Sad Puppies Guest Post by Chuck Gannon

I don’t normally do guest posts, but I saw Chuck Gannon at a con last month and he asked if I would be willing to post this essay. There are parts I agree with, parts I disagree with, and there are a few bits where I think Chuck’s take is completely wrong, but the reason I’m posting this is because somebody dared him to post it on a Puppy blog to see our reaction. 

Well, okay then. 

I didn’t bother to read the comments Chuck linked to, but I hear they are a hoot. 

-Larry

###

It will help to have some context on the origin of this essay—which I never anticipated writing beforehand.

On August 31 of this year, I posted the following on Facebook:

My thought for the day:

Choose your battles carefully.

If you find yourself constantly in combat, you’re not being choosy enough.

Or you’ve decided that you are actually at war. Which means that you are now committed to destruction, not discourse.

 

No value judgments implied, but it was a call for courteous self-awareness when in discourse, and, more directly, a kind of diagram of what our discursive behavior tells us about our deepest motivations: are we talking to communicate or do battle? At no point do I imply that battle is always avoidable, or even wrong; just that it’s important to know when you’ve crossed the line, and what that really means.

 

On the same day, I learned that John Scalzi (who has always been friendly and polite to me) had mentioned my novel Trial By Fire (favorably) on his blog. He wrote that, “Also, I think it’s possible that some Puppy nominees could have gotten onto the ballot on their own steam — in the novel category Chuck Gannon has been nominated for a Nebula two times running, so I think he could have had a decent chance at the Hugo.”

I contacted John to say thanks, but to also offer a differing opinion.  My own take was that despite being a Nebula finalist, I wasn’t well enough known, and the novel hadn’t had enough fan buzz, to get a Hugo nomination without the Puppy exposure.

In the course of talking about the Hugos, I mentioned the post I referred to above and the wide and multipartisan affinities it had elicited. Our exchanges inspired me to explicate the reasoning behind that post, and before I knew it, an essay had been created. I let John read it, giving him the yea or nay to post it on his blog. He elected to do so, warning me that he could foresee it not getting a particularly warm reception, and did I really want to go ahead with it?

 

Principle means we do things not in the anticipation of any particular perception, but because they are right. I thought that this essay—which does not engage the rights or wrongs of the current genre divide but merely assesses the long-term costs of how the debate is being conducted—might do some good.

 

Its reception is a matter of record which you can consult if you wish: just read the comments and my responses that follow the essay itself. Some of the comments can only be characterized as irate dares that I post this on a “Puppy” site and see what sort of reaction it would get there. So, since Larry graciously offered to host the essay also, that is precisely what I am doing here.

 

I have included the link to the essay and the reader responses so that everything may be seen in its complete and original context: no alterations of any kind can be asserted, since you are viewing the original itself.

I do not anticipate responding to any comments here, not because I am uninterested in them, but because I am currently working on another novel in the same series as Trial By Fire (and the recently released Raising Caine), as well as a novel in the naval space opera series that launched David Weber’s and Steve White’s careers, the Starfire universe. I need every minute I’ve got for those projects–and we all know how addictive exchanges on the interwebz can become.

 

I wish you all well, and I thank my friend Larry Correia for agreeing to host this introductory statement along with the link to the closed-comment essay (entitled “Ends, Means, and Arsonists—Or—The Importance of Saying ‘Yes’ to Civility While Saying ‘No’ to Passivity”) on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog.

Top of Form

 

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/09/02/wrapping-up-2015-a-hugo-awards-open-thread/

Ends, Means, and Arsonists
Or
The Importance of Saying “Yes” to Civility While Saying “No” to Passivity

Dr. Charles E. Gannon

I contacted my host, John Scalzi, a few days ago, just after he mentioned one of my books here in the following manner: “Also, I think it’s possible that some Puppy nominees could have gotten onto the ballot on their own steam — in the novel category Chuck Gannon has been nominated for a Nebula two times running, so I think he could have had a decent chance at the Hugo.”

This was indeed a kind mention because (and here’s the part where I slit my own throat) I can’t fully agree with John’s generous assessment. Don’t get me wrong: I wish I could agree—but I suspect that it was the Sad Puppy listing which put me on enough folks’ radars so that my novel Trial By Fire wound up just 11 votes behind Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem in the total number of Hugo nominations. This is not a comment on the relative merits of my (or any other) Hugo-eligible novel. I simply observe that the odds are good that Trial By Fire did not have enough widespread buzz to climb that high all by itself. On the other hand, Trial by Fire was the only SP-recommended novel that did not make the Hugo ballot. It was also the only SP-recommended novel not included on Vox Day’s authoritarian slate. I will let you decide if there might be some relationship between those two data points…

As many know, my presence on the SP recommendation list came as a surprise; I did not learn about it until a few days (a week?) later, when someone commented on it on my FB account. Perceiving it as a list akin to dozens I’d seen floated during Hugo and Nebula seasons since I first became an SFWA member in 1990 (I think), the one concern I voiced to Brad (Torgerson) was that I was only comfortable being included if Vox Day (whose proclivities were known to me only via general third-hand report) was not on the list. Which he wasn’t. So then I went back to work (I’m fortunate to have a number of novels under contract) and pretty much stopped following the Hugo process. (I’m the parent-on-call for four kids, so I don’t browse FB feed much and sometimes wonder why I even have a Twitter account…)

When I learned about the Rabid Puppies and Vox Day’s activities (which prompted my research into the details of his prior commentaries upon race, women, and more), I contacted Brad and we agreed that everyone must follow their own conscience if push came to shove. I should add, for the record, that I not only respect fellow-novelist Marko Kloos immensely for the choice he made, but I also understand what may have been his instinct not to add to the unfortunate spectacle until and unless circumstances made it incumbent upon him to do so.

However, although my inclusion on the original Sad Puppy list probably brought votes my way, a countervailing trend among another discernible (if non-collectivized) group of readers probably took as many (or more) away. Specifically, during both the Hugo and Nebula process, many blog posts, or comments thereupon, explicitly proclaimed their decision to ignore my novel for a reason expressed with admirable economy by one of their number: “Because: Baen.”

In response to all of this, I can only repeat what I have said about awards from the very start, thus echoing what my host John Scalzi penned here not so long ago: “Vote for what you like.” And, I might add: “Don’t judge books by their covers or publishers.” Most of the major spokespersons in this debate have said just this or something quite similar.

Happily, most people consider these admirable sentiments, but almost as many will wonder, “Yeah, sure, but how the hell do we get to that reality from where we are now?” Or, to use Chernechevsky’s SFnal title (which Lenin appropriated for his famous essay), “What is to be done?” The context of that query invokes, of course, a challenge to discover, articulate, and strategize the attainment of the ends one seeks. I, on the other hand, have come to suspect that in our present quandary, our first agenda item must be to explore the means whereby we may communicate effectively about those challenges. In short, my concern is best titled “How is it to be done?”

Methods and Means

If you can’t communicate effectively, you can’t solve problems—not unless your “problem” is waging a war to utterly exterminate your opponent. So, if you do want to communicate, then as long as words are being wielded as weapons, the downward spiral—of this conflict and of our genre—will continue.

So my focus has been, and remains, on behavior not politics. That may sound like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but I see it as making sure the rudder works. By which I mean: at some point, people have to talk if they wish to end, limit, or deal with the aftermath of a conflict. Right now, the capacity for genuine communication is crashing in a dizzying tailspin, while attitude polarization is on an inversely proportional rise.

Let me be perfectly clear, I’m neither “puppy” nor “anti-puppy.” My own beliefs are so darn eclectic that I doubt any group would have me. But beyond that, there is this purely functional consideration: any resolution to a conflict (short of unilateral annihilation) cannot be achieved through strident advocacy for or by any one side.

Why? The answer is one of the most consistent and simple phenomena of social dynamics, one as old as history itself. You cannot be primarily committed to facilitating equable and balanced communication and be a partisan leader.

I am a communication specialist, have worked in that role in various capacities for over 30 years, and have seen (and been asked to help manage) this phenomena in many different scenarios. And here’s the relevant challenge that arises: partisans have the luxury to remain absorbed by (and locked into) their conflicts of the moment. So, they cannot become change-agents for better bilateral discourse; their prior role precludes opponents from believing that they are doing anything but surreptitiously supporting their own agenda. So it is necessary to preserve and/or create a communications channel for moving beyond the conflicts in which those partisans are still engaged. A truly multilateral discursive arena—for which civility is both the bedrock and cornerstone—is the foundation and lynchpin of that eventual need.

I do care about hurt feelings, but that’s simply not my reason for emphasizing the issue of civility and respect in discourse. Indeed, feelings are not merely important but operationally relevant because, when people’s feelings are hurt, they are primed to strike back–and so, the possibility of increasing civility remains near or at zero. But this is not a hand-wringing, mewling appeal for “oh, can’t we all just be nice to each other?” This is more of a “Look: when everyone is done thumping their chests and mixing up their genuine beliefs, their admitted and unadmitted ego involvement, and all the rest of the emotional and rhetorical baggage, we’re all still going to be here. If this was a literal war, you might decide to exterminate each other. But since it’s not, you’re going to have to coexist, because you can’t steer around each other far enough to create total mutual avoidance. So some people have to keep saying: ‘when all of you are ready to clean up the mess, remember how to talk to each other. Because that is the only way the mess is going to be cleaned up. No matter who declares victory and goes home.’”

To reprise a theme that I’ve seen on posts from commentators as diverse as David Gerrold, Brad Torgerson, and Eric Flint, the descent into personal invective always portends a downward spiral that carries us away from ideas and understanding and straight into a cesspool of inane and profitless rock throwing. And “but they started it first” is no excuse for any side to maintain their vituperation level at Defcon 2. Indeed, there is every reason not to.

Firstly, it’s rarely a good idea to let the actions of another dictate the manner in which we respond. To do otherwise is to essentially say, “I accept that I do not define the means by which I engage in conflicts; I cede that initiative and authority to my opponent.” As we all know, it’s not a good idea to let anyone else drive your life-bus or set the pace—least of all someone you perceive as an opponent.

Secondly, when it comes to the notion of matching your opponent’s dirty tactics or railery with your own, … Well, departing from your own game plan or ethical rules of engagement is only worth considering when the stakes are so high that the benefits strongly outweigh the deficits. I can think of real wars (Cold and otherwise) where matching escalation was essential to maintain whatever balance remained in the conflict. But are the desperate, end-of-the-world cost-to-benefit ratios which informed those scenarios really present here?

Lastly, since mutual name-calling only achieves mutual mud-wallowing, there is no argumentative advantage to be gained by it. At most, invective and mockery might incense your adversary (i.e.; if they’re stupid and easily distracted). But unless you firmly believe that their rage will cause them to a ) act rashly, and that b) you will be able to decisively exploit that intemperance, it’s not a worthwhile tactic.

But let’s be honest. None of these “reasons” explain the verbal vitriol that has been fuming like Old Faithful (Old Fateful?), lo these many months. Name calling is usually just a way of venting one’s overloaded spleen. It’s a verbal smack in a childish slapping war, like the ones waged between testy siblings in the back seat during a roadtrip to some hated destination (an analogy employed to great effect by Eric Flint during one if his epic excurses on this very topic).

So that’s why my concern is with how the discourse is conducted. Yes, there are always going to be arguments and debates, some more ferocious than others. And some burn themselves out. But some go on for longer, and do far more damage, than they must. And that typically happens when a debate starts falling under the real (or perceived) rhetorical influence of radical extremists like Vox Day or Requires Hate. Because although they might sound like they are deeply invested in the debate, their involvement is motivated by other objectives.

Specifically, lots of people have been shouting loudly on either side of this issue, most of them very impassioned about protecting the enjoyment they derive from our genre. But the radical extremist has a different objective, which often betrays itself in their subtly different modus operandi. Whereas the impassioned partisans want their side to win, the extremist wants to effect change by burning the extant structures to the ground.

I worry that the state of discourse in our genre could easily play into that long term result. Not because of the differing opinions among our genre’s various partisans but because of the lack of civility, which undermines fair and clear communication. Invective and insult has greased the slide down into today’s growing midden heap of rhetorical excesses, sloppy evidence gathering, and hasty presumptions of guilt-by-association. And these cascading failures in reasonable discourse are the tinder with which radical extremists may easily fuel the conflagrations whereby our genre’s structures might consume themselves.

Arsonists Among Us

I offer you this conceptual equation as the formulae whereby cultural pyromaniacs have historically created group- (or nation-) consuming infernos:

+ incivility ->
+ dehumanization ->
+permission for violent response ->
+radicalization and extremism

This is a proven recipe for quickening passionate partisans into aggressive zealots. When advocates forsake their initial behavioral limits, they have started down a path in which their ends have begun to justify means they would not have countenanced earlier. And so they are on their way to becoming radicalized extremists.

We are familiar enough with the early warning signs of this dynamic at work, and which, cast in the taxonomies of our genre, equate to:

1) increasing numbers of SF & F readers becoming infected with the same virus of polarization now endemic in so many other parts of our culturescape;

2) name-calling, mockery, and personal invective that becomes so ubiquitous that it no longer stands out as arresting or unusual;

3) increasingly strident and absolutist rhetoric, often accompanied by a reflex to screen for “correct think vs. wrong think” semantics.

I don’t propose to have any sweeping answer for how to reverse this trend. (That would make me yet another strident advocate, wouldn’t it?). Rather, I perceive the answer to be ultimately personal: a conscience-informed attempt to balance what one intended to convey with how it was received. In short, to temper oneself without muzzling oneself.

My own answer is to keep talking amiably with people from all over the spectrum, regardless of however different (or not) our opinions may be. Consequently, lots of the folks I’ve spoken with over the last six months will not find the content of this post surprising and have expressed sympathy for larger or smaller parts of it. The list includes people such as Larry Correia, David Gerrold, Brad Torgerson, John Scalzi, Rachel Swirsky, and Eric Flint, just to name a few. And if anything strikes me as even more prevalent than the differences of opinion and perception among the dozens of people with whom I’ve chatted, it is the degree to which the “sides” do not understand each other. Which, given America’s contemporary culturescape, is not really surprising.

Specifically, there is an increasing paucity of shared experience in America. The present cultural volatility and churn, which goes well beyond the demographic reshuffling of relative measures of social power, produces a situation in which persons from different outlooks and experiences are likely to attach subtly or even significantly different meanings to many of the same words and labels.

What place does this thumbnail comparative cultural analysis have in this post about civility in rhetoric? It may not be as tangential as it seems, because these underlying cultural divides aid and abet the reflex toward Othering. When it comes to forming opinions about persons from an opposing set of experiences and values, it requires much less of a push to tip us over into negativity and dehumanization. So when “the American experience” is as howlingly different for two groups as it is for what media pundits now often refer to as the urbanite vs. fly-over dyad, frictions are primed.

So, if there are indeed significant cultural differences that are informing the underlying topography of the friction in our genre, that also explains why neither side needs to employ conspiracies or complicated plotting to achieve what might seem like a monolithic consensus. After all, each group already speaks its own language, has its own behavioral codes and cues, and its own sense what constitutes praiseworthy cultural products. It’s hardly surprising that their aesthetic preferences and values are. in so many ways. almost wholly misunderstood by each other.

Yet here’s the challenge this puts before us: when you meet a person from a different culture, you have to be more civil and you have to listen harder and more carefully, if (a big if) you want to understand and be understood. And you must also be prepared to step back enough from your own cultural values to see that many of them are not objectively correct, but conditional to the experience that gave rise to them. Then, when you turn that same dispassionate lens upon the Other, you may begin to see the world as they do through their eyes. (I think I’m starting to channel Margaret Mead.)

Unfortunately, no single act is so likely to result in one’s being ejected from one’s own group as the process I outlined above, because few things threaten group cohesion as much as questioning its self-defining narratives. Which of course include the narrative of the Evil Other. Yet somewhere between excessive and insufficient empathy, somewhere between unacceptable gradualism and insupportably rapid transformation, there is a happy medium…which will paradoxically not make anyone truly happy.

But that is in the nature of compromise and coexistence. And as long as we’re arguing over transformation, we’re still engaging worthwhile issues. Every genuine conflict that ends in something other than absolute expulsion or extermination of one side means that we have affirmed our ability to move back from the pendulum swings of vituperation, anger and rage into a modus vivendiwhere two parties can speak to each other and resolve (or at least reduce) the aggression and animus dominating the situation. If this were not possible, discussion and negotiation would be delusionally pointless activities. And if you already hold that grim belief, then I am sorry for having wasted your time with these words.

Some Closing Words About Words

Many people have uttered or asserted many questionable things throughout the entirety of the 2015 Hugo process. Some people have uttered or asserted some arresting ideas and personal attacks. Only a very few have routinely employed the radicalized extremist’s cant to frequently advance propositions or characterizations that are outrageous or horrific. But to the extent that our genre’s discourse tolerates the articulation of atrocity, or continues to wallow in the vitriol that greases the slide toward greater dehumanization and Othering, the social arsonists can hope for new recruits, new zealots. That’s what makes voices like those of Vox Day and Requires Hate so dangerous: their objective is to use our own worst impulses as the means to bring about the destruction of the SF&F community and many of its institutions.

I appreciate being given this space, and you having taken the time to navigate this conceptual slalom. By way of offering a quick, value-neutral take-away, the spirit of these comments were synopsized in a recent, much-shared post of mine on Facebook. It is simply a conceptual barometer whereby we may assess our discursive behaviors:

A thought for the day:

Choose your battles carefully.

If you find yourself constantly in combat, you’re not being choosy enough.

Or you’ve decided that you are actually at war. Which means that you are now committed to destruction, not discourse.

I believe that if we insist on civility (as distinct from passivity), we will hasten our climb out of this discursive tailspin and enhance our collective ability to celebrate SF & F, regardless of its source or style.

 

Ask Correia #17: Velocity, Releases, Rankings, and Remainders
BOOK BOMB! Pack Dynamics by Julie Frost

568 thoughts on “Sad Puppies Guest Post by Chuck Gannon”

  1. No discourtesy intended, but the writer needs to read Vox Day’s new book, “SJWs Always Lie” to see more clearly what the problem is.

    1. I like Chuck and enjoyed the first in his Caine Riordan series. But I have to agree with Henry Smith. Compromise only works with a sincere group, and the SJWs are not sincere about anything other than subjugating everyone to their worldview.

      1. In point of fact, barefaced lying has been a principal tactic of EVERY proglodyte movement, from Sanger and Lenin to Alinsky and Obama, with side trips through fascism, the Democratic Party and Mitch McConnell’s office.

    2. I would recommend that Mr. Gannon actually speak to Vox Day. However, he has apparently “Othered” him and screened him out for “bad think” which he exhorts the rest of us to avoid doing.

      1. No, it’s perfectly possible to understand Vox Day and form a negative opinion about him and his 3edgy5me rhetoric.

        1. Odd, in general, that it’s only Vox Day’s edginess that gets singled out, and not Scalzi’s consistent condescension toward those who disagree with him, or Wendig’s chronic assholia online, or Sandifer’s defense of pedophilia…

          1. No, those get pointed out too. It’s just that it gets pointed out by those who are more likely to agree with Vox than by those on the Left. Heck, Larry, if taken only in the context of one of his fiskings, probably looks like an asshole too someone that leans left and has never read him before.

          2. Or the Nielsen Hayden’s thirty year record of character assassination and attempted suppression of crimethink books.

      2. I happen to know that Charles Gannon is both a coward and a liar. But more importantly, he’s just wrong. He demands unilateral disarmament when it comes to rhetoric and completely fails to observe that you cannot “choose your battles” when you are attacked by SJWs.

        No doubt he’ll eventually learn this when they turn on him for one reason or another; they always do, sooner or later.

        As for the idiocy of trusting “general third-hand reports” in a poisonous environment like SFWA, well, that alone should qualify him for the short bus. As for discourse, I am always willing to speak in a civil and respectful manner with anyone. But you can’t speak at all with those who have written you off on the basis of third-hand reports.

        Not that any of this is my concern or my problem. The Legion continues to grow.

        1. Ditto. It took me a while to read through nearly decade of World Net Daily posts (I admit, I skimmed a lot of the football, econ posts, & now-ancient computer tech commentary). This is a guy who held a reasonable mix of main-stream libertarianism and for his thoughtcrimes was targeted for personal attacks by the Tor crowd. Nasty, crowd-baiting stuff: lets all ostracize and Other, Mr. Beale: Pile on guys! This is super LOLz.. Based on everything I’ve read (and with the obvious exception that the comments section at Vox Day is like Jackson’s Whole) the accurate model isn’t isn’t “Vox Day vs. Requires Hate” but “Vox Day vs. the Nielsen-Haydens”

          It wasn’t available when I began my run-and-find-out quest, but the most reasonable anti-Vox site I’ve read is Killing Vox Day: http://therev3.blogspot.com/2015/09/killing-vox-day-conclusions_1.html

          Mr. Gannon’s letter, as a missive to the File770-ers makes sense and might even persuade them (He’s got enough virtue signals to get past their reflexive hate filter). As a missive to the Rabid Puppies …. it’s too funny. To the folks who joined the campaign to end puppy-related sadness?

          Let’s put it this way: when one group is using their institutional power to coordinate national and international (!) defamation campaigns in the mass media, de-escalation is not the province of their victims.

          I prefer the model of the iterated prisoners dilemma, myself.

    3. I end any conversation when the other person starts saying “You always” or “You never” because absolutes rarely exist in human behavior. It’s a sign the discussion has gone off the rails.

        1. I’m sorry, whatever his explanation the choice was a poor one. But he wasn’t speaking to me anyway. I’ve read some of his work and I feel no need to go back for more. Ditto Requires Hate.

          1. xServer, which of his works have you read? I’ve read many of his essays, some of his editorial products (many of which are superb), one debate with Philip Sandifer (fascinating) and part of one novel which didn’t interest me (topic, not writing style or craftsmanship)

            Which of Requires Hate’s work have you read? I have only read a handful of excerpted tweets as presented in Laura Mixon’s Hugo-winning report, so it’s possible, that somewhere s/he exhibits the grammer, rhetorical skills and reasoned arguments, or for that matter, storytelling ability of Vox Day.

            Please clarify.

            Otherwise this is merely a random dismissal, parroting the bumpersticker sloganeering of a closed mind.

      1. Then you are socially and intellectually retarded. Most conversations are rhetorical in nature. You are quite literally refusing to communicate with most of the human race.

        The fact that the discussion is insufficiently dialectical for you does not mean it has gone off the rails.

        1. I, on the other hand, HAVE read both Vox’s fiction and non-fiction over the years. You may not always agree with his conclusions, but I’ve found that they generally proceed in a relentlessly logical fashion from his premises.

          People’s problem with Vox’s premises, is that he tends to openly state what a lot of people think, but won’t openly say. Hell, **I** don’t always agree with his premises, but he argues them well.

          And for that, he is anathema to the crowd that values Feelz over Realz. . . .

          1. Like you I did that and I’ve come to much the same conclusion as you have. I’ll occasionally pop over to his blog to read some of the posts there, because such relentless, and unrepentant logical proceeding from a premise is a breath of fresh air to read.

            Realz over feelz indeed. I’ll have to remember that.

  2. I agree with a lot of his points and I’d love to see a reconciliation of Sci Fi fans. I am afraid however that if one side is in a battle and one in a war the side that believes it’s in a war will win. Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels to me that the other side believes it’s in a war.

    1. And I fear that is an accurate perception. Not just in SF/F fandom either. The US has become all but ungovernable thanks to unreasoning, extremist ass-hats on BOTH political extremes and their unrelenting push to “victory or death (for the nation)”.

        1. Extremism gets you people having a disagreement about what to do and using the democratic process to select a new leader?

          1. No, extremism gets you “repeal the ACA or we’ll collapse the economy by not raising the debt ceiling”. Or the current “defund Planned Parenthood and slash Social Security and Medicare or we’ll collapse the economy by not raising the debt ceiling.”

            Extremism gets you the ABUSE of the democratic process to overturn the legitimate democratic process.

            The TEAOP and the Anti-Puppy SJW Hugoistas are spiritual and tactical twins: their way or no way.

          2. The TEAOP and the Anti-Puppy SJW Hugoistas are spiritual and tactical twins: their way or no way.

            Remind me, Greg: which side actually proposed “their way or no way” (aka No Award) as a voting strategy?

          3. That is my point. No Award is the same tactic as “repeal this/that or we’ll collapse the economy”. Either you do what the bully wants (be they TEAOP or SJW Hugoista) or they’ll burn everything down.

          4. “Mommy, mommy, Bobby hit me back!”

            We are bad for hitting back.

            Instead we should be “Thank you sir, may I have another”?

          5. Yes, if you properly submit to be bottom to their top, you can claim a non cis-normal gender role and be assimilated into the SJW Borg Collective.

          6. Hah, which side refused to pass any budget that would defund Planned Parenthood or Obamacare and set the tone to “their way or no way?”

            There’s a lot to agree with in this gentleman’s guest post, but he forgets, there’s only so many years you can tell someone they’re a racist, sexist, homophobic, racist, stupid, ignorant, inbred, uncultured, worthless, hatemongering, pig-faced, incompetent, drooling, mouth-breathing, racist yokel… before said person starts waking up to the crap-sandwich that these enlightened betters are trying to ram down his or her throat.

            Let’s try to remember who started the poo-slinging and how long it went on before someone put their foot down, shall we?

            Your end objective, your enemy, (and your allies) ALWAYS dictates your tactics. Read Rules for Radicals, and ignore the cryptocommunist leanings of the author as necessary.

          7. Dude, that is so incredibly full of shit, and not related at all to the topic at hand.

            So I could either take the time to explain how you are economically and governmentally illiterate (and I’m guessing you won’t get it anyway) or I could tell you to drop the culture warrior Bernie Sanders Occupy Democrats meme nonsense and get back to the topic this blog post is actually about.

            Either way I’m guessing I’m wasting my time.

          8. The day is coming, Greg, when no more debt will be taken, and it will have NOTHING to do with a ‘debt ceiling’. It will be when nobody lends us any more money. And there will be no way the Dems can vote around that.

          9. Of course, “their way” is “everyone should have a voice in making decisions that affect us all.” And “no way” is refusing to be ignored anymore.

          10. And then there are those of us who think “we need to repeal the ACA and defund Planned Parenthood because otherwise we’ll have to raise the debt ceiling; if we keep raising that, we’ll collapse the economy!”

            Let’s face it: whether our republic is functioning democratically or not, our government is currently severely disconnected from reality. It can only remain disconnected for so long before horrible things happen…

        2. By “extremism,” you men politicians more interested in enriching themselves and their cronies than doing the work they were sent to do? Because that’s the problem in the House today.

          1. The problem with that claim is that, simply put, the TEAOP is doing *exactly* what it was elected to do: gum up the governing process so that no governance is had on the important issues, and to re-arrange the rules so that truly democratic forces cannot regain control of the political process.

          2. America is a Republic and not a Democracy.

            In a Republic, the system sticks to a deal that had been agreed upon at some point. If enough cheat, the deal is null and void, and there is no reason to grant anyone any of the protections it carried.

            A Democracy is a popularity contest all the time, every time. If it is popular to slaughter a minority, than that minority is slaughtered. Everyone who complains of the constitution being written by dead men, or who considers it a living document, is a supporter of Democracy.

            Both sentiments have long been present in our great Republic.

            We thoroughly discussed which the United States was a hundred and fifty years ago, and your side lost.

            There is reason to think that the PPACA care act is helping destroy the economy, and if the economy is going to be destroyed anyway, destroying it to save it is not actually a cost. Especially if an earlier destruction is a milder, easier to recover from destruction.

            Thirdly, if the Feds continue funding Planned Parenthood, they have no moral grounds to complain if the ‘legitimate medical procedure’ of putting immigrants into ovens is carried out. It’d help control the spread of infectious disease, so why do you hate science? 🙂

          3. The people that are cheating are the voter suppressing, registry purging, gerrymandering TEAOPers.

            The rest of your screed I refuse to answer on account of your obvious derangement in promoting the idea of putting people in ovens.

          4. Putting people in ovens is no more deranged a ‘medical procedure’ than what you were just promoting up-thread.

          5. Oh, yes. Greg’s a “moderate”, all right. The mask always slips, doesn’t it? Now go away, Greg, and think up a new fake name. Try harder next time.

            You do know that the people who put other people in ovens were socialists, right? It’s right there in the name of their party, dude.

            Libertarians aren’t, in general, in favor of putting anybody in ovens, or a government that has enough power to do that.

          6. Really? The Tea Party is behind gerrymandering? Fascinating. Also, totally historically inaccurate not to mention logistically impossible, but you are on a roll.

          7. My father-in-law was involved in the redistricting of the State Illinois and the City of Chicago, based on the 1970, 1980, & 1990 censuses. I can say quite categorically that gerrymandering to redraw districts “to screw the Republicans” was a standard tactic of the Democrats in Illinois. And prior to about 1995, Democratic politicians in Illinois openly boasted about doing so.

            The Democrats are just pissed that they’re getting a taste of what they themselves used to do unchallenged for decades.

          8. My favorite example of gerrymandering is in Cook County there is/was a l district two sections joined by a long thin piece of land that is a median in a 4 lane highway LOL

          9. When my father-in-law was working on the redistricting for Illinois in 1990, I looked at some of the maps he had in his office. One of them was for a proposed revision to a Judicial district. This map had a weird offshoot in one area that went down a street then opened up to one side to take in a few addresses. I asked about it, and he said a district judge lived at that address and they were trying to keep him in the district he’d been elected to and not moved into the next district over. The next district over was, shall we say, of a predominantly different ethnicity, and since if he was redrawn out he would have had to either run again or move, they were trying to find a way to keep him in his original district.

          10. Greg, that’s called “projection.” Here’s a fact for you: there’s certainly been voter suppression, registry purging, and gerrymandering up the whazoo, but it hasn’t been by the Tea Party supporters or the candidates the helped to get elected.

          11. I’m reminded that the Founders *designed* our system of government to *encourage* legislative gridlock, because they felt that stalling the process was preferable to rushing into potential doom.

          12. Government is best which governs least….

            Someone said that and it makes far more sense.

          13. If the “TEAOP” is winning elections, how are they not a “truly democratic force?” In fact, they are regaining control of the political process. You just don’t like it very much.

          14. If the TEAOP were democratic, they would be lynching people. They are republican, because they think the deal still holds, and that only the means inside of the deal are appropriate.

          15. However, the democrats are working hard to demonstrate why you can’t deal with people you can’t trust.

    2. Both sides feel embattled. One because it had comfortably ostracized the Jews and the Blacks and their clubhouse was cozy just the way they liked it, and now it’s under threat from all those nasty conservatives, libertarians, and religious folks who they thought they’d managed to drive off and keep out. And now THOSE PEOPLE ARE BACK AGAIN. And they are making a MESS all over our nice clean clubhouse, playing that Jew-music and reading those darky magazines. Ick.

      One side feels like it’s gone to war because somehow, enough pebbles started moving that an avalanche of oldfans woke up and said “no more” and newfans said “golly, you’ve gotten small and pathetic-looking,” and some folks on the side lines said “this isn’t fair.”

      But they’re embattled, too, because somehow the rebels got demonized as shylocks and thugs and savages and sure they keep Kosher, and their culture’s a bit different and maybe one or two of them fit the stereotypes in one (but not all, and certainly not mostly) way or another… But the demonization is splashing over into other venues and some of them are growling: you wanna call us savages? We’ll give you savages!

      And that’s where its at.

      Blessed are the peacemakers, but they have a HARD row to hoe on this one.

  3. This is exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from someone with a Dr in front of their name.

    Sometimes war is already upon you.Is it not appropriate to defend yourself in that situation? Does that count as commitment to destruction?

    1. Why is it that someone with “Dr” in front of their name isn’t worthy of respect? Is it a bad hospital experience or anti-intellectualism raising it’s head?

      1. Anti-intellectualism like “compulsory heterosexuality,” which, by the way is the core argument behind Ann Leckie’s genderblind SF. Ironically and stupidly, that argument is for a “return to nature.” Hahahahah. That’s right. Mating pairs of tigers are morons. There’d be far more gay tigers if the male one’s hadn’t constructed heterosexuality. That shows you how far gone these creepy people are. They are a cult of fringe lunatics.

      2. People with “Dr” in front of their name, intellectuals if you will, have a pretty bad track record when it comes to producing accurate and useful information.

        One reason for this is the strong incentive to produce positive experimental results, particularly in social sciences. The prestige and attention of a paper with a new finding is far greater than that of a paper that disproves or finds no correlation. Since these positive findings are usually flimsy, they’re often, embarrassingly often, reversed. To put it another way, the intellectuals can’t make up their mind if I should eat eggs or not, so I ignore them on the topic.

        Second there is a tendency to expound on areas outside their domain of expertise, which is more common in the hard sciences. To obtain significant depth in a field requires intense study of that field, but doesn’t generally convey expertise in unrelated matters. I don’t ask philosophers to create new solvents, and no one expects them to do so. This doesn’t stop scientists from spouting off on complex ethical or moral matters, and typically it results in shoddy philosophy echoing the rhetorical points of their own ideological bias. In other words, when a physics doctorate talks about gun control, I give it the same weight as a florist.

        Third, there’s an overwhelming ideological bias among intellectuals, which is understandable given the source of funding for their jobs, that influences the results of their findings largely in one direction. If Exxon funded a study that said the Prius was a total ecological disaster, I’d take it with a grain of salt. If universities report findings in line with organizations which give them billions each year, the same should be done. In other words, I understand a study might find that public schools would be awesome if we only upped funding for all levels of education, but I’d like to see the results from someone with a bit less interest in continuing the funding.

        So, while I’m not anti-science (I’m a hobby chemist), anti-learning, or anti-progress (I’m a software engineer), I certainly have a skepticism of the intellectual class. That skepticism is essential for intellectuals, particularly scientists, to do their job, and it is a cause for concern that efforts are made to excise it.

      3. Hah! I can explain that:

        Once upon a time a fellow came out to a Texas farm from the city. After looking around a bit, he went up to the farmer and asked him why that cow–the one in that field over there–had no horns. “Some cows, sir,” replied the farmer, “some cows don’t have horns because they’re special-bred not to have any. And there are some cows where only the bull has horns, so that cow could just be female. And there are times when we have to remove the horns from a cow for some reason.
        “But this cow has no horns because it is, in fact, a horse.”

        I’ve been reading Mr. Sowell’s book on intellectuals, and one of the points he makes over and over again is how so many of those who belong to what might be termed the intellectual class: those who make their living, or call their vocation, the things of the mind: professors, media analysts, commentators and the like; how they prefer rhetorical flourish to reasoned argument. They have abandoned logic, reason, proofs and evidence.

        Worst of all, should any of these once-revered tools of the intellect be brought to bear against a treasured belief, these modern intellectuals will scream Anathema! and run with torches to burn the heretic.

        Therefore, it seems to me, that in a United States made up of millions and millions of individuals, it would have to be true that there are some people who are anti-intellectual because they have a burning resentment of the well-educated they suspect (rightly or wrongly) are their social betters. There must be some people who are anti-intellectual because they really prefer to wallow in pop-culture and inanity.

        But it’s most likely that modern intellectuals are despised because they are, in fact, barbarians

          1. Kevorkian only killed people who wanted it.

            Or, more likely, whom he persuaded to want it. See the comment thread at http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/10/01/the-weapon/ for many examples of such a thing happening with other doctors in places where murder-by-physician (which they call “assisted suicide”) is legal. To pick one example, here is a cite from one of Paul Howard’s comments in that thread:

            I remember reading a News Article about something that happened either in Holland or in Belgium.

            It seems a son was told by her elderly mother that she was thinking about “assisted” suicide.

            He immediately got her another doctor and she stopped thinking about “assisted” suicide.

          2. And see also Belgium, where a 2003 article in “De Standaard” article quoted the high number of “euthanasia without request” cases (translation: murder by physician without even the figleaf of the patient asking for it). In 2001, 1.5% of all deaths in Belgium were “euthanasia without request”. In 1998, that number was as high as 3.2% of ALL deaths in Belgium!

            Euthanasia is not just a slippery slope, it’s a slippery cliff, and should be opposed by anyone who cares about human life. It can sound good in principle, but in practice it delivers horrors.

  4. I don’t have the consciousness remaining to really discuss Mr. Gannon’s post, but I do find it interesting that Mr. Scalzi would imply that there would be a negative reaction to the post if made in a Puppy-friendly (so to speak) forum, given the vitriol and butchery of posts found directed at anyone on prominent anti-Puppy forums who doesn’t agree with the anti-Puppy side (see “disemvoweling”, quotes taken out of context or outright fabricated from bits and pieces of unrelated work, and Scalzi’s own editing of posts holding opposing viewpoints in fora where he has administrative control).

    It would be nice to be proven wrong about regressives being suited for working at movie theaters, as masters of projection, but so far the evidence of my being wrong seems to be kind of thin on the ground.

    1. That is, being wrong about the projection thing. It doesn’t take a whole lot of searching to see elsewhere that I have been in the wrong. 😛

    2. There’s grounds to be terribly concerned for Chuck’s safety when he posts here. I think I called him a racist to his face here, or somewhere in the Puppysphere, because his writing promotes negative stereotypes of corporations.

      Of course, then he tells his story about the time in the eighties he spent observing a financial company during a Mexican earthquake. He also points out how careful he is to present a range of corporate behaviors.

      It looked liked we laughed and moved on, but I hear hundreds of people had a fit of vapors over that discussion and had to seek medical attention. I swooned so badly that I spent three and a half weeks in the ICU.

      Mr. Scalzi had a legitimate reason to be concerned for Mr. Gannon’s health.

  5. Requires Hate is still accepted within the mainstream of SF publishing. One cannot say the same for Vox Day. More to the point, Vox Day for all his numerous “interesting” views, has not run around making violent physical threats to minority women (which Requires Hate did). He’s been civil, while Requires Hate wasn’t (creating a separate persona unconnected to your uncivil screeching isn’t being civil). These false comparisons don’t help Gannon’s case.

    1. Only days ago RH Tweeted about “pigfucking white women.” An entire cast of SFF editors, bloggers, and writers still Tweet with her. And how is RH different from Alyssa Wong, Elizabeth Bear, Amal El-Mohtar, Steven Gould, Laura Mixon, Saladin Ahmed, Aliette de Bodard and 100 others I could mention. It’s the same thing every day: men, men, men, whites, heterosexuals, men, men, men, whites, heterosexuals. I’m not interested in “getting along” with David Duke but instead dropping rhetorical bombs on his stupid head whenever possible. Gannon needs to read 1984 about a million times. Do you really think people admit they’re racists and supremacists? You use your judgment. The lesson of Orwell is the next KKK will look like a trusted friend and come bearing talk of allergies to scented products and wheel chair access. Yes, all that’s left is cursing at this point.

  6. By taking his essay to Whatever, I am afraid Chuck threw good money after bad. The “other side” in this is happily engaged in a zero-sum culture war. Most of us had no interest in that culture war, but as any good Marxist knows, just because you’re not interested in the culture war, doesn’t mean the culture war isn’t interested in you.

    The reason SP exists is because there are people in our entertainment arts who have taken it upon themselves to tell us what kinds of fun are right, and what kinds of fun are wrong. Fans, authors, artists, editors, all of us are now exposed to a pretty much endless stream of culture war criticism. And you are expected to either knuckle under and become an “owned property” of the culture warriors, or you stand up for yourself and your work (as Frank Cho admirably does) thereby inviting a torrent of vitriol, lies, threats, and worse.

    Because the culture war admits no compromise. Compromise — making room for Wrongfun — is sexist. It is also racist. it is homophobic. It is cisnormative. Wrongfun must be driven from the public square. Creators of Wrongfun must be locked in the stocks, and pilloried for their Wrongcrime. All accolades are seen as objectives for control, by the zero sum culture warriors. Resistance to this control, organized or no, is also labeled with a lot of bad words, and the conductors of the resistance will be thrown in the culture war dungeon. For daring to shine a light in the culture war darkness.

    I admire Chuck’s desire to bridge the gap. I probably felt like he did, three years ago. But after this past Hugo season, my sense is that the “other side” has zero-point-zero interest in dialogue. There is but one acceptable end state: we totally surrender.

    Our failure to surrender will be met with scorched-earth tactics.

    Thankfully the actual marketplace is still free. For now.

    1. That’s why I no longer really care what they think. I write what I want to write, read what I want to read, and watch what I want to watch. Their opinions no longer matter.

      And no, to the trolls watching, it’s not because you’re somehow not human. It’s because you and I clearly approach science fiction and fantasy from different places and your opinions don’t matter because they’re useless to me. Just as I’m sure mine is useless to you.

      Now, if they want to chat about fandom stuff, I’m willing. Just don’t expect me to change who I am or what I’m doing with a damn good reason, and those are only determined by me. No one else.

    2. Brad, you make exactly the point that I wanted to.

      For some reason, the literati in the publishing world decided that certain fans were not welcome. They made a lot of excuses why we weren’t welcome to sit at their mean girls’ table- topped off with a heaping helping of intimation and innuendo.

      The truth of the matter is, nothing we do will satisfy them. We have tried bending over backwards to be nice, we’ve tried explaining ourselves and having a reasonable dialogue.

      Where did that get us?

      The books we love were one starred on GoodReads and Amazon without being read.

      Authors were bullied and used as weapons in an attempt to harm their own fans.

      They made entire websites advocating for a No Award, Puppy-Free slate- while simultaneously railing against Sad Puppy supporters who make recommendation lists of their own.

      They loaded up the pre-Hugo show with anti-Sad Puppy people in order to “explain” to us all what it was we really did and why. They did not invite ONE Sad Puppy supporter to offer a counter view.

      They invent an “assterisk” award, giggling about its connotations when they thought we weren’t listening, then they batted their eyes and pretended there were no connotations meant when we called them on it.

      They cheered when No Award was announced, forbade booing for No Award, then tried to justify themselves later by claiming it was our fault they voted No Award. We made them hurt those authors, you see.

      Oh, and let’s not forget all of the slander in media outlets, blogs, on twitter, and everywhere else. “They’re a bunch of white, mormon males who hate gay people and people of color!”

      And not a single puppy kicker come forward to stop any of it.

      Not one.

      All because we dared to enjoy books they didn’t approve of. AND we voted.

      The horror.

      We will never be welcome at the mean girls’ table. Even now, people on the puppy kicker side are demanding that authors denounce Sad Puppies fans, or else. Why? Because there is nothing, ever, that we can do to make them be civil to us, except to go away. Then, MAYBE, they’ll consider ignoring us.

      1. And to this day they are defending the bald-faced lie they don’t commit to affirmative action initiatives, though there are literally thousands of quotes by them showing them doing just that. Meanwhile they claim we read books solely because people are white, straight and male. Show me any quotes recommending books on that basis. There’s the basis of the “diversity” movement. It is based on a lie. In fact it is their own racial and sexual narcissism they are promoting. Someone just posted stats from a large dating website. White men were among the lowest in same-race preference. That is in keeping with the facts as opposed to the myths when it comes to SFF.

      2. The only thing left to do then, is to flip that mean girls table over while they are sitting at it. And take their meals and feed them to hungry puppies.

      3. The more moderate voices in the opposition didn’t dare voice their concerns, because they knew they’d get mulched by the strident activists for whom all of this is merely a single battle in the larger culture war. I’ve linked to this essay before. It’s an instructive insider’s look at the cult-like mentality of the social justice bullies who are trying to set themselves up as the commissars of our popular culture. They claim to be loving and tolerant, but are filled with anger, resentment, and hatred for people who don’t have the same anger, resentment, and hatred.

        And yes, the merchants of anger, resentment, and hatred are absolutely determined to frighten everyone they possibly can, into capitulation. It’s scorched earth. Scare the ones who can be scared. Herd them into line. Torch everyone and everything else. Burn it to the ground.

      4. On the drive back from Sasquan I sketched a comic about it and posted it the following Wednesday. You can find it if you google tempest in a teardrop sunday t-shirt shopping.

        That’s exactly the impresson I got at the ceremonies and the comic sums up exactly how I feel about the whole sorry mess.

    3. I think Chuck accounts for that scorched-earth, no discourse, only full unconditional surrender attitude and discourse when he said “But beyond that, there is this purely functional consideration: any resolution to a conflict (short of unilateral annihilation) cannot be achieved through strident advocacy for or by any one side.” (Emphasis mine).

      I get what he’s saying about civility. It’s sort of the same question of “how do you respond to Alinsky-style tactics without using Alinsky-style tactics?” I don’t know that I have a good answer, but I trust that there is one. After SP3, I’ve had this weird feeling that the two sides are both talking past each other. There’s definitely at least two different communities, and they do use different versions of virtue signalling.

      I do think that SP4 has a shot at really subverting the opposition’s narrative, as it’s going to be run by non-American females. But I’m not 100% sure what the objective is at this point. It started as “Get Larry on the ballot because fun,” became “getting any conservative on the ballot will cause the other side to have vapors, therefore fun,” which then became something that I feel no hesitation supporting – nominate what you like, vote for what you like, don’t try to force others to only like what you like.

      I’m looking forward to seeing Kate and the gang run next year’s effort, and I want to help push those specific values, but I also have a real desire not to make anyone a bogeyman, not to burn anyone in effigy, and not to participate in interminable flame wars because either a) my side is engaging in what the other side believes is wrongthink, or b) their side is trying to force me to surrender or subvert my own tastes and enjoyment in the service of some greater social good.

      Huh. That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it? The PK’s believe that we SP’s should surrender or subvert our own tastes and enjoyment in the service of some greater social good. We disagree on two points: A) we disagree that what they are trying to force us to is in fact a greater good either social or otherwise, and B) we disagree with the practice of trying to force people into subverting their tastes and enjoyment for that purpose. And rather than run the risk of allowing a work that DOESN’T support the “greater social good” to win an award, they No Awarded the bat-snot out of it.

      I gotta think about this some more. There’s got to be a way to frame that argument in their language.

      1. You just lost the war. If you are worried about framing your argument in their language, you just lost the war. This is like trying to negotiate with the bully where he will hit you by screaming louder or softer according to where he just hit you. He is still pummeling you, and he is not even paying attention.

        Look, words have no meaning to these people. They find whatever meaning they want on your words, doesn’t matter what you say. Those are the people that claimed that Tetris was Nazi propaganda and that Pong is a symbol of the oppression of women.

        They don’t have a language. They have emotions and they can use the English language to convey those emotions very poorly.

        1. Those are the people that claimed that Tetris was Nazi propaganda and that Pong is a symbol of the oppression of women.

          …What.

          I mean, I read recently that these rapists of the dictionary called slow motion sequences misogynistc because Baywatch used it, thus proof that slow motion = misogyny, but what you cited blew that BSOD out of the water, neighbor.

      2. “how do you respond to Alinsky-style tactics without using Alinsky-style tactics?” You don’t. If one man is trying to have a civil debate and the other is trying to knock his fucking head off with his fists, guess who wins?

        Even if Mr. Gannon was genuine (and there is strong indication that he is a treacherous liar; http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/mailvox-irrelevant.html) his strategy is a surefire way for conservatives to continue to get their asses kicked by SJW like they have for the past 40 years.

        The first thing that needs to change is the attitude of those fighting the SJW. It’s a war against an enemy committed to your destruction. Treat it like one.

          1. I’m going to define terms.

            If you mean “really on the other side, and trying to make us take our medicine without resisting by pretending to be our friend” – no, not treachery.

            If you mean “undermining our will to fight” – which is a bit of a stretch but valid, then yes. In this context, useful idiot may be a more appropriate term.

            I think he honestly believes he’s a moderate, and doesn’t realize that just because both sides are fighting that both sides are not necessarily wrong. Only takes one side to start a war….

            That said – I don’t think the SJW’s will be any more inclined to pay attention to his suggestions, may even take the concept of “live and let live with the puppies and make amends” as betraying them.

            Insofar as truth, I note a discrepancy between the guest post, and a later comment by Chuck, about whether or not he’s dealt with vox, and why he on one hand found him pleasant/civil, and on the other hand, not worth engaging with at all due to third-hand reports.

          2. Yep. Sometimes people are just wrong. Wrong premises, faulty logic: weird-ass conclusions.

            Or, as I like to say, never attribute to an “ism” what can more easily be explained with “raised by wolves.”

      3. In the last day, I’ve had some time to think about it, AND I just finished reading SJWs Always Lie, which addresses quite a bit of what I was concerned about.

        I’m not willing to say that Chuck is a SJW. And I wholeheartedly agree that there are those on the other side with whom we cannot reason. It’s (culture) war with those people. War to the knife.

        AND I understand now that any attempt to “frame that argument in their language” is doomed to failure with the activists, because of the difference between a dialectic approach and a rhetorical approach. I’m trying to approach this dialectically and find a way for them to understand it while they insist on a purely rhetorical approach. That is, if that book is right, the argument isn’t the point. Winning the argument isn’t winning the fight. I get it. I’m not happy about it, but I get it.

      4. “A) we disagree that what they are trying to force us to is in fact a greater good either social or otherwise, ”

        This… really this. What I see when I look at what social justice bullies are trying to do is destruction. They’ll respond with some thing about how it’s just fear or anger over the destruction of the *status quo*… of loosing my white privilege racist power. No… I see DESTRUCTION.

        The “rules” are arranged so that the “goodness” of what they are doing can not be questioned or falsified. And while it’s the bullies and power crusaders like Requires Hate that do this the most, the “but I’m for social justice and all good things” enablers are enabling it. “I think what you’re doing hurts people” is my true opinion, but the whole of it, all of the “I’m for social justice” rules are based on “you can’t know anything so you must passively accept what you are told.” This itself is destructive and I could talk about how and why it is destructive for hours.

        What I’d really like to see is just a few of those “but I’m for social justice and all good things” folks step back just a little bit and accept that people can be genuinely in favor of and working for fairness, inclusion, and racial harmony and view the current demands and tactics of the social justice bullies and their enablers to be actively and disastrously harmful to those they are so set on supposedly helping.

        If a person is not allowed to have a different point of view and be a “good person” then there is no possible avenue to conversation or reconciliation.

        1. The sweet and lovely Requires Hate: the idea Laura Mixon and others have turned against her because of statements like these below is completely false. They didn’t give a fig about this shit until she started going after Mixon’s precious “PoC.” And that doesn’t include the people who openly support her and Tweet with her to this very day.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai
          ‏@benjanun_s
          Here’s the thing: I’m 10000% serious about wanting white writers to stay in their own culture.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          As @tehawesomersace said, ‘diversity’ doesn’t need white saviors.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          When people recommend books about POC or non-western cultures they shouldn’t be recommending those written by whites.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          But what happens is, white writers use this ‘diversity’ thing as a brand – they use the ‘exotic’ culture, the literary brown/yellowface.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          They use diversity as a brand, a flavor, to spice up their otherwise completely average – even mediocre – writing.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          The equivalent of white girls putting on henna or bindi. To seem ‘interesting’ and stand out from the bland herd.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          Because whiteness is pretty magical, they get to do this AND become preferred over those with actual connection to the non-western culture.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          White writers become the authority. See, for nonfiction, Tim Wise for example.

          Bee (ghost) Senpai ‏@benjanun_s 3h3 hours ago
          So white writers didn’t just pillage our history: they’re doing it now too, consuming it and presenting it for other whites to consume.

    4. They fail to realize that they are the ones radicalizing many of us. We would be happy to ignore them, but their tactics show that peaceful coexistence is not possible.

      They are shaking the beehive and then complaining that the bees won’t settle down again.

      BTW: I wish I could figure out how to get this to just link to my Google account. It fails every time I try that.

      1. Me – I get my email followups, but they don’t tend to include the identity of the poster like they do over at Hoyt’s, or some context of what is being replied to. Annoying.

    5. This, by the way, is one reason I was so pleased that of the final choices that made the Hugo ballot, if Jim Butcher couldn’t win, The Three Body Problem did.

      It opens with “here’s how the Cultural Revolution went” which for any thinking person means taking a second look at the culture warriors of the social justice left.

  7. I think I’ll probably have more thoughts later, but there is one point that immediately comes to mind:

    “I was only comfortable being included if Vox Day (whose proclivities were known to me only via general third-hand report) was not on the list.”

    Isn’t shunning a man based on “general third-hand report” precisely the sort of “Othering” this post is supposed to be warning against? I’m rather lukewarm on Mr. Day (who has said some interesting things, some things that were taken out of context, and some things I find genuinely batty), but if you’re going to say, “I won’t be here if you let Vox Day be here” I think you really ought to have more than “third-hand report” to back that up.

    1. And for someone who claims to have been a member of SWFA since 1990, he could hardly have failed to have been familiar with Vox Day and his opinions on things.

      The whole article can be summed up as “Let’s all be reasonable and agree with me.”

    2. ““I was only comfortable being included if Vox Day (whose proclivities were known to me only via general third-hand report) was not on the list.”” Sounds a lot like the Soviet Era Criminal charge ” Suspicion of contact with persons suspected of Anti-Soviet Propaganda”

    3. “who has said some interesting things, some things that were taken out of context, and some things I find genuinely batty”

      Often in the same sentence.

  8. I would feel more charitable in my analysis if I hadn’t seen many, many SPs ask for reconciliation and for allowing works to stand by their own rights.
    You don’t need to see an arsonist in Vox. They’re already torpedoing themselves without him. So, which civility and discussion should always be cherished, at what point does one stop getting kicked and stands? And when enough people stand and the kickers break the stage down to make them fall, what is the answer there?

  9. A bit wordy (with “big” words), so I’m not sure I grasped Dr. Gannon’s goal. I think he was aiming to say “Civility, empathy, and understanding will help us back from the brink of extremism”. If so, I agree wholeheartedly.

    1. What he is trying to say is “if we stopped being mean to them, I am sure they would stop being mean to us, as well. Maybe. I know it never worked in the past, but I am really really REALLY sure it would work now. Because. But even if they don’t, we should still do it because we don’t want to cause badfeelz on them. Causing badfeelz on other people is bad, so nobody should do it, except when they do because it is also our fault, since we did it to them, even when they did it first to us. Because. Also, we should kick Vox Day out for no reason.”

      Which he is wrong about. On all accounts.

    2. It was more like “I’m totally cool with the insane, suicidal extremism of my pals like John Scalzi but the far less extremist views of Vox Day are totally evil!”.

      Also, conservatives trying to be “understanding” and civil to SJWs while SJWs proceed to destroy them at every fucking opportunity is why they have been defeating conservatives in every arena for the past 40 years.

      Adjust or die.

      1. I’m watching Europe begin to burn because of the ‘understanding and civility’ towards a culture that tries to destroy the West at every opportunity. There simply was a point where I felt giving out warnings wasn’t working, shrugged, and set about simply trying to protect my own. Dr. Gannon’s request for civility is several years too late as I’ve said, but I’m willing to grant him some benefit of the doubt that he simply hasn’t paid attention.

        1. Didn’t he admit as much (that he hadn’t been paying attention) early on? Being the stay-at-home writer and primary caretaker of 4 kids really doesn’t leave you with much time for paying attention to the Left’s doings. I believe him that this is all new to him.

          With that said, yes his request is several years too late, but it’s not because he’s a closet leftist or whatnot. I simply think he’s well-meaning and misguided.

  10. Hooooly Crap. I read the comments. Thoughtful responses quickly gave way to drooling slather of hatey hate hate hate. The uncontested winner was this little nugget of SJW “logic”
    “…The problem with that sentence is, of course, that civility with or without passivity has zero costs only for white straight male authors and fans — whichever the issue, the people on the up axis don’t have costs to being civil and very seldom for being uncivil. For anybody else, civility with or without passivity has oodles of cost…”
    In other words, “the rules don’t apply to us.”
    It’s war folks.

    1. Men, men, men, whites, heterosexuals. That’s all these freaks got and all they talk about. It is their precioussssss. Without it, they’d have nothing to do or say.

      1. Some day they may regain their presciousssss, and as the prance and mince about the stage, fall of Bob Dole style, with no one to catch them.

  11. The Progressives only goal is to destroy anyone not Progressive. I give as an example the people calling for those who disagree with man-made global warming to be killed, jailed, or investigated for RICO. As another example are those who want Christians who oppose gay marriage to be jailed. And the shameful way Gerrold and the others at the Hugo Awards ceremony acted, causing even someone like Toni Weisskopf to walk out, shows they have no interested in civil discourse. Chuck needs to understand that you can’t negotiate with an enemy who is out to destroy you. But in any case, I love Chuck’s books 🙂

    1. And the TEAOP threatens government shutdowns every few months if we don’t end social programs, reduce the tax rate to zero on businesses and rich “investors” (who produce virtually nothing of value), and generally open up all of our society and lands to unbridled, unfettered exploitation by rich elites in general.

      Goes both ways.

      1. You are entitled to an opinion, but you can’t just make up facts and not get called on it.

        That’s not how government works. They threaten government shutdowns every time a Continuing Resolution expires. Why do we have continuing resolutions? Because of a failure by one party to pass a budget for many years now.

        Nobody has put forth a serious proposal to reduce the tax rate to zero on business.

        Rich investors invest money in companies that produce. Without investors there would be no capital, and thus no production. That’s the basic history of business. Incorporation has been around about as long as cash.

        1. I suggest you read/listen to the speeches of the TEAOP Presidential candidates. Every other proposal is another tax giveaway to Big businesses or elite “investors”.

          And you have an extremely outdated view of “investing” if you think those “investors” (really parasites) are putting money into companies based on their actual value in terms of needful things produced. They’re buying stocks to run the price up then bailing out (the “pump and dump” strategy). They’re using tricks like the “naked short” to game the system bu causing artificial fluctuations in value that they can extract a percentage from.

          And companies play to that by manipulating their own values by needlessly firing massive numbers of employees (and requiring the remainder to work even harder to make up for the lost workers) to pad their bottom line. Those companies are rewarded for their “good management” by the parasite “investors”.

          Wall Street numbers have long since been divorced from any connection to legitimate economic activity. That’s where the whole CDO/CDS quagmire came from, for example: gaming the system.

          1. Yeah, what do I know? I was only a Fortune 100 auditor, and then ran two smaller start up companies created through investment.

          2. Mr. Correia, if you let real-world experience get in the way of a good all-encompassing explanatory Theory, you’ll never properly support the coming Utopian Society of Perfect Fairness’n’justice.

          3. You are an ignorant child, Greg. You would be a particularly destructive one if your childish rambling were not recognized as such.

      2. Who produce virtually nothing of value? Where do most jobs come from? Are you really that delusional? Also, do you understand our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world? Let me guess, you just want the rich to pay their fair share, even though the top 10% already pay more than 50% of the taxes collected.

        And as far as social programs, pray tell how we are going to pay for them when we are $17 trillion in debt? Continue to borrow from the Chinese? I would prefer not to hand that debt over to my children and grandchildren.

        1. The Chinese are no longer buying our IOUs. In fact, they are selling the paper they have as fast as they can get away with.

          No one want our paper. The Federal Reserve now electronically creates Dollars out of thin air, and buys the US Treasury’s bad paper with it.

          Look up the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe, if you want to learn where this leads.

          1. I know. That is part of what pisses me off about people wanting “Social Programs”. How do you pay for it? And while I don’t advocate punishing anyone down on their luck, it should be a hand up, not a handout.

        2. The average taxpayer making $50 thousand a year pays only $36 towards the support of poor people. The same taxpayer pays over *6 THOUSAND* dollars in corporate welfare. per year.

          http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19844-food-stamps-are-affordable-corporate-welfare-is-not

          The two biggest “welfare queens” in the US are Wal Mart and McDonalds, both of whom refuse to pay living wages, forcing their workers onto public assistance rolls.

          http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens

          The average WM supercenter costs taxpayers between 1 and 2 MILLION dollars a year in welfare benefits as a result of underpaying workers.

          http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/

          Note that is FORBES saying that…hardly a “socialist” news source

          1. Hint letting anyone a citizen or a corporation keep some of their own money? Is not welfare or a subsidy

          2. I’ve actually discussed this with Walmart employees. And several things came to light:

            Many, perhaps most of the people working there would not have jobs at all without Walmart, because they are marginally-disabled or retirement-age folks, many of whom are physically unable to hold a full-time position — show me the big job market for them elsewhere? Without these jobs, they’d be wholly on the dole, rather than merely receiving some assistance.

            One pointed out to me that Walmart’s lower prices amount to a 25% boost in her wages — without Walmart, her life would be that much more expensive. (I need only wander over to the competing local grocery to verify that.)

            I too used to think Walmart was the devil, but Walmart employees themselves convinced me otherwise.

          3. So are you advocating flipping burgers as a career? These are starter jobs, not freaking livings.

          4. Hillary n Bill have both been on the board of Wal-Mart fir decades. Pull my other finger

      3. Investors produce jobs. Actual new job growth comes from start-ups, which have a high failure rate. These take capital and expertise.

        If job growth doesn’t match or exceed population growth, you get an increase in the unemployed population.

        One answer to that is social programs. In my experience, long term unemployment is boring and maybe even soul destroying. I suspect that government support of the unemployed is less a recipe for political stability and more a recipe for pogroms. Especially social programs which come at the cost of start ups.

        Social programs are often justified as an investment. I have rarely seen this supported by solid numbers on returns, if returns are mentioned at all.

        1. Investors in todays markets produce nothing but “churn”. That’s how they make their money. They jump in, manipulate the price of the stock how they want it, and sell off and move on to the next stock. That’s just how modern “investing” works. Has ZERO to do with producing needful goods and services.

          And as for social programs, fortunately for the US, most people (if only by a tiny margin) still refuse to measure the value of a human life by its Profit and Loss balance.

          1. You give the impression that you know even less about small start ups and the whole spectrum of investing in America than I do.

            Social programs are a matter of spending money, and are not a choice between murder and no murder.

            Killing a kid because you somehow think you know how their costs are going to balance is an insane parody of measuring the value of a human life by its Profit and Loss balance.

          2. fortunately for the US, most people (if only by a tiny margin) still refuse to measure the value of a human life by its Profit and Loss balance.

            And yet you argue for continued taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood and it’s continued contribution towards population decline while increasing it’s profits with the organs of those human enough to exploit, but decided not human enough to protect.

            Yes please, continue to display your thoughts so that we may know them, and by knowing them, know the measure of yourself by your own words.

          3. I just want you to know that any time somebody posts something like this, an accountant dies.

            Yes, we get that you watched Wolf of Wall Street and mistook that for the entirety of the US economy, but that just isn’t how investing works.

      4. I had to look up TEAOP. The request for a definition led me to the use of the term in the Daily Kos. Not a term we’d use here. So, Greg, if you’re just here to stir up trouble…that’s sad.

        1. And at Kos I typically get dismissed as a raging conservative (at least on cultural/international affairs issues). Which tells me that I’m right where I need to be politically: neither TEAOP right-wing-nut-job, nor Kook Fringe left. On those “what are you” political questionnaire tests I score out as a Social Democrat, which is just slightly left of center on the Left vs Right axis and mildly on the authoritarian side of the individual vs state axis.

          It isn’t in my nature to say things I don’t honestly believe just to “stir up trouble”.

          1. And at Kos I typically get dismissed as a raging conservative (at least on cultural/international affairs issues).

            Why do I not believe you?

            Ah yes: The progressive jargon and presumptions.

            Do continue, Mr. “Moderate” One.

          2. Well, it’s possible. You can be slightly left of Lenin and still be a “raging conservative” on Kos.

          3. Hmm… true. I’m sure “Greg” would consider that “proof” of his moderateness, even as he repeats the progressive line and proclaims the “TEAOP” as the major villain.

          4. Ah. The position of “Both sides are pissed at me so I must be right”

            Uh, no.

            Or are we going to argue that choosing to only murder three people is a good “middle way” compromise between “Murder Six” and “Murder none?”

          5. Nope. You’re a far-left extremist, who’s trying to adopt “moderate” camouflage as a form of protective coloration. And like all your ilk, you seem to believe that no one can see through your rather transparent disguise.

          6. He self-identifies as moderate. Quit being such a bigot and let him live his life as he likes.

            /snark

          7. Well, if you and Tom get together with even more self-identified tanks we’ll end up with our own armored division pretty soon. 😉

        2. It’s the Terrifically Energized Americans Opposing Potus, right? Because those guys are cool. Now the Totalitarian Emergent Anti-Opportunity Party (Democrats) kind of suck.

          Maybe those are the guys he’s pissed of at? They really have screwed over most of the U.S., so he’s got a point.

      5. “who produce virtually nothing of value”

        You can’t possibly be this stupid.

        Dude, you’re using a computer containing billions of transistors, hooked to a global network of billions of similar machines, running from a continent-spanning power grid, in a house with running water that won’t kill you if you drink it, eating fresh vegetables in the winter time that were grown hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away, not seeing half your children (if any) die before the age of five, and not being being forced to choose between “spear-carrying foot soldier” or “stoop-labor agricultural serf” as career.

        You know how many of those things were produced by modern industrial society?

        All of them.

        You know how many of those things you’d have if the EEEEVIL corporations and their EEEVIL investors went away tomorrow?

        None of them.

        I know in your head you’re imagining some bucolic paradise, with cute and compliant hippie chicks dancing around, singing, and braiding flower chains. or some crap like that.

        That world never existed outside of a Fleetwood Mac video, dude.

        There are investors of the loot-and-burn sort you imagine to be the norm. The most prominent one I can think of is George Soros. Hint: he’s not a Republican.

        1. Well said. And speaking of moderates,

          “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

          When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.” – Ayn Rand

        2. Yeah, lots of folks in the West take for granted things like clean running hot water that doesn’t have cholera or other microorganisms in it, regular access to flushing toilets and septic tanks, transport, books, TV, computers, cement/asphalt roads, washing machines, dishwashers and a house that’s more than just hollow brick walls with corrugated sheet metal roofing.

          Those of us of have a passing familiarity with how hard it is to hand-scrub laundry aren’t keen to return to that.

          1. That metal roofing is… loud. Our off-base house had one and during the rain (tropical rainy season… rain for months) it was so loud you had to yell to talk to each other. The rain stopped suddenly once and you could hear everyone’s TVs and radios down the whole block.

        3. Re: Dr. Loc- The leftist mockery of “trickle down” economics is especially hilarious in regards to your post. Many of the things that today’s Leftist takes for granted were expensive luxuries for the very, very rich just a few decades ago: cell phones, personal computers, indoor plumbing, electricity, air conditioning… yadda yadda. Anyone else here remember when a CD player cost over $1000 in 1980’s dollars?
          But that’s what base, profit driven capitalism does- makes stuff available to the rest of us.

          1. Many of the things that today’s Leftist takes for granted were expensive luxuries for the very, very rich just a few decades ago

            One of my favorite examples is the term “jet setter”–a term for the very rich back in my younger days from when only the very rich could afford to travel on jet aircraft. The rest of even the pretty rich, had to make do with propeller aircraft (and the well to do were stuck with trains).

          1. Watch that! There you go making unfounded assumptions…

            And you know what happens when you make assumptions… you…

            Uh, never mind.

      6. Greg, did someone yank on your Marxist Beard or something? Calm down, this is about SF, not your boy Bernie Sanders.

  12. Oh, he’s right in that you shouldn’t judge a book by its publisher, but its publisher damn sure can affect my purchase decisions. I try to avoid giving the bigots at Tor any money – unfortunately several of the authors I like are still stuck there for at least some of their books. So for things like the latest Safehold book from David Weber, I bought the audiobook, which at least only sends money to the parent company, and I’ll buy a used hardback later for the shelf. New authors from Tor? Not a chance in hell I’ll buy them – I expect anything new from them to be SJW garbage and a waste of time.

  13. I admire him for his measured response and ideals of courteousness but at what point do does Chuck think people should strike back at their would be oppressors? From what I just read he has highlighted why it has gotten to this point. They lied, they ignored, they name called. Even if Vox Day were a raving raciest Native-American/Italian/Mexican (Which I do not believe he is, he is a cultural isolationist) is that a reason to close dialog?

    That would be like me say hey China, I don’t like you so don’t ever talk to us.
    Chuch needs to look at his own thoughts and see how they actually apply to the history of this entire thing.

  14. “The sum of virtue is to be sociable with them that will be sociable, and formidable to them that will not” – Hobbes

    Unfortunately, Dr. Gannon, the people who most need to listen to this are the ones salivating over the imagined butthurt that will happen when we read your words.

    There have been calls to sociability by non-Puppies, including Toni Weisskopf’s call for Big Tent Fandom last year and the We Are All Fans of this year. They were shouted down and ridiculed, not by Puppies, but by the anti-Puppies. Sociability is a two-way street, and there’s no sociability possible when one side refuses to listen and prides itself on that fact.

    Honestly, between Gamergate, Atheism+, Metalgate, Sad Puppies, and all the other pushbacks of the last few years, it makes me wonder if the fever swamp is with the convention regulars. Because its the same names and the same that keep on cropping up in fight after fight, and the common circles appear to be the fandom conventions.

    It’s the same hardcore vs. casuals fight seen in every videogame forum out there, with the anti-Puppies as the hardcore. Problem is, catering to the hardcore inevitably shrinks the audience and drives away the dollars, which is precisely what’s happening to the print market.

    1. If the ranting children (on BOTH sides) are left dominant in ANY situation, social, political, or economic, then inevitably destruction follows.

      Sooner or later, the adults have to step in and stop the fight. The OP is being one of those adults, or at least he’s trying to be.

      1. I think the real question needs to be, what coercive power is needed to bring both sides to the table. Moral authority, when neither side has a common view of morality, isn’t enough. And when a number of those ranting children run major publishing houses, how can the adults step in except through destruction? Because with the way Tor employees and Worldcon members have acted over the past four years, I’m thinking its time for the adults to break the toy the children are squabbling over.

        1. That is a fair question. And that question presumes that an adult can be found to begin with. We are rapidly becoming a society without “adults”, with ALL groups increasingly becoming self-centered children interested only in advancing their own interests at the expense of all other groups.

      2. Did you know Catholic and Jewish quotas at colleges were just a he-said, she-said? Yeah… just a failure to communicate. There were no bad guys.

    2. I think the takeover of fandom conventions — and the same activist names one sees involved over and over — are a good example of how cultural Marxists view the world. The subjugation of organizations is a primary goal in their larger culture war. When you control an organization, even something as benign as a con, you can use that organization to enforce your ideology. People who may or may not agree with you, can be forced to “agree” with you, lest they face punishment, ostracism, and expulsion. In fandom especially, that sense of belonging — the love and loyalty to the org — can be overwhelmingly strong. People will say or do anything to stay part of the org. Up to and including having their own ideals and values silenced, or warped, in order to avoid being evicted from the org. Like SFWA, which is both worthless and useless, but there are people in SFWA who would rather lose an arm or a leg, than be kicked out, or shunned.

      1. I think you are giving them too much credit. Oh, sure, some of them probably are masters of patient long-term planning, like you say. However, from what I’ve seen, most proponents of social justice just aren’t that conniving. It’s not that they have a diabolical master plan; rather, they simply lack the capacity to experience the world, other than through the lens of their ideology.

        So, from their point of view, the only value of a book is measured by the number of passages within it that advocate for feminism/diversity/privilege checking/whatever; minus the number of passages that advocate for traditional gender roles or whatnot. That’s it. When they read a book, these people don’t engage with it in any way besides checking off points on a checklist. There is a whole area of human experience — appreciation of literature — that is forever closed to them (and same goes for movies, video games, etc.). Because of this, I think it makes more sense to pity them than to hate them…

        1. After seeing the articles about the No Borders activist that was raped, and her fellow activists encouraged her not to report it so that it wouldn’t hurt their cause, I’d tend to agree with Brad that they enforce the group’s behavior. It doesn’t really have anything to do with long term planning either.

          If the no borders people were long term planners they’d realize that the story of how they tried to silence a rape victim so she didn’t hurt their narrative/goals would be more damaging to their cause than if they just went to the police in the first place.

        2. Never, ever underestimate one’s enemies. Their leaders are not idiots (some of them are even very intelligent) and certainly capable of long-term planning.

          One can pity SJWs as much as one wants, but that makes them no less treacherous.

      2. I am reminded that a significant chunk (sometimes a majority) of the “demonstrators” at any activist event are paid agitators; they are not locals spontanenously reacting to whatever.

  15. Unsophisticated, childish and ignorant nonsense from the beginning to the end. All I have to do to buy into it is throw out the meaning of words, law, equal protection, facts and principle.

  16. With apologies to the original: “In a time of universal polarization, a call to moderation is a revolutionary act…”

  17. Fascinating.

    Based on purely third hand opinions heard, not ones formed himself, Dr. Gannon already refused to give Vox Day a chance, yet calls for both sides to try not go for the nuclear option. This is illogical and undermines the rest of his essay.

    If Dr. Gannon himself has already given a negative opinion about a person from third hand opinions, how then are any supposed to credit him with impartiality? I am no doctor, but I went and read the man’s words for myself, and I have to say he lays traps for the unwary to fall into (Skim until offended) and it is those traps that lay the greatest outrage reaction. I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, and admit that I do agree with a number – his criticisms regarding feminism come foremost to mind, and his book SJWs Always Lie may well be the go-to book for rhetorical warfare that has become very common on the Internet. There are those who would condemn me for merely giving him that chance, to which I say – why shouldn’t I? I am a human being of equal worth and no less deserving of respect, and so is he. Unless he behaves in a manner so unforgivably reprehensible that Vox himself has ceased to behave as a civilized person, or shown horrible behavior towards myself and my kith and kin, I have no reason not to treat him as I have others: judging him entirely by himself, his words and actions, and not by the views of others.

    For all that Vox is decried as evil, he’s certainly far more civilized in his discourse than his opponents, who behave as abominably as they would believe Vox does. He shares a certain concept that few people these days find difficult to believe: “I will treat you exactly as you treat me.” In my few brief discussions with him, he has ever been civil, and knows courtesy, which few these days are even passing familiar with.

    Setting that aside as a done observation, I’ll acknowledge that Dr. Gannon has made his decisions largely based on the observations of his peers because of lack of time, and that this is quite understandable. I’ve not been frequenting my usual online haunts as frequently due to work. One cannot write AND draw at the same time, unless one is fortunate to have both a cognative and kinetic split concentration. Or telekinesis. Nevertheless I can sympathize the lack of time.

    I must note though that the ones opposed to Sad Puppies who have engaged in the worst vitriol yet demand that Sad Puppies cease name calling. George RR Martin himself listed ASPs as one of the ‘insults’ he dislikes and demands that it cease in usage.

    I coined that acronym, and it simply means Anti-Sad Puppies – those who are actively AGAINST the Sad Puppy campaign (versus merely disagreeing.) Yet, based on his own preconceived belief that all the acronyms used were insulting, such a world renowned writer failed to understand that some are merely descriptive. CHORFs described the behavior commonly displayed by the ASPs. If we are no longer allowed even to describe those who are against Sad Puppies, then how then are we meant to describe them? By far, those descriptions are the most neutral in describing a group and common behaviour associated with them. (A troop of teenyboppers; a gang of friends; a shepherd’s flock, and so on…)

    If the ASPs are so dismayed that ‘CHORFing ASPs’ so quickly and succinctly sums them up, then perhaps the ASPs need to cease CHORF as their default reaction. Then there would be no need to describe them as CHORF, but there they go, and so it goes. As an example, Mr. Martin issued his demands for insults to stop but followed it up with an insult leveled at the Sad Puppies’ justifiably angry members, in a display of breathtaking hypocrisy. Indeed, why should any of us have reason to kowtow to the demands of Mr. Martin? By what means does he imagine he commands our obedience? This is not Westeros and he is not Robert Baratheon who can order the death of those who defy him by branding them ‘traitor to the crown.’ In Dr. Gannon’s favor is that he makes a rational plea for civilized behavior on both sides – but I fear there is a side uninterested in civilized behavior; and they showed it back during Sad Puppies 2 when they went after Larry’s wife and tried to wreck his marriage and his public image by painting him an abusive husband.

    I doubt either Dr. Gannon or Mr. Martin believe it could have happened if they know of that incident at all, but I’ve found that Larry prefers to reserve his fiction for his books. Yet in the face of that, mere name calling – indeed, mere descriptions and neutral terms, are what Mr. Martin feels he ‘isn’t fine with’ and that he calls for an end to. Not the threats, not the slander in news, not the lies that were told about us. Nope, he’s PERFECTLY fine with that. Because we’re not on his ‘side’.

    In case there are those who wonder what I mean, this is the particular thing I speak of:

    Puppies and Puppy sympathizers using terms like Fan (with a capital), or trufan, or anti-Puppy, all of which I am fine with. I am not fine with CHORF, ASP, Puppy-kicker, Morlock, SJW, Social Justice Bully, and some of the other stupid, offensive labels that some Pups (please note, I said SOME) have repeatedly used for describe their opponents since this whole thing began. I am REALLY not fine with the loonies on the Puppy side who find even those insults too mild, and prefer to call us Marxists, Maoists, feminazis, Nazis, Christ-hating Sodomites, and the like.

    Archived and screenshotted https://archive.is/QUZYi

    Mr. Martin rages about the names but calls us loonies. Why, pray tell, are we meant to simply bow our head? Because he hasn’t written his next Westeros novel (and apparently has a different one published/new show? What’s he going to do, not write it in protest?

    Civilized behavior can only happen if the other side is civilized too. But if we Sad Puppies have learned something over the years the campaign has been running, the ASPs and their ilk the SJW have shown that ‘there are no bad tactics, only bad targets.’

    I fear that Dr. Gannon’s plea for civilized behavior comes a few years too late, and already there have been attempts to try discredit Sarah Hoyt and the other lovely ladies of SP4 as ‘racist’ or other such nonsense.

    But alas, that stuff’s not worth the time to address, because they’re on the wrong side, n’est ce pas?

          1. To have a crush on someone is to be enamored.
            I was merely declaring my undying, platonic love of Shadowdancer =)

    1. Interesting that he objects to Marxist.

      There are several prominent (and not so prominent) ASPs (because yes, anti-sad puppy is a descriptor, not an insult) I have had lengthy discussions and arguments with, mostly on Facebook, who I call Marxist.

      Why do I call them that?

      Because they proudly call _themselves_ that. They can hardly object to being referred to by their own self-applied label.

      Why they cling to an ideology responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people is beyond me, but that is a different topic.

      1. How many social justice crusaders in SFF self-identify as “Marxists”? 2 as opposed to 200 or more who call themselves “feminists”?

      2. Exactly – and not only do they self-describe as such, they actively write/speak/behave as such.

        Notable too that GRRM seems to pretend that these labels are considered ‘by all’ bad. Yet if one proudly proclaims onself as a “Marxist” it is no insult to describe that person as such, it becomes easier to identify him or her, like pointing out ‘that cute guy with the big blue eyes and dark wavy hair in the black denim jacket,’* to note someone particular out of a crowd.

        Certainly – one who professes to love freedom, equality and the ability to choose one’s own way should view anyone who espouses Socialism, Marxism, and their various Progressive offshoots as viable alternatives with the same kind of wariness and careful handling as a saint views the Devil’s temptations and promises. Indeed, for all it’s claims of being non-religious, the replacement of God by an all powerful State is merely substituting God with the golden calf statue – merely a figure, and one should do well to recall the story of Ozymandias as well and apply it to the -isms mentioned above. I’ve lived through that and I have no desire to see my children living in such totalitarian lifestyles.

        *…that reminds me, it’s time to kiss the love of my life awake and wake our children. I shall return anon.

        1. I have told you 100 times you are not up against Marxists. The reason Milo and Gamergate are cutting up their opponents is they have correctly identified who they’re up against: racialized political lesbianism based on texts which began in 1970. Their most cherished goal is the elimination of heterosexuality. With the “Third Wave” or “intersectional” element emphasized 25 years ago, they are also ferociously anti-white. The reason Leckie’s novel was promoted the way Coke is in ads is because genderblindness is the cure for heterosexuality. Ancillary Justice was their Holy Grail. No surprise it experienced an historic awards sweep since the default orthodoxy of core SFF is gay third wave feminism. The Devil in this ideology is the straight white male, a thing they take no trouble to hide. What is Marxist about that? The signature quote of this cult is Simone de Beauvoir’s “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” That quote leads the most famous book about gay feminism ever written, Judith Butler’s 1990 Gender Trouble. Every time you use the term “Marxist” these people are (quite rightly) laughing at you. “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” is not about class but a voodoo doll of straight white men Swirsky sticks pins in. It is no more sophisticated than any expression of mindless biological hatred is.

          1. Saying so does not make it so, James,
            The underlying ideology of Third-Wave Feminism is indeed Marxist. Feminism was created by the Left as part of their general assault on Western Civilization, and is driven by the same emotional and political impulses that drive all other aspects of the Left’s relentless, unending crusade against reality.
            Hiding from this does not help. In fact I would argue that it does the opposite, because it then becomes impossible to understand why all of the enemy forces work together and coordinate.

          2. That is false. Read your Mary Daly, Charlotte Bunch, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin, Kate Millet and even the Shulamith Firestone who prodded at and then rejected Marxism for feminism in her 1970 book The Dialectics of Sex. Even more to the point, show me the quotes from feminists in SFF who invoke Marx or Marxism. They don’t exist. This is not me “saying so,” this is thousands of hours of research.

            Third wave feminism is a racialized version of a Patriarchy which stole sexuality from women in pre-history. It is as fabulist as Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age or Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

          3. “… radical lesbian feminists focus on the problem of heterosexuality as the pivotal core of women’s oppression… By the late 1970s black and Third World feminisms emerged as a critique of the white privilege inherent in feminist theory itself.” – The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World

          4. James, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. The underlying assault on “power structures” (deconstructionism), the “critical theory”, the tribalism – all of this is most firmly rooted in Leftist thought going back to Marx (who was just mooching off of Engels). The problem here is that these people simply don’t know that they’re ultimately Marxists because of just how deeply infused their entire culture is with all that Frankfurt School nonsense. Just look at the insane assumptions about “equality” that many of these people start from.

            Each and every one of those you mentioned has a Leftist view of power, economy, and collectivization. Their worldview is just a logical progression of Marxist principles as applied to their newly invented classes. Their ideas are only new in the sense that they’ve been able to invent new classes of people to manipulate into The Great Struggle. But it’s still all the same, tired rehash of late 19th century German bullshit.

          5. Wrong. Gay feminism has routinely pointed out that sexism and racism pre-date capitalism. As I’ve said elsewhere, they’ve cherry-picked the anthropological dabblings of Jacques Lacan, Claude Levi-Strauss and Michel Foucault about the formation of gender and sex just prior to the rise of great urban centers. Look, there are for a fact gay feminists who are Marxists. A book I just read by Alison Jaggar states that such feminism is in fact a perfect expression of Marxism. This is not a monolith. The point is that in SFF you never hear these people talk about Marxism. It’s men, heterosexuality and whites. The hatred and paranoia is so feral I find it difficult to believe it is a mere observation of historic movements. It is a biological hatred hiding behin “reasons.”

          6. I don’t dispute anything you say here. What I’m saying is that just because they don’t say “I’m a Marxist” doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Their methods are just extensions of tired old Marxist tropes on “equality” and endless struggle.

            The vast majority of these ignoramuses don’t even recognize real world incarnations of socialism or Marxism and instead only understand it in terms a textbook might describe. They think they’re onto something new, when it’s just a rehash of the old and musty. The recent rehabilitation and promulgation of Howard Zinn on social media is just the latest I’ve noticed.

            Just as the Leftist revolutions were never over and eternal struggle was the only way to retain power, so it goes with these SFF SJWs and their perpetual grievance mongering.

          7. This conversation reminds me of the time a buddy and I went trekking in the Malaysian jungle. We had a Chinese guy for a guide and everything was “jungle” this and “jungle” that; jungle firewood, jungle rats, jungle bed, jungle cave, jungle squirrel, jungle candle. If everything’s Marxism then nothing is. According to you, I live in a Marxist society, a thing which is plainly false.

          8. Yes, because labeling people who hold Marxist views as Marxists is saying that everything’s Marxist.

            Slow down next time.

      1. Considering their pride in their assterisk insult and their screaming MEANIE at ASP (it’s not my fault ‘anti-sad puppy’ has the same spelling as the name of a snake) it’s probably a valid descriptor, especially for David Gerrold.

      2. Are these the vapors you are referring to?

        “I awakened, and broke wind without further delay”
        — George R.R. Moretons
        SJWs never Lie

    2. So I can’t convince you to ignore what Gannon says, based on his problematic views about persons of incorporation.? 🙂 Or convince you not to read his new book, Raising Caine, out very recently?

      I haven’t read it yet, but I intend to. I do put a higher priority on the Onward Drake anthology, but I hope he will forgive me for that.

    3. Treat civilized people in a civilized manner, and barbarians as barbarians. And by their acts you shell tell them apart

    4. “…already there have been attempts to try discredit Sarah Hoyt and the other lovely ladies of SP4 as ‘racist’ or other such nonsense.”

      I read a post at File77 in which Sarah Hoyt was referred to as Requires_Hoyt. The post was quoted and replied to. Not one person posted that it was uncalled for.

      It ticked me off.

      1. There was the whole nonsense about “Chicoms” trying to make Sarah look like a racist, which failed utterly and miserably. So then they attacked Sarah as being stupid. When she produced her Mensa card as proof that she wasn’t stupid, then they attacked her for bragging about being in Mensa.

        So yeah. Civility.

        1. Didn’t you know? “Civility” means they get to kick our shins under the table and we have to sit there and take it. If we slap them across the face and tell them to stop we’re being horribly uncivil and hate “disagreement” and so on.

          We’re not supposed to fight back, after all.

      2. When Mixon’s stuff first came out, the SJW didn’t like that a Thai name was associated with her, so they decided that it was another of Sarah’s pen names.

        If this were so, I would expect Requires Hate to have published one or two books a year about Billy and Kit being shapeshifters on the Moon.

        In reality, Requires Hoyt is the fourth child of Dan and Sarah in a Gundam 00 fanfic.

  18. Reading the comments at the Whatever, item 6 on the Checklist, “Resort to Moral Equivalency”, comes to mind. Chuck was carefully avoiding making any moral comparison between the sides, merely pointing out a small set of tactical similarities he thinks are damaging, and even was explicit in not claiming both sides engaged in these tactics equally.

    But the Whatever crowd seems so attached to arguing by the Checklist that any mention of any slight similarity is taken as arguing moral equivalency, and they spent lots of bits & electrons pointing out that they’re not the same as us, they’re not the same, they’re not, etc. ad nauseam.

    1. Chuck was carefully avoiding making any moral comparison between the sides, merely pointing out a small set of tactical similarities he thinks are damaging, and even was explicit in not claiming both sides engaged in these tactics equally.

      I did notice that he was being very academic in tone and phrasing, very neutral. Thus the tone of my own response.

    2. Here is the Orwellian winner from Scalzi’s comments section:

      “Trey Goesn says:
      SEPTEMBER 2, 2015 AT 2:37 PM
      My thoughts on the nature of aggression and civility in this debate are well expressed by Laura Mixon:
      ‘Bullies and abusers rely on the larger community’s desire for comity—our willingness to live and let live—to impose their will and silence dissent. In such a case, it’s incumbent on people with standing in the community to speak up against them, providing a counterweight to their destructive ideas. By speaking when she did, in my view, Irene was doing what other thought leaders in our field like N. K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, and the Nielsen Haydens have done: guarding the health and well-being of our SFF community by standing up against hate speech.’”

      Anyone who knows the absurdly defamatory comments that woman and her “thought leaders” have made about tens of millions of men and whites at a single swipe knows she is describing her and hers, not us. I honestly don’t know what you do with a mind like that. It is so lacking in awareness of its own deeds it’s just out in the asteroid belt somewhere. According to these morons, SFF 1912-70 was in and of itself “destructive” due to actually writing about science fiction and fantasy rather than a campaign to normalize insanity, sexual deviance and racial-sexual demonization theories. I’m not a big believer in mind-reading but one has to go with “always project” here. This is Big Brother shit. If there were an annual award for most idiotic and disengenuous use of the term “hate speech” you’d have your winner right here. Second place would be “live and let live,” since that is us, not that screeching team of racist man-hating harpies and their bizarre phobias of men. I recall no genre-wide campaigns full of terms like “black tears,” “womensplaining,” “#femininefragility,” “brown homo dames,” “old black women,” “black broad parades,” “homo peeeeeoooooople,” and with posts by award-winning authors with an allegorical restaurant where black waiters rape and beat white women.

  19. I will say this: prior to the last Sad Puppies campaign, I was a moderate. I really don’t care about awards or shiny stickers on covers. (Actually, given the recent quality of both, they’re likely to count as a strike against, rather than for, when I’m deciding which books to buy.)

    I sympathized with the earlier Sad Puppies, mostly because I love SFF and was fairly annoyed at the outspoken left leaning ideologues in publishing that makes it feel as though you’ve fallen down a wormhole and landed in 1984. But I stayed out of it because I’m tired and didn’t want to have to deal with the online attacks.

    Then SP3 happened.

    And I watched people screaming shrilly into the interwebs. Watched them point and shout names while decrying pointing and name calling. I watched people lie and twist words out of context until they no longer held any light of truth. I tried correcting a number of lies people were spreading and relishing in on a writer’s board, linking back to what Larry and Brad actually said, only to find myself in a room full of people who weren’t interested in the truth. They were much more interested in finding something to rage at and to wound them, even if the wounds were largely self-inflicted by way of their own twisted version of reality.

    Where was the call for moderation then? The call for civility? Or, barring that, human decency to speak the truth without name calling? Even if you (general you) disagreed with it. Especially if you disagreed.

    It isn’t hateful to point out the truth. No violence is done by correcting misinformation. It isn’t bigotry to have different opinions, life experiences, or perspectives.

    Compromise is impossible when you have a mob metaphorically calling for your head on a pike as they bravely wave their pitchforks and torches among themselves. Compromise is impossible when that same mob is NOT willing to live and let live. To allow people the right to their own opinions without trying to damage them socially or financially. Compromise is impossible so long as lies are favored over truth, so long as people are *determined* to be offended, and so long as anyone seeks to strangle any ideas that are not reflected in their own.

    Of course, it’s easy to call for moderation and civility from the people who just want to be left alone and who want story above message.

    Because we aren’t the ones calling for the Wild Hunt.

    1. These people who all too generously call themselves “feminists” lie about global slavery, colonialism, murder and crime statistics, rape statistics, immigration and men. If it’s under the sun they lie about it.

    2. I tried as well during the time when people were passing around a complete fabrication of what Brad said about marketing books with space ships on the cover. Saying “that’s a lie, he never said that” one to many times got me rage blocked on Facebook.

      1. We live in a day and age where disagreeing with someone is actually considered harassment by twitter’s policy. Report harassment, and under the options they had “someone disagreed with you”

        1. There’s a gent in Canada who might go to prison for disagreeing with a woman on twitter. Strange days indeed.

          1. In Canada? There is no longer free speech in Canada–look for Mark Steyn and his tangles with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

          2. Though as I understand it, the law has changed considerably since Mark Steyn went through his ordeal–largely because Mark and his co-defendants used the ordeal to put the system itself on trial. The statute under which the alleged “Human Rights Commissions” went after them no longer exists.

            If people are being prosecuted for tweets, though, it suggests Mark and co. still have work to do up North (he should get on that as soon as he finishes dealing with the corruption of climate science).

        2. Hey, I’m getting accused of “intimidation” on Twitter right now for this exchange. And this is the ENTIRE exchange.

          Bic N. Moleskine @BicAndMoleskine
          Dear Larry Correia: DAMN, your fans steal a lot of your books. Is this the Libertarian idea of a “Free Market?” ‪#‎IndieBookstore‬

          Larry Correia @monsterhunter45
          Larry Correia Retweeted
          It is a hazard of being popular. Nobody has ever stolen a David Gerrold novel.

          “Bic N. Moleskine @BicAndMoleskine ·
          Wow, mention folks are stealing his books & Libertarians & Larry Correia himself feels compelled to make a remark. Because the search for . . . a snarky comments in social media against Libertarians never rests. How the puppies yap! Blocked.”

          1. Snark for me, but not for thee apparently.

            Nothing like manufacturing outrage so you get to block someone with your bulging Twitter muscles.

          2. The more time passes, the more I wonder if Neal Stephenson is right in Seveneves when he tied social media to first mental disease and then social disorder.

          3. Oh for the love of Pete… he addressed you directly! “Dear Larry Correia”… right there. Even seems to have spelled it correctly.

            And then a public flounce-block. Wow.

          4. I wouldn’t worry about any Twitter action; they’re too busy *not* telling three hundred or so now ex-employees that they’ve been laid off.

          5. There’s a meme going around, shows some old guy with a caption of:

            “Wat.”

            I think it gets overused especially on the ME3 Multiplayer Forum, but in this case:

            Wat.

  20. It’s an interesting article, but at times it seems to me to stray into ‘cultural relevance’ i.e. ‘all cultures are equal’. Which has never been true.

    What I am not so sure he understands is that we -are- in a culture war, and it’s been brewing for a long time now. One side, has been pushing their agenda rather ruthlessly for many years now, and the other has finally gotten tired of it and started to push back. If you look at the number of ‘extremists’ out there, I think you will find that there are far more on the one side, than the side that has just started fighting back.

    Whenever someone stands up and says ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ the answer is always a resounding NO.
    Because by then, things have just gone too far, and on for too long and the person asking that is completely blind to the actions of the aggressing side.

    Has the argument spiraled ‘out of control’? Yes, and, as in most conflicts, one side has pushed it to that point. The other side is left with responding or capitulation, and calling for a ‘reasoned discourse’ at this point looks a lot like capitulation. Especially when the aggressors have made it clear that they are by no means interested in a reasoned discourse. I think the insults offered at the Hugos kind of made that clear, and there is no walking that one back.

    Back in August, before the Hugos, this was still a valid argument. Now? Too late, the war has begun.

  21. Chuck and I had discussions about this, and I am both a former New Yorker and someone with the “flyover country” values of my rural-rasied parents so I can see both “sides” with clarity. Understand that my career was in construction safety management, and a big part of that is human factors engineering where I had to “get” what makes people tick to do my job. I have to agree that there was very little desire for dialog in the whole movement against SP3…well, I hesitate to call it a debate except for folks like Eric Flint. I watched the dynamics and strategies of the other side and was dismayed to see patterns that would do a scorched-earth lying presidential campaign proud. It was WAR on their part, and all was fair. To make that palatable to their side, we were demonized with lies. Chuck Gannon is a fine fine human being, and I agreed with his sentiments then and now, but at the time we (my mostly female run magazine with a minority presence ) were on the SP3 list and therefore being called “male white supremacist homophobic misogynists” by the puppy kickers. It was such a hash of whole-cloth lies that those who know me had no idea I was a Sad Puppy. Othering? Obviously, I could not be one of them since I was a nice person. My magazine was below what I call “the spatter zone”–the major Hugo writing and editing categories–but the lesson was clear. If we wanted the SF community to be civil to us we had to admit we were evil and wrong. I politely resisted such characterization, up to and including the farce of a Hugo Ceremony and the after party. It was a sad day for fandom.

    1. Very well said, Wendy. And I am so sorry you and the other nominees got put through the vulgar carnival that was the 2015 Hugos ceremony.

      1. Yep. That was the worst part of the whole thing and I think the PKs really just relished in it without shame. Pride even.

  22. Just had to mention this. Over on the other site there is a post by someone most of us have had the ‘joy’ of interacting with before. He claims that he has always engaged in polite and reasonable discourse with us, and that we have always attacked him without provocation.

    So now I wonder, is this person (no, not clamps) a liar? Or are they really that crazy that they think their constant attacks and insults are ‘reasoned and polite’ comments?

    Insane.

    1. I have watched people who, with straight faces, make public declarations against name calling, sexism, racism, and bigotry only to follow up with Socially Approved™ all of the above.

      There are a number of people who have built walls of belief around themselves that only those who hold power can do any of those things mentioned above. And they, not being white, male, and/or heterosexual, cannot be in a position of power. This, despite protesting, that they are strong and empowered. When it suits them.

      All I know is that whatever dictionary they’re using, well, it’s not the same one rational people are using.

      1. “Oh, but that’s not name calling when I call you a nazi, it’s just descriptive.”

        Or there’s the sorts that will get self-righteous about you called them a nincompoop or idiot, which is disrespectful, while they didn’t use any silly names they just said you were a vile human who should apologize for your existence… but they didn’t say *poop* so they were *respectful*.

        1. One of the funniest things I’ve read in years was on Sarah’s blog were she quoted Bernie Sanders as saying he’s a socialist but not a communist, because he’s a nationalist. I immediately sent if to the people I know who support him. When none of them got it I had a near permanent face palm having to explain the humor in his saying it. In case there any liberals left, look up Nationalist socialist democrat party.

          1. They’ll never grasp the reference. I’ve wasted far too much effort with academic sources, citations, and direct quotes detailing just how leftwing that fascism is, far beyond pointing out the obvious problems with the name NDSP.

            It usually shuts them up, but I’m confident that it never changes their mind.

          2. I suppose they didn’t get it because NSDP was lacking the word “workers” ;). Not that that missing word constitutes much difference in Ideology between the two.

          3. Actually, the full name was NSDAP, with the “A” standing for “Arbeiteren,” which is the German word for “workers.” FYI.

    2. And how many racist sexist comments against all men and all whites in Scalzi’s comment section; I stopped counting. How many comments here lighting up all women or non-whites? None. “Nuff said.

      1. You recently asked, in the ‘Modern Man’ fisking, if the madness of the feminist makes satire impossible. Just this week I answered by claiming that women are extraterrestrials, who stole the ability to bear live human young.

        Perhaps I misunderstand ‘light up’.

  23. My takeaway from this essay is Dr. Gannon falls to understand the toxic and terrible nature of mascot/victim politics as it is applied to the production science fiction books. A compromised position in mascot politics buys into position of elitism and that its okay some animals are more equal than others in order to maintain civility.

    This goes beyond “you’re either with us, or against us.” Mascot politics is “we’re using this group to advance ourselves. ” Call it Marxism or whatever-ism (heh see what I did there? Try the veal folks, I will be here all week.), anybody who opposes this form of an elitism is branded a “whatever-nist” (heh) because it signifies the inability to be manipulated by threat narrative and therefore a person deserving of hateful words and actions. This is why when a person in the mascot category goes off the rails, both the mascot group and the elitism group go completely bonkers. It’s a stab at the more equal animals.

    Which is exactly the reaction to SP3.

    Dr. Gannon is a smart guy, and I encourage him to look at the root causes of the discourse instead of the discourse itself. People who wish to step outside and maintain a civil discourse go hand-in-hand with mascot politics, with a predictable and well-established failure result.

  24. It’s obvious that the ASP/SJW crew got called on their shenanigans. ASP/SJW had become so inbred with perversity and diversity in a their bubble from the mainstream they welcomed pedophiles instead of shunning them. They had become an exclusive club with an non-exclusive rule set that the SPs recognized, so they were the first to go “nuclear” and burn the Hugos rather than allow mere “normals” in the clubhouse.

    It’s also obvious to the rational person that we are in a wide spread cultural war and epoch of corruption that benefits mostly the few at the top of the global dog pile. Division and hate benefit those sociopaths that sow the seeds their seeds. Truth doesn’t matter, only power. And it’s easier to destroy than create. This is true in science fiction, in OSS, in gaming and in real life regards of what ever spin the “media” to puts on it.

    There’s a lot of people that didn’t want to get caught up in this fight that got pulled in. The radioactive fallout has spread far. This is not about identity, it’s about ethics and behavior. I don’t care if David Gerrold is gay, it doesn’t affect my passion for his writing. I do care how he treats fans and authors, that tempers my spending on his and his fellow SJW books. I don’t want to give many to those that destroy the Hugos with asshole awards. The fact they still respect and revere Delaney is damning evidence in their absolute lack of morals.

  25. I’ve seen people be discourteous and hard-headed on both sides of this argument. I was and remain a “read the book and judge it on its merits” woman and voted accordingly for this year’s Hugos. If more people did that and if organized slates like the one used by the Rabid Puppies this year didn’t exist then the whole business wouldn’t have exploded. But of course that’s not how it went.

    As an aside: I find it interesting that people defend Vox Day; he seems like a gleeful anarchist to me. He’s already stated that he enjoys pushing buttons which has always struck me as a fairly childish form of entertainment. But then I suppose there are those who defend Requires Hate too so there are people I don’t understand on both sides.

    That said: if calls for stopping the use of pejorative names is really beyond anyone then the battle for civility and finding any middle ground has already been lost. By both sides. And there’s really no point in reading or talking to anyone, is there? Because it just degenerates into who can sling the most poo and I’ve never been a fan of that tactic.

    1. The only way this year would not have exploded was if SP3 hadn’t won the embarrassment of riches at the nominations. Everything else, from the vote buying to the chorus of “racists, sexist, homophobic” to the slandering in print, was a rehash of last year.

      1. “embarrassment of riches” brought about by slate voting which rather proves the point that there isn’t some leftist cabal running the show. If there was, the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies would never have gotten through the door.

        Funny that the “No Awards” win was brought about in reaction to the slate success. Until the slates, people weren’t apparently voting in lock-step on the “other side”. Now many of them are. Not really a step forward.

        But I’ll continue to read what I like and vote for my favorites, regardless of affiliation.

          1. “sexually uninitiated”

            You SJWs really can’t think of anything outside of sex, can you? Go back to defending pedophiles like the rest of your ilk.

          2. Eh. We all “virtue signal” we just do it for different things. It’s like gang hand signs flashed at a group to say “I’m one of yours”.

            As for the rest… the suggestions of shenanigans, if one has been paying attention, was more in the nominations being controlled by an extremely small number of votes by people who by all accounts rub elbows regularly and have similar tastes and who did and do publish “lists”.

            The “upset” over the “slate” was opportunistic in that it gave people an excuse to defend their turf with fire, all while saying silly things like… “If only they’d done this differently we wouldn’t have had a fit about scary Larry Correia maybe being in the same Hotel with us three years ago… we *totally* would have not had a hissy fit over fat jokes that happened in the future…. and we would *never* have gathered a SFWA mob to shame and vilify politically liberal science fiction legends who used the word “lady.””

            Honest.

        1. It proves no such thing. It only proves that RP/SP had more people voting for their recommendations than any other potential group. You ever wonder why sasquan decided NOT to release voting data? You don’t really buy that its because they can’t anonymize it do you?

          1. They don’t need to anonymize it because they’re friggin’ NOMINATIONS. I’m closely involved with state level awards, as well as some national ones and nobody…. NOBODY tries to keep what books get nominated and by whom a secret.

            Probably because in a sane world, outside of this particular spot of CHORF-ly nastiness, nobody needs to be AFRAID of what would happen if someone found out they nominated The Wrong Book for an award.

        2. I believe Vox has done some in depth analysis of voting results for previous years.
          I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken. Cliques voting in lockstep is not a new thing.

        3. It was brought about by people voting for what they liked and what they wanted to win.

          What they liked, and what they wanted to win was BadThink and WrongFun, so of course it had to be crushed. With jeers and insults. Explain again why Toni Weisskopf deserved to be No Awarded?

          But people need a good excuse for that kind of hatred, and if you can slap a label on something you don’t have to think about it or see it for what it is.

    2. Discourse requires both sides to listen to the other. Sad/Rabid Puppies are tired of trying to have a discussion with children flinging poo. Our side doesn’t disemvowel. Our side doesn’t ban someone at the drop of a hat. Name calling is the worst we do and if you can’t handle that, I’m not sure you should be out in society.

      If the other side will only understand fighting (figurative, because literal fighting would trigger them I’m sure), then we will punch back, twice as hard. You can’t talk with a bully. All you can do is bloody his nose.

      1. Name calling doesn’t further discourse. If you feel that this is beyond you then that says more about you than it does me.

        I like Eric Flint’s take on the discussion: http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2015/08/26/do-we-really-have-to-keep-feeding-stupid-and-his-cousin-ignoramus/ In short, both sides should grow up and stop mischaracterizing, name-calling, and low-blowing each other. Oh and Rabid Puppies have never tried to have a discussion that I have seen. They just want to burn it all down.

        1. What does it say about a side that opens with “Racist, Sexist, Homophobic” in news articles that had to be retracted?

          Discourse is a two way street, as is civility. Stop trying to spank Puppies for the bridge the other side burned down immediately.

          1. I have already admitted to bad behavior on both sides. If that isn’t even-handed enough, if only “oh, yes, you’re right!” will work for you then that just shows that you don’t want discourse you want capitulation.

        2. White privilege and patriarchy is not only name-calling it’s hate speech. You don’t get that. I don’t care.

          1. Hate speech? That seems a bit strong. But as you say, I don’t get it and you don’t care. Discourse ended.

        3. Of course you’ve never seen it. It gets Ban-hammered, disemvoweled or flat out deleted. Try again.

          Your group started the name calling, we are going to finish it. If you can’t comprehend that, I can’t help you.

          1. “My group” is moderate fence-sitters who read posts and articles from both sides and vote according to what books and stories (and editors and artists) whose work they most enjoy. I am probably more culturally aligned with “their” side but I don’t really feel like jumping on any bandwagons.

          2. If you’re a moderate fence-sitter, why not go over to Scalzi’s blog or File 770 and instruct them on the errors of their way? Good luck with that.

          3. Our “bandwagon” is the U.S. Constitution, dictionaries, equal protection, rules and laws.

          4. There is no fence, my dear.

            You are either with them, or you are their target. Heck, you can be with them, and STILL be their target. We’ve seen it happen plenty of times. The only reason they didn’t go after you yet is because you are not relevant enough. But relevance is relative. You may not be relevant enough for the likes of SFF Fandom, but you may still be relevant enough for people at your work, at your community, etc.

            When they come for you, and they will, and you feel the full force of their attack for some minor slight, either true or fabricated, when they come for you and they are trying to destroy your life, your means of subsistence, and even the lives of people that are merely related to you, when they are doing it…

            I wanna see you call for moderation.

          5. You don’t feel like jumping on their bandwagon because you’re already on it. Nobody cares to be lectured by you clowns any further.

        4. When simple description is considered name-calling and pejorative, how can you even talk about those who you disagree with? No, this is just more attempts to silence any opposition.

    3. Defending Vox Day? One person posting in this thread has real-life (i.e. not genre- or fandom-related) reasons for personal gratitude towards the man, and even that person is not defending him. I personally can think ill of someone while still having my sense of fair play offended if he’s mistreated or lied about—and in this thread all you’re seeing is “maybe third-hand reports aren’t quite sufficient to disassociate yourself from someone so completely you won’t be put on the same recommendation list.”

      1. One person posting in this thread has real-life (i.e. not genre- or fandom-related) reasons for personal gratitude towards the man

        Much like I have talked about about the very odd place in my head I find myself wrt the late Marion Zimmer Bradley. The stuff she was involved with her late husband was heinous, no question about it. But she was one of my writing mentors and the first person to publish one of my stories. (I sold first to Analog, but the sale to her beat that one into print.)

        People are complicated and someone can appreciate one aspect of someone while reviling another aspect.

      2. Ayup.

        Though in fairness, I am also defending Vox Day. The man published John Wright after the CHORFS blacklisted his short fiction. He brought Jerry Pournelle back into publication. I am grateful to his work as an editor. He has been both rational and fair to his enemies (and if he seems horrible, by offering tit-for-tat, I submit it says more about them than him)

        Keep in mind, however, these are progressives and cultural Marxists we’re talking about. If you recall from the opening chapters of The Three Body Problem, if you defend a person from attack, you’re also defending every belief and value system the person has. And vice versa.

        We really are talking past one another about some critical premises.

    4. Could you point out the pro-Sad Puppy equivalent of the Entertainment Weekly slander?

      And, of course, organized campaigns have been a part of the Hugos since the beginning. It’s just that it only took a handful of the like-minded in past years, whereas SPs brought hundreds.

      1. There is no such thing. We use this thing called quote marks. The reason our feminist ideology doesn’t use them is they are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Easier to make shit up. Everything in their sick ideology has been made up for 50 years anyway; why stop now?

      2. Sorry, all the “moderates” have skimmed over your post.

        The best way to avoid reality is to look away from it.

      3. Not just Entertainment Weekly. Popular Science. Library Journal. The Guardian. Io9. Give me a few more minutes to pull up my research from the various journal databases and I can give you more.

        National and international mass-media defamation campaigns.]

        The Puppy Kickers are the Man: the 1-percenters of SF&F.

    5. It would have exploded anyway. It exploded just because a couple of people got on the ballot for SP2. Most of us remember that.

      I don’t defend VD. I don’t hate him. I don’t fear him. Sometimes he’s interesting. Sometimes he’s wrong even if I’m not quite up to persuasively arguing why he’s wrong. Him being wrong doesn’t harm me… or anyone else. His response to the publishing industry was to become a publisher and compete for the market.

      Requires Hate who is defended by many, still, was denounced by Mixon for actively working to acquire power to punish and destroy authors who “did something wrong”. Requires Hate… and this is very important… also attacked people on the puppy side of things and had been doing so for years under (as Mixon said) a variety of names. Annoying, but not particularly damaging because our response is generally to tell the social scold to sod off. This is the important part…. Requires Hate targeted vulnerable targets, those who were themselves SJWs or PoC or generally dependent *on that community for acceptance* because Requires Hate is about power and acquiring power. That power was the ability to destroy new writers, to be the arbiter of “representation” in science fiction, and to function as the authority who must be sucked up to. Authors, having no way to know what they’d even done wrong reported PTSD symptoms. They were dogpiled and harassed and driven from writing at all. RH’s minions blog at Tor and people’s careers were in real peril. With RH somewhat neutered others are stepping forward to judge “representation” and who gets it right or not.

      VD called someone a bad names and suggested that stupid women shouldn’t vote.

      Oh. My. Gawd. What will we ever do?

      1. He also suggested stupid men shouldn’t vote. But there were more needy pro-gumming stupid women than needy pro-gummint stupid men so they were worse for the body politic. He could be right.

        His solution: Ban women voting, right? WRONG: Universal sufferage.

        Most people would rather believe second- or third-hand gossip than run-and-find-out for themselves. No worries – until you’re using those rumors to make serious decisions that impact innocents: like no-awarding Toni Weisskopf. Then you should be ashamed of yourself.

      2. I look at it this way, if they are lying about all of the Sad Puppies, doesn’t it follow that they are lying about VD? So the guy should really not go by 3rd hand reports for anybody involved in SP or RP.

    6. Context matters: Vox Day claims to enjoy pushing the buttons of the people who think they can attack him with impunity.”

      He’s the guy who, when you punch him, not only punches you back twice as hard but enjoys it.

      And I defend him because I hate liars and bullies with the flaming passion of a thousand burning suns.

    1. Vox has 430-odd (so far) Vile Faceless Minions who have pledged to vote as he instructs them.

      This gives some people heartburn. On the other hand, the VFM support Vox voluntarily, so it’s not really anyone else’s business.

      By the next Worldcon, he’ll have even more Minions; a nontrivial voting bloc he can use as he sees fit.

      The current “Vox Day” is a creation of the SJWs. They vilified him so thoroughly nothing he can do can alter public opinion one way or the other, so he’s free to say and do anything he wants without concern for repercussion.

      So now he’s the dark monster living rent-free in their heads. Which suits him just fine, as far as I can tell.

      1. “The current “Vox Day” is a creation of the SJWs. They vilified him so thoroughly nothing he can do can alter public opinion one way or the other, so he’s free to say and do anything he wants without concern for repercussion.”

        I’ll take it a step further than that. The reason they hate him so much is not that he is racist, sexist, or whatever else he is (although he does, based on what I have read of his work, at best tap dance on the line and at worst actually is all those things), but because, whether intentionally or accidentally, he is now their mirror image.

        1. The problem is that we have let evil people define those terms. Those based on truth will always be called lies. The modern situation is far from perfect in those areas and many “accepted truths” of today are complete and utter crud.

        2. From what i’ve seen, Vox is more of an observer who puts down in writing what he is observing. If you want to attribute all of these things to him, you should consider that first.

          1. The problem is not that Vox makes observations. If he confined himself to simply commenting on statistical evidence and anecdotes, I wouldn’t have (much) of a problem with him, and would consider him to be a useful corrective to the current zeitgeist, although not someone to get all your news from.
            The problem is that his proposed solutions to genuinely concerning problems tend to be along the lines of race and sex, which is why I consider him the mirror image of the SJWs.

          2. Which are those solutions? I’m trying to pin down “Wrong Stuff from Vox Day.” I have a few of my own (because I’m opinionated. I probably disagree with everyone about something), but every time someone on the interwebs comes up with something I end up down the rabbit-hole of he-said, that she-said that…. and I find out it’s not true.

            It’s worse than Sarah Palin.

            So any specifics would be helpful.

      2. The only reason he has them was because the misbehavior at WorldCon Hugo Ceremonies: The unecessary rudeness and petty nastiness and sheer ugliness of that evening really torqued everyones’ shorts. I think it was herding cats before.

  26. Hey everybody, did you know there’s no scoring in baseball? I bet you didn’t know that. Everything’s a tie. Just ask the doctor.

    1. I’ve watched baseball. It definitely FEELS like there’s no scoring. (yes, that was meant as a playful joke. But also why is baseball so boring? Seriously? Only English cricket is worse as far as I can tell)

          1. Courtesy and Respect go hand in hand (at least in broad social terms). Without Courtesy, Respect is never earned. You admittedly can respect someone who is not courteous, but that is the begrudging respect of an adversary, not the warm respect of a friend.

      1. “Chivalry was a system, which imposed behavioral obligations on women as well as on men.” – Glenn Reynolds

      2. Including the backstabber, the slanderer and other vile creatures?

        Let me think about this carefully…

        No.

      3. No… pretty sure it was courtesy to the weak (women and children), politesse to one’s equals, obedience to one’s Lord and the sword to varlets, churls, and cowards.

        What you’re thinking of is Christian charity. Overlapping sets, but not contiguous.

      4. Saladin was one of the most chivalrous belligerents in the crusades, and he personally beheaded Renauld de Chatillon after the Battle of Ein Jalut because the man was a lying sadistic son of a bitch. Even in chivalry, respect has to be earned.

  27. I met Chuck last month at the Wordfire Press booth, and had a really delightful half-hour-long conversation with him that I imagine could have easily metastasized into an all-night BS session with beer involved. He’s a great and really sharp guy, and I was inspired to add his books to my growing reading list

    That said, I’m afraid I agree with Brad Torgersen downthread. I do not believe that the current contretemps results from two sides advancing good-faith arguments but nonetheless failing to understand one another. Would that were so: I would much prefer a world in which I could civilly agree to disagree with Puppy Kickers, and I could read what interested or entertained me without being told by the likes of John Scalzi that my genital configuration, sexual orientation, and skin tone means I’m living life “on easy mode;” that my interests and preferences are a juvenile, negative influence that ought to be purged from the genre; and so forth and so on.

    I am not inclined to deal civilly with individuals whose method of argument consists of an increasingly absurd mix of mottes-and-baileys and kafkatraps. They are not honest interlocutors; they deserve nothing more than the rhetorical equivalent of being scraped from my shoe, the proprietor of “Whatever” included.

  28. I appreciate Chuck’s post. However, it’s obvious his logic is shown to be completely flawed when he compares Vox Day to Requires Hate.

    I’m no fan of Day. Some of his ideas are repugnant. His manner of expression is heated. In real world political terms, he’s Ann Coulter. I usually tune out because of ideas and tone. However, he’s never done worse than causing a few hurt feelings.

    RH, on the other hand, is truly despicable. Not just in ideology and tone (though she’s worse in both than Day). She hides behind multiple identities and other sleazy tactics. She’s caused real harm to real people. And she is still widely accepted among leftists in fandom even today. She is, in political terms, David Brock.

    There are thousands of Days on the fandom left, and dozens-to-hundreds of RHs. There are perhaps dozens-to-hundreds of Days and no RH equivalents I can find on the right today. There’s the true imbalance which produces incivility. Couple that with the left-wing impulse to control rather than co-exist, and you have the recipe for war.

    1. Yes to this. All of it. And thank you for phrasing the difference between Day and Hate.

      It speaks much that Scalzi, and the rest still accept RH but shun Day; but then again SJWs defend pedophiles and totalitarianism so it does not surprise me. We are not the ones pretending to be good guys while covering up for the evils in our ranks.

      If indeed Day were as evil as they believed him, he would have long ago refused to abide by the law and simply and permanently ended certain problems when he felt moved to act.

      1. In the end, I believe Day truly believes in civilization, and that people should be free to make their own choices. Yes, all people.

        Aside: Re “I don’t agree with everything he says” – I don’t agree with everything you, Sarah, Larry, or others here write either, so I’m not terribly inclined to slip into the defensive frame with Vox either.

    2. Add to that the access these people – including most of the Days on the left and some of the RHS – have to mass media and you have a critical power imbalance as well.

      When you consider the narratives of power that the SJWs like to use, and the disparate authority and access wielded by the SP vs, ASPS it’s friggin’ hilarious.

  29. The problem with modern discourse or the lack thereof is the sheer lack of consequences for boorish, intellectually dishonest or flat-out deceitful behavior and words. Perhaps this has always been a problem, but it is extremely notable in this circumstance and when combined with distance and internet anonymity, perhaps insurmountable.

    At the end of it all, however, if the principle of inclusiveness is to be exercised as to fringe philosophies and lifestyles, then it must also be exercised as to conventional and mainstream philosophies and lifestyles.

    It really is that simple. Do unto ALL others as you would have ALL others do unto you.

    When advocates for the fringe elements (who undoubtedly hate the phrasing and would take me to task for it, but candidly I’m sick of trying to find “acceptable” language for fringe element people because 100% of people understand the reference and that it is made without denying the validity of their existence or choices but merely in reference to the fact that relatively few make those choices) promote fringe elements to the exclusion of mainstream elements, they are violating their own principles and being intellectually dishonest to the point of hypocrisy. That is one part of the problem and bad enough in its’ own right. They apparently feel no shame about violating their own principles, they express no remorse for having taken a once-reasonable concept way too far, and they don’t listen to rational arguments because they don’t think they need to. Surely they must wonder: what’s wrong with being hypocritical and why do we care?

    This is the other, more frustrating, piece of the problem: they see nothing whatsoever wrong with being that way. It’s nihilism at the end of the analysis, anything-goes, we do what we feel like without regard for fairness, logic, consistency or any other principle that allows humans to co-exist at levels above sheer brute savagery.

    How can one use the tools of civilization on savages who completely disregard them? One cannot. They cannot be shamed, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be dissuaded. If this sounds like more of a reference to the Mob or a Terminator, perhaps that is not misplaced. Let us instead ask: what inclusive outcome would satisfy the Antis? If they cannot articulate one, then perhaps they may begin to understand their own problem.

  30. To note the obvious, Maggie Mead was one of God’s great fools. There are few academics who have been more thouroghly debunked.

  31. Civility . . . You know, my personal experience with the SP opposition in 2015, was that the more civil I tried to be, the lower their blows got. To include actionable defamation and slander, which (when they were called on it) frightened a major media outlet like Entertainment Weekly into retracting its own grossly-in-error tabloid article. Heck, the founder of TOR itself also took to the internet airwaves to mitigate the slander and defamation an employee of his own company chose to use in the midst of promoting a TOR product.

    If the opponents of SP had somehow managed to refrain from defamatory, untrue hyperbole — calling people Nazis, or racists — probably things would not have gotten so heated. But my observation is that many of the opponents of SP believed fervently that a) no person of worth could possibly disagree with the outlandish, unfair attacks on SP, and b) lies are perfectly okay to tell, when used against the opposition. Because c) they’re the kind of lies the Puppy-kickers (sorry, Chuck, sometimes you gotta call a pineapple a pineapple) were prepared to believe no matter what.

    In other words, always tell the home stadium crowd exactly what they want to hear. Even if it’s a complete fabrication.

    There is also the massive imbalance of power. The Puppy-kickers held practically all the face cards, and many of the high cards. They had the wider media eating out of their hand from the get-go, and they had well-known heavy-hitters (like Scalzi and Martin) going to bat for their side all summer long. Their narrative was the larger progressive narrative of Poor Little Victims being “aggressed” by the evil bad naughty people, despite the fact the Puppy-kickers had all of the money and influence from start to finish. They still clutched their pearls and stumbled for the fainting couch — while throwing rhetorical grenades by the gross.

    Then there were the serial acts of incivility at the Hugo awards proper. The wooden asterisks (cough, CHORFholes, cough) were a tasteless, no-class stunt. The NO AWARD scuttling of the Best Editor – Long Form category, in mindless lockstep fashion, after we’d heard endless whining that SP was somehow lockstep itself, and therefore inexcusably bad — even though the actual voting results prove that there was no lockstep at all on the part of SP supporters, who voted for who and what they liked on an individual basis.

    Orson Scott Card told me that his experience (in this field) is that the people who hate him, always project. Meaning, they always accuse Scott of doing and being all the dastardly things they themselves (his critics) do and are all the time; without blushing.

    I’d say 2015 pretty much confirms what Scott was talking about: they accuse us of being and doing all the crappy, underhanded, low, dirty things they themselves do and are. And they either know this, and don’t care — or they are oblivious, and not introspective enough to see their hypocrisy. My bet is on the latter.

    SP3 was definitely not perfect. And I take the blame for the lion’s share of the honest mistakes. As amateur science fiction politician, I was learning as I went. And I am sad for a few of the personal bridges that got severed in the process. In this way, it was definitely not a bloodless fight.

    But my opponents? They lost any willingness I might have had to parlay, when they used every dirty trick in the book to try to not only ruin SP3, and those connected with it, but to also ruin my personal and professional lives. I could not have a principled discussion of points with people who made the destruction of Brad R. Torgersen their objective. I was their road apple. Their low-hanging fruit. A clay pigeon. They did everything they could to “off” me, short of hiring a hit man. (I didn’t believe nor did I talk about the death threats; those were obvious garbage from obvious trolls.)

    As I have said many, many times before: Sad Puppies demanded nothing, and threatened nothing. This is a provable, objective fact.

    The opponents of Sad Puppies demanded and threatened a great deal. This is also a provable, objective fact.

    And we (SP) get blamed for not offering enough olive branches? When the opposition threw nothing but hammers, knives, and chainsaws at us?

    1. Here’s where I disagree with Brad. I think the Sad Puppies did demand something: we demanded that the other side live by its own standards.

      They refused.

        1. Wolfmanjim –

          You hit the wrong Reply link on this one. Might want to repost it further down so it’s obvious who you’re replying to, because this comment thread is going to grow really huge eventually, and it’ll be hard to tell at that point who you were talking to.

    2. It’s like saying Israel simply won’t give peace a chance when it’s the Arabs who are continually trying to commit genoice and rid the land of Jews.

      When your opposition isn’t open at all to the possibility of peace except the peace of the dead (and they clearly mean for you to occupy that category), then there is no moral reason to offer an olive branch ever to them until they are forced to negotiate.

      I keep thinking of Kratman’s Transis in the Carerra series. They do the exact same things the SJBs and puppy-kickers are doing here in real life, and they have the same deluded fantasy of them being the morally superior ones when they are themselves the moral blight.

      1. Do you have any source for your assertion that Arabs wanted to kill off Israeli Jews? There’s zero evidence of it and if we look at how things have actually gone it’s the Palestinians who have gotten the shortest end of the stick in that conflict–by far.

        1. That’s because Israel won a civil war, an international war in ’48, another in ’67 and another in ’73.

        2. ” But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).”

          Hamas Charter Article 7.

        3. Oh, nothing more than their own statements. But I guess we can’t accept those if they don’t follow the leftist “narrative,” can we?

        4. Uh, the Palestinian version of the Muppets had a character leave the show by suicide-bombing Jews.

          Also see Hamas’s constitution.

    3. Heck, the founder of TOR itself also took to the internet airwaves to mitigate the slander and defamation an employee of his own company chose to use in the midst of promoting a TOR product.

      And then the ASPs complained that he “threw her under the bus.”

    4. Brad,

      That is the core problem. So many are willing to fire on their own side, but not truly hold the other side accountable. Where is the long rant against the SJWs? It won’t fly on their sites and would not be posted here.

      Yet those like the author here feel free to take pot shots against those on their side. That is reprehensible and would have gotten them shot in past earthly wars.

      Can you imagine a commander on the Allied side in WW 1 shooting at those in his trenches? That is what we have here.

  32. Hello. Before heading home and doing Dad stuff, I just wanted to say that I appreciate all the comments (even those that Mr. Mays has made at my expense; I cannot fault him his ability to turn a sharp quip).

    Whether or not I agree with all the statements and comments is beside the point. Rather, for me, the point is this: there has been no profanity, vitriol, or attacks made on the basis of personal traits or presumed characteristics (ad hominem). The challenges been have been courteous, serious, and remain affixed to issues and actual statements. For which I thank you.

    And I do not exclude Mr. Mays from my thanks. In some ways, his posts strike me as the most important. Because frankly, if this was as “vitriolic” as the debates on these topics ever became, the state of discourse in our field would be in infinitely better shape.
    I do want to point to (and thereby reemphasize) a line with which I introduced this essay. Specifically,

    “No value judgments implied, but it was a call for courteous self-awareness when in discourse, and, more directly, a kind of diagram of what our discursive behavior tells us about our deepest motivations: are we talking to communicate or do battle? At no point do I imply that battle is always avoidable, or even wrong; just that it’s important to know when you’ve crossed the line, and what that really means.”

    One of the (few) similarities between the reader reactions on Whatever and here is that many perceive this subtext: “And shame on you for crossing that line!”

    No, no, and no. I *do* think that the outcome of battles is destruction. I *do* think that destruction is a damned waste. But I am neither so foolish as to think that it is always avoidable, or that *any* alternative is preferable. So the limit at which destruction becomes the prefereable alternative is ultimately one of personal judgment.

    I *do* think that when conflicts get heated, most of us (self included) have a reflex to err to the side of excess when matching what we perceive to be another side’s escalation. But not all persons’ experiences of a conflict are identical (as the Korean axiom has it, “We see from where we sit”), so I cannot reasonably presume that all the people in a conflict have “over-escalated.” Only they can know that.

    My primary point is simply a structural one: if you are using words not merely to win a debate, but to inflict damage, you are now destroying the discursive fabric and that means you have escalated out of the realm of communication/argument with the other side. And if you are trying to convince fence-sitters that you are the preferable alternative, then vitriol and personal attack will generally work against securing their opinion and/or affinity. So I am also making observations (again, non-partisan) about what I will call the tactical consquences of rhetorical choices.

    Much can be said about where the debates started, and what they entail, and who has the right of them. But I am not speaking to that here. I am not even speaking to the idea of vigorous, even empassioned argument. I am not asking for people to get along. I am posing this one concept for consideration: if vitriol and abusive language offers no discernible argumentative or tactical advantages, why engage in it? If you feel it truly has no costs, then I suppose you have no reason not to employ it. But for those (like me) who feel that it has costs (upon self, public discourse, and outcomes), then why incur costs that produce no tangible gain?

    Lastly, whatever personal choices I have made regarding who I do and do not associate with has:

    a) not been done with any animus or accusations. E.G. Mr. Day and I have had perfectly courteous exchanges.

    b) not been made a matter of public pronouncement or record (with this one muted exception). Over my career, I have maintained professional distance from certain persons for various reasons. But I do not detail why I made those choices, much less aim invective at those persons.

    Thanks again for your comments and civility.

    1. That was not a “sharp quip.” It was the distillation of two years research reading thousands of Tweets and blog posts which resulted in a 200-300,000 word book documenting the 2009-2015 rise of this sick gender feminist cult in the core SFF community. I have never bothered to edit the wordy and repetitious raw first draft but it is meticulously researched and fact-checked, including several hundred linked quotes by our social justice hate movement.

    2. Chuck,

      I haven’t read the conversation on Whatever, but I know it is highly regulated. I do not believe it is tightly controlled here. You are comparing apples and rocks.

      Note the side that cannot handle the open conversation. Perhaps your time would be better spent there than at shooting on those you claim to be compatriots with.

      Though by insulting VD out of hand you insult many others of us. Who you shoot at indicates whose side you really are on.

    3. For the most part I agreed with your original essay, but you make one point here that is absolutely false. Vitriol and abusive language DOES, in fact, offer a significant tactical advantage. It may not convince fence-sitters in and of itself, but it does dissuade fence-sitters who may disagree with you from speaking up, for fear of becoming the next target, which in turn allows you to dominate the conversation, which in turn does allow you to convince more people that your ideas are the truth, in the end.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say this is a good thing. As you say, the end result of the “this is a war, and the enemy must be utterly destroyed” mentality can only be destruction, and I feel that mentality should only be brought to bear when actual lives are on the line. War is war, and debate is debate, and science fiction is the sort of thing that should be debated over, not fought over. I don’t agree with the tactics commonly used by the social justice community, or by people like Vox Day, and don’t believe those tactics should be used against anyone who isn’t trying to kill you. But to say that there is no tactical advantage to using them? History has proven otherwise, time and time again. That’s why people keep on doing it.

  33. This gets tedious to the point of unconsciousness. You have people bright-eyed and enthusiastic to talk about the homework they refuse to do. Go to a Twitter feed like Cecily Kane or Amal El-Mohtar right now and tell me what you see. It is sickening, hateful and obsessive. Then go to “You may also like” to see who these people Tweet with and what they Tweet about. It is a fascinating tour through SFF’s animal kingdom. And what is El-Mohtar promoting? An article at Uncanny. And is it about rocket ships or galaxies? Why would a KKK like Uncanny do that? Naturally it’s about what jerks men are. And just as naturally anyone who disagrees defaults to a Men’s Rights Activist. I could tell Uncanny was a diversity KKK just from looking at the names on the first cover.

    The truth is that despite what this sick “feminist” movement in SFF maintains, there are no scores of Twitter feeds making up demonizing theories about non-whites, women and gays that can match “rape culture,” “misogyny,” “patriarchy,” “white male privilege” and all the other bullshit stuff they obsess about on a daily basis. And don’t forget to Google the recent “Ferguson” Afrofuturism symposium at Princeton. It was mostly black SFF authors we all now know all too well. The one’s who can’t live a day without attacking whites. Don’t forget to visit Mikki Kendall’s Twitter feed, a shut-in who’s amassed 200,000 Tweets in 6 years. That’s 80-100 Tweets without missing a day, much of it unrelenting hatred of whites. And she’s a respected figure with the social justice crowd in SFF.

    First realize what I just mentioned in 1/5000th of what’s going on, then realize there is no other side to that. I dare anyone to try to show it to me. Good luck. It doesn’t exist. That’s why social justice crusaders multiply Vox and J. Wright like a hall of mirrors. Gannon is wrong. There was an attack and now a response. Saying this is a civility issue is like saying the divide between neo-Nazis and Jews is a civility issue. Do your fucking homework; research, fact-check and source this stuff. If you don’t want to, fine. Then don’t write about stuff you’re so far out of the loop on the Army of the Potomac becomes “SJWs.”

  34. For clarity’s sake, in the time between the submission of my longer comment and its moderation and posting, things did get a bit less civil here. So I was not blind: simply out of phase.

    1. Hard to tell who you see as “less civil” or is that just a general swipe to remove responsibility from yourself?

      Though it is hard to be civil in these conversations after years (yes years) of SJWs being very uncivil. Do you really think calling others RSHD and far worse is something to respond to civilly?

    2. What are you calling “less civil”?

      I’ve just gone through all 400+ comments as of this writing and failed to see anything that isn’t rational or accurately descriptive. Compare and contrast to the usual howls of “racist”, “misogynist”, “homophobe”, “sexist”, and lesser, but more frequent insults hurled this way on the competing thread. The latest in a long series of verbal ejaculations.

      You have received substantial criticism and chosen a lazy, but entirely predictable retreat. If you truly value dialogue and constructive communication, your responses shouldn’t be summed up as “Let’s everyone be reasonable and just agree with me.”

  35. “Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC (person of color) what they =really= meant.” – Steven Gould, science fiction author and president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA)

    “I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” – John Scalzi, SF author, winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, five time nominated, three time winner of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award nominee and president of the SFWA

    “SFF is, alas, dominated by white westerners” – Aliette de Bodard, science fiction and fantasy (SFF) author , five-time nominated, two-time winner of the Nebula Award and two-time nominee for the Hugo Award, SFWA member

    I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.” – Kate Elliot, Nebula-nominated SFF author and SFWA member

    “sounds like something a straight white cis dude does, secure that his position and privilege will always be there.” – Veronica Schanoes, Nebula nominated SFF author and SFWA member

    “The law is made by rich, selfish, shitty people – mostly white, mostly men – with cockroaches for hearts. Fuck their ‘rule of law.'” – Saladin Ahmed, Hugo and Nebula Award nominated SFF author and SFWA member

    “I’d say most white men should come with TWs (trigger warnings) for unthinking privileged arrogance, but that’s like saying books need TWs for ‘contains words’.” – Rose Fox, SFF editor, SFWA member and Publisher’s Weekly review editor

    I can produce 5,000 hysteric quotes like that from 150 editors, bloggers, serial convention panelists, con organizers, publishers and award nominated SFF authors. There is no “other side.” Please don’t talk to me about civility. This is about a hate movement led by bigots, the mentally ill and naive and the pushback against that hate movement by normal human beings who enjoy an actual genre and want to be left alone to do just that. I’m trying to imagine A.E. Van Vogt writing about “black tears,” or Jack Vance calling people “shitlords” for not agreeing with his posts about “homo black broads” or Famous Monsters of Filmland having regular articles about how stupid women are and I just can’t. That’s because it never happened; not in 100 years, though our “feminists” lie that it did.

    1. I don’t think that I have seen the leading voices from Whatever/ML/SomethingAwful/F770 address those substantively – or offer anyone else beside VD/JW as the counter position.

      I appreciated Chuck’s visit and his engagement – but neither has he substantively addressed these, which must be done in order to credibly demonstrate a ‘moderate’ or middle position nor offered a strategy to address them – other than (a) ‘be nice’ and (b) ‘if you are going to be mean, know that you are doing it and for what purpose’.

      I think that many posters are already complying with his suggestion (b).

  36. Great guest post.

    And there’s an easy way out of this. EASY.

    I agree with Gannon that being civil AND speaking out is the best course. But the fact of the matter is that we don’t have to engage in any “war” at all.

    Authors are not forced through a SJW gauntlet to get their stuff published. Not in today’s market. Not with indie publishing. Sure, there might be editors at this or that house. But you don’t have to publish with any house to publish.

    Look at Marko Kloos. Look at Annie Bellet. Look at LL Muir. Konrath. Blake. And thousands of others.

    No single group controls access to readers. Not any more.

    So the solution is to forget the Hugos. Who cares about the Hugos?

    If readers want to promote fiction that they feel is great, then set up some other award.

    When the automobile came along, the auto makers felt no need to go give the buggy makers what for. No need at all. Why would they? They had superior product. All they needed to do was get it to the market and get it noticed.

    You want to promote awesome fiction of all stripes?

    Well, heck, Larry’s already doing that with his book bombs. He just needs a TV talk show that features boot fashion and melon ballers for men, and he’ll be golden. He’ll rocket new voices to stardom like Oprah or Carson have. Then he can start a line of lipstick in camo colors.

    But until we get that, why not go to cons where all stripes of readers appear. If the problem is that the Hugos has one general type of reader, then go out to places with a broader swath of readers. See if you can’t get the various Comic Cons to partner in a new award. Or GenCon.

    Get a new award with an awesome name. We’ve got the Penn, O’Henry, Nebula, Sturgeon, Campbell, Hugo, Edgar, Pulitzer. How about the Blaze award. The FAB (freaking awesome book). Okay, maybe not that one. The Correia. The Owen. The Agent Franks Award for awesome fiction.

    The Agent Franks Award for Awesome Fiction…

    Or set up an annual like America’s Best Fiction does and rotate in various big name “editors” to select awesome books.

    The point is that the Hugos are what they are. Who cares? They’re like a little hill. Let the folks who like that hill have their hill party. It doesn’t hurt a soul. In the meantime, the rest of the country–the rolling hills and mountains and plains–are open before us.

    1. You’re right about authors not needing the old gatekeepers’ approval anymore. It doesn’t follow that the forces who captured trad publishing and the Hugos are now harmless; much less that we can ignore them.

      There is one party that the vast majority of indie authors rely on to reach readers–Amazon. If you think they’re somehow immune to pressure, I can tell you about the book they removed from KDP at a word from Scalzi.

      The forces we’re up against–call them CHORFs, SJWs, Morlocks; whatever you like–have infiltrated and dominated every other institution they’ve set their sights on. The only reason they haven’t invaded Indie is because they don’t yet realize it’s a threat.

      The CHORFs are obsessing over their little hill because they think it’s big. But they’re totalitarian if nothing else. When the Big Five implode; when no awards are given in certain Hugo categories for multiple years in a row, they’ll figure it out. And make no mistake–they’ll come for us.

      If you’re fine with preemptive surrender, then no, you don’t have to fight this war. But don’t expect them to be gracious.

      A year ago I was exactly where you are now. Then I looked back at how avoiding conflict forfeited almost all of the arts and most of the culture one inch at a time.

      This enemy doesn’t understand anything outside their own heads. They don’t understand civility because they only use civility as a feint. They don’t understand compromise because with them it’s always “heads I win, tails you lose”.

      There’s only one thing they understand. It’s the most powerful word in the English language. It’s concise, unambiguous, and never overstates itself.

      That word is “no”.

      Can we just let them have the Hugos? No.

      Are we willing to compromise? No.

      Can’t we all be civil? No.

      Aren’t we just being mean and tribalistic? No.

      Will they let us have our own award free from entryism? No.

      We owe them nothing. Let’s give it to them.

      1. I wonder if you vastly overestimate the power and numbers of these folks.

        How many people attended WorldCon this year?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Worldcons

        Looking at the numbers, I think SP drove somewhere between 4,000 to 6,000 more folks to sign up to vote. Without SP, it would be just a handful. Even with them it’s a big whopping 10,000. Some of whom voted for SP. So let’s double it. 20,000 folks.

        Big whoop.

        SLC Comic Con 120k.

        San Diego Comic-Con 130k.

        GenCon 61k.

        I could go on.

        The vast majority of those folks don’t care and don’t know about the Hugos. They just love great SFF.

        If Larry’s basic premise is correct and SJW fiction doesn’t work as well as fiction where the story comes first, then the only issue is getting the word out about great story-first fiction. The market will flock to it.

        If you want to beat McDonalds, I guess you could go storm their store and demand they serve prime rib. Or you set up your prime rib shops, and if the prime rib sandwiches really are that good, the foot traffic will turn your way.

        1. Oh, and just another numbers thing. I think Larry gets more than 10k people to his site each month. Larry, by himself.

        2. I agree with your head counts for the various cons. As for Larry’s readership, the history of Book Bomb! results inclines me to believe you may be lowballing a bit 😉

          We also agree that the opposition’s numbers are small relative to greater fandom and the general population. Yet despite being vastly outnumbered, look what they’ve achieved.

          They halved the Big Five’s SFF sales, took over SFWA, and dominated Worldcon–all in 20 years.

          You correctly argue that these institutions are irrelevant. But they weren’t prior to that 20 year march.

          I’m all for discussing which hills we’re ready to die on, but before we can have that discussion, everyone needs to understand how the enemy operates.

          They’re experts at infiltrating and subverting organizations–especially when they’re at a numeric disadvantage.

          San Diego, SLCCC, and Gen Con have lots of thankless scut jobs that Morlocks will gladly take to get their feet in the door and multiply.

          How many of those cons have codes of conduct? All it takes is one infiltrator on a committee and the other members’ complacency to weaponize the rules against normal fans.

          Larry posted a while back about a guy who complained that Gen Con isn’t safe for minorities. That’s how it starts.

          I’m all for starting new awards and moving on to greener convention pastures. But unless the unequivocal message is sent that entryism will not be tolerated, anything we build will look just like Worldcon and trad publishing inside of 2 decades.

          1. Isn’t entryism what SP practiced with the Hugos?

            I don’t think the answer is to silence the other voices out there. Why hound them out of the city? If they are offering burnt burgers and there are nice juicy ones right next door, then only those who truly like burnt burgers are going to patronize that vendor. The rest of the market will automatically flow to the juicy product.

            I really think the answer is to spread your own message with civility, courage, good sense, and good humor. Meet attacks that rise to a level that merits a response with a compelling response.

            And above all, make sure the market can get to and see what else is out there because the market is the giant that will do the work.

          2. “Isn’t entryism what SP practiced with the Hugos?”

            No.

            It’s mind-boggling and suicidal to presume good faith on the part of the enemy when their zero sum, intolerant intentions couldn’t be more publicly on display if they took out a full page ad in the NY Times saying “Fandom for Me, but Not for Thee”.

            Archbishop Charles Chaput had their number back in 2012:

            “Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be.”

            We’re not dealing with fair-minded people whose aesthetic tastes simply differ from ours. They actively and avidly seek power; not for some greater good, or even for its own sake, but to destroy the good.

            What we’re dealing with is more like the Sith. Their numbers are small, but they find no shortage of venal apparatchiks and useful idiots who help them worm their way in. Then they hunt down all opposition and turn our Republics into their Empires.

          3. How is it not entryism?

            “a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organisation in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program.”

            This is exactly what SP did. That was it’s whole purpose–bring a crowd of SP folks to the WorldCon organization in an attempt to expand their SP influence on the award and the type of fiction that got recognized in general.

            Maybe you’re using the term for something more specific.

            I don’t question the fact that some folks are ardent in their desire to promote their views. And that some folks promote things that seem odd to me like only reading fiction written by women for a year. Or even try to convince everyone that all books must always include some certain demographic. Etc.

            Which, BTW, is very different from Larry’s inclusion of at least one Mormon and a Portuguese in his books. Larry does it because he loves to do it, they’re his peoples, but he would never campaign that all books written must include a Mormon and a Portuguese. Or Orcs.

            Anyway, I agree that some folks have a view of what fiction should be and include. But it’s the internet, man. People can rage all they want about what people should sell and what they should buy, but the sellers and buyers just flow around them and go on their merry way selling and buying what they want.

            There’s no senate for the Sith to control. And there’s definitely no crazy space lighting. There are, however, many characters like Jar Jar Binks running around.

          4. Because it wasn’t a political strategy.

            To my knowledge, neither Larry nor Brad sought to restrict things to only bring in the SP crowd. In fact, the attitude in general seemed to be the more the merrier.

            Larry pointed out that politics played a role in determining things like which books were nominated and recognized. He took the stance that story should be more important than message. He encouraged people to read things and to vote whatever way they felt. To vote honestly.

            Much hysteria ensued.

            To my ears, what Larry–and later Brad–did reads more like democracy than entryist techniques. Yes, they wanted a wider array of works considered, and encouraged people to vote. But they allowed the books to rest on their own merits to garner votes.

          5. It’s not entryism because I was there first. So was Minz and John Wright and any number of decades-long fans I could name who got involved with the SP-3 because it was the right thing to do. And fun 🙂

          6. While I agree in principle as I am naturally inclined to go do my own thing rather than demand whatever group I’m a part of to capitulate to my desires–either through loud tantrums or subterfuge–there comes a time when you can retreat no further.

            The thing about entryists is that they don’t build and create their own things. Rather, they are parasitic in nature, feeding off of the efforts others put in to build a thing. Why should we abandon what we have built? Because there will come a time when we’ve reached the shore and retreat will no longer be an option. Personally, I would prefer to be left alone, but that isn’t an option if the other person doesn’t feel the same and refuses to accept or accede to any sort of boundary.

            I don’t really see the Sad Puppies as practicing entryist techniques. Prior to SP, I had no idea a normal person, a reader, could vote on the Hugos. What SP did was inform people that they could vote, and encouraged them to read what they voted on and, well, vote.

            To be honest, it wasn’t so much Larry or Brad’s efforts that persuaded me, but the reaction of those who ought to have behaved as grown-ups, but have shown they are completely without honor or integrity. A few months of watching reactions on a fairly superficial level–I didn’t go out of my way to search things out, unless it was to verify claims and quotes–turned me from a Puppy sympathizer into something a little more rabid.

            Because there comes a time when a person has to stand up and say, “Enough.”

            I’m not choosing to die on the Hugo Hill. It’s simply the place where I chose to stand up.

          7. Democracy is politics. Getting a community to change is politics. And that was the goal of SP.

            But I do get your point. If we’re defining entryism as some kind of sneaky virus plot, then SP was definitely not that.

            When you refer to abandoning “what we have built”, what are you referring to?

            Certainly not the Hugos, right? You’re talking about the Amazon Award (for lack of a better name at this point) that could be given in the future. Or something else?

          8. You do realize that some of the people here have been around nearly as long as World Con and some of the people on this blog have been participating in Worldcon for that entire time?

          9. I believe Brian Niemeier was talking about some future thing.

            But as for WorldCon, sure. Lots of folks have been going for a long time.

            At the same time, I think there’s a difference between owning a business and patronizing it. Someone may have been there when Five Guys first opened its doors, but that doesn’t give them ownership of the place. They may be disappointed when management and the product changes, but it’s still not their joint.

            There may be people here who volunteered to be staff in years past, and they’d have good cause to feel disappointed if they felt what they worked to achieve was undone, but do they have any more right to the thing than all the staff that came thereafter? Or the others who volunteered with them who like the current direction?

            I’m 100% behind the ideas Larry has shared about message fiction and dumb social prescriptions some folks make about what everyone else should and shouldn’t have in their fiction. And I can see the importance of making a stand somewhere. If nothing else, it rallies folks to think and speak up. I just think there are a lot of bigger opportunities.

          10. It also reminded people who had GAFIA-ted from Worldcon fandom to come back. All was not lost. Ca ira!

          11. ‘Entryism’ as used here is the SJW appropriation of the Leftist Leninist organizational weapon.

            In the Leninist organizational weapon, true believers join an organization under false pretenses, work their way into leadership, take over, and run off the non-believers. It is a way of suborning an organization to a particular flavor of leftist agenda.

            In entryism:
            1) A pink polka dotted Martian SJW joins an organization
            2) Demand change, because the organization isn’t supportive of pink polka dotted Martians, and it needs to recruit more pink polka dotted Martians.
            3) Run off everyone who isn’t a pink polka-dotted Martian.

            A example being that woman who quit being a Linux kernel developer because her racist anti-Finnish views were not being adopted by the organization.

            SP3 was neither, because there was no false pretense and no effort to change the rules.

    2. I would love it to be that simple, but to me it is not.
      Right now the Hugo is the most prestigious award around. It’s the Olympics of SFF. We could start a new award, and in a decade or so it may match or overtake the Hugos in prestige. That would be wonderful, but you don’t stop participating in the Olympics while your new award is building its name. Also I do not think the SJW mob are the kind that could leave anything they perceive as a challenge alone.

      1. I seriously doubt that most SFF readers really know or care about the Hugo or Nebula. Many of those that do recognize the names couldn’t tell you the difference between the two, much less the Campbell or the many others.

        The Salt Lake City Comic Con itself had over 120k attendees. It’s attendance dwarfs WorldCon. I’m betting that the vast majority of those folks don’t know what the Hugos are. Don’t care.

        No data, but that’s my hunch.

        But they would know about awards that they got to vote in.

        I think the only thing that keeps the Hugo name alive outside of WorldCon is little star bursts put on the covers of books by traditional publishers. Well, and Sad Puppies bringing so much attention to it 🙂 Yes, it would take a couple of years to build the brand, but if this award actually drove massive sales, if it engaged the hundreds of thousands of SFF readers in a fun way, then nobody would talk about the Hugos.

        Why would they? It’s the car and the buggy.

        Correction, some would. And I think it’s fine for folks to give awards to books they feel meet their tastes really well. If SJWs want to give awards to SJW books, then I say more power to them. The great thing about the internet is that you can’t keep the hordes out of it.

    1. Yeah, Slate Star Codex is pretty damn awesome. I might not always agree with everything he has to say, but I do more often than not, and even when I don’t it’s always well-argued, thought-provoking, and entertaining. I’d suggest checking it out!

  37. The Amazon Award.

    A kick butt woman in full Greek war gear holding a book in one hand and a spear in the other.

    The Tolkien Award.

    Good grief, why not? The man spawned a whole new genre.

    The Middle Earth Award.

    The Bilbo.

    The Gamgee.

    Because Sam was really the hero in the end.

          1. Well rats. I couldn’t get the image to imbed using the usual html tags. Turns out WordPress doesn’t allow it generally. So here’s the link: ttps://tempestinateardrop.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/athena-print-01.png

        1. Well, if she holds a bow she won’t get bowled over when the phalanxes collide, the delicate little flower…

      1. Technically – a woman archer with one breast cut off so as not to impede the bowstring. I’d prefer a little artistic license here.

        1. Except the breast thing is ridiculous. How many top-notch women archers do we have today that have perfectly fine breasts? Some historical idiot who has no breasts must have thought that one up. And if the breasts are too large, then good grief, give those gals a spear. Or have them work the pavis. No need to mutilate 🙂

          1. I dunno. I hear quite a lot of classical fighters worked naked, and I don’t hear that modern female archers do that much. I imagine the string could hurt a bit under such conditions.

            That said, I imagine they weren’t as well fed as we are.

            It might just be the same as the stories about a woman warrior needing to kill a man in order to wed. Which is, where are all the mass graves of women stripped after a battle, with skeletons deformed by practicing arms?

            My own taste is for a young female kyudoka rising like Venus from an open book. But that isn’t necessarily timeless.

          2. Which is why they’d wear clothes (grin)

            Armies of naked ladies with large gravity-defying breasts going to war are nowhere in the historical record, even if Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta thought they made terrific covers.

            The only historical accounts of naked battle that I know of are Roman reports of Celts in the BC time frame. And the Celts soon learned that fighting against folks like the Romans when wearing armor went a bit better than sending in lots of big men to run around naked in blue body paint, as scary as that may be.

            The Amazons, according to the tales, were in Turkey or Scythia. Places that were well-steeped in the Assyrian, Hittite, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek style of warfare, which was loaded with shields, armor, etc. And had been for a very long time.

            I believe none of the ancient art of Amazons show any missing breasts. Some do show the left breast covered. Interestingly enough, archers do the same today. It’s called a chest guard. An wouldn’t you know it, but it covers the left breast of the archer, for those drawing right-handed.

            http://www.lancasterarchery.com/shooting-gear/gloves-guards-tabs/chest-guards-protectors.html

            Seems the ancients were just as practical as we are today. Why cut off a breast when you can just cover it up?

          3. I think Amazons are more myth than history. If so, the absurdly fantastic elements are just as authentic as the practical ones.

            Kaga from KanColle was one of the images that came to my mind, and I’ve seen her depicted with a chest guard often enough.

            I screwed up trying to model Amazons of Celts. Thanks.

            We want a woman, a weapon, and probably a book.

            I don’t know much about sculptures, I’m guessing rather than something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L6SNPOI?keywords=kancolle%20kaga%20figure&qid=1444801775&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

            we would want something simple, with few elements and a simple base. Then if it has to be a bow, she might work better if she is in the process of shooting a scroll from it.

          4. Most of the people who talk about removing breasts for female archery have never shot a bow. That really isn’t how the parts intersect.

            Not to mention performing major surgery a couple thousand years ago. 🙂

          5. I have to admit that “ancient woman warrior with next to no body fat” and “boobs big enough to get in the way of a bowstring” aren’t exactly concepts that logically go together.

    1. I rather like The Amazon one. Has so many flavours of tongue in cheek interpretation. (Amazon has been quite explosively helpful to indie writers, and Amazons are traditionally strong women, etc…)

  38. If I understand Dr. Gannon, the idea is that iterated prisoner’s dilemma is complicated when the sides don’t have the same definitions of “defection”.

    The creation of “Sad Puppies”, in and of itself, was seen as a defection, but only by one side.
    “No Award” was also seen as a defection by one side, and not the other.

    I would argue that the only way for two sides to come together would be in a diplomatic framework of objective rules, but….
    One side has decided to change the rules, and the other sees that as a defection.

    It goes on like that. Mr. Gannon is making a good point, but IPD says you’re just stupid to continue trying to cooperate with a constant defector, or even an unpredictable one. You will always loose. As long as the definitions of “defection” can’t be agreed upon, only luck would wind up with a way to return to cooperation. However, it’s important to remember that “zero cooperation” IS a better outcome than “constantly taken by defection” for the side that would be taken in.

    I’d be fascinated to hear how two parties could manage some framework, without external rules, when they don’t agree on what’s a defection.

  39. The last time I was influenced to buy a book by a Hugo award was 25 years ago. The book was OK, but not really to my taste. I haven’t paid attention to the Hugos since, as the authors I enjoy don’t appear to live in the Hugo universe. So I really can’t work up much emotion about the whole SP3 thing. I just don’t much care.

    That said, if the next awards look to be anything like the last, I’m going to show up with a can of gasoline and a bag of marshmallows. Heck, I might vote No Award just for the H*ll of it. Creative destruction and all that.

  40. While I appreciate Chuck’s post, I’m afraid we’re well past civility. We were certainly past civility when the Hugo ceremony was turned into a travesty, a spectacle hosted by a man who made no secret of his loathing for the Sad Puppies during the months prior to the awards. When wooden asterisks were being passed around, it was too late. When Toni Weisskopf was insulted and walked out of the ceremony, it was too late. When L Jagi Lamplighter Wright was cursed out by her own editor for the perceived sins of her husband, it was too late. And when a No Award slate was voted in to punish thousands of Hugo voters, it was too late.

    The other side has been waging culture war for decades. It’s time we realized that.

    1. It was worse than that. Gerrold as much as said that we as an entire group would object to receiving an award from a gay man and black woman. That was not based on research, fact-checking and quotes but on the usual stupid where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire assertions about straight white men.

      1. Some belief systems are impervious to outside information. If the ONLY reason that people disagree with you is because they’re racist homophobes, well of course they’d object to receiving an award from a gay man and a black woman. That this world that they inhabit is (appropriately under the circumstances) FICTION is irrelevant to their Truth.

        So you can stick yourself on a broken record… “No I’m not, that’s a lie, no we’re not, that’s a lie, no I’m not, that’s a lie, no we’re not, that’s a lie…” and all they hear is “You wouldn’t deny it so hard if it weren’t true… also, wouldn’t it be a HOOT if those 2nd Am activists got their wish and all the gays and black people got guns!!! OMG!!! So FUNNY!!!”

        This “conversation” thing is difficult when people are living on entirely separate planets.

        1. There’s a reason why I ask if they’re listening to what the people they hate say… or what the voices in their tiny overheated little heads claim the people they hate are saying.

          1. I’ve used a clip from Spaceballs showing Dark Helmet playing with his dolls again to describe the phenomenon. 😉

  41. Firstly, it’s rarely a good idea to let the actions of another dictate the manner in which we respond. To do otherwise is to essentially say, “I accept that I do not define the means by which I engage in conflicts; I cede that initiative and authority to my opponent.”

    I would say “Firstly, it’s rarely a good idea to fight by Marquise of Queensbury rules when your opponents are using brass knuckles and knives.”

    People who define “racist” as “white” and “sexist” as “male”, and who think that saying “The Sad Puppies were started by white males” is all they need to say in order to “discredit” the Sad Puppies, have already gotten out the shivs.

    Actually, i’m going to put it more strongly than that: decent human beings think it’s racism when you judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. SJWs, “anti-Puppies”, and the left define a person’s character as their skin color.

    There’s no middle ground, so there’s no place for compromise.

    Personally, culturally I come from the other team. Know them? 80% of the people I associate with in meat space are them. I’m not one of them because I know them, and understand them. I understand that, to be of the left, one must be a liar, both to oneself, and to those around you (once you’ve pretended to believe that the US Constitution is a “living document”, and that it’s perfectly reasonable and appropriate for unelected and unaccountable judges to rewrite it to their (left wing) heart’s content, it’s pretty easy to tell all the other lies, too). I’m not willing to do that. So I’m on the team with teh people I’m not like, but that I do like.

  42. Or you’ve decided that you are actually at war. Which means that you are now committed to destruction, not discourse.

    SJW delenda est?

    Look, civility is well and good so long as you can expect it in return. However, that’s not what we can expect from the SJW’s. In the political arena we had people blaming Sarah Palin and her registration marks used to indicate zones being “targeted” for the Gabby Giffords shooting. But the same people blaming Ms. Palin were, at best, silent on the subject of “Chimpy McBushitler.”

    Consider this analogy. Boxers learn to fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Some people think all fights should be fought that way to “fight fair” and voice “low blows” and other “unsportsmanlike” attacks. That’s great when you’re in a ring, with a referee to insure that both (and it’s two–one on one–rather than a gang mobbing an individual) parties follow the rules.

    In a knife fight in an alley that kind of “sportsmanship” is a good way to get dead.

    We’ve been on the receiving end of their hatred, lies, and namecalling for years–a lot of them–and now that we’re getting some of our own back they’re calling for “civility”–which apparently means that we have to shut up while they continue as before.

    You’re a nice man, Charles, but I think you’re wrong here.

    1. I’m in agreement with you TWIB. My trust has been exhausted. If someone wants to argue for the return to civility, I need to know there’s some civility to which we may return. Asterisk coasters, No Awarding and changing the rules, represent a decisive departure from what I see to be civility.

      I don’t see any civility to return to, though I remain willing to be convinced otherwise.

      1. I think it is probably a war to destruction, but I do not think think fighting on this front will decide the destruction.

        I think there are two outside destabilizing influences.

        One is the broader American political argy-bargy. The American Left and the American Right cannot both be correct. This will come out. American society is stressed. Stress will out. Eventually we will move to a more stable status quo.

        Secondly is the publishing matter. There are conflicting models of how to do business, and things seem to be in transition.

        I suspect that these will be the decisive conflicts.

      2. I’m sure you saw what happened at the last Hugos. Why is there even an entertaining of this idea of civility? It’s never extended to us.

        1. That’s a good question. The best reason to continue to keep the idea of civility in mind is that, while “both sides refuse to cooperate” is better than “constantly be the victim of defection”, cooperation is the best strategy if it can be achieved.

          More importantly, it is necessary to retain the skills of cooperation so that we can do so when it is an option. It may be that it isn’t possible to cooperate with “Team SJW”, but it is possible to cooperate with “Team Undecided” and we MUST do so. If we defect, refuse civility, with Team Undecided, we’d just be jerks to be around.

          I’m willing to accept the occasional necessity of “US vs THEM”. “US vs ALL NOT US” seems like a bad idea.

  43. You have some damn nerve claiming that you think somebody is so evil you don’t even want to be on an AWARD BALLOT with them based on “third-hand reports”.

    Let’s turn this around. I didn’t read the whole article, just that sentence, so I know not to take you seriously. At least you wrote it, instead of a “third hand report”.

    Don’t worry. I intend to read the whole thing.

    1. I read about 75% of it. It’s basically like somebody shows up to a ball game in the 9th inning explaining how to run the 1st inning.

      1. I liken it to someone arriving on planet Earth in Jan. 1945 and crying “What? You’re bombing Berlin and going to invade Okinawa? Why? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  44. Interesting read, but a couple of things stand out. The first is the mention (as others have pointed out) that Vox Day was apparently Othered by Chuck based on “general third-hand report”; therefore: mote, beam, let us know how your conversation with Vox goes. No, I’m not a Vox supporter, just agreeing with others that this seems to be a wee bit of (unintended, I’m sure) hypocrisy.

    The other thing that stood out was the comment about being “prepared to step back enough from your own cultural values to see that many of them are not objectively correct”. There’s quite a big assumption being made in Chuck’s statement, and it goes to the heart of the conflict. I’m all for self-awareness, and I’m open to changing my mind on things if I see valid evidence that persuades me to do so, but my values, my principles, are neither negotiable nor are they incorrect.

    Within the context of an award that is supposed to go to the BEST in SF&F, those principles include integrity. The entire process should be fair and accurate so that the fans choose what they consider to be the best and that should all boil down to whether the story is the best of the year. When you have suspicions raised that the process is sensitive to manipulation by a relatively small number of people working in concert, that should raise a concern. And when you have a group pull the kind of BS that happened this year, they’ve proven there is no integrity in the process and that Larry was right all along.

    While they CHORFle and laugh as they congratulate each other, they don’t actually realize what they’ve done. The Hugos aren’t dead yet, but they’re tainted. I can guarantee that if I see “Hugo Award winner” on the cover of a book, it’ll serve as a warning, not a reassurance that I’m holding some of the best SF&F.

    1. Yes, one thing this year’s Hugos did for me was absolutely confirm that “Hugo Award Winner” is a warning. This from someone who didn’t feel any particular way about it before participating in the whole Hugo voting process this year and went into it in good faith as a fan of SF/F voting purely on my own tastes/preferences with pretty much no regard for any outside party’s recommended lists.

  45. So let me get this straight? Vox fights back and effectively so that makes him evil? No wonder moderates have such a bad name, they always attack their side.

    1. Gannon didn’t say that it was evil to effectively fight back. He made a special point of noting that wasn’t his position.

      If I’m understanding him, he’s trying to point out that neither “side” understands the other, and that if two sides aren’t able to effectively communicate there’s no mechanism to restore peace. Those are both good points.

      It’s arguable that neither side understands the other. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Probably not. Certainly, there’s less effective listening, less attempting to understand, going on.

      The real problem comes, for me, that I’m not able to think of any valid reason to give out asterisk coasters and put No Award above Jim Butcher. All the reasons I can think of to do it are things that SHOULD be fought and opposed if I want to be free to read or write what I like and still be part of civil society. This is the other half of what he’s saying. Our experiences and viewpoints are so radically different, that the common ground on which cooperation is based can’t be found. I suspect it does not exist, but I’m less sanguine about things than he.

      1. If I’m understanding him, he’s trying to point out that neither “side” understands the other, and that if two sides aren’t able to effectively communicate there’s no mechanism to restore peace.

        Wellll…. I think we understand them better than they understand us. To us, they seem like children, whereas they simply don’t even seem to “get” manhood, honor, etc. as something other than a thing to be mocked, a chumps game.

        And it’s not just my observation, but one backed up with actual SCIENCE(!) by a liberal psychologist who statistically measured the ability of self-described liberals and conservatives to predict each other’s responses.

        1. The idea that neither side understands the other is just a lighter flavor of “claim moral equivalence”.

          This has actually been studied. Conservatives, liberals, and libertarians were given questionnaires and asked to fill them out not just for themselves but how they think people in the other groups would answer.

          One group, liberals, did significantly worse than the other two in predicting how the other two would answer.

          1. I really began to understand that when the anti-Puppies tried to flaunt certain things, like this article or Scalzi’s contract, in the hopes of hearing us wail. Instead, each occurrence was greeted with, “meh” or “good for him.”

          2. I saw the news about Scalzi’s contract and had 3 thoughts: 1) so he heard about how many books Larry is under contract for, and used that as a bargaining chip in his own negotiations (“Correia isn’t a real writer, and he has a contract for X, so you have to at least make my contract for X+1!”), 2) Well, good for him. His writing isn’t my cup of tea, but to each his own. and 3) Suckers

          3. TheWriterInBlack –

            That’s very interesting, and not at all surprising. Do you happen to have a link to that study? I’d be interested in reading it.

          4. “One group, liberals, did significantly worse than the other two in predicting how the other two would answer.”

            That’s because we are bathed in their ideas almost every time we turn on the TV, read a newspaper, or go to the movies, while they would have to make actual effort to seek out ours.

          5. Haidt – not exactly a conservative – who did the “predicting responses” survey – also did a related study where he determined, despite expecting the opposite – that conservatives actually incorporate more factors into moral decision making than liberals, rather than the stereotype of “simple”

            While I have issues with some of the chosen axes and how he chose to represent them, the upshot is still that of the six or so moral exes he identified, liberals effectively only used a much smaller subset, while conservatives tended to rely on all of them.

            So it’s NOT just “we’re bathed in it” – though we are.

            It’s because we already know what we’re thinking… because it’s part of our thinking – and they literally can’t ‘get” what we’re thinking..

          6. For a while after WWII, I mean half a century after WWII ended, every big bad villain was a rich, white, male, Nazi.

          1. Volokh has some stuff on it – it relates to the book “Righteous Mind” (iirc) that has most of his results, and sums up some of m issues with the work – generally correct but may need better definition of terms.

            http://volokh.com/2014/01/17/jonathan-haidt-psychology-politics/

            One other point that I find really interesting and important about Haidt’s work is his findings on the ability of different groups to empathize across these ideological divides. So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’ The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.” In other words, moderates and conservatives can understand the liberal worldview and liberals are unable to relate to the conservative worldview, especially when it comes to questions of care and fairness.

            Also , Haidt’s home page – the ted talk near the bottom (moral roots) is probably the most relevant, and one of the few ted talks worth a damn other than Mike Rowe’s. (which is possibly the best ever).

            http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/home.html

            He’s also pointed out to his own profession the massive discrepancy in politics within the field.

  46. Apologies but update notifications are not going through to my main email so I thought I’d try setting the subscription to an alternate address to see if the problem is at my end.

    IOW: C4C

    1. you’re not the only one not getting update notifications even though I clicked the send me notifications.

    2. And the subscription confirmation and notifications came through on my alternate address. I sent the confirmation and one of the notification to the tech support guys at my primary address and here’s what they had to say:

      Thanks for the example emails, that helped identify the issue. There is indeed a problem with both of them. The FROM: field is invalid – it doesn’t contain a legitimate email address. It only contains the text: “WordPress ”
      Our server rejects malformed headers as presumptively spam. Whomever is responsible for that WordPress installation needs to configure it so outgoing mails have a real email address in the FROM: field.
      We do accept other email from that server – two of them for you today in fact, but that’s because those messages had proper headers.

  47. If you can’t communicate effectively, you can’t solve problems—not unless your “problem” is waging a war to utterly exterminate your opponent. So, if you do want to communicate, then as long as words are being wielded as weapons, the downward spiral—of this conflict and of our genre—will continue.

    So my focus has been, and remains, on behavior not politics. That may sound like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but I see it as making sure the rudder works. By which I mean: at some point, people have to talk if they wish to end, limit, or deal with the aftermath of a conflict. Right now, the capacity for genuine communication is crashing in a dizzying tailspin, while attitude polarization is on an inversely proportional rise.

    This, right here, is the crucial error. Words were ALREADY being wielded as weapons. Are we supposed to respond “I say, good Sir, but I do believe your discourtesy is unbecoming.”

    No. We need to FIGHT back. The time for discourse isn’t now – it’s too late. It’s the time for action.

    1. The other thing he misses is that in order to have rational discourse, both sides must exhibit rational thoughts and behaviors. And, for some, there is *no* separation of politics and behavior.

  48. Choose your battles carefully.
    If you find yourself constantly in combat, you’re not being choosy enough.

    Or maybe you’re a target because you’re standing up to the bullies.

    It was also the only SP-recommended novel not included on Vox Day’s authoritarian slate.
    It’s not the Rabid puppies that want to tell you what you may say, what you may think, what you may read, what you may write.

    Honestly, I can hard;ly believe that these 5000 words of nearly unreadable turgid prose came from a published auther and from a “communications specialist.” And of course, like all moderates, he advises us that we’re bad people if we adopt the tactics of our enemies, that we must watch our tone, that we must compromise with the forces of totalitarian darkness. The other side, not so much.

    Go moderate yourself in a ditch.
    We Don.t Care.

  49. This man took “general third-hand report” as sufficient to hold another man in such disgust as to be unwilling to have his name appear on the same list of talented authors?

    Gossip and slander are no light matters. Willfully negligent ignorance is no excuse where the Ninth Commandment is concerned.

    Eighth, for all you Catholics and Lutherans out there. 😉

  50. While I think any message broadcast at a large group that includes the use of the word “paucity” risks sacrificing clarity and communication, the heart of what he has to say is clearly correct.

    How you conduct yourself and how you treat your opponent is every bit as important as what you’re doing.

    It doesn’t matter if they’re an asshole: you shouldn’t behave like one. It doesn’t matter if they are monsters: you shouldn’t become one yourself.

    Like Captain Sheridan said: fight them without becoming them.

    Especially since “they” are rarely the monsters you think they are. Just like you aren’t the monster they think you are.

    Especially since fighting them, as we understand it on the Internet, isn’t fighting. That happens with guns and knives. What we do here is mostly high school clique stuff, grotesquely magnified.

    You really want the “fight” to be over, it is going to take some adults willing to be patient and actually communicate. On all sides.

    The only question is whether or not there are enough grown ups willing to step up to be heard over the screeching.

    1. Jim, I’m wondering where you will find the “adults” here? The SJW’s really don’t seem to have anyone they all respect enough to all listen to without some faction or other tearing them down.

    2. What bullshit. Men are being kicked out of college in kangaroo courts exactly because of the “rape culture” ideology pushed by these freaks. Tell THEM it’s just an internet fight. Tell a black guy or Jew they’re a monster for punching a neo-Nazi in the nose. Tell the frat at the U of Virginia which was closed down for a rape hoax based on the #JustListen pushed by Steven Gould and Jim Hines. Tell the cop assassinated while pumping gas that racial incitement is just an internet thing. Tell the white men Lightspeed won’t review they’re doing just fine, just fine. “Patience?” I exhausted my patience the day Tor banned me for pushing back against bigots like N. K. Jemisin and Liz Bourke and their obsessive and fanatic hatred of straight white men.

    3. OK. Let’s start with two. Find two adults to talk out the relevant issues.

      Let me know when they agree on what the “relevant issues” are.

    4. I’d love to see a discussion amongst grownups. I don’t harbor much hope, however. Clearly there is a lot of anger on both sides of the issue, a lot of things have been both said and done which have struck nerves and there aren’t many people willing to let go and offer honest discussion without holding grudges.

      For my part, Mr. Butcher, I love your books and really am looking forward to listening to your latest (The Aeronaut’s Windlass) on Audible. Please keep trying to lower the temperature where you can. It’s a worthwhile endeavor and you’re respected enough that some may actually listen.

      1. Lots of anger on both sides?

        I’d invite you to compare and contrast this comment thread with the one linked. 🙂

          1. Oh, there’s plenty of anger. Anger in and of itself isn’t bad. Anger is a perfectly justifiable action. It isn’t my side that tries to disqualify people with “You Sound Angry.” When I get slandered as a rape apologist, racist, sexist, wife beater I consider my reaction to be righteous anger.

            The question is if the anger is rational, or if it is based on bullshit. Argument is a spectator sport. You never sway the decided. You argue to give ammo to your side and convince the undecided.

          2. For the issue of whether civility can be attained I am not looking at validity of angers, basis of angers, etc. I’m simply saying if there’s to be civil discourse that the anger must be released by the parties involved in the conversation. Because arguing from anger seems to have gained little and certainly devolves (in most cases) into incivility.

            Also, I’m reading the comments on the other site and what strikes me is the similarity of the arguments. “False equivalencies” and “presumption of good intent” and “fair play”…change the position and many of the arguments sound so similar it’s striking.

            This really is a fight between people who love SF/F and can’t understand why the “other” doesn’t love it the same way that they do, judge it the same way they do, value it the same way they do. Which is kind of strange to me…

          3. Uh huh… Which is why my side ran a coordinated media slander campaign about how the other side was white supremacists. Oh, wait. Never mind.

            I find it amusing how people with no skin in the game are so quick to tell others how they’re allowed to feel. Oh, your husband beats you? Well, maybe you should be nice, that way he won’t hit you more. If you hadn’t upset him, he wouldn’t beat you.

            Wow! That’s great advice!

            Here’s the thing. The other side can make similar arguments all they want. That’s irrelevant. That’s what evidence is for. And at the end of the day, my side isn’t the one forming witch hunts, and running articles in the Guardian, Salon, Slate, HuffPo, io9, and Popular Science about how people who disagree with us are racist, sexist, white supremacists. We’re not the ones giving out wooden buttholes and hiding behind charity. We’re not the one No Awarding accomplished women, and declaring it was to fight misogyny.

            They did what I thought they would do, only turned to 11. You are pretending to be moderate, but we all know you aren’t. So your opinion is irrelevant. My goal wasn’t to sway the willfully ignorant. It was to show the rest of the world just how badly the culture war was screwing up this little corner of their entertainment world.

            You seem to be under the illusion that I am under any delusions of possible reconciliation. You are mistaking me for Brad or Chuck. My goal was to expose the bias.

            I’m having a great time. 🙂

          4. I at no point told anyone how to feel. I said that for civility to take place anger would have to be put aside as it is difficult to be civil while angry. You don’t want to do that. Clearly that’s your choice to make.

            Regarding my stance as a moderate, that is what I consider myself to be. If that’s willful ignorance in your esteem then that, also, is fine. Your definition of me does not have to be nor will it be my definition of myself.

          5. It’s entirely possible to be ‘civil’ while being righteously angry. What it’s not possible to do is pretend that your friends are NOT being lied about by people who most absolutely know they are lying and are doing so in every national/global media outlet they can get their message into, that no one who absolutely knows better has bothered to venture a timid “you know that so-and-so is certainly not a racist”.

            You’re not suggesting people not be *angry* but that they pretend that they weren’t slandered.

            So… not to seem to be piling on here… but why don’t you try bringing your message of civility to them? Venture a timid “you know that so and so is certainly not a racist” and see if you only get down voted. Oh! Better yet… The thought-police attack and destroy squad is apparently after a YA author named Meg Rosoff for saying perfectly ordinary things about the purpose of fiction and lying about her and making her into a villain. Go… venture to defend her. You could even dare to do so using your real name.

            You can find links here to get you started… http://thelibertyzone.com/2015/10/12/the-unbearable-racism-of-social-justice-warrior-jerks/

          6. That is straight to the point. How do I reach out to people who vilify me for my biological characteristics – straight, white, male. I’ve read these people until my eyes bled. There is only one recourse. I must confess to my sexism, racism, privilege and oppressive heterosexuality. Then, if I’m lucky, I become an “ally.” I’ll say this again: we’re up against nothing more sophisticated than a crude version of a KKK. There will be no parlay. However it’s nice to know the 8th Air Force were “monsters.”

    5. A reasonable summation – with regard on what an end to or at least a cessation of the sfnal culture war long underway might look like, I offer that there is at least one missing element worth adding to JB’s list.

      If you insist on internet fighting (and as specifically accepted by Chuck’s initial post) then you must concisely state what your goals are. What does victory look like? When do you stop? As heterogeneous as both groups are I doubt that a concise and uniformly accepted statement of victory conditions can be captured for either side.

      If compromise is how this impasse is resolved, what compromise is possible when mainstream members of Whatever/F770/ML characterize pups first by gender, sex and race? I don’t think it is possible.

      1. What does victory look like? Like the flesh of the last SJW after being excreted by the SJW who devoured him. When do we stop? When social justice has as many adherents as a god whose name no one remembers.

        There can be no discourse with those who deny God, reality, and the principle of non-contradiction.

    6. First, you don’t understand the difference between objectives and tactics. Second, you don’t understand the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. And third, the 165-year-old convergence towards social justice ideals is not going to end because some adults are patient and actually communicate.

      Read Clausewitz. This, being politics, is war. It’s just not violent. Yet.

      1. “This, being politics, is war. It’s just not violent. Yet.”

        Depends on how we define “this.” In the realm of fandom, no, not yet violent. In the realm of far left politics, violence has long been a staple. It just got a little quiet after the USSR was unable to bankroll the crazies. It’s on the uptick in recent years: James Chester Blanning, Joseph Stack, John Patrick Bedell, James Lee, Clay Duke, Floyd Corkins, Karl Pierson, etc.

    7. And let’s not forget people like Scalzi, Kameron Hurley, Damien Walter, K. Tempest Bradford, Foz Meadows, Mikki Kendall, Saladin Ahmed and others have had gigs at The Atlantic, HuffPo, Xojane, Salon, The Guardian, NPR, Gawker’s Kotaku, io9, etc., all of it unrelenting attacks on straights, whites and men. And using their own logic, if Confederate flags kill then surely 3 years of daily racial incitement against whites and incitement to hate men kills too.

  51. Larry
    First, thanks for hosting this guest article. It was an interesting read and the comments were also interesting, mostly. Some sad, some hysterically funny, some made me wonder if either the commenter or myself spoke English.

    I find myself in agreement here and there with Dr. Gannon. I agree that “it’s rarely a good idea to let the actions of another dictate the manner in which we respond.” I agree completely that civility has pretty much totally gone AWOL both in the Hugo debate, debacle, discussion, war and in the larger cultural war going on in the US.

    I think, though, that Dr. Gannon misses one salient point. He says, rightly, “Yet here’s the challenge this puts before us: when you meet a person from a different culture, you have to be more civil and you have to listen harder and more carefully, if (a big if) you want to understand and be understood.” What he fails to recognize is that the statement is a two way street. If the person from the other culture isn’t interested in understanding you, they won’t. Phrased another way, Dr. Gannon seems to be saying “Reasonable people negotiating in good faith can always reach reasonable compromises.” (Geek points for whoever gets the quote). The assumption Dr. Gannon seems to make throughout his whole essay is that both sides are negotiating in good faith. I’ll leave alone the question of whether both sides are reasonable. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any interest in the Anti-Sad Puppy side in negotiating.

    I do think, in disagreement with some commenters here and in partial agreement with Dr. Gannon, that the Puppies and allies should leave the invective and vitriol out of the debates. Let the other side sling poo. It’s not disarming ourselves, it’s taking the moral high ground and refusing to step into the cesspool. It’s still possible to engage in rhetoric without being rat bastards about it, just a bit more difficult.

    1. “it’s taking the moral high ground and refusing to step into the cesspool” This strategy has led to conservatives getting their asses kicked by liberals and SJWs for the last 40 years. It’s a strategy for defeat and failure.

      If one man is trying to have a civilized debate and the other is trying to knock his fucking head off with his fists, guess who wins?

    2. “Reasonable people negotiating in good faith can always reach reasonable compromises.”

      Oh, come now. I didn’t agree with everything Dr. Gannon had to say, but comparing him to Houseman seems a bit below the belt. : – )

    3. “the Puppies and allies should leave the invective and vitriol out of the debates. Let the other side sling poo. It’s not disarming ourselves, it’s taking the moral high ground and refusing to step into the cesspool.”

      I don’t actually disagree with you, but it’s really irrelevant. We’ll be portrayed as abusive and spiteful no matter how the majority of us actually behave. And I know this, because it’s what’s already happened.

      1. There is more than one moral axis – (aside, Ultima IV, quest for the avatar, played off of that) – and the ultimate moral axis is survival.

        You can seize the moral high ground by remaining civil to those who would return too civility, and thus impress those about you with your calm and steadfast nature.

        At some point though, you just come across as weak, a doormat.

        You can also seize the moral high ground by treating barbarians like barbarians… and proving you are ruthless enough to survive, and that you’re NOT a doormat.

        The spectators will also respect that.

        When it becomes an issue of survival, because they won’t leave you be, “nice” is not the same as good, and no longer an option.

        Sportsmanship is for sportsmen. Not existential battles.

        1. I’m at a loss at how pointing out and criticizing the slander and libel the puppy kickers are using against the Sad Puppies is bringing in “invective and vitriol” into the debate.

          We don’t have to stoop to their level, but then I don’t recall the Sad Puppies getting media smear campaigns setup against their opponents. Nor have I seen Sad Puppy opponents libeled as spouse abusers, to the point where their spouses are contacted by relatives offering to help them escape that awful abuser.

          So I suspect we’re already far above their level.

    4. No offense, but I can’t believe there are people who still think this way, after what we witnessed over the course of SP3, culminating in the Hugos.

  52. I would think the first concern of a communications expert who invoked the word “principle” would be to allow for only one single definition of words like “racism,” “supremacy,” “sexism,” “genderphobia,” “sex-hatred,” and “cultural appropriation.” It is that semantic stacking of the deck that allows this feminist cult to think they can skate away as “anti-racists” even while they sport photos of themselves with coffee mugs that say “male tears” and “white tears” like Randi Harper and Alyssa Wong do even while they go after others for “racism.”

    1. Well, the term racism itself has been a mockery for some time. I believe they first moved the goal post to bigotry=racism. Not sure all the steps in between, but now it’s basically racism=white,hetero,male. And the close runner up is white,hetero,female.

  53. Thank you Dr Gannon for entertaining me over the years. As to the requirement of civility in discourse, the easiest example I can give is Rosie O’Donnell vs NRA. If the NRA had used the same tactics used against Rush Limbaugh a few years ago where a social media campaign was launched against his sponsors, the “6,000,000 members” of the NRA would have driven her out of public life and livelihood on a rail. The 70 trolls how attacked Rush were not able to get a significant number of his sponsors to demure, and most of those how did were rebuffed when they asked to again do business. As Rosie and her ilk know only to well, only one side needs to go to war. They tend to prefer it that way. We have come to this battle late, but we are here now so may the left enjoy the fruits of there labor.

  54. I was all for civility until the recent hugos. Now I don’t believe they can be saved. All out war? Pfft, let them stagnate in their own purification. We should set out for our own new world and let them burn their own house down. Who needs them? After years and years of dealing with SJW type behavior (Way before that term came into common use,) I know there is no talking to them. I feel like we should act like Martin Luther – Pound our own 99 complaints and thoughts on their door and leave their church.

    1. “let them stagnate in their own purification”

      Anybody have a death metal album that needs naming?

      “We should set out for our own new world and let them burn their own house down. Who needs them? ”

      That’s exactly why I wasn’t originally going to get involved with Sad Puppies 3: when your opponents are hell-bent on making themselves irrelevant, why try to stop them? Various posts (especially Brad’s) convinced me that it *was* worthwhile to try to fix the Hugos, but I’m still not entirely sure that I didn’t waste $40.

    2. And where will we go when they follow us? They will follow us because they’ll need to steal their glory from somewhere. Sooner or later you have to stop running and make a stand. Which is far closer to what Luther actually DID.

    3. Yep. That was the final straw. As I’ve said before, that’s whats turned me into a Were-Puppy. Basically all the goons did is harden their opposition.

  55. While I did him the courtesy of reading the whole piece, Mr. Gannon seems to be very well-intentioned, well-educated, but regrettably mistaken.

    Equating two sides as identical is every bit as childish and simplistic as the “othering” he mentions above. In nature, nothing is truly 50/50. Even the number of male and female births isn’t 50/50; it’s about 51-52% male.

    The two sides are most certainly not equal. Not even close.

    I’m sure there were well-intentioned folks like Chuck Gannon equating Nazi sympathizers (which included a lot of great intellectuals all around Europe, and in all the eventual Allied countries) and classical liberals/capitalists in the 1930s as two reasonable groups with fringe elements on both sides, and it’s almost as silly here.

    And while I disagree with him on certain points, Vox Day is not the extremist counterpart, whether in terms of beliefs or tactics, to Requires Hate. He is less extreme/radical in both regards than John Scalzi is.

    Larry is a really nice, considerate guy to post this on his site, but it’s a bunch of well-intentioned, utterly misguided equating.

    1. This is really very simple: as a society we have well established tools of self-criticism which allow us to step outside ourselves and eliminate bias. We have law, we have rules. It is no coincidence the go-to bullshit which this cult centers itself around is the idea that women, gays and non-whites are incapable of sexism, racism and genderphobia. That’s what their dumb shit regarding “privilege” is all about. That essentially eliminates rules and allows one side to be always right and the other always wrong. The problem is only a farcical idiot could believe Jews, men, women, Arabs, whites, blacks or whatever group some sociopathic cult has set their sights on is always wrong or right. That is supremacy no matter how you cut it.

      1. It’s become obvious to me over time that these people have broken with reality as we know it.

        The part that I haven’t gotten ahold of is how their fevered minds have somehow created a hive hookup and they share their twisted mental reality, like the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis.

        And like them, they are parasitical in nature, needing a strong host to suck dry over time, destroying it in the process.

        Or, to make a long story short, who the hell let the nuts in charge of the nut house?

      1. “And him being friends with Scalzi, one of the biggest extremists and bomb-throwers of this whole fiasco, while utterly dismissing Vox Day makes one seriously doubt his stated intentions.”

        I don’t know, Scalzi might be one of those people who’re complete dicks on the internet, but are nice if you know them in real life. I wouldn’t count on it, I’m just saying it’s possible.

      2. (Waggles hand) It would not surprise me to see that Gannon has absolutely no idea what Scalzi, Hines, and crew have been up to, but would have received word about Vox Day’s activities. He’s got low-information syndrome.

        1. Yes, and Scalzi ran the article, praised his book, and Gannon speaks glowingly of Scalzi. This is the equivalent of a so-called “moderate” who dismisses Trump as crazy and dangerous out of hand praising Bernie Sanders and being friendly with him. His stated intentions are very suspect.

          The most charitable interpretation is that he is simply utterly unaware of anything and everything that Scalzi has done during the past year, although that’s assuming a comical level of ignorance/blindness.

    2. I think it’s great Larry let him post it here. Gives us all something to talk about for a while 😛 Yeah, no animosity for Gannon, but I believe that the idea of meeting on common ground is a non starter. We will be entering the 4th year of SP. If you allow a bunch of totalitarians control over something, then people will first fight to preserve it in hopes of saving something that once had meaning. Once that has been determined impossible, then we move forward from there.

  56. Dr. Gannon, you have used the word “principle” and also referred to looking into comments about “race,” sex, “and more.” Based on this principle, can you honestly tell me why you have not similarly singled out the following people as those you would not want to be associated with?

    N.K. Jemisin, Kameron Hurley, John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Kate Elliot, Daniel Jose Older, Rose Fox, Foz Meadows, Ann Leckie, Amal El-Mohtar, Rose Lemberg, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Ekatarina Sedia, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rachel Acks, Sunil Patel, Saladin Ahmed, Aliette de Bodard, Sofia Samatar, Rachel Swirsky, Veronica Schanoes, C.C. Finlay, Steven Gould, Laura Mixon, Nalo Hopkinson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Nicola Griffith, Elizabeth Bear, Beth Bernobick, Tobias Buckell, Neil Clarke, Carrie Cuinn, L. Timmel Duchamp, Andrea Hairston, Ramez Naam, Jason Sanford, Nisi Shawl, Sunny Moraine, Yoon Ha Lee, Alyssa Wong, Natalie Luhrs, Seanan McGuire, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, etc., etc., etc.

    If the binding principle in play is that of obsessive group defamation based on biological characteristics, let’s have your explanation. Personally, I can detect no principles in your writing, only a spinning weather vane where “racism” and “sexism” is one thing on Monday and another on Sunday.

    1. Let’s see: which side is full of people that will dismiss everything Dr. Gannon has to say, on the grounds of his race, gender and sexual preference, before even bothering to read his words? ‘Nuff said.

  57. So Chuck, those who fight getting rolled over by others are wrong? Should we just sit back and think of France instead?

  58. Theoden: I will not risk open war.
    Aragorn: Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not.

    I’d also point out, basing an opinion and ‘othering’ a person on third party reports is sloppy, and lazy.

    1. I believe he must have been hanging around too many who consider it common wisdom. But, now he is hearing from the other side. Maybe he will review and modify his ideas about that.

  59. “Feminist movement to eradicate heterosexism — compulsory heterosexuality — is central to efforts to end sexual oppression. . . .
“Feminist movement to end female sexual oppression is linked to lesbian liberation. . . .
“Feminist efforts to develop a political theory of sexuality must continue if sexist oppression is to be eliminated.”
— bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (2000

    That’s courtesy of Robert Stacy McCain’s blog today. Batty video game critic Anita Sarkeesian cites bell hooks as her greatest influence. Don’t be fooled by what these people are selling. When lesbian Alex Dally McFarlane called for an end to the gender binary at Tor it was this very lesbian liberation ideology she was selling. When lesbian feminist Liz Bourke at Tor has a column named for a quote from gay feminist Adrienne Rich most famous for her essay about “compulsory heterosexuality,” take them at their word. Bourke and McFarlane were first on board (both at Tor) gushing about Ancillary Justice, and for by now obvious reasons. These people hate and fear men, heterosexuals and whites. They have mainstreamed their sick ideology to naive water-carriers like Jim Hines, Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi by talking bullshit about “equality” and “social justice.” More the fools them, because they have abandoned American principles of due process and equal protection to buy into what is nothing more than a racket pushed by mentally ill women who not only publicly admit to their illnesses but brag about them. In intersectionality, the most oppressed is queen. The biggest victim rules with the wisdom of Solomon.

    “Jeanne ‏@fangirlJeanne @Finickii I have anxiety and bi-polar depression. I think a lot of us suffer from mental illness either because of this kind of social conditioning or it just makes pre-existing conditions even worse.”

    That’s a woman with 100 Tweets a day over 6 1/2 years which are obsessively anti-white and anti-male. She adds “If anyone knows an essay that talks about this very specific forms of PTSD related to racist misogyny, please link me.” I’d say 240,000 Tweets is its own explanation.

  60. So let me get this straight:

    the people who want sci-fi to become a genre without any sense of gender norms and vote no award because of who backed a nomination are the civil and balanced side?

    while

    the ones who want to stick with story over message and ignore the would be architects of a new and “diverse” sci-fi+ that suspiciously all looks the same and kicks out noncompliant or disliked authors as “nazis” “white supremicists” or “misogynists” are the clamorous blood thirsty disruptive radical zealots bent on destruction?

    The Status Quo side is radical?

    It seems you’ve purchased yourself a lovely bridge on the Arizona waterfront Mr. Gannon, right in the middle of the Sonoran desert. No doubt the saguaro will look lovely with the gentle waves crashing around them.

    Best of luck. Too bad I can’t join you, but sadly I have to live on my planet where words mean things and facts don’t evaporate when you command them to check their privilege.

  61. dgarsys quoted this:

    One other point that I find really interesting and important about Haidt’s work is his findings on the ability of different groups to empathize across these ideological divides. So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’ The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.” In other words, moderates and conservatives can understand the liberal worldview and liberals are unable to relate to the conservative worldview, especially when it comes to questions of care and fairness.

    What I’ve noticed about strident 21st century progressives is that they tend to be virtue hoarders. And by this I mean they like to think that they — and they alone — are the only people in the universe who have any empathy, a sense of fairness, a desire for equity, etc. Therefore conservatives cannot possibly have empathy, otherwise they’d be liberals. Because it’s a mutually exclusive proposition: if you have empathy, you must be a liberal. Conservatives are automatically those evil people who don’t care about anybody else. This is literally how many strident progressives think. They are the only ones allowed to have virtue. Nobody else is allowed to have virtue, otherwise they’d be progressive too.

    We saw a lot of that kind of rhetoric from David Gerrold and George R. R. Martin, where Sad Puppies was concerned. Only their side — the Puppy-kicking side — could be noble. Only their side had compassion. Only they had goodness and light in them. Everyone else . . . was a creature of darkness. Yup. Virtue hoarding.

    I would also add — and speaking more broadly — that a surprisingly large number of conservatives, are merely former liberals who’ve grown disillusioned. I count myself in this category. I know why your average liberal thinks the way she does. I know how your average liberal thinks. Because I used to be on that side of the fence myself. I walked in those circles. My pedigree — from that era in my life — was spotlessly liberal.

    But as I got older, I started to ask a lot of questions. And events like 9/11 certainly jolted me hard. In fact, 9/11 took my twenty-something liberalism and smashed it against the wall. Destroyed it. So many precious illusions about the world, and how the world (and the people in it) work, gone. Poof.

    My road to a new, more accurate understanding of the world (and the people in it) began on 9/12/2001. Along the way I had to gradually giving up liberalism. Because liberalism did not fit with the facts — cold, hard, often unfriendly to theory.

    1. Search “Stanford Prison Experiment”, where liberal college students were asked to act as they thought prison guards would behave.

      The Narrative goes ‘way back.

      1. Wow, you know, I had heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment plenty of times before, but I’ve always heard of it in terms of demonstrating how people are likely to react when given unlimited power. It never occurred to me that the preexisting narrative about how prison guards are supposed to behave may have played some role in the end result. I’m still unsure about how much of the result had to do with which factor, but I can definitely see how that might have had something to do with it. Thanks for giving me something to think about, at least!

        1. Then you’ve got Milgram’s obedience experiments. Yes, most people will “just follow orders” when somebody they perceive as being an authority gives them–if the situation is set up right.

          1. As somebody pointed out once, the ‘authority figure’ in the experiment who was saying that it was OK to keep ‘shocking’ the ‘subject’ was actually telling the truth, since the ‘subject’ was acting and was in no pain.

  62. And fire rained from the sky, the heavens were rent! In this time there was despair. There was pain and suffering. They had sent me and I brought WAR! I brought PAIN! I brought SUFFERING! In this time I was DESPAIR. The enemy cried out for mercy. They begged for peace. I turned and asked ” Is it enough?” and you said “No let them be scoured from the Earth.” “Let their people be forgotten.” I replied ” They are defeated, they will trouble you no more.” and you said “NO!” “You must utterly destroy them!” I sighed. and replied “As you will.” And I struck you down with the enemy for you were of them and they of you! and you cried out for mercy and peace! ” I can not give you these things. Alas you had me send them away. I am only able to give you what you have left me to give. Pain, Suffering, Despair!” And I smiled as I ground you under my boot.

  63. I wonder if this is Scalzi’s response to this conversation:

    @scalzi
    OH SWEET JESUS PEOPLE ARE STILL WHINING ABOUT THE HUGOS JUST FUCKING LET IT GO ALREADY YOU PATHETIC TWITS

    2:17pm · 13 Oct 2015

    1. Probably. 😀

      Hey, all I did was repost Chuck’s same essay he posted over there, after being dared to. But he should do more all caps tweets. The ladies of SP4 would surely appreciate it because those were the best recruiting tools ever.

      1. The ALL-CAPS tweets are the ones where he’s being ironical, or sarcastic, or whatever he calls it when he wants to disavow what he’s saying, right?

    2. Scalzi’s hilarious. He’s been pulling udders for lesbian liberation ideology for 6 years now. When’s he gonna tire of that? Yeah, white male privilege. We get it already – heard you the first time. Startle us with something new… like rocket ships or something.

      1. He made “snarky” fun of Star Trek so I guess Time Tunnel or Land of the Giants has to be next huh? Or he could jump ahead to The Phoenix, Manimal, Misfits of Science, and Automan.

        1. Sure, Scalzi could be a Mary Sue who goes back in time and stops Conan from enforcing compulsory heterosexuality on pre-history. He comes back to his own time and Ohio is a forest ruled by giant hamsters which hunt monkey-people for food. Goddam dirty Mary Sues.

        2. He did a “reboot” of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper named Fuzzy Nation some time back. I’d gotten the original on Audible.com and (unbeknown to me at the time) it came with Scalzi’s version. The original was the okay, but after it finished Scalzi’s version came on. I literally went “WTF?”, listened to about 2 minutes of it and turned it off. I have to say, though, that the 2 minutes I heard gave me a greater appreciation for the original.

        1. Cows got udders,
          Ships got rudders
          If you need a break sailor,
          Take heed what I’ve said:
          You can wee over the starboard
          or crap in the harbor,
          But
          don’t you even dare
          fart near
          our
          dear Skipper’s head.

          1. REFRAIN
            Oh our dear Skipper’s head
            Is scrubbed spotlessly clean
            By a steward or two
            There’s a well polished sheen
            And believe me my matey
            You’re better off dead
            Than leaving your odor
            near our dear Skipper’s head.

    3. See? Perfect example of what we’re talking about. Chuck makes a reasonable post, in fact, repeats the same one he did at Scalzi’s, and Scalzi responds like this.

      1. It’s also very revealing. Notice how he thinks an interest in SF is stupid but his own feminist crusade which never ends is okay and natural.

        1. And thus, the amazing political double standard. “We” are supposed to keep our politics on the down-low (be they Christian or Atheist Libertarian or any combo that involves *not* being on that social justice by our means and with our words bandwagon) while authors sitting on con panels or their blogs freely insult people of faith, insult and bring politics explicitly into genre discussions, exclaim in their professional persona that Americans are dumber than a box of hair, etc., etc., blah blah blah… Scalzi wants to freely talk about his politics and has always felt free to talk about his politics. His blog has never been a polite politics-free I’m-here-for-all-my-fans zone.

          “Manners” seem to be “don’t say anything I don’t like, but if I like what you say, say what you will.”

          And creating “unsafe places” is pointing out that one may, in fact, believe in equality, inclusion and fairness while denouncing the structural racism and implicit power positions of “punching up”. (If you’re not looking *down*, you cannot conceptualize punching *up*.) Creating an “unsafe place” is looking at one of the “pathetic twits” and saying… “Excuse me… you want me to vote with my glittering what?” Because you were *rude* and made fun of them.

          1. Here’s something that goes beyond a mere double standard or hypocrisy: SFF’s social justice fops hate Vox Day and admire N. K. Jemisin for the exact same reasons. That’s a literal expression of Orwell’s doublethink.

    4. “Dear Star Wars, can I put some lesbians in my new edgelord movie tie-in novel, because science fiction.”

      1. Dear Star Wars, can you put some actual English, description, and plot in your next movie tie-in novel. Signed, the fans.

        1. No! I want to see more cgi people jumping over cgi lightning barriers on a cgi conveyor belt thing like a video game. Thanks. Also make Han Solo addicted to space heroin.

          1. Or mix franchises and make Han Solo addicted to spice heroin.

            And, instead of CGI people jumping over CGI lightning barriers, have them navigate a passage full of chomping, crushing things.

  64. Okay, in the spirit of Dr. Gannon’s initiative, let me start turning over a new leaf. If I have ever given the impression File 770’s commenters are medieval swineherds and pill-rolling dung beetles who build their homes out of their own excrement, or that they are tuft-yanking, clod-pulling waterheads who lie as effortlessly as they forget to breathe, or that they are purple-fingered arrogant know-it-alls impressed by their own gigantic puffed up egos and that their breath smells like the goats they manipulate in their leisure time and are at that age where they realize all the cool things they thought they’d do will now never happen or that they tortured cockroaches with matches as children and feel their pockmarked opinions and nice judgments are worth as much as the grass they eat and cuds they chew, or that they are moon-faced stick insects who sleep in red diapers and think the Patriarchy stole everyone’s luggage just prior to the sinking of Atlantis or are a Cargo Cult of zany cat-eaters hopped up on Prozac…

    …then I sincerely apologize.

    1. Right: Who are you and what are you doing inside of James May?

      The more I read of this the more I think it’s war to the knife no matter what I might want instead.

      Okay, fine. Let’s do this then.

    2. BURN IT . . . BURN IT ALL! Frankly the awards are the problem. Who needs them? I like what i like or I won’t read or buy the books. What we need is to attack the publishers who print the schlock. The awards are simply the symptom of the disease at the top.

  65. The “other side” seems to need an enemy in order to feel joy.

    There was an item in the news (Nightline, though I could be wrong) recently about prominent female writers and illustrators in mainstream super-hero comics. Well and good. But that alone isn’t deep and meaningful enough! So they spun the usal SJW narrative that no female super-hero creators existed before 2010, all male suoer-hero fans are sexist pigs, etc.

    The wrinkle: In the montage of “bad comics that are EVIL and DEMEAN WOMEN” they included Gail Simone’s run on RED SONJA and Amanda Connor’s work on POWER GIRL, HARLERY QUINN, and STARFIRE.

    Prominent feminist creators. Titles that have tons of female fans along with the male ones. But because they feature attractive, strong, beautiful women they MUST BE EVILBADWRONGSEXISTMANSTUFF.

    Gail and Amanda were both intrerviewed for the piece. I wonder how they felt about their OWN WORK being attacked.

    But such is the SJW way. Their narrative requires enemies. And if no enemies exist, they create them, facts be damned.

      1. The irony in play here is that in their shunning of Vox Day for his alleged habit of group defamation based on race and sex, social justice feminists have provided both the bill of particulars against themselves and the solution: their own expulsion from decent, polite society. There is no doubt the single most glaring activity of this modern feminism is an addiction to group defamation based on race and sex. They are perhaps coming to realize that any normal application of principles leaves them on the outside looking in. The other irony is that if they had simply advocated for diversity without using the subject as camouflage to attack straight white men, we would’ve tolerated them. We trusted these people from 2009 or thereabouts and for 3 years. Then, once in place, they attempted to scuttle normal human beings from the genre they themselves created, even going so far today as to demonize normal sex and sanity as “oppressive” heterosexuality and championing madness as “neurodiversity.” One need only look at WisCon’s Tiptree Award winners since 1991 to see what a bombed out museum looks like and today both the Nebulas and Hugos are empty and dark places full of rats and spider webs. I for one have had enough of their remarks about “mansplaining” and “white tears” touted as “social justice” while maintaining us simply existing is racism and sexism. That’s a con game only a child falls for. According to their own muddy intersectional logic about “cultural appropriation” and racial and sexual ownership of culture, feminism is a useless and unwanted appendage that is a killer of both art and society and deserves to be in the same swamp as the KKK an neo-Nazis, the ideologies social justice lesbian liberation ideology most resembles.

    1. No they need an enemy to feel justification. After all if they are not fighting the good fight then they might be wrong in their behavior. But hey enemy! So see no need for introspection full torpedo spread at the enemy and advance!

      Or so the ASP/SJW crowd justifies it to themselves.

  66. I am perfectly happy to live and let live. But I am also perfectly willing to destroy anyone who whats to destroy me. The time for calls for civility was back in the 60s, not now.

    1. Ay-yup. I’d rather collect their ears than have them collect mine, all things considered.

      Or they could just not try to collect my ears. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, does it?

      Back to sharpening the knives…

  67. When people argue in bad faith, then there is no way to have a ‘civil’ discussion. I consider dishonesty a hundred times more disrespectful than any curse or insult.

    You are saying to lead the SJWs to water and make them drink; only problem is, they are not -and never will be- thirsty

  68. “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” – B. Goldwater

  69. Recently, two frowsy frauds named Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn went to the U. N. to complain about “cyberviolence” against women and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), although globally (and with similar figures in America) 3 to 4 men are murdered for every woman. Let’s look at how Sarkeesian “critiques” video games:

    “Feminist Frequency (Anita Sarkeesian) Verified account ‏@femfreq There’s no such thing as sexism against men. That’s because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.”

    Feminist Frequency Verified account ‏@femfreq Since so many seem confused. Masculinity ≠ male. Masculinity is a socially constructed and performed gender identity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_gender#Masculinity

    In case you haven’t been paying attention, that last one is French Queer Theory 101, and the “cure” for heterosexuality is Ann Leckie’s genderblind doofus robot or whatever the fuck it was. And let me remind you of the other part of this insane formula: according to this bizarre cult, heterosexuality was imposed on noble more androgynous ladies and lesbians by Conan the Barbarian during the Hyborian Age. Don’t believe me? Look up the head of Rutgers gender studies dept., the gay Charlotte Bunch and Harvard teacher and PhD Artemis March, among many others. Charlotte Bunch was honored with an award by Pres. Clinton and is in the women’s hall of fame, went with Hilary Clinton to China and is involved with the U. N.

    So basically you have batty feminists attacking all men on Earth, including men’s “fake” Hyborian Age sexuality, and then when people tell them to fuck off they go screaming to the U. N. for censorship, armed with a document so poorly sourced that 30% of the links were empty and one was someone’s hard drive. The U. N. has since pulled the report. Using a hard drive as a footnote is like using the inside of your head as a footnote. Guess what? I’m not reaching out to these crazy supremacist fuckers. These people are like the KKK attacking all Jews and blacks on Earth and then crying “harassment” when Jews and blacks tell them to fuck off. These nutty femmes want video games cleansed just like comics were cleansed in the ’50s. The video game nuts are the exact same people as the batty dames in SFF with their “cis” this and “privilege” that. Fuck ’em. Fuck every last one of them. Just fuck off.

    1. This unquestionable “truth” that racism or sexism or whateverism can only exist as “prejudice + power” should be so absurd on the face of it that it never got off the ground.

      When I was young All Good People agreed that judging someone by their race or gender, assigning them virtue or assuming criminality or making assumptions about their capabilities or lack of capabilities because of their external characteristics was wrong. This was rightly considered destructive to society as a whole even if the thoughts were only ever inside your own head… you’d still treat other people unequally. Nothing has changed in reality… prejudicial thoughts and feelings of hatred in individuals is destructive to society. It hurts communities and destroys equality and social cohesion, actively, *objectively*… and yet the *permission* to hate people is promoted in the new paradigm. Why?

      You can’t Virtue Signal with an idea that everyone agrees on. You just can’t.

      But even the faulty “prejudice + power” equation relies on never never never considering individual power of one person over another. It requires completely discounting individual victimization.

      SJWs think they are Good People. They are NOT. They are making our society worse, not better, people are more polarized, more suspicious, not less. Getting a fair shake is harder, not easier. Their Virtue Signaling isn’t for the oppressed, it’s for the other upper middle class American white women and those who curry their favor.

      1. This unquestionable “truth” that racism or sexism or whateverism can only exist as “prejudice + power” should be so absurd on the face of it that it never got off the ground.

        Unfortunately, it’s a seductive enough lie that some people embrace it. “I don’t have power so I can’t be a bigot towards those people.” In reality, powerless people can be bigots. Especially if they decide $group is the reason for why their lives suck. Then if they get power things get worse because now it’s “their turn” to hurt people and make $group pay for every insult or injury (real or imagined) that $group is blamed for.

        I guess the Big Lie technique can work on it’s practitioners as well.

        When I was young, I was inspired by MLK’s speech on how people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Looking at the character of these bozos, I can understand why they don’t want to be judged by that criteria.

        “You say that because I’m a $protectedgroup! and your inherent racism/sexism/whateverism compels you to do that!” “No, I say that because you’re a lying, hate-filled jackass.” “THAT’S UNCIVIL!!!” 😉

        1. I’m quite open about being bigoted against certain practitioners of recreational drug use. I am still a bigot, even if I have kept myself out of positions where I could act on that.

          In comparison, I think murdering terrorist scum are fine salt of the earth types, who only need killing to prevent them from killing others.

      2. Synova,

        We (as a society) are essentially being asked to trade in Dr. King’s dream (“Content of character”) for a half-baked retread revisiting of “Separate but Equal,” only some are more “equal” than others.

        How many victim hats can you wear at the same time? That will determine how much moral and intellectual status you have. The more victim badges you can hang on yourself, the higher your pedestal.

        In this environment, we suddenly have people like Rachel Dolezal manifesting — a white woman masquerading as a black woman, for cool points. That is just crazy, I know. And she’s not alone. Nor will she be the last. I am sure Dr. King would be aghast at the whole thing, and confused too. White people pretending to be black people, because it gives them an advantage?

        Identitarianism is going to completely fuck up the West, if the West doesn’t rouse itself enough to shrug off the Victim Culture’s encroachment on the Dignity Culture that gave us the Enlightenment.

        1. I’m not holding my breath for any Enlightenment coming any time soon, to speak honestly. At this point I just wish we could start the official process of Balkanization and get some of this over with.

    2. “Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)” I saw them open for Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats in 1986. I got arrested for trying to set the nacho cheese free from the concession stand in the atrium.

    3. “Using a hard drive as a footnote is like using the inside of your head as a footnote. ”

      the 6th edition of the APA Publication Manual is not amused.

    4. Well, the advantage of fighting an ideology that vilifies heterosexuality is that in the long run, you are practically guaranteed to outbreed them.

  70. By all means, both sides should be civil. That seems like common sense. Instead, we get one side flat out lying about people on the other side in “news” places like EW, Guardian, and other agencies picking up the lies. At what point does the slander (or libel) eliminate the need for the slurred side to be civil as well. This last SP showed a lot of people on the fence just what the established group would do to defend their turf. From lying to insults, to needless humiliation the other side has shown time and time again that they do not want to be civil. I would greatly like to hear your opinion and comments on the lies that were told during the last SP campaign.

  71. I have to admit I love File 770. Social justice retards are the bearded ladies of SFF. Only among them can you find some fool who thinks a single remark about John Scalzi in a dress constitutes “homophobia” while ignoring the formulaic, academic and hysteric heterophobia and man-hatred of the cultish femme religion they’ve adopted for their very own. This included the fantasist notion that disagreeing with a woman is “sexism.”

    These social justice clods use the term “cis dudes” as a slur 100% of the time (including its use by one of the most award-honored SF authors of all-time, Ann Leckie, their patron saint) but don’t dare use the analogy: “homo broads.”

    Only among such ill-bred people can you find morons who actually think a white guy with a black wife is eligible for serious consideration of the white guy as a white supremacist racist, though there are no quotes social justice rats can produce. Meanwhile, the in-your-face anti-white racism of their own colleagues who routinely use terms like “white tears,” “pigfucking white women,” compare white men to buffaloes, whine about “white saviors,” cook up fabulist theories about “white privilege,” review-censor whites, and think “whitesplaining” is a real thing along with the white “cultural appropriation” of non-white precious fluids all sails serenely over their empty heads.

    They call Gamergate a pack of misogynists although GG has defenders like journalists Ashe Schow, Cathy Young, Liz Finnegan and also tuber game commentators Liana Kerzner and porn actress Mercedes Carrera as well as the anon “Vivian James” and many others I could name. All of that above makes sense to people with zero critical thinking skills.

    That is what I would expect of people who not only think a “fifth” joke about a double chapter is high humor ala Oscar Wilde but go on for weeks using the same joke over and over again because they have such wild eccentric edgy progressive minds.

    1. >>>”All of that above makes sense to people with zero critical thinking skills.”

      Yes, but to the Linguistic Relativists, critical thinking just means deconstructing something according to whatever a word means today.

      And the humanities are churning out legions of people who consider themselves critical thinkers based solely upon their ability to tear down something they don’t understand.

      1. “Critical thinking” (once a reference to aristotelian rhetorical analysis but no more) has become code for use anyrehtorical means, hook or crook, to diminish or invalidate anything John Stuart Mill probably would’t cotton to provided such invalidation somehow benefits or advances a cultural-marxist “revolutionary” effort or goal in some way.

        it’s sort of like how po-mo is never used against po-mo thinkers or art. Critical theory is never used against friends and supporters of critical theory unless they have outlived their usefulness.

  72. Hey, Chuck, when dealing with SJWs there is no line – everything is on the table.

    There are only winning and losing tactics. Winning is the only thing that counts and there are no boundaries demarcating which is and which is not acceptable.

  73. When a writer gets insults from Vox Day here and Chris Gerrib over at Scalzi’s, it seems to me that they are onto something. 🙂

    1. I looked at the comments. They are the usual stunning lack of any sign of principles or standards all can live by. I am honestly consistently and newly stunned every time I read these people. I cannot believe adults in 21st century America are that stupid. They literally have one set of rules for themselves and a completely different set for others. There’s a reason for that; their entire feminist con game would collapse like a house of cards if they used rules the way sports or law does. And they seem to have no notion of how time works. If they were talking about WW II they’d put the date of Pearl Harbor wherever it most benefitted their argument, if not ignore it altogether. There is a timeline in all this, and it is crucial to understanding what happened first and who started this crusade of group defamation. And they hate Vox Day. On what basis? They love a hundred of their own for the same reasons! I can make no sense of these very weird people. Then again you have to be stupid to look up to the extremely short intellect of Scalzi.

  74. As you can see, we got nowhere at the speed of light. That’s because in order to “communicate” with these people we have to accept the idiotic myth that whites, men and heterosexuals as an entire group have acted as a force of oppression throughout the history of SFF and continue to do so today. That includes America, the globe and all of human history. What am I supposed to do with the insanity of that ideology pioneered into SFF by K. Tempest Bradford, N. K. Jemisin, Mary Ann Mohanraj and John Scalzi. These feminist asshats range from the hateful to the insanely naive to just insane. In order to power this asylum, one must believe misogyny, homophobia and racism is as common as dirt among straight white men and and that among noble women, gays and “PoC” misandry, heterophobia and racism is a fantastic chimera worthy only of LOLs. Good luck selling that con game. Plus, fuck off.

  75. Be polite, don’t stoop to name calling and not every disagreement has to involve fighting with straight razors.

    Sounds good to me, and while it may not always work out that way; I am glad it got posted here.

  76. One of the most interesting things about the gay radical third wave feminist theory being pushed by those we call “SJWs” in SFF is how little they seem to be aware of it. I’ve tested this many times by introducing it into comments and I get a lot of “LOLs” from SJWs. Of course SJWs are for a fact pushing gay feminist theory. The difference between actual gay feminists and SJWs is with the former you get the theory and the means to implement a solution and with SJWs you only get the solution; a type of rah-rah poorly understood “social justice” they confuse with Jim Crow and equal rights feminism. That’s why you have stalwarts like Scalzi, Hines and Wendig pushing rape culture, the end of the gender binary and white privilege without a hint of awareness or where those ideas came from or what they ultimately mean to actual gay third wave feminism or the very culture SJWs enjoy which radical feminists have repeatedly said must be destroyed.

    The reason that matters is because I believe if SJWs did truly understand what’s been mainstreamed into their consciousness they wouldn’t promote it because radical feminism is no different from anti-Semitism or white supremacy.

    What’s revealing is how SJWs never shut up about human sexuality and yet Bettie Page, convention “booth babes” and Frank Frazetta are taboo. There’s a reason for that: in feminist theory normal sexuality is considered an oppression. Normal expressions of sex like a pin-up are frowned on while any sexual deviancy is promoted as if it’s some analogy to ending Jim Crow. There’s a reason we use the term “useful idiot,” and when it comes to the SFF community, you’re looking at it. Chuck Wendig seems to be trying for Scalzi’s title of the most naive man in SFF. Not only did he personally lobby Disney for permission to shoehorn in gay characters into his Star Wars tie-in novel and called everyone names who knew he was a useful idiot, Wendig was also trolled by a “racist boycott” prank of Star Wars. There’s a reason why people play pranks like that on daffy clueless male lesbian feminists like Wendig and why they so easily fall for them. It’s because the ideology they have adopted as their own personal religion states straight white men are oppressive heteronormative racist women-hating homophobes merely by existing and so even the slightest confirmation this is true sent gender abolitionist Wendig into high gear. SJWs to this day still believe Ancillary Justice is just a very good SF novel whose genius they all stumbled upon at once. People who aren’t useful idiots know exactly how and why Leckie’s nothing from nowhere achieved a religious status in what is after all a religion. Anything like Leckie’s novel which depicts the Messiah of “genderblindess” is like a solid gold ingot to these people and their stupid cult.

    1. “Foz Meadows @fozmeadows Fuck the gender binary, is what I’m saying. Fuck it sideways with a chainsaw, and ESPECIALLY when it comes to children.”

      “We want to destroy patriarchal power at its source, the family.” – radical feminist Andrea Dworkin

      (Leckie) “…made a deliberate decision to use feminine nouns and pronouns as a neutral, genderless default, even in instances where the character’s biological gender is known to be male… if it doesn’t garner the author a Hugo nomination, I’ll be very much surprised.” – Foz Meadow’s Oct. 2013 review of AJ at A Dribble of Ink

  77. This essay was a waste of time. As so many here have already stated, but not in strong enough words, we ARE at WAR! The fact he will refuse to respond shows his cowardice even if his excuse is time constraints. From what I know of the situation, there was a group of people in the SF community who tried to do something constructive with offering their own alternatives for voting. The end of this was the other group wanted to remain dictators and burned their own bridges so no one they disagreed with could cross. The only alternative I see is to destroy so they at least get a black eye. Modern Science Fiction is no longer interesting anyway.

  78. I wanted to repeat with some changes what I responded in its own comment.

    BURN IT . . . BURN IT ALL! Frankly the existence of the awards are a problem. Who needs them? I like what I like or I won’t read or buy the books. What we need is to attack the publishers who print the schlock. The awards are simply the symptom of the disease at the top.

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