their mission. By contrast, the Crane Clan is dominated by courtiers who rule the courts of Rokugan. Violence is not their strong suit: they specialize in very articulate debating, cultural pursuits, and making strong social connections.
All of that is to say: Larry quite obviously identifies with the blunt manners and valor of the Crab, and being direct is far more important than the hurt feelings of others. Deeds, not words. By contrast, the Crane artists rely on their connections and etiquette: take that away and their whole culture comes crashing down. Words are critical, and anyone who’s handled tense conversations knows that. Now, that’s obviously not the whole explanation. But it does show why some people aren’t regarded as “real” writers despite having equal (some say superior) mastery of storytelling, and why some people feel a critical need to not tarnish the reputations of legacy icons, sometimes long after they’re dead. Without the connections that have developed in the cultural scene, how can a community of artists expect to survive and thrive?
Props for working a role playing game analogy into a real world discussion so aptly. Makes sense to me.
If you don’t mind me extending your analogy, one of the reasons this is so is that the Crab are, individually and as a clan, never more than a wall’s thickness away from sudden, total violence. The Crane are far enough away that they can pretend violence only comes in stylized doses, and that they are the arbiters of the style.
As someone who’s played Scorpion, (And Crab, and Crane and Unicorn, even Dragon…) these folks are nowhere near as nuanced or as skilled as a Crane Courtier; there’d be a CHALLENGE in that then. I can’t even compare them to Unicorn Clan courtiers making verbal faux pas-es. They think they make brilliant verbal traps but in fact they only reveal instead what they REALLY think. They also wouldn’t know etiquette if someone slapped them across the face with it (these are the people who want to do away with things like social protocols, after all, saying they’re old fashioned and out of date and thus useless.)
Also they have no honor, so they cannot recognize it when it’s shown, and instead mock it. Or rather, the only ‘honor’ they recognize is when it’s used in ‘honor killing’ … but that’s okay because its’ something Islamists do, and it’s not a Christian faith therefore excempt from scrutiny or criticism from them.
The analogy about them being similar to the Crane that they’re so far away from the violence that the Crab face daily is apt though.
They’re not Crab, because they’re not blunt enough, and attack the wrong things. They’re not Crane, because Crane know enough to deal with particularly unpleasant individuals… for the good of the clan if nothing else. They’re too clueless to be Dragon. They’re too pushy to be Mantis (or any other minor clan). They dance around issues too much to be Unicorn. They’re not Lion because they claim to hate fighting. And they’re not Scorpion, because the Scorpion would have nothing but contempt for people generating that much blackmail material. The Naga, of course, are non-human, and asleep, and they were single-mindedly devoted to overcoming The Foul. So they’re not the Naga.
The Phoenix Clan, though… During the original storyline, the Phoenix Clan almost wiped itself out because it embraced corruption. Of course, the reason it did so was in the pursuit of knowledge, which is questionable with this bunch.
Of course there’s always the Spider Clan…
The Scorpion Clan do what they do with the ultimate goal being the protection of the realm; regardless of personal tarnishing. So, while they have honor that isn’t understood by the rest of the Clans, they are still honorable. The SJWs turn on their own the moment they protest even slightly.
Yeah, the Phoenix became corrupted through their pursuit of knowledge…. which doesn’t match the vileprog / SJW / GHH pursuit of self-righteous control, hedonism, and over-sexualization.
Which, if I had to ascribe, it would have been Hantei Sotorii.
Oh and communism…
You’re right. Probably the Spider Clan.
Man, if we ban the word d*cks the only sporting goods store in my city would have to rename itself.
Penis’s Sporting Goods -“We have bats that match your balls”
Pussy’s Sporting Goods – “Proudly owned by John Scalzi”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6xyV68KN5A#t=119
for some reason wordpress ate my timecode embed. Skip ahead to 1:58.
Does no one else see what Larry is doing. He is keeping the SJW’s attention on him while writers who believe in story over message out flank them and steal their readers.
Oh wait that only works if SJW had readers to steal. Nevermind.
As for the big nasty word he used. Well when Robin Williams was on Inside the Actors Studio he was asked what his favorite curse word was. Pussy. Did not know Robin Williams was a misogynist.
Mr. Happy certainly isn’t.
“and the usual how guns were compensating for tiny penises (which doesn’t explain women who carry guns…) ”
Well women have tiny penises too, but I think they call them something different..
I note with amusement that damien takes exception to you saying pussy when the Brits throw Cunt around with aplomb.
Standard feminist shaming language. It’s been around for a long time, and it’s always the same.
“Why are you so angry?”
“You have a tiny penis.”
“You make me feel afraid.”
“You hate women.”
“You just want women back in the kitchen.”
“You must live in your mom’s basement.”
“You need to grow up.”
“You’re afraid of a strong woman.”
–and on and on. You’d think they could come up with something new, but as Larry’s Liberal Arguing Checklist proves, they really don’t have anything other than tired old arguments to fall back on, every single time.
Just their way of shutting down all criticism. Thank God it’s starting to fail them.
“and the usual how guns were compensating for tiny penises…”
This has always confused me. I can’t quite figure out why having a big dick is SO useful when you’re being assaulted. Do you whip it out when thugs threaten you? Do criminals flee before it? Also, if ANY dick is threatening to women, wouldn’t a big one be more threatening? Doesn’t that mean a man with a gun should be less threatening to a woman than a man with a big dick?
See? Confusing.
A few years ago on another forum, some SJW type tossed out the “compensating” argument. I pointed out that if she thought I was “compensating for having a tiny penis” by carrying a two-inch .38, then she had some really low standards….and also some troubling sexual issues that really required professional help to address. It shut her up.
😉
Having said that, I’ve pretty much given up arguing gun rights with liberals, because inevitably such arguments rapidly degenerate – or usually, start out as – pissing contests where the pro-gunner is immediately accused of personal complicity in Sandy Hook or whichever other politically-useful atrocity is at hand, and then is subjected to dick jokes. Which is why, these days, my response to the “Why do you need a gun” crowd tends to be “Because f*ck you, that’s why.”
I usually just look puzzled, and then ask
“But if I was ‘compensating’, wouldn’t I be carrying a gun that was BIGGER than my tackle?”
Works really well when it’s a Glock 21 kinda day…
“No, she’s absolutely right,” said Zeb, patting the enormous pistol at his hip. “This _is_ a penis substitute. After all, if I could kill at a range of thirty meters with my penis, I wouldn’t need to carry this thing around, now would I?”
— James Drew
Fanny is British slang for p*ssy. So can’t use that either. Oops, I meant f@nny. Can’t use the real letters with slang words for pussy.
F@nny is also slang for @ss in US english. So double bad bad.
Whoa . . . thanks to this I just had an epiphany. The SJW are so concerned about badthink, that they’ve sworn off thinking entirely. Wow.
Note: this is so obvious that I know that I can’t take credit for it.
Though it’s okay if you’re talking about a fanny pack.
😛
Jeez, I’m ALMOST ready to start writing up replies to comments on your last two posts on this topic, and you go and write a whole new one for us to reply to? Some of us don’t write as fast as you, Larry! :op
(To be honest, I mostly just wrote this reply so that WordPress would start emailing me new responses to this topic… >_> )
I know none of you are under any obligation to condemn Samuel R Delany or Marion Zimmer Bradley. But when you’re going to start attacking people and you choose Larry Correia….
I just don’t get this.
(The following is lifted from a comment elsewhere about this):
It’s simple. They don’t give a shit about rape. They only ever bring it up to silence people who express un-PC opinions.
Why aren’t they condemning MZB and Delaney? Because they don’t give a shit about rape. Whenever you can’t comprehend their hypocrisy at attacking innocent people for nonsense like “enabling rape culture” while giving actual rapists a free pass, just remember they don’t give a shit about rape.
When you understand that, everything falls into place.
I hadn’t heard about Marion Zimmer Bradley before so I looked into it. Holy crap!!! This pedophilia enabling pimp was the hero of the left!?!? Just wow. Here is a good site with the text of her own testimony. http://www.sff.net/people/stephen.goldin/mzb/
It feels like I’ve a lot to say, but I’m not going to. Scalzi started the fight and his critique on the post title reveals more his own stance on the subject. He acted also disingenuous in doing so because no reasonable person would come to the same conclusion unless they are dishonest and does it out of support for Scalzi.
As for the word pussy, the minute you get scared of using that word or any trigger word, you allow the rapists and other bad guys to win. You allow them to dictate your moods and thresholds. So much for standing up. I suppose this is a discussion that could go on for long, but this is my basic position on it.
And here’s the other thing that riles the crap out of me. They would rather start a fight with Larry and insult him and try to discredit him than condemn MZB and Delaney. This is a biggie for me. In fact, if they’re going to remain silent on this I’ll take it they accept and support pedophilia, that they condone it or are apologists for it. Nothing less than a very public condemnation and outcry of MZB and Delaney and child abuse in general will dissuade me.
They’ve got fuckall credibility with me now. They were unable to separate the man from the art with Larry and Vox. Let them dare do it now with Delaney and MZB.
It’s disgusting how far things have spiraled downwards. Meanwhile the real bad guys out there rape and kill and abuse without fear. They don’t worry about words or sensitivity or triggering. I once did a paper on rape (and one on the death penalty) in law school–doesn’t make me an expert and I don’t pretend to be–but what I learned was that rape is a power crime. Its about violence and submission. The sex part is just the tool they use. These guys don’t view women as human and educating them will only piss them off more.
Forgive my going on like this, please. I’ve flu and is extra grumpy today.
hell they are unable to separate Larry and Vox… They think we’re some monolithic social construct like they want to be.
what I learned was that rape is a power crime. Its about violence and submission. The sex part is just the tool they use.
I’ve read and heard that assertion a lot, but I’ve always wondered about it. If rape is just about power, and not sex, then why bother with the sex part? Wouldn’t it be easier to just beat the crap out of someone who was weaker than you? Also ISTR that most rape victims are attractive young women. If it was just about power, then why would rapists be so selective in their targeting (assuming my memory of that factoid is correct).
It’s not only the power trip the rapist gets, but the lasting effect it will have on the victim. They enjoy that bit as well. Normal people don’t enjoy hurting things. Rapist get joy out of what they do.
My understanding is that the sex part is the ultimate humiliation and domination. I’m not a psychologist and I’m sure there are other, newer studies on what motivates them. Obviously a rapist gets turned on by the act, but it’s the taking-it-by-force part that turns him on.
I don’t know the stats, but woman of all ages gets raped. Again, it’s about what motivates a specific rapist, what mental issues drive him. Of course, not all rapes are violent. I focused on the violent ones. The ones that turn violent once the woman said no.
Rapists know what they are doing is wrong. They don’t care.
I’m confused why everyone is suddenly outraged about MZB. Hasn’t it been public knowledge that she aided her husband in child molestation for years? Did new information surface recently?
Stephen Goldin has been telling everyone about what she did to his step-son for at least 14 years.
I don’t think the SFF community has drawn much attention to MZB. This week is the first time I have ever heard about it and I’m a long time reader and fan of the genre.
It was common knowledge in *parts* of the fandom. The first I heard about it was last week when Tor.com hastily yanked their post praising MZB for all the good she’d done for feminists, etc.
Then her daughter came forward and said bluntly that she had been raped by MZB. Heck, she out and out said Bradly was the villain of the piece more than Breen – he was a pedophile and a rapist piece of shit, but at least he loved his kids, something she never did.
I had heard a very little bit about Breen before, but nothing about her. That they still are trying to distract from it says volumes to me, especially as it brought up Delany’s support for NAMBLA, and he’s still alive and receiving awards from them.
Her enabling has been somewhat known, though I only learned about it a few months back.
However, recent information has surfaced from her daughter that claims MZB physically and sexually abused her.
Yep, that part is new. Pretty f’d up.
I’ve only become aware of it two week ago. Never heard or read about it before then. My sister introduced me to MZB’s books when we were little and I read it. Don’t remember too much, but I enjoyed it. Never thought she was like this, though.
Not known to me, and (asked in bewilderment) who is Goldin? I don’t do gossip, I don’t attend cons, I just read SFF. So, no, I had no idea, so I’m hugely shocked.
I believe it’s her daughter.
(I’d comment more authoritatively, but I couldn’t make it though the source material. It pissed me off too much.)
Stephen Goldin is a long-time SF author whose son was one of Walter Breen’s victims.
As someone who was at best a reader and didn’t do the SFF community thing till very recently, no I didn’t know and it was news to me. All this was news to me.
I knew about MZB enabling her husband, but had always assumed that this was basically her looking the other way because she loved him. I did not know until very recently that she was much, much worse than him — for one thing, she was sadistic, violent and went after both younger children in general and her own children.
Jordan- made the mistake of looking deeper into MZB’s history. It’s absolutely horrific. She abused her daughter in every way possible- psychologically, physically, sexually- I can’t imagine ANYONE calling this woman a hero.
I’d never heard about it until two or three weeks ago, and I’d read over a dozen of her books, and keep reasonably up to date on the Science Fiction Fantasy world, though I’m not a con-goer.
All I am getting from this is that insults need to evolve to be more genderless and perhaps more specific about certain acts while remaining punchy.
For example, if someone wants to refuse a direct confrontation but rather make snidely insulting comments without actually addressing the central premise, perhaps they are a “weasel” or a “crap-weasel.” I think terms like “bloviating” are too obscure but “inveigler” or “fink” could still be candidates.
Thus, one might be an “evasive weasel” or an “inveigling fink” or possibly even a “word-snake” without providing any return ammunition whatsoever.
For those interested in the fine art of insulting and the many nuances thereof, I recommend a great publication from a number of years back called “Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression.”
Why does everybody pick on the weasels?
Because wolverines have better press agents?
Wolverines are the best they are at what they do, bub. But what they do best isn’t very pretty.
+10 to geek points!
I give Jordan’s comment two *SNIKTs!* up. 😉
I’d say this incident was “hysterical”, but if awful etymologies are a sin now then maybe I’d better stick with “ridiculous”.
Close call! At least I didn’t risk using an even-more-directly-misogynist word derivation, like “hysteria” or “hysterical”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria
Imagine how embarrassing that would have been.
http://books.google.com/books?id=etRaAAAAMAAJ&q=hysteria
http://books.google.com/books?id=pAJtk_IUi1sC&q=hysterical
I think I died a little inside learning about MZB. The same way I died a bit inside when I learned that Arthur C. Clarke had a taste for little boys and had moved to Sri Lanka so he could be close to an abundance of impoverished young lads willing to satisfy his predilections. Once again, I will exercise the very limited power I have by refusing to purchase or read anything, ever again, by Bradley — just as I have done with Clarke. I have no knowledge about Samuel R. Delany, but his support for NAMBLA is sufficient to cross him off my list as well. Sad day.
I thought Clarke had been cleared of those accusations.
I hope he was cleared, at least. But I’m going to read the references upthread.
Not to my knowledge. If you have information to the contrary, please let me know.
Hmmm…. having read the BBC story, I can’t convince myself that he has been “cleared” in a meaningful sense. The wording is damnably faint praise and basically says, the way I read it, “we do not have enough evidence to get a conviction so we are not going to press charges”. Considering an interview that occurred when the controversy arose in the late 90’s when he said, “I have not been sexually active in 15 years” — I noted at the time that he did not deny the basic thrust of the accusations, just that he had not indulged in them recently. Thus, I have to say I still believe he was a pedophile.
Crap. That’s just depressing.
Hearing about Clarke really saddens me because I love his style as a short story writer, and he also originated some seriously important science-fictional concepts. Compared to Clarke, both Bradley and Delany were small-timers.
Yeah. Clarke was someone my Dad used to tell me to read and pay attention to for short story and sci-fi concepts. Childhood’s End, I read when I was 9.
That’s why I was desperate to be reassured for one of the other bastions of my childhood: Diane Duane. The hero my short story is named in a themed homage to her Young Wizards work. Haven’t found anything remotely questionable so I’m starting to relax on that front.
But MZB wasn’t a chunk of my childhood reading influences – the only book of hers I know I have is a gift; I always though I should try to read her again, but… I guess I won’t be.
If it makes you feel any better (it makes me feel better) what Clarke is merely accused of is far, far less seriously abusive than what MZB apparently did with numerous witnesses coming forth to attest.
John Scalzi is nothing more than a coward who refused to admit that he is wrong when shown the facts and Mary Robinette Kowal acted like a 5 year l when told that she read the timeline wrong and instead of reading the whole twitter timeline in the correct chronological sequence of tweets and acknowledge her misunderstanding, she stupidly doubled down and banned him.
The most interesting exchange was between Larry and Aaron Pound. Somebody should remind Mr Aaron Pound it does not matter how many black belts in martial arts that one has, it only takes one bullet to make everything for naught especially when the attacker has the advantage of space and surprise. I also wonder how his gun removal training would work when faced with an armed assailant who had combat hand to hand training and had real life experience in applying said training .
You can only disarm someone if you get close enough. With a gun, that’s not a guarantee by any means.
I agree and that guarantee goes down real rapidly if he is faced by an assailant who is not only armed but has the combat martial arts training that is not available to most civilian martial arts dojos. Mr Aaron Pound in his arrogance made the most fundamental mistake a martial arts practitioner should never make, do not advertise to the world that you can disarm a person because your enemies will never make the mistake of you closing the distance to disarm them.
Mr. Pound should ask Meredith Emerson how well martial arts work against a larger, stronger, more aggressive opponent.
There is a really good reason that we train cops and soldiers to primarily use guns, not kung fu.
And martial arts have weight and gender divisions for a reason. A 5’1″ 98 lb female blackbelt is still going to get picked up and thrown into the wall by someone the size of Arnie.
But, but, what about grrrrrrlpower? That’s worth at least like, fifty pounds of muscle right?
Alas for the 90 pound waif, Joss Whedon doesn’t write real life.
I’m a tall strong girl who still got thrown around a bit during training– and I can say with no false modesty that I am a good fighter. Women just aren’t as strong as men and no grrrrrl power anthem is going to change that.
@Nathan: There seems to be a sad lack of Slayer power in real life.
Well, to be fair to Whedon, when he created Buffy, he was basically poking fun at existing silly action tropes with the butt-kicking, 90-pound pixie cheerleader character.
These days, though, the butt-kicking 90-pound pixie cheerleader character has been overdone so much that it’s become a silly action trope in its own right…and due in no small part to Whedon himself.
That said, I still laugh at all the parts in “Serenity” when River opens up the full can of whoop-ass.
Hey, no straight white male oppressors won the Nambulas this year. I say good deal. What sane person would want to, and also celebrate race-war guest of honor speeches at WisCon? At this point, any straight white male who doesn’t withdraw from a Nambula nomination is supporting hate-speech. Not only that, hate-speech against their moronic selves. “Allies.” hahahahahaha.
I am a female, I have worked in the ivory tower of Academia, and I have used “pussy” to motivate.
I have also used “pansey”, which must mean I hate flowers. And because flowers are traditionally associated with females and the feminine, my use of the word “pansey” must mean I hate women.
I thought the classical allusion-flower was the orchid…? Why bring pansies into this? They aren’t nearly complicated enough…. topographically, of course…
Or am I having a Georgia O’Keefe moment?
Well the name “orchid” does refer to their similarity to testicles.
I’m female, I’ve used ‘pussy’ too. Pansey as well. And cunt to describe people of both sexes, genders or what have you, because they behave like one. Whiny bitches are whiny bitches even if they have a dangle between their legs.
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/479309274263199744
I guess Larry is the new boogeyman in place of Vox. I have a feeling Scalzi is going to regret choosing Larry as his new target.
I’m curious why they would think this would bother Larry, since that same group told the White House this:
In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming ‘rape culture’ for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.
Link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/18/rainn_attacks_the_phrase_rape_culture_in_its_recommendations_to_the_white.html
Warning, Slate gets all butthurt over this, but I personally find it very promising. 🙂
Wow.
That’s a really cool sentiment, actually. I had been becoming worried that too many anti-rape organizations were becoming too caught up in the “rape culture” meme to actually do any good. I think I might go donate to RAINN, now. Do you think Larry will mind if I do it in his name?
You’d have to ask, Larry, but I doubt it.
Hell, Larry’s got the pull to make this happen, so how about a SFF anthology by various writers. The theme would be something like badass survivors. Ask authors to donate work, and donate all the proceeds to RAINN.
FWIW, I’d be happy to write something and donate it, but I have no draw at all.
What do you think, Larry. Let’s take their “we’ll show him” gesture and really own that shit.
If I did anything like that it would just lead to more freak outs and condemnation.
So, you’re in?
I’m just a dude with an opinion. I deserve no credit for other people’s charitable actions.
Heh. Well, the be fair, the “do you think Larry would mind if I do it in his name” line was meant to be as much of a joke as anything, to highlight how silly the idea that donating in his name would be offensive really is. I guess I should have used a smiley! (See Scalzi, they really ARE useful! :op )
Though, if it was something you WANTED people to do, I’d totally be on board with it. I’m doing it regardless, of course, but I figured I’d throw that out there.
Incidentally, if you or someone else did do an anthology like that, I’d just like to point out that it would be an absolutely PERFECT opportunity to do a story from Holly’s POV. Just sayin.
Ooooh, you’re right. That’s one I’d like to read, nightmarish as it is likely to be. Holly. Rocks.
+1 to a story from Holly’s POV. She’s one of the most vibrant secondary characters in the whole series.
Yeah.
When it comes down to it, Holly is probably my favorite character in the entire series, secondary character or no, though Tanya is starting to give her a run for her money, and Ray Shackleford was pretty close before he got killed, (for good) too.
One of the (many) things I find ironic about this whole situation is that, in Holly, Larry has created a more realistic, more sympathetic, and more empowering portrait of a survivor than anybody his detractors have ever written. Kind of helps narrow down whose opinion on the issue you should pay more attention to, doesn’t it?
Well, FWIW, Milo is my favorite character, but Holly is my second favorite.
What is RAINN?
Ur, never-mind, just looked it up.
That’s actually very cool. Subpress donates to RAINN. Larry has donated his time to shoot. And in honor of this whole broody-ha-dee-ha-ha, I’m also making a donation to our local “safe house” organization! Everyone gets a donation! If only all kurfluffles could end this way!
Even if some people are donating under the misguided belief that it… somehow… I don’t know, does he think that would be an insult to Larry? Or us? That’s kind of weird, but hey, what the hell. A good charity benefits.
/shrugs//throws confetti/
Hmm… looks like I’m buying anything from Subterranean Press through the used book store.
Wonderful. We’re living in a Jack Vance novel. Linked and commented here:
Some more feminist ditziness, from both, or all three, or whatever, sexes of feminist, reported by Larry Correia:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2014/06/feminist-logic-rape-culture-again.html
“Perhaps you might consider the moral defects of rape as a form of courtship in a polite society.”
The ogre seemed uninclined to accept this admonition, and resumed his shockingly rude advances.
“Then perhaps this might prove a more effacious repellant,” she sad, drawing her evaporator and vaporizing his midsection.
THAT kind of Jack Vance novel?
Wow. Just wow.
First, good for you for standing up for yourself and some sane level of open discourse. I’m sick to death of all the perpetually outraged, too.
Second, I had not heard about MZB. I had heard about Delaney, and could not understand how he can be celebrated.
I’m a reader, not a huge fan, but from here on out, I will buy every single book you write and talk you up everywhere.
Thank you.
Would “WUSSY” be more socially acceptable to SWJ crowd ? 🙂
TRIGGER ALERT: Vulgar insults are meant to be both vulgar and insulting. Calling your father-in-law a “pussy” is not an insult to women, but to your father-in-law.
Which makes the crusade to ban offensive word so futile. Trying to ban a particular word gives it more shock value, which makes it more valuable for the intended purpose of being vulgar and insulting.
Here’re some boylove quotes, including SRD’s.
https://www.ipce.info/library/miscellaneous/famous-quotes-boylove
I wonder how often the outraged Brits say “Cxxt”?
‘quim’ seems to be the Brits’ (and possibly Asgardians’) shock-value word for it.
I know. But the Brits I have known try to say that “Cxxt” isn’t an offensive term for female bits. To them it is just a harmless term of endearment.
Yeah, I’ve heard it used both as an insult, admiringly, and as a friendly endearment. It really depends on the tone, especially down here in Australia.
Actually, if the tone of any insult word is used with an admiring, happy or laughing tone, it’s a positive thing.
In an angry, or flat, or hostile voice, it’s meant in the negative light. In fact, depending on tone, it indicates levels of outright contempt and hostility that needs to be heard to be truly felt.
Well, sure, Duskstar. That’s because all insults are endearments to Aussies … 😉
heh. Yes, it’s only people we despise we’re polite to.
And isn’t Jim Hines constantly conflating rape with sexual assault? What Bill Clinton did to Paula Jones was sexual assault, what he did to Juanita Broaddrick was rape. Allegedly x2.
And hell, if Jim Hines can freely use the word “dickish”, you are entitled to use ‘pussy’.
Game over.
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/Pages/decrease-risk.aspx
I don’t know if the same Andrew who commented on Hines post comments here or if he will see this or not, but I just wanted to take a second to thank him. His comment was reasonable, articulate, and spot on. It will probably be ignored, it will likely cause poor reactions from some, but that doesn’t matter. It needed to be said and, personally, I appreciate it.
That is all.
I’d like to echo that thanks as well.
Hey Book,
I try to take the stance of “Not my Circus, Not my Monkeys” when it comes to online stuff. So I don’t comment on a lot of things. Yesterday, as the whole of the internet exploded I started to think… “that MAY be my circus and those MAY be my monkeys.”
I wrote and deleted the Hines comment about five times yesterday and then wrote it again and posted it. Little surprised to see it here today, but I don’t mind it and wanted to actually say thanks. It IS something I feel should be addressed.
Other stuff:
Larry didn’t imply it and no one else has said it, but please don’t consider my comment to be a blanket endorsement of everything Larry ever says or does. I’m adding that disclaimer for people who might be reading this looking for a reason to think that what I said was politically motivated. I still think Larry is a good person, though.
By the way, I also get the urge to look for a way to invalidate. I don’t know how the teams got drafted in all of this, but I guess there are teams now. Jim Hines is probably (I say probably because I haven’t met him) a nice guy. So is everyone else I mentioned. I know what bad people look like. No one with skin in this game seems like a bad person to me.
I like Larry because he reminds me of my uncle Dutch (a greasy diesel mechanic who argues with everyone and swears constantly but secretly donates to underprivileged children) but he’s as fallible as everyone else. As for the “sides” being drawn in this thing…
My grandma always told me that you should know who people are and believe they can be better than they are, and you should know how much people deserve to be loved and then choose to love them more. I’m choosing to believe that everyone is thinking how to handle the whole Delany and Bradley situation and just haven’t had a chance to think them through yet. Those are two distinct things, by the way, and I never meant to conflate them.
I’m not naive. I’d rather be a disappointed optimist than a satisfied pessimist.
I feel like a bit of an asshole for stepping into Moira Greyland’s personal tragedy. And her brother’s, lest we forget. It took a lot of guts for them to speak up. I got mad because I wanted more people to acknowledge them as people and say they had a lot of guts for standing up and speaking. The people who have positioned themselves as the people who are supposed to do that didn’t do it. I don’t know what to say to Moire and her brother other than “I don’t know what to say and I’m sorry if I’m stepping on you or speaking words you don’t want spoken.”
I know rape culture isn’t something the people here believe in, by and large. Maybe I don’t believe in it the way other people do, but maybe you’ll even believe in my definition. Here’s rape culture in a word: Silence.
Rape culture is people knowing that there’s something off about a person or situation and not saying something about it. Everyone is prepared to fight the evil they imagine in their heads. Almost no one is prepared to fight the evil that exists in the world. When we encounter true human ugliness it takes most of us a long while to actually believe in it. We are never prepared.
Yesterday was a good example of that Silence. No one wanted to talk about bad things because they weren’t the bad things they were prepared to talk about. Larry happened to be saying it. I don’t think he was saying it to score points, which is what I imagine a lot of people probably think when they try to brush that stuff off. I choose to believe people are always acting in their version of good faith.
I’m rambling here, aren’t I?
I guess what I was looking for people to say was:
“Sometimes people we like a lot and maybe even inspired us are not good people. Sometimes people who say good things and say true things are not good people. People who hurt people hide in the open, in the blind spot of our Silence. People who hurt people can be charming and brazen and they can make you laugh, but they are not good people. It is very to unsee things we don’t want to see. But if something very ugly rears it’s head about a person we like, we should be ready to believe that even someone we like a lot might not be a good person.”
I also wanted to see people say:
“You are more than what was done to you. Your life will go on and continue and this awful terrible thing in the meat of you, can be healed. It is not your fault. Even if you could have done something to prevent it, the fault is with the person who did it. You can have any thought opinion or feeling you damn well please and no one owns your suffering and your trials but you.”
I guess I was just sick of being told how I felt.
Then again, I did just stick words into people’s mouths.
Andrew, sincerely, thank you for posting that.
And I’m totally cool with somebody disagreeing with me! If someone agrees with everything I say, I’m going to get suspicious.
Andrew- another excellent comment. I really appreciate you taking the time to come and elaborate.
And I should say that very few people who comment here agree with Larry 100% of the time- nor do we agree with each other all the time. That’s ok, because that’s how humans work. Mostly we come here because we’re fans of his work. Then we stay for the camaraderie and amusing drawings of moose cartoons.
** “Here’s rape culture in a word: Silence.” **
This is an important point. I can’t come out and talk about people close to me or their stories, because their lives are not mine to speak of, but in every incident of abuse that I’ve been witness to or that has been confessed to me, one thing is always common- silence. Perhaps I’m contributing by not being specific myself? Hm. Maybe. But I do it out of respect and love, so I’ll leave things at that.
But to go back to the subject, that silence was always present when it came to people abused by those close to them. Those I know who were attacked by strangers had no problem being loud about it. And neither did their friends and family. In that situation, it’s easy to fight back, it’s easy to arm and defend yourself. Well, it’s easy if you know how to arm and defend yourself, but that’s why we have people like Larry.
In situations like Moira’s- well that’s different. People are motivated to be silent. Who wants to believe that a friend, relative, or coworker is capable of that? What does that say about Suzy when Suzy is friends with Sally, and Sally turns out to be a monster? It becomes hard for Suzy to admit that she had befriended this person, that she didn’t see the warning signs…
As you mentioned, those things are very hard to overcome. I wouldn’t call those issues a culture problem- because it isn’t behavior taught to our culture at large, particularly in the US- but it IS human nature to want to believe the best about one’s self and one’s friends and family. Psychologically speaking, denial is very hard to overcome.
Anyway, I have a feeling I’m preaching to the choir and you know all of this already. I think you’re right in that what needs to be fought when it comes to that sort of rape (and/ or abuse) is support not just for the people abused, but also for the friends and family who come forward and say “I think I saw something that concerns me…”
Anyway, now I’M babbling. All that to say- welcome to the MHN, hope you’ll stick around. 🙂
Book, it has been ignored. Not that the coward Hines closed the comments as soon as Andrew posted his comment. Hines’ only logical response is to agree and admit he is in the wrong, but he’ll never do that, so he just runs away.
I just pledged 1,000 bucks to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the name of John Scalzi and the Nambulas.
Larry, I just wanted to say: Wow. Thank you for the quote. I got home and there was a message saying I’d been quoted by you. I’m deeply honored.
Andrew’s story hurt a lot to read. I have a son only a little older than when he said he was abused. As a mother, my heart bleeds for the pain he suffered and still has to live with. There is only one appropriate response for a child rapist and it’s an agonizing death.
I guess that’s why they’re so scared of us.
In other fun news, the woman who runs the racist Medieval PoC website that claims whites are covering up multicultural Europe is now claiming she was outed though she freely admitted who she was on NPR last Dec. If you don’t know who Medieval PoC it’s one of QUILTBAGs favorite go to links about white supremacist conspiracy.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/13/250184740/taking-a-magnifying-glass-to-the-brown-faces-in-medieval-art
Then she claimed all sorts of fake Indian blood and also that she used skin lightener years ago she bought from a very light-skinned Indian or she’d be much darker. I’m telling you, you can’t make this stuff up.
http://omgstopbeingashittyperson.tumblr.com/post/84876450403/this-is-girljanitor-they-identify-as-two-spirit#_=_
It’s worth reading that second one to show how batshit crazy QUILTBAGs are. Naturally N.K. Jemisin and K. Tempest Bradford are defending this outing that never happened. They never vetted this site because as long as it shot down whites they didn’t care how inaccurate it was – or anti-Semitic.
The closer you look at these people the more they fall apart.
Simply frikkin amazing… Well done Larry!
I hope the Sam Delaney thing isn’t true… He taught my comp class in college and was very inspiring.
I also live near him too, and have a child, which makes it more disturbing.
It’s true. He’s a vocal supporter of NAMBLA.
There is a sickness that has been building for a long time and it’s blowing up in cases like Elliot Rodger and the Steubenville football players. Other cases don’t get as much attention, but I recall a horrible one in the past decade where a high school football team in NJ went to camp and the incoming freshmen boys were subjected to some extremely horrible sexual attacks that the older boys considered simple “hazing”. All of this is downstream of the sexualization of absolutely everything. And I don’t mean women with gorgeous bodies (who work very hard on achieving and maintaining those bodies, BTW, for the purpose of being seen and paid well for it) on TV. I’m talking about the “slutwalks” and “16 and Pregnant”. Giving away condoms in school and laughing off abstinence. Calling virgins “freaks” and anyone who tries to pull back on the reins is “shaming”. So girls and women think they have to be sexy and sexual and boys and men think they have to get some or there’s something wrong with them. It’s actual pressure and it’s seriously damaging.
Don’t mistake me, I’m not making excuses for criminal acts and I believe everyone is responsible for their own behavior. But the lessons they’re being taught and the messages that hit their consciousness should be looked at a little more closely in case something better can be put out there besides “sex or you’re a failure” … except that would be shaming so no go.
There’s also a sickness where men have been portrayed as nincompoops all over the entertainment industry and women abusing them is considered “girl power” or comedy gold. So this division and lack of appreciation for the opposite sex is being ingrained. It’s everywhere you look and it’s taken root. The worst is that virgins are supposedly freaks and if you don’t have sex before your junior year of high school there’s something wrong with you — boy or girl. This contributes as much to violence, misunderstanding and regrets as anything. In fact, I’d say more than anything else.
It’s sick and it’s going to get worse. But at the base of it is politics. That’s why they don’t condemn MZB or Polanski or Delaney. They’re fellow true believers in the vapid movement that is leftism and they get a pass.
You’ve made an astute observation that everyone needs to hear. I attended Franciscan U, and I was shocked by the extreme dichotomy between the culture of the school and the town.
In my experience, the campus is a small oasis of decency and mutual respect surrounded by a moral and cultural wasteland. That isn’t just a metaphor. Steubenville is a depressed rustbelt town hit hard by the collapse of the steel industry. Kids growing up there face paltry job prospects, a largely corrupt city government, and endemic despair. Football is about the only diversion from this morass.
The recent tragedy wasn’t the first, either. There were earlier warning signs, like the two FUS students who were kidnapped from an off-campus apartment, subjected to horrible sexual abuse, and killed.
As you’ve discerned, among the chief causes of this epidemic is a depraved philosophy that sexualizes everything while systematically objectifying and commodifying human beings.
It’s a scandal that the situation has degraded so badly in a town hosting a school with a strong Christian identity. I claim my share of the responsibility for never really engaging the local people while I was there. I think that many FUS students avoid witnessing to their faith due to fear of the strong and widespread anti-Christian sentiment. But perhaps relations would improve if more people spoke out.
Thank God there are signs of change. Marc Barnes and folks like him are starting independent outreach initiatives in the area. They recently bought and renovated an old music hall to give local kids something to do.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/students-inspired-by-john-paul-ii-to-revitalize-college-town/
oh wait, butt hurt may be offensive to people who have actually experienced anus pain…
Well, speaking as a person who’s experienced chronic, sometimes agonizing anal pain for over a decade (due to severe intestinal inflammation, a.k.a. Crohn’s Disease), I hereby give you official permission to use the term “butthurt”. You’re welcome.
Haven’t had such a good laugh in some time.
You probably haven’t seen it, but Scalzi is currently basking in the afterglow of his muting of people that disagree with him on Twitter. When asked why he doesn’t block them, he replied he prefers muting because then the person muted isn’t notified and is therefore unaware their messages aren’t getting through.
First, he accuses you of being passive-aggressive by including smileys in your tweets and then turns himself into the posterchild for it. Talk about projection.
That’s good. The more he exposes himself, the more he shows that he has no clothes, metaphorically speaking.
For some reason, I don’t find the thought of JS exposing himself and having no clothes appealing.
There’d be nothing to see?
..though someone mentioned upthread about him being a mangina…
…oh ew. Yeah don’t want to see that.
Please, no mental images. I beg you.
^^;;; I was trying to go with the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ metaphor… and no, no mental images. Not this time anyway…
Hug?
Hugs are good.
irrational fear of NAMBLA = homophobia
I do hope that that was your attempt at sarcasm.
Unfortunately, I suspect it is an opinion held by a lot of the people getting their panties in a bunch about pussy, but covering up for MZB and Breen. 🙁
What I’m seeing is a bunch of people vociferously insisting on a narrow definition of the word pussy in order to ensnare their target (you went after the Correiakin with a snare?) in a charge of misogyny.
But pussy is a simple pejorative with no legal and little (if any) social consequence in modern America. Whatever its antecedents, it’s a generic insult, anymore.
The same sphere of people insisting on the narrow (therefore you’re a misogynist for daring to utter) definition of this word have been seen advocating a fluid and subjective definition of the word rape. A word that has severe legal and social consequence.
Calling somebody a pussy might hurt their feelings. Calling somebody a rapist will likely change their lives.
It’s hard to treat them as adults, following such performances, isn’t it?
About Mary Robinette Kowal:
At first I couldn’t figure out why Writing Excuses went from ‘Yay! New episode tomorrow! I can’t wait!’ to ‘Wow… am I behind two full seasons?’ After a while I determined WE completely jumped the shark when Mary Kowal joined the team. Brandon is brilliant, Dan is weird in a helpful way, and Howard is funny yet insightful… but Mary just doesn’t add anything to the mix. They don’t have that great synergy anymore.
If this is a good example of her public behavior, I can see why a lot of that helpful chemistry was thrown off when she joined the team. It’s too bad… that podcast was awesome once.
I both agree and disagree with your assessment of the show. I started listening to WE just last year, and I burned through the whole catalog in a few weeks. So, I’m pretty confident in making a couple of observations.
Brandon started the show out of dissatisfaction with other writing podcasts that averaged an hour long but only gave 15 minutes’ worth of solid writing advice. WE was intended to present just that 15 minutes.
Listening to the show and doing the writing prompts is basically equivalent to taking college-level advanced creative writing and intro marketing courses for free.
Mary’s first guest appearance blew me away. Her advice pertaining to breath, POV, movement, etc. substantially improved my writing.
As a regular co-host, she does bring a different style to the table than her colleagues. You don’t seem very fond of it, and I won’t presume to find fault with your tastes. To each his own.
We both agree that the flavor started to change somewhere along the line. That’s normal. We’ve watched these folks go from relative novices to the top of their game. Priorities get shifted around in the process, e.g. Dan moving to Europe and Howard getting a traditional book deal.
I suggest a related but somewhat different explanation for the dip in quality. Yes, it did seem to start when they added a fourth host. But I attribute the problem to logistics more than any one personality. Look at the math. WE started out with three hosts and a 15 minute running time. That gives everyone exactly five minutes to talk, which is enough to dispense some solid if streamlined advice. Dividing the same 15 minutes between four hosts doesn’t come out even and gives each person too little time to relate substantive ideas.
Solution: expand the show to 20 minutes (it still fits the haiku).
As I mentioned upstream – she actually delivers some pretty OK advice, but cramming a fourth person into the 15 minute slot dilutes the insight and cuts back on depth, as nobody has the time to develop an idea anymore.
It was later that I discovered her attitudes towards some of the people I considered the greats of SF – which explained why so many recent examples were from works I wasn’t familiar and classics that perfectly encapsulated the idea – or even popularized it – were rarer and rarer.
And I too suspect Larry won’t get much time on the show in person or as a (positive) example.
“And I too suspect Larry won’t get much time on the show in person or as a (positive) example.”
It’s a shame if that’s the case. WE introduced me to Larry. His writing advice, especially on the accurate depiction of guns, has likewise been invaluable.
Having just checked it with my cats, they assure me that they did find it very offensive to have Larry imagine that something like Scalzi could ever rise to the title of ‘pussy’. One of them threw up on the mat in reaction. Seriously, though, based on the fact that it was Bradley and Breen’s fans, fellow travelers, frequent associates who were the witnesses to the ongoing rape of children and did nothing to stop it, one needs to ask who these people were. We know who they weren’t: conservative heterosexuals, possibly conservative homosexuals too. So until there is sufficient evidence that conservatives spend years ignoring their leading lights sexual abuse of children, they don’t need ‘education’. Bradley and Breen’s inner circle was populated by feminists, neo-pagans, homosexuals, their supporters, and very left-wing – AKA vileprogs. I think it is fair to say it was obviously culturally acceptable for them to turn a blind eye, (and I don’t think you’d have to look hard to find they recruited others with similar depraved tastes to participate). So given that Hines, Scalzi, Kowal et al think the ‘rape culture’ needs to be dealt with by education… well, we’ve just clearly established just who needs that education. And as these folk are the loud champions of the current generation of the part of US culture that stood by and let kids get raped and are utterly silent about condemning the perps and their witnesses — I think they should volunteer to be educated out of being vileprogs ;-/ It’s for the children. We’ll know they’re much safer when Kowal tells us it is statistically the equivalent of a flipped penny landing on the edge to get all female Nebula winners.
Hear hear.
I agree. I’m not sure why we’re surprised when people who constantly go on about redefining sexuality, bending gender, an all-gay future and crossing old tabus set out to envision a real life exactly like that.
Add to that the obsessiveness on display to do that within the context of SF and F. If that’s a natural fit, where ISN’T it a natural fit? That’s a one-track mind of sexual deviancy, not an interest in fantastic literature. It’s like stuffing together Tarzan and bondage or something and us being told “oh, sure it’s just fine,” and if we say anything we’re intolerant reactionary bigots. Maybe a clue is in the SFWA nominating “Hild,” which is without SF or F and big on bi-sexuality.
“Ummmm…. but there’s no SF or F.” “Quiet! That’s the reactionary pushback from bigots we expect as more of us come in.”
The operative word here is “mainstreaming.” Didn’t it used to specifically say “adult” on a magazine like Heavy Metal? Now we should be surprised they’re putting this gender-bending into young adult fantasy next to goblins and fire-spiders? If that’s their public expression, what’s their private expressions like?
The same is true of their other unholy interest: race. No less than the president of the SFWA is retweeting stuff like “Space: Not just for white men anymore,” as if a half-century of NASA has been somehow purposely white and keeping Nigeria out of space. Once again they shoe-horn in a weird obsession part Jim Crow, part Jackie Robinson, part Rosa Parks and not only ask us to swallow it as SF and F but SF and F as a KKK that needs healing.
These are amazingly sick and creepy people telling us we’re racist sexists for not sharing their delusional fantasies. I’m not surprised they have to redefine every word in the English language for their own obvious hate-speech, supremacy, racism and sexism to become something completely different. They’ve redefined SFF to mean something else entirely.
What’s more symbolic than nominating “Wakulla Springs” for a Nebula, which literally has Tarzan and white supremacist Jim Crow juxtaposed against a backdrop with NO elements of fantastic literature written by 2 devoted WisCon-ites? That’s a damn big shoe-horn. It’s like watching 90 minutes of The Creature From the Black Lagoon with no creature, all race and gender, the [redacted] Lagoon, and the creature’s hand found in the final scene, the one which starts the actual movie.
And HOOORAY! NO WHITE MEN WON isn’t in need of Sherlock Holmes and a magnifying glass. They call that diversity in reaction to a century of white supremacy in SFF. The amazing coincidence there is they can’t actually point to anything in SFF’s history that looks like themselves. I call them liars and say fakery about SFF’s history is camouflage to enable their own sick ideology of QUILTBAG supremacy. You don’t need that magnifying glass to figure out what “diversity” means when they self-segregate at every chance they get. It’s like the KKK saying they exist because diversity.
These people aren’t fighting “misogyny” but anyone who disagrees with their distortions of reality. Disagreeing with a bigot who happens to be black, gay or a woman isn’t racism, homophobia or sexism, though that is exactly what they push. They’d like to imagine that’s true so they can say and do anything they want and have it called “justice,” and us all sick reactionaries who long for the days of Ozzie and Harriet.
One of the primary reasons for the decline of Sci-Fi is the petty exchanges by both Larry and John and their respective acolytes. We, the general readership, could care less about reliving your high school days. The “he said, he said” and “pointing fingers at each other” makes for sad drama.
In the end, writers are going to write, and readers are going to read. Blue sci-fi vs. Pink sci-fi? Completely made up. Cheers!
3 concerned citizen posts show up right after each other talking about high school and urging silence? I’m sensing a trend! 🙂
Um, Joe, I hate to break it to you, but I gave up on “modern” sci-fi in the late 1990s because the message had overpowered the story. I’d never heard of Correia, Scalzi, et al until 2010 or 2011. You need to push your “decline of Sci-Fi” timeline back a few years.
Don’t care about it? Don’t read it.
However, the message fiction thing is what seems to have pushed quite a few folks away from SFF. It’s not seeing someone like Larry defend himself from such pathetic attacks.
Let me lay it out for you, Joe. In the world of fiction writing, I’m a nobody. One work out, indie published, and it’s just a novelette. Working on a follow-up now. However, I’ve also been a political blogger for the last five years.
When you’re outspoken, you expect criticism. I don’t mind it when people call me dumb or some variation of it, because usually the figure I don’t know what I’m talking about. No big. It’s not true, but since I consider them stupid, it’s only fair that they get the right to say the same thing about me.
However, I’ve had death threats. I’ve had complete strangers wish my children to be killed in a school shooting. I’ve been called all manner of things and derided in so many ways it’s not even funny.
None of that compares to what I’ve seen Larry deal with, particularly since the Hugo nominations came out (and, in Damien Walter’s case, a little bit beforehand). Not. Even. Close.
So, you don’t want to see the squabbles? Then don’t read them. You decide where to go on the internet, so just stop going. After all, I stopped going to Scalzi’s blog because I didn’t like the way he talked about libertarians. Now, I don’t get my panties in a bunch when he writes something there unless it’s about me (and it hasn’t been. Ever.).
Here’s a thought. How about you go concern troll over there, and leave us the hell alone. We’ve had enough of you guys over the last few days to last a lifetime. Larry won’t ban you without really, really good cause, but I know I speak for the majority when I tell you that no one really cares if this kind of thing upsets you or not. A lot of us love seeing someone tell Scalzi off for his stupidity.
There is no such thing as “message fiction”.
“So, you don’t want to see the squabbles? Then don’t read them.”
It’s a much larger issue among fans. The in-fighting takes away from the overall work.
“How about you go concern troll over there, and leave us the hell alone.”
I will take that under advisement.
There is no such thing as “message fiction”.
Interesting bald assertion. Here’s mine:
Bullshit.
There is no such thing as “message fiction”.
There is no such thing as “oxygen”.
Both statements are equally accurate.
Concern troll is concerned.
And a moron.
“There is no such thing as message fiction.”
Chris Moriarty once wrote a book with the Israelis selling WMDs to Muslims to keep them out of the dangerous hands of the United States. There is such a thing as message fiction.
Karen Traviss wrote an entire series of books saying that genocide and eugenics is fine, as long as it’s motivated by environmental concerns. George R. R. Martin did the same in a short story. There is such a thing as message fiction.
Chris Moriarty once wrote a book with the Israelis selling WMDs to Muslims to keep them out of the dangerous hands of the United States. There is such a thing as message fiction.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That, right there, encapsulates how stupid and suicidal the Left thinks Israel is. Or rather, should be for them, so conveniently.
There isn’t when you clearly put your head in the sand like some people.
The truth is, there is message fiction. The truth is, also, that both sides engage in it. I’ve read libertarian message fiction. Guess what? It sucks too.
The difference is, we will call our own side on writing shitty fiction that puts message first.
One of the primary reasons for the resurgence of Sci-Fi is Larry and others speaking up.
Wag your childish finger about sad drama all you want, huge numbers of people read his blog because he won’t stand aside for the opposition’s petty diatribes.
Considering what the man’s faced lately, you really think snide remarks about high school, sad drama and accusations of “completely made up” are going to deter him?
Uh-Huh.
Petty or not, the clue to who is interested in “drama” is to look at who is accurately quoting the other, and who is not.
Hate-speech isn’t he-said, she-said but a simple matter of using the definitions the social justice warriors themselves use. It’s pretty obvious only one side is engaging in formally organized and institutionalized group defamation and segregation.
We are not making Kickstarters for all-white or all-male anthologies with Mens’ Rights Activists and David Duke writing essays. We are not organizing “safer-spaces” at conventions for whites only. We are not calling for an end to gay SF and then censoring comments. We do not dress like women while we emcee awards presentations that brag no black women won. We do not give SFF Guest of Honor speeches that call for a race war. Amazingly, our SFF guest of honor speeches are about SFF. We are the ones who used to go on about making maps of Middle-Earth and how the Ringworld was constructed. The new version wonders where the non-whites and gay Ringworlders are. There are no Yaaaay Eurofuturism!!! white SFF symposiums. We have no HAL 9000 computers who don’t know what a man or woman is and so defaults to transgender pronouns. We have no alternate history racial revenge anthologies where Muslims are turned away from Constantinople, Spain and Alexandria and the Crusaders took over the Middle East.
The fact the other side actually does all those things, pretends they don’t and that we do, only shows what mental cases they are.
Another classic Larry “Ownage” of the Perpetually offended. I’d love to see a Goblin named “Scalzi” in a MHI story. The possibilities are just ENDLESS.
Better write that up fast Larry, someone might go running to the U.S. Patent office all butt hurt or something about you.
Sounds more like a skin condition… one that makes your pores clog and your scalp smell funny.
I’m disappointed to find out that Scalzi is a mangina.
See for yourself.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/21125578@N00/3813244401/
I first heard of the allegations against MZB more than a decade ago. However, I was told at the time by fandom friends who I trusted that they were lies and did not have an ounce of truth. I’d sort of forgotten about them until now, when her daughter came forward. And now I find out that Stephen Golden has had a webpage up since 1999 with the evidence, Wow.
While it is very disheartening to read about it, and especially since it now appears that many in fandom knew but either ignored the evidence or chose to keep it hidden, I can’t honestly say I am all that surprised. There always seemed to me to be something slightly askew about her writing when it came to sexual issues, something I couldn’t put a finger on but was disquieting nevertheless.
It’s ten days and 1st time I heard about MZB’s “child raping” is here.
Happy to say, if it is the correct adjective, that I never was a fan of her. Know her name, since being a reader of fantasy is impossible to NOT know her, but never complete any of her book.
There is no need to burn any book of hers in my house cause I aint got one.
You know what, wiki doesnt even have a section on that subject in her page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley or about her scumbag husband.
I dont even have the energy to look through the history section to see if it’s in the deleted portion.
I remember reading about her husband in detail on Wikipedia, and yes, they linked from MZB’s page. If it’s not there now, there’s been some editing, as there was a bit about controversy. This section I copypasted out of the biography, but perhaps I should screenshot it as well:
Bradley and Breen separated in 1979 but remained married, and continued a business relationship and lived on the same street for over a decade. They officially divorced on May 9, 1990, the year Breen was arrested on child molestation charges of a 12 year old boy.[2] She had edited Breen’s book Greek Love, which was dedicated to her, and in 1965 had contributed an article, “Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Literature”, to Breen’s journal The International Journal of Greek Love.[3][4] She had known about Breen’s sexual interests and previously accepted his sexual abuse of a 14 year old boy.[5]
On her husband’s page, the mentions of pederasty remain intact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Breen
The blogger who reposted the quotes from MZB’s daughter noted that Wikipedia seems to get the MZB page edited pretty frequently to remove mention of MZB’s own abuse of children.
Thanks cutelildrow! Case in point of Net censoring. And gods, I still remember hearing some mute but glowing exhortation of her books for the last 5 years.
I agree that we should separate authors private life/politic from their books. But easier said and done and it is possible only when the author is rotting to nothing already, which is 30 years after death. Let’s see how her books stand 20 years from now, assuming readers still read those.
If anyone wants to read her works, at this point I’d recommend borrowing from the library or buying them used. Just so long as no money goes back to the estate.
… my insulting an effeminate man with a vulgar word related to female genitalia (a type of insult that has been in common usage since at least the Romans) was the worst thing ever.
(*offended sniff*) I’ll have you know that the Romans enslaved nations and crucified rebels and were mean to kittens. It’s pretty clear that this is because they used insults such as you describe. Also, they didn’t eat sugar like Hitler, but I’m sure they would have done so if they’d had transoceanic shipping to get large quantities of granulated cane sugar. So there! 😉
The funny thing is, I’m a big fan of Correia, Scalzi and Michael Z. I don’t want to read about their pissy little intercultural wars, I just want to buy and read their next books.(which I have already bought everthing they have written, to date.)
Do you guys even notice that your fans are becoming terra non cognito by publishing your petty squabbles?
Grow the f**k up, re-establish your personal boundaries, and write something that I want to buy. Jeez, my daughter had more discretion when she was 15 and hormonal!
You are alienating your customer base; we want to believe that you’re rational people (which doesn’t seem likely) and above this kind of internecine crap!
Children .. don’t make me stop this car!.
Terra incognito? Well, you might have missed the other post where my new book is #1 on Amazon right now. I’m still waiting for that irreparable career damage the Guardian promised me for defying leftist orthodoxy.
If the culture wars offend you, you should probably skip them. This is 2 posts in a row where some concerned citizen has popped in to tell me that defending myself in an unapproved manner is acting like a teenager. That’s good to know. Next time a public figure tells 60,000 complete strangers you’re a rape apologist, or a national newspaper tells people you’re a vile homophobe and puts words in your mouth, or your awards nomination (because you have the wrong politics) brings hundreds of allegations of fraud, crime, threats and wife beating, I’m excited to see how you handle the whole thing with dignity and aplomb.
Now a teenager might say, “but he started it” and you would get all self righteous and scoldy. However that doesn’t change the reality of who did start it. Only we’re not talking about kids and hair pulling, we’re talking about systematic libel, slander, and career damaging campaigns intended to silence opposing viewpoints. I’ve exposed them rather well over the last year, and the whole reason I put myself on the wall for them to shoot arrows at was to show the world the character assassination tactics, and career sabotage that one vile segment of the genre fiction community engages in, and I’m big enough, hard enough, and just plain don’t give a shit enough to pull it off.
So I could do it your way, all polite, where my side should just shut up and take it… Which is what we’ve always done, uselessly, and which the Social Justice Warriors would like to keep us doing as they lie about their opponents, but I say screw it. I prefer to mock my opponents, give ammo to my side, and convince the undecided. 🙂
Speaking of which, did you ever contact
the Grauniadthe Guadrianal-Ghardian for an opportunity to rebut the calumnist on their site?Naw, I just mocked him. I thought about suing for libel, but when I looked into it, it was just too much of a pain in the ass.
Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous that they demand we take the high road.
We aren’t making up the lies, putting words in people’s mouths, twisting words, using misrepresentation, and crossing from Internet discussion to RL approach of relatives, workplaces, friends.
We already have the high road,, so the concern trolls can just Q_Q harder.
Jerry, I’m curious. Did you leave this same comment on Scalzi’s page? Or is it only Larry whom you feel the need to rebuke?
Well, a quick scan of Scalzi’s blog posts since the Twitter thing went down shows no posts from a Jerry. Given that you’re posting with your website name, I would assume you’re not using a pseudonym on Scalzi’s site, so it would appear the answer to my question is you haven’t left the same comment on Scalzi’s page, so you’re just concern trolling Larry’s blog, not leveling your demands for civility/maturity/whatever you want to call it on all sides of the debate. Kind of takes any bite you might have had out of your comments (not that I thought there was much there to begin with).
Thanks for looking! I’d wondered about that one…
Notice after they chide, most of the concern trolls left?
You’re welcome, Shadowdancer. What’s really odd is, looking at his site (which also doesn’t have any mention of condemning Scalzi), the guy appears fairly conservative, at least where guns are concerned, and appears to follow Larry pretty regularly about the topic. Doesn’t strike me as the sort to concern troll like this, but there it is.
Actually, Julaire, to a certain extent, I can understand that some folks on our side might not be so happy about how rude and angry we can get. We seem so distressingly uncivilized
I sometimes get the impression that they think with grace under pressure, we will win more to our point of view, but in a lot of cases, those of us who’ve been fighting in this idea-war (both in these blogs and outside <a href="https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/19/correia-uses-a-bad-word-and-it-is-the-worst-thing-ever-sjw-outrage-of-the-week/?replytocom=68471#comment-68226"?of it) have seen it’s useless to be civil; and worse, it actually makes us vulnerable in many cases because we’re the only one holding to a ROE while the other side – the vileprogs, the Islamists, etc – don’t bother.
So while NONE of us would ever conceive of using the police to try murder someone, or dragging the RL friends and family to the discussions online, the vileprogs have been known to use SWATTing, have called Child Services on their opponents, have engaged in hacktivism, have stalked their victims, harassed them outside of the Internet (especially if their target is outside the US, and I’m not talking of just myself here), cost them their jobs, engaged in slander (Damien Walters, from the relative safety of being in the UK, does this regularly to Larry), have threatened the children and families of the person disagreeing with them with death, rape, school shootings… and so on. There’s plenty of examples online.
It doesn’t even have to be about politics. I believe it was Vox Day who linked an example several months about a New Zealand husband and wife who ran a site giving advice on how to, well, keep the love alive and renew/strengthen sexual intimacy… to married couples. It was/is quite popular. Someone printed out the site and sent it to the employer of the wife. The work climate changed to the point that she quit. Goodness knows why that was offensive, but apparently working to keep your marriage is. Somehow, for some reason.
But that’s what the vileprogs think is perfectly okay to do when they encounter someone/something/an idea they don’t like or find acceptable. Destroy destroy destroy!
So really, cussing out the cussed hypocrites is pretty darned restrained, in my humble opinion.
To paraphrase Joel Rosenberg, “You can’t teach them to be civilized. You CAN teach them to be circumspect.”
People,
I think we’re missing a whole slew of words that display a bias against left-handed people and should be expunged, excised, erased, removed, and scrubbed from from the English language.
Examples:
1. Dextrous – A word meaning deftness with ones hands, actually originates from the fact that it relates to the right-hand side.
2. Sinister – We all know what this means, actually refers to the left-hand side.
It comes from the world of heraldry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_and_sinister
3. Gauche – showing clumsiness comes from the French word for ‘left’ and basically means that you’re as clumsy as a left-handed person.
4. Maladroit – this is a combination. ‘Mal’ means bad, and ‘adroit’ comes from the French phrase “a droit” or “according to the right”.
source: http://unusedwords.com/2013/05/09/maladroit/
5. The word Left itself comes from the ancient English word Lyft, which meant ‘weak’.
6. We also have the unfortunate phrases which abound in English such as: a left-handed compliment, the left hand does not know what the right one is doing, having two left feet, and so on.
7. Let us not forget, of course, how the word ‘right’ means being correct and also a legal entitlement, supposedly inalienable.
As Left-Handed people are a minority in society, I believe that swift action needs to be taken. So, take scissors in one hand, your dictionary in the other, and start cutting.
Cheers, mate; I laughed myself right out of my chair!
Don’t mention it, Shadowmancer.
I believe that you inadvertently added another example since you didn’t laugh yourself ‘left’ out of your chair (-:
As an individual of ambidexteritude, I support this motion to remove the stigma of handedness from the English language, and will make a donation to the restoration of Clan Kerr’s castle in your honor.
(For those not into Scottish and/or sword-fighting trivia, Clan Kerr has a very high proportion of southpaws, enough so that parts of their main residence were built to favor left-handed defenders.)
I sense a bumper sticker in the making. LOL 😀
I’ve always thought the origin of Right/Left wing is due to how various factions congregated themselves in French National Assembly after Louis XVII reconstituted that body.
I’m one of God’s other children, and I approve this message.
I’m left-handed and I approve this comment. 😀
Kind of off topic, but how does Mary Robinette Kowal fit into the spec fic community? My wife reads her stuff, and I thought she was a romance author.
IIRC, she took some stuff out of context, claimed Larry said some stuff he didn’t, called him a dangerous so-and-so then flounced off in a huff when people pointed out to her that her assumptions and accusations were incorrect.
I can’t edit my comment, so I will just add this addendum to say that Mary has commented below to add a specific apology for reading comments out of order. She didn’t apologize for the rest of it, but it must have been very hard for her to come on here at all- particularly since so many people have made a point of warning people away from this “dangerous” and super scary group of people who comment here.
It’s rare for people to act despite that sort of prejudice, so she deserves kudos for that. She also deserves credit for admitting she was incorrect. I wish I had seen her comment earlier, my tone was too dismissive for someone who has offered an apology.
It’s romance in an alternate history setting with magic.
She also has a sci-fi story that’s up for a Hugo.
Larry, et al,
I apologize for posting this here, but I somehow missed a contact link on the MHN website. This is an excellent article on the anti-gunners’ mindset by a psychiatrist on the JPFO website:
http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
It’s sad as a fan to witness Scalzi and Correia, along with their acolytes, engaging in what amounts to high school drama. Both sides are equally to blame for the decline of the genre for their constant shitstorms. Blue Sci-Fi and Pink Sci-Fi my ass!
Yeah, when somebody tells 60,000 complete strangers that you’re a rapist apologist, responding is very uncouth. My bad.
Don’t forget the insinuations that you regularly beat your wife! And are a foul beater of women!
(Seriously though, that one made my blood boil, because it crossed from online to RL.)
Yeah, it really pissed off my wife too. For all these people telling me how I shouldn’t respond, or this is a juvenile spat, they probably don’t know what it is like to get an award nomination with the wrong politics, and within a couple of days have dozens of concerned people contacting your wife, wanting to know if she was okay, and if her vile abusive husband was still beating her… Yeah… Get back to me about remaining civil after you put up with shit like that.
That is one of the only times my wife has ever made a public comment about any of this. The funny part was that everybody who knows my wife well was all like “oh no they didn’t?!” because the lovely Mrs. Correia is a badass, and if I ever hit her I’d either be dead or in the ER with a gun shot wound.
I’m going to apologize in advance for the length, but I think this should be said.
When the SWATTing practice started to really crop up against conservative bloggers, I sat down with my husband and talked to him about this, much in the same way my father would talk to my mother before big decisions. (The first time was to know what she thought about the risks in refusing a bribe sent by one of the Marcos relatives so Dad would abandon the worker’s rights union in he newspaper he worked in – Dad was a journalist in a time where people with principles like himself tended to vanish into shallow graves in the jungles; the second involved him taking on the Israeli Immigration Police, when he was just barely 5 months into his Ambassadorship. Each time, she told him to do the right thing. In the case of the latter, it lead to investigation of his claim, and reforms, though there was a LOT of kerfuffle; mostly inflated because he chose deliberately provoking, scolding words to make the reader sit the hell up and pay attention. He apologized later for it, but the impression he made stayed.)
I sat down and asked him what he thought of what I was doing – standing up for what was right, fighting this war of ideas with words, online. That the other side had felt it was okay now to take a war of words and ideas, and to try get people on my side killed for real; with little thought towards whether or not the children or wife would get in the crossfire. He knows about Clamps / yamamanama; how crazed the guy’s been in chasing me all over the Internet. Ever since the first time Clamps mentioned my children (in a since deleted comment on Jordan179’s LJ because every single person who saw it took it as a threat), I’ve thought about how easy it would be for Clamps to hop on a plane when trying to attack me via the Internet was no longer good enough for him, and with time and patience, find me, or find my children, and hurt them, because to him, for my political views, I am an abomination that must be erased from the planet, one of his personal Jihads. I shared these fears with my husband. I am well aware that it would be easy for Clamps to run us over with a car – or, for the matter, any psycho on the vileprog side who decided that my political views, my views on anything, was justification enough for them to try have me killed, because I disagree with them and they could not refute my words or deny my facts and frankly, every insult hurled at me I embrace as a compliment, an affirmation that they lose because they can’t beat me.
Rhys said (paraphrasing because this was a several days worth of conversation) that he and I were both soldiers, in our own way; though in his case he IS one; and we both were fighting for the same reasons: because we have children. Neither of us want for our children the world that the Islamists or the Vileprogs want. The world is less clean thanks to them; that much more dangerous, that much more risky, that much less free. If I stopped fighting these idea-wars, then their side would have no opposition, and only their ideas would be around when the kiddlywinks were old enough to understand them.
So I didn’t stop reading, I didn’t stop analyzing, and didn’t stop fighting. RL concerns got in the way for a while, so I had to take care of that.
I originally started reading your blog when I discovered you wrote Legend of the Five Rings serial stories. Then I saw your other posts and read them quietly lurking. Then I discovered you wrote books. A few fellow blogger friends encouraged me to join this blog and a few others, ‘so I wouldn’t feel like all was lost.’
Then came the post where you talked about how some poncey, lying, slanderous, spineless, gormless, witless, talentless prat of a hack’s venomous falsehoods caused people to contact your wife. It’s been a domino tumble since then, as we saw more and more people who ‘didn’t fit’ or ‘expressed views that the SJWs didn’t approve of’ affect more than just those people, crossing over to full on attacks on their family OUTSIDE of the Internet. No truths, no substance, only smoke, mirrors and lies.
The Internet is made of words, ideas… and people talking, fighting, arguing. But it’s not enough for the vileprogs that there’s room enough for all of us online (for the ‘Net is vast and infinite, to quote the 90’s Anime movie) – they want it all. That only their approved voices have the ability to speak.
So in closing, thank you for refusing to back down and shut up – All of you, such as Mrs. Hoyt, Kate Paulk, MZ Williamson, John C. Wright, and the rest… who refuse vehemently to shut up. Thank you for refusing to play their demands for being ‘polite’ when the SJWs don’t adhere to it themselves. Thanks for showing what they’re willing to do in order to achieve their ends while covering their shit with roses and pretending their glittery farts smell like French perfume. We’ve seen that happen in history before (including the perfume part.) Thanks for fighting, thanks for providing a place where it’s not JUST the SJWs controlling the discussion… and thanks for letting me be here.
Perhaps most of all, thanks for showing that we writers don’t HAVE to be Leftist in order to have our stories published and sold.
Aurora “Rory” Modena
(And yes, I guess I’m painting the target on myself too.)
We’re not talking short-term, we are talking long-term time preferences. Repeated “he said, she said” is not becoming of anyone.
You and John are certainly entitled to “defend yourselves”. Whatever that means.
Repeated “he said, she said” is not becoming of anyone.
Since the conflict is being played out in the written form the typical ambiguity implied by “he said, she said” is absent. What has been said, by either side, is available for all to see. And refusing to sit quietly on your thumbs while being accused of reprehensible things in public may not be ‘becoming’ but it’s damn sure appropriate.
You and John are certainly entitled to “defend yourselves”. Whatever that means.
I’m sure all parties are appreciative of your magnanimous acquiescence to their freedom to defend themselves. Whatever that means.
Looking at the latest trackback, looks like Scalzi is losing at least one person wanting to buy his books new.
But yes, I will repeat the question asked: did you go over to Scalzi’s blog and scold him too? or is it just Larry you felt it was acceptable to yell at?
Ummm…didn’t you just engage yourself into,”what amounts to high school drama.”? Hypocrisy thy name is Joe Author.
Mr. Goodrich, I merely pointed out an observation I had regarding this sad state of affairs.
You didn’t point out an observation. You inserted yourself into a commentary which you stated to be innately immature, and responsible for the decline of science fiction and fantasy genres. By doing so you have become part of the commentary and part of the “problem”. That’s why I called you a hypocrite.
Joe, same question I asked Jerry above. Did you go post this to Scalzi’s site as well, or are you just here to rebuke Larry and give Scalzi a pass?
Great question, Julaire. I got the ban-hammer for having the audacity to call him out some time ago on an unrelated manner. Big deal? No. Exclusively a leftist response on his part? No.
Larry, I am sorry for misreading the timeline.
I did acknowledge the possibility that my twitter client had the order flipped to the first of your followers, but realized that you hadn’t seen it nor had anyone else. So I posted a public apology today.
Let me say that again. I read the timeline wrong. I am sorry.
I have been struggling for the past two days trying to figure out how to apologize with sincerity, because I was still angry with you for other things in that thread. I did not want to appear to condone them by offering an apology that was too broad, nor did I want to offer an insincere apology that was too narrow.
I can’t offer a sincere apology for the disgusting and dangerous, because it was a previously held opinion and the entirety of that thread angered me. We have mutual friends and I have tried to refrain from comments for their sake.
But I am sincerely sorry that I chose to say something damaging out loud though. Calling you “disgusting” was deliberately hurtful and unnecessary.
I am sorry for that and for misreading the timeline.
Thank you, Mary. I will copy your response into the blog post to clarify your position for everyone. That is appreciated.
That was good of you, Mary. Thank you for taking the time to comment and apologize. 🙂
FWIW, Mary, I’ve been forced to revise my opinion of you. The whole “dangerous” thing annoys me, especially when Larry’s not threatened anyone, but so be it. However, you came here to apologize, and to be specific.
Not only that, but you had the guts to stand by other things you said. I vehemently disagree with you, but you probably expected that in this “wretched hive of scum and villainy”. However, you still did it. Not a lot of folks have actually done that, so you should know that some of us do actually appreciate it.
No snark from me. Apologies aren’t easy. Thanks.
Mary,
You are owed many apologies I know you are unlikely to ever receive. I imagine you have also long since stopped expecting them. I’ve followed your online presence enough to know that you are daily attacked for your gender and for speaking out on behalf of others.
I would like to, at least, offer you an apology from me.
It is, in a sense, easy for me to say what I did and bring up your name and the other names I mentioned.
No one could ever, without being immediately ridiculed, call what was done to me anything other than monstrous. No one will ever question whether I wanted it, whether I led on my attacker or whether I could have done something to prevent it. There are unique issues I face because of what was done to me, but they do not take away from or detract from the issues you face.
I am also no one.
I can say these things and admit to these things without having to worry about someone coming up to me at a signing or a convention wanting to talk about one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. I don’t have to worry about someone telling me what was done to me was “not really rape.” It is a protection I have and you do not.
(Adding a break here to show I’m human. I know the way I’m writing this is formal, awkward and tense but I’m trying to find a way to be sincere in a way I think would also be of genuine help to everyone reading this. I imagine you also want that. So, however formal I’m being, please know I struggle with all the comments I’ve written about this.)
Most women I know have a story they do not share in public. I saw on your twitter that you shared that kind of story openly, and I know that was probably hard considering you’re a public figure. I’m sure you have others. The people who do these things get away with it because to speak of what they have done frankly and matter-of-factly is all but impossible. There are no smooth conversational roads from “hey, how are you?” to “I was raped, and you?”
You have not been silent and you have been working to make things for survivors better. I tried to acknowledge that as much as I could but I’m sure I didn’t acknowledge it enough. I apologize for that.
As to my defense of Larry and everything else I said…
In part because of what was done to me, I distrust people who are able to project niceness and personal charm. I also have a distrust of groups of people who are generally of one mind. I know that is a poor heuristic, and this is sometimes not a healthy impulse for me. Please know that I do see how you might have the opposite opinion.
People laughed at the jokes the man who raped me told. They gave him things because they wanted his good opinion. My sister, who tore off parts of my face when I was only an infant and laughed, was well-loved. The people I grew up trusting were abrasive, rude and sometimes even mean, but they were the same people in public as in private and they never turned into someone else to try and hurt me. They came exactly as advertised.
I don’t know Larry. I give him some credit because he has friends in common with you who I respect unreservedly (although I have also never met them, and do not mean to imply I do not also respect you unreservedly despite what I have said). When Larry is attacked, I do think he could stand to assume better of people more often than he does. I try to assume the best of people when they hurt me. Not because people are owed an assumption of decency but… well, I just think it’s right. Someone has to do that sometime or else things never get better. Granted, it’s easier for me to say that than it would be for either of you because I’m a nobody and I only have to do something like that maybe once a month.
The other stuff:
I am responsible for a lot of this because I’ve not joined these discussions or tried to contribute before. I like being nobody. These last few days, though, I’ve seen that as contributing to the Silence.
1. The tone of this is getting crazy. Yes. The tone.
I’m going to make a tone argument.
I think it’s valid though.
When one person talks to another person about sexual assault, it’s probably better to assume the other person was assaulted than not. Even if they say they’re not because people lie about that stuff. The stats are 1/3 for women (not necessarily rape) and 1/6 for men (not necessarily rape).
This is hard to consider.
Way more for you than for me.
The people who scream at you on twitter may be having a weirdly emotional response because they’re survivors and never dealt with it, and/or never let themselves think of what was done to them as assault. Not all of them or probably even most of them. But some. It’s happened to too many people for that to not be eventually true. It’s not right that you have to deal with that. I’m not saying you are obliged to. I’m only saying that it must be true.
(For people who are skeptical of how many people this happens to, I understand. There are two kinds of families. Families in which this is an unthinkable horror which no one could ever even conceive of doing. And families where there’s one asshole who no one talks about because it’s hard to face what they’re doing and easier to pretend they’re not doing it.)
I don’t know what to do with that information, but there it is.
It’s unfair of me to say more directly to you.
My next points are addressed to a more broad audience and I don’t see you as a primarily responsible party. (This is an important sentence if anyone quotes this)
2. Why are there sides? Someone explain why there are sides.
I like John Scalzi.
Good guy. Donates to charity.
Again, I am iterating: John Scalzi is a good man.
Here’s a dick thing he did.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/05/15/todays-song-i-kinda-hate/
He made a child-rape joke. A survivor of child rape showed up in his comments. He chose to overlook the comment (I think he may have edited the wording of his article slightly afterward) and then got into a fight with some guy named dpmaine about six comments down over who-cares when a woman had opened up about what was probably the worst thing that ever happened to her and why she feels that feeling okay is a lofty goal. He’s not obliged to talk to her. But he DID make a child rape joke and then ignore someone who had been raped because he chose that it was more important to keep having an argument and “be right.”
(by the way, ma’am, if you read this and you weren’t offended by that and are offended by me pointing it out I am really, truly, sorry. Same for John. Maybe he e-mailed you privately or something like that. I WANT to be wrong. I like to hold out hope that stuff happens. I choose to believe in people. It’s just… I don’t know about you but I feel like everyone has been talking about this but when a survivor shows up and says something real and tragic everyone still gets really uncomfortable and keeps on going right around us. Also, I’m sure some of the people who are fighting this thing publicly and doing some of the stuff I’m talking about and are also survivors who just haven’t talked about it.)
Wil Wheaton called a woman a cunt on twitter a few days ago.
Because she was a hunter.
This is easy for me to point out. I say stupid stuff all the time. No one cares when I say it. That’s hypocritical of me. I’m not famous. I’m nobody. This is easy for me to say.
I feel this wouldn’t happen if there weren’t sides.
Maybe when there are enough people in the public eye there have to be sides just for stuff to work. Human history seems to like sides.
But… I hate sides.
What happens once there are sides is that no one can go up to someone who is doing something wrong and say “Hey, I think that was probably wrong” in a human way without having someone’s war instinct kick in and say “Hey!?!?! Aren’t you on my side?!?!”
I also really don’t like when people shout at Larry (I also don’t like a lot of what Larry shouts back. I sometimes feel like I was watching CSPAN and suddenly professional wrestling started happening, which is definitely entertaining but I don’t know if it helps although like everyone else I think he’s operating from a place of positive intent) and say “No real woman survivor is on your side.” Only for, lo and behold, a woman survivor who likes Larry to appear and then get talked over like her existence and voice don’t matter.
People matter. All people. Even the ones that aren’t on your side.
No one should EVER tell a woman how to woman. Even another woman. Every woman can woman however she pleases. It’s not okay to even gently imply that survivors all have the same opinion on anything. This stuff impacts everyone.
Does anyone really want to exclude a survivor because they’re not on the same side?
Damien G Walters was openly laughing at people who were offended over the Sam Delany NAMBLA thing. He deleted it later… but Jesus, dude. Really?
That’s what happens when people make sides.
3. Survivors are people
There are survivors everywhere.
CEO’s are survivors.
Homeless people are survivors.
Republicans are survivors.
Democrats are survivors.
Here are some things that I think are fair to say in general:
We’re all trying to get on with our lives as best we can. We are all more than what was done to us. No survivor is standing around waiting to be a character in someone’s personal hero story. We’re people. In fact, no human being of any tragedy is standing around waiting for someone to make them a character in their personal hero story. People are people.
We should help people, but we shouldn’t do it with aspirations of heroism. We should help people because we like people and because it’s the right thing to do.
4. Sam Delany
I keep turning this over trying to find a way to not think this is as bad as I think it is. I can’t find one. I know Sam Delany came of age when pedophila and homosexuality were often conflated to be the same thing and perhaps it’s possible (I really have to strain my belief in people to consider this) he thought by standing up for NAMBLA he was standing up for homosexuality and would have a different opinion now.
But in my experience… that is really straining credulity.
He hasn’t said anything about it, if his opinion has changed. And that seems to me to be the kind of opinion you’d want people to know you’ve changed. I want to be wrong and hope that it is only because he has not yet had the time and is even now drafting an exonerating essay.
I preemptively apologize to him if so.
There.
If I can say that then anyone reading this should be capable of putting aside whatever anger they have and doing what they feel is right.
I just… it’s so fucked up I can’t even feel how fucked up it is all at once.
Why aren’t people saying something about it?
You can’t be against rape and celebrate a guy…
It’s the sides, again.
I feel like people aren’t saying anything because: sides.
I’ve spent four hours revising this and I have to get up at 4am. I just didn’t want to feed the Silence anymore. I “graduated” from my Survivors Group about a month ago. I wouldn’t want to face the people I met there and tell them I didn’t speak up.
I’m a nobody and I have nothing to lose by saying any of this.
I get that.
But please?
5. I don’t know what to do. I just think everyone should do what they think is the right thing to do regardless of what side they think they’re on.
I’ll end with the end of Ulysses by Tennyson, because it’s what I say to myself when I’m tired and I don’t know what to say anymore but still feel like I need to keep trying:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Thank you for writing this, and pouring your heart into it. IMO it is a perspective well worth thinking on.
I wanted to add that I’m “Andrew” from above. There’s one or two other Andrews here so I changed the display name to avoid confusion.
…And we are off to the bookstore to buy more Correia novels for care packages. If the SJW keep this up, I am going to go broke.
I bought the three-in-one as a Kindle gift to a friend; might do it for another. I am going to buy Nemesis as a gift for my husband, for sure, and I’d pre-ordered the signed B&N edition hardback for myself. Ah, exchange rates…
A good starter book now is the omnibus volume The Monster Hunters that have first 3 books for MHI novels.
Larry, when do we see an Omnibus eBook of Grimnoir Trilogy? Perhaps when the next Grimnoir comes out?
I yielded to temptation and checked Scalzi’s gun thread last night. It’s the first time I’ve been to his blog in years and I was immediately reminded why.
Right off he warns about the ban hammer. The he pops up every ten or twenty comments to chide about formatting and syntax. Or that people are straying off the official topic.
Sheesh. Turns my teeth sideways!
Well that sounds… like just so much fun.
Calling Hines a “pussy” obscures his real fault, which is that he is a liar. I went and checked the studies he linked involving “teaching men to not rape” and those studies are only tangentially related to rape.
Hines is a liar and Correia calling him a “pussy” derailed what could have been an opportunity to call him out on his dishonesty.
I’ve demonstrated Hines dishonesty before. For those of us paying attention it is sort of the default assumption. 🙂
But hey, rather than chiding me for not liking my tactics, feel free to stand up for your beliefs and call out their dishonesty yourself.
Basically, the studies Hines linked involved getting non-rapist men to feel bad when women get raped by other men. Not sure what that has to do with preventing rape.
What I find interesting is that leftists have this thing for linking to studies that are behind paywalls and that inhibit the average person from actually checking the studies for veracity. I think the lesson, here, is that keeping a cool head has far greater long-term effectiveness than is the immediate emotional satisfaction of name-calling.
I like Correia but he biffed this one.
Biffed it? Duly noted, coach. Now how about you go out and take a public stand where you take on all the Social Justice Warriors, scores at a time, and do better?
Long-term effectiveness? Because being nice to statists has accomplished so much…
You might not like my methods, but I’m actually standing up to these lunatics and their attempt to totally dominate public discourse. I call it the Outrage of the Week, but sadly that isn’t an exageration because that’s about how often they go on a slanderous rampage against somebody.
You may have noticed I’m an oddity in my field. That’s because for years leftists have systematically destroyed any opposing viewpoints in the entertainment industry. Your “cool head” methods prevailed on our side for decades and led to nothing but effectively silencing us and setting the narrative that leftist philosophy was culturally dominant.
Now here are a growing number of us standing up to them, and people like you come along and are quick to tell us to fall back into line. What you self-righteous chiding types on the sidelines are missing as you finger wag at me for being rude or juvenile is that it is super easy to demand a stupid ROE when you’re not the one under fire.
“You can tell when you’re over the target because you start taking flack”.
LC, VD, TK, and JW have given the Leftists more trouble in the past three years than any dozen “polite, graceful” types have in the past twenty.
Keep punching!
Whenever a feminist/leftist brings up rape stats the first response should always be “and what is the distribution of those stats?” If 20 percent of all men are rapists that doesn’t mean that in every room one in five men is a rapist. It could mean that you walk into five rooms, the first filled with nothing but rapists, the next four with no rapists.
I suspect the reality is closer to the latter than the former.
Prisons n’ stuff.
bTW, I’m not saying that 20 percent of men are rapists.
On a slightly related note, our old pal Damien G Walter posted this on Twitter yesterday:
“The challenge for liberal writers isn’t to please liberal audiences, but to win over conservative thinkers to liberal ideals.”
After that? He tried to launch a meme “LibertarianChildensBooks” which included stuff like “The Grand Wizard of Oz”.
Winning strategy there, Damien.
Apparently he never learned that it’s easier to catch flies with honey than by flinging bile in their faces.
You know, his initial premise is an intelligent way to approach things politically.
Unfortunately for him, he’s a complete turdnugget and manages to blow it all in no time flat.
The flip side of that his first premise has a mirror though. The challenge for conservative/libertarian writers isn’t just to please conservative/libertarian readers, but to over liberals to conservative/libertarian ideals.
Of course, since we don’t try to beat people over the head with those ideals, we don’t run them off right from the start by telling them how much they suck as people, we’re probably going to be better at that.
Damien is delusional. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that to sway conservatives about any idea about any topic, you need to actually address the merits and ramifications of the idea. They tend not to operate on “feels” but rather what makes sense to them.
And since Damien is literally one of the stupidest people I’ve ever dealt with, good luck with that!
I said it was an intelligent way to approach things. I didn’t say it would work. Not the way Damien thinks, because, like you said, for him and those like him, it’s all about “teh feelz” rather than…you know…facts.
That’s why they could never figure out how come conservatives never came around on Obamacare. Sure, the math didn’t work, and all the stuff we predicted about it came to pass, and it is total and complete failure, and economy killing nightmare, but they FELT SO HARD! Obviously we must not like it because the president is black.
Oh god, you have no idea how many people I’ve come across for whom that’s a completely accurate description. Well, actually you do, I forgot who I was talking to for a sec. 🙂
Exactly.
We’re weird. I mean, we expect silly things like facts. That’s just proof of how hard we hate.
And the fact that their predictions didn’t come about? Pure racism,obviously. Facts conform to want in their little world. 🙂
Correia: “Damien is delusional…And since Damien is literally one of the stupidest people I’ve ever dealt with, good luck with that!”
…Well, that’s probably what Orwell was getting at with the whole “Ignorance Is Strength” thing from “1984.” Liberals know what they know and their feelings trump merit, logic and reality.
Speaking of stupid people, here is an SF author who unflinchingly supports N.K. Jemisin, Scalzi, Kowal, K. Tempest Bradford, Foz Meadows, Kameron Hurley, Hines and all the rest.
“So many falsely believe the #HugoAwards have never been political. I’d love that to be the case but it’s simply not true.”
10 minutes earlier:
“And I still don’t understand how recommending Interzone for #HugoAward is political.”
The longer I stare at those two sentences the more my mind freezes. It’s like a Jeddai mind-trick or like staring at the sun for two hours.
At some point you have to wonder how much actual mental retardation is at work with these folks.
I have a “meme” for Walter: “The Children of Thailand.”
Walter lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, famous for child prostitution. When I was there young things would come up to us late at night. It was typically something like “Me half-boy, half-girl, you like me.”
“There are thought to be around 20,000 – 30,000 street children in Thailand, most in Bangkok, Pattaya and Chiang Mai.”
http://www.chiangmainews.com/ecmn/viewfa.php?id=2879
http://www.chiangmainews.com/indepth/details.php?id=744
He imagines the Ku Klux Klan to have been libertarian? Does he know anything about either the KKK or libertarians?
He’s a hard-core British leftie, so no.
To be charitable to Mr. Walters…
The Ku Klux Klan was effectively the Democratic Party.
The Libertarian party could be understood as those who ignore this, ignore the history the Republican party has of countering the Democrats, or simply do not consider punishing the Democratic Party for segregation, and keeping the Democrats from being able to carry out ethnic mass murder again a priority.
Thus the case for Libertarians being objectively pro Democrat, and hence objectively pro KKK.