After my post about the Social Justice Warrior’s cannibal feeding frenzy, http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/11/10/sjw-cannibal-feeding-frenzy/ I’ve had a few people ask me why I bother writing about these people. That’s a good question. The short answer is that I can’t tolerate bullies. The long answer is complicated.
I read Sarah’s post this morning, http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/11/14/table-settings-at-the-cannibal-feast/ She is also talking about the SJW blogger getting caught being a total asshole scumbag jerk face, but to the SJWs the problem wasn’t that she was doing these horrible things, it was that she was doing these horrible things to the wrong people. Because when these horrible things are done to people like me or Sarah, then they are double plus good.
But one of her commenters said something that really struck me, and I want to quote it here.
Synova – Some of the comments by people who had been subject to the full treatment just made me want to cry. I didn’t think it was funny because the guilty parties and enablers aren’t the ones who are hurt. Yes, we can scoff at Scalzi when he makes a rational counter-argument and is made, ultimately, to retract and abase himself and agree in public and start proselytizing in public that no… you really can’t trust your own brain and if something seems wrong to you or you feel like defending yourself it is simply proof that you’re guilty.
But there were people who reported rather severe PTSD type reactions to even sitting down at a keyboard to write because they were so terrified of offending… again. Because *rationally* they’d done nothing wrong the first time, but they were forced to an irrational acceptance of their guilt. So now they’ve “accepted their privilege” and “checked it” and confessed and repented (they could come to the Dark Side and be welcomed, but they don’t know that, and have been taught that the Dark Side is evil, and that’s why shunning is so very evil within closed communities… being exiled is a horrific punishment) but since they had NO IDEA how they could have done something wrong in the first place, they also have no idea how to avoid it the next time.
Imagine doing this to a child.
The kid is walking through a room doing nothing much and suddenly POW… and then you tell the kid… well that was YOUR fault. You screwed up. You stepped on that spot on the floor.
So the kid looks at the spot and it looks like every other spot. But the kid is told that, no, the fact that she can’t even SEE the spot is what the problem is. You can’t SEE the spot… that’s why it is YOUR fault. Also, a good child will try to learn. You’re a good child, aren’t you?
So the kid says, yes… it was my fault. I could not SEE the spot. Not seeing the spot makes this my fault.
Afterward, it’s still impossible to see the spots, and walking across the room becomes fraught with danger. Sitting down at the keyboard gives this very “good” person the shakes and panic attacks… where are the spots? She still can’t see the spots but she MUST agree and believe that those spots exist.
I have a LOT of sympathy for those who were hurt, just like I have sympathy for any abused person.
Bingo. My problem is that I like stepping on their spots.
The issue with the Social Justice Warrior contingent isn’t just that they’ve got their causes, it is that they take those causes and use them to brow beat not only their opposition, but also the innocent bystanders, the undecided, and newcomers.
They’ve gotten away with it too, because they had cultural allies in high places, like academia, publishing, film, and the media. If you enter one of those industries they try to frighten you into staying within their arbitrary and capricious lines. If you color outside their lines, their punishments are slander, threats, rumor, lies, harassment, and whatever career damage they can come up with.
You know, all the stuff Requires Hate did to the wrong people. The threats, harassment, and slander weren’t special or unique. My side is used to them. Hell, according to the SJWs I’m a racist, sexist, homophobic, wife beating, rape apologist. None of those things are true, but it doesn’t matter to the SJWs. I’m a foe, and thus must be shunned. They stick as much stuff like that out there as possible in order to build a narrative about their targets. It is pervasive. The uninformed read those things and believe them.
Requires Hate only became controversial for getting caught using those tactics on people who’d obeyed and tried to color in their lines. That was a violation of the SJW’s social contract of not eating their own until they stray from proper goodthink.
The SJWs say they stand for equality. Only they don’t. That’s a smoke screen. They are champions of diversity, provided that everyone is diverse in exactly the same approved manner. At their core they are petty, vengeful, tyrannical thought police, who simply can’t abide someone sinning. They’re an unholy cross between puritans and communists, with a heavy dose of Zanax, and severe self-esteem issues.
Social Justice Warriors are control freaks. Nothing more. Their bizarre antics have given true feminists a bad name. Their mad accusations of racism against anything and everything causes real racism to get lost in the background noise. By accusing well meaning, good intentioned individuals of horrible crimes, they legitimize and empower the real criminals.
The most interesting part of last week’s big expose of Requires Hate was the comments from various left wing or moderate authors living in fear of being slandered or having their careers destroyed. All I can say to them is welcome to the party, buddy. Now do you understand why thought police are so dangerous? You can’t cheer when they go after those you disagree with, and then act surprised when the pack of vicious attack dogs you’ve fed, raised, and nurtured eventually turn on you. Attacking is what they are programmed to do. One day you will make a wrong move, or a move they at least perceive to be wrong, and then you’re going to get bitten.
Of course, once people like me and Sarah commented on this, the SJW Harpy Brigade took to Twitter to complain how horrible it was “White Men” feel they get a say in the matter… Let that bigotry soak in for a moment. Sure, this is our industry, and it affects our livelihood and our friends, but no opinion for you, because of skin color.
SJWs stifle artistic creativity. When artists, authors, designers, and creators are afraid of crossing the invisible lines, art suffers. What some of you haven’t realized yet however is that the lines just aren’t invisible, they move based upon how much the SJWs like you. Basically, if you are on their shun list, no matter what you do, you will give offense and cause outrage. And if you are one of them, you have a dispensation to sin freely.
If the SJWs decide you are an enemy anything you do is automatically sexist, racist, homophobic, or something, and they will tell thousands of complete strangers all about it. Regular nice people don’t like being accused of horrible, vile things, so usually they fall back in line. Of course, actually reading the books or knowing anything about the author is unnecessary before slandering them, which is how come to them I’m a white guy with white privilege who writes about manly white men doing white things for white people.
For those who end up on the shun list, if you have a minority character you are guilty of “tokenism” or worse, “cultural appropriation” which is a totally asinine concept, especially in a nation based upon cultural appropriating every winning idea and strategy in the history of the world. My children are Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Russian, Jew, Mormons, descended from conquistadors, Vikings, cowboys, pioneers, and prophets, and we had Indian food for dinner last night before watching a Japanese TV show while I glued together pieces of a Spanish war game. My ancestors introduced the chili pepper to Thailand and my wife’s ancestors were legal to shoot on sight in Missouri. Who the hell do you think you are to tell an American not to culturally appropriate stuff?
However, if you are a SJW approved writer you can write tweets that are so blatantly, absurdly bigoted and racist that if you do a find and replace of White Man for Jew it would read like a Heinrich Himmler speech.
The SJW’s campaign of suppression is insidious and far reaching. They don’t just come after you after you’ve created, they scare you before you start.
Back when I mocked the foolish demands of End Binary Gender lady on Tor.com http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/01/28/ending-binary-gender-in-fiction-or-how-to-murder-your-writing-career/ and then defended myself from the White Knights who rode up to defend the poor damsel in distress from my Big Evil Swarthy Menace http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/01/29/5687/ I heard from a whole bunch of authors, ranging from just beginning to superstars, but mostly political moderates or liberals, thanking me for talking about this. These authors are frightened of writing about certain things or writing about them in the wrong way. Basically, they were trying to be good kids, and they didn’t know where the spots were. And these authors couldn’t comment themselves because they knew that would draw the SJW attack dogs.
Interesting side note, it was fun to hear from a bunch of liberal authors how End Binary Gender lady wasn’t such an innocent damsel in distress, and how she was actually an attack dog bully who’d harassed people at conventions. Fast forward a year and we see her implicated as one of Requires Hate’s minions. Fantastic.
This stuff is pervasive. It is everywhere. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I got involved in the End Binary Gender nonsense because I actually like encouraging writers, especially new ones. SJWs like scaring writers. They’ll lecture you on forbidden topics and forbidden words, because the most important thing in the creative process is that the author walk on egg shells, worried that he might inadvertently sin.
Some of my fans follow various SJWs on Twitter and send me links to the most ridiculous quotes. An award winning SJW author recently tweeted about how she wasn’t going to play the videogame Destiny because it used Dark versus Light. Then there were a whole mess of comments which basically said You Go Girl! That’s Racist Colonialist talk!
Now there are plenty of reasons to hate Destiny’s writing (I actually felt bad for Peter Dinklage during some of the nonsensical exposition) but racism isn’t one of them. Somehow to an SJW dark vs. light or black vs. white used as a theme to represent good vs. evil is actually racist and based upon human skin tone… So now aspiring authors are afraid to use this because they don’t want to be racist. Too bad this is like one of the oldest continual themes in human storytelling, dating back to when we figured out fire kept away the things in the dark that wanted to eat us.
In actuality every human culture, from every continent, has some form of good vs. evil myth represented by light vs. dark. Because I write Monster Hunter, I’m a folklore nerd, so within a couple of seconds of reading that I thought of myths from Africa, India, South America, and all over Asia where the good guys were represented by “light” and the bad guys were represented by “dark”. The Bible, the Torah, the Talmud, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, that is a theme is all over religious writings from every corner of the world, from Amaterasu to Zoroastrians, light good, dark scary. Light you can see. Dark you can’t. Duh.
Hell, there’s a Dark Side of the Force for a reason!
But you should totally not use that old and powerful theme that appeals to all of sane humanity in your work, because outrage. Stay in your lines, peasant.
Recently another author tweeted something about oh good, another story where a white man says things, does things, then shoots things. Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible, except it describes stories as diverse as Unforgiven to Blade Runner, or Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Godfather, or Inception to Apocalypse Now. So maybe, just maybe, there is more diversity to storytelling than the skin deep bullshit SJWs fixate on.
Basically, the SJWs want you to be screwed, no matter what. If they can only control criminals, then soon enough they’ll make sure that everything is a crime.
The solution?
For creators, don’t play by their rules. Write what you want. Write about what inspires you. Make up whatever characters you think make for the most interesting story.
When the SJWs come for someone, and you know that they are liars, stand up for the truth. When they form an angry mob, at minimum don’t join in. If you’re like me and not adverse to confrontation, fight back. Tell the truth. When they say something bug nuts crazy, you’re not doing anyone any favors by validating their stupid opinion.
Don’t let them set the terms. When they say you’re something-ist, and you’re clearly not, tell them so. Never accept their lies. When they start explaining how you’re guilty because of invisible privilege, micro aggressions, or original sin, then all the observers will realize just how full of shit they really are.
When they judge someone based upon the color of their skin or their sex, rather than the content of their character or the quality of their ideas, call them on their bigotry.
Don’t let them determine what constitutes an acceptable response. They will show up, insult you, and then demand polite debate. An SJW can malign and insult you all day, but when you respond in kind, they call you rude, aggressive, hateful, and so angry, why you need to be dismissed! This is a one way street. They do it to individuals, groups, and even entire political movements. SJWs will pick the most bat shit crazy person on the opposition’s side and use them as the poster child to tar the whole movement. And if one of those people doesn’t exist, they’ll fabricate one.
When you’ve reached that point, you’ve got nothing to lose. Mock them relentlessly. When you discover that you’re dealing with a Concern Troll, just skip ahead to where you are going to end up inevitably anyway. The onlookers will appreciate your honesty.
SJWs are predictable in their responses. When I inevitably get attacked for this blog post, it’ll be all about how I’m something-ist or something-phobic, and want to keep Group X out of Industry Y. It is all about dismissing their opponent. The truth is optional.
Their predictability makes them vulnerable. Their toolbox is limited. That is why they can’t just condemn Requires Hate’s dirty tricks, because they those same dirty tricks are all they’ve got to cow the opposition into silence.
One thing you need to realize before joining in this fight, the goal isn’t to convince the SJWs. Swaying the decided is a nearly insurmountable task. The real goal is to convince the undecided, and debate is a spectator sport. When one side has nothing but lies, slander, and intimidation, all you need to do is expose them for what they really are.
Above I talked about the eternal human theme of light vs. dark. You’ll note in most of those mentioned religious texts from all over the world light and truth go hand in hand. The darkness hides the truth. SJWs thrive on ignorance, bigotry, hate, and fear. It is time to turn the light on and watch the cockroaches scatter.
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Bravo Sir.
Biting Social Commentary that is aimed by a knowledgeable wordsmith. And ALWAYS on target.
We see enough “passive aggressive” nonsense that it’s refreshing to see someone respond with active aggression. When someone honestly wants to debate (and there’s a chance that they might actually, you know, change their mind), let’s debate. If they want to fight unfairly, let’s fight for real. You sir, are a master of the mock-comment takedown, and it’s a pleasure reading your responses to trolls.
Keep up the good work (and I don’t even mind if it means that it takes longer for you to take more of my money ;)
Wait, what? This is cutting into my future reading pleasure? I did not sign off on that! I enjoy seeing the Correiakin unleashed on the ignorant of the internet, but only if it doesn’t interfere with the wordsmithing that takes my money. I need my fix!
With that in mind, I’m loving the anthologies. I get a taste of the good stuff and I get exposed to some authors that I have not read from. Thank you, and keep up the excellent collaborations.
From the sound of things, this is his way of taking a refreshing break. You know, so he can get back to writing and be even more productive. Some of us like to take a walk or maybe play some video games. Larry likes to throw down with internet trolls. Whatever works, huh?
Nah. This sort of thing is the equivalent of him waiting between load times on a game and like warming up his hands – pre-bookwriting finger exercises. At least this is the impression I get. *grin*
If you’re a Conservative Christian and don’t immediately support Same Sex Marriage, you’re an evil person who wants the Laws changed so that gays can legally be killed.
Oh, the “Liberals” were silent about the person expressly applied that thought to me.
IE I wanted to legally kill gays.
The whole gay marriage thing is so irritating. If you don’t support something that (until the last couple of decades) hasn’t ever been legally recognized for the thousands of years we’ve had laws, we obviously want to lynch every gay person around for simply being alive. ARGH!
And yet these same troglodytes cannot countenance any criticism of the Religion of Peace(tm), followers who, if given a chance in this country, would do the same to gays they do in other sharia ruled countries: put them to death.
I remember laughing at former Iranian President Imindeedanutjob when he was allowed within our borders by this despicable administration to speak at the UN when he said, paraphrased, “We don’t have a homosexual problem in Iran.” No sh*t Sherlock. You killed them all.
–
Excellent piece, Larry. Bookmarked for later tossing (like a grenade) at SJWs trying telling me that I have “white privilege” or other such nonsense.
I’m in favor of gay marriage. I’m also appalled at the Left’s demonization of everyone who isn’t in favor of gay marriage. The sad thing is that the Left is very likely to doom the hopes of gay marriage because their strategy to gain it is so offensive to most of the population — including me.
There is nothing in between Hate and Enthusiastic Acceptance, ya see…
This was the moral of a fanfic that I thought was supposed to be porn.
Misappropriation of the word “Homophobic”. ‘Homophobic’ means feeling about gay people the way some folks feel about slugs or spiders: unreasoning fear and hate. Disagreeing that being told you’re unable to open a joint checking account is the moral equivalent of Sandy Bull’s firehoses isn’t homophobic, or any kind of phobic at all.
I got in an argument with an attorney about exactly that point and in probably one of the most straw-grasping responses I’ve seen yet, he claimed that it’s what was in common use that matters, with no thought to the matter of people inventing words out of whole cloth designed specifically to demonize certain world views (like 1984′s “Double Plus Good”), and that “You don’t control the English language.” Um, I do control it, as do you, and every other English speaker and it is behooves us to call out those who invent words intentionally to demonize wrongthink.
Unless, of course, one favors the publication of a Newspeak Dictionary.
I’m not sure that it’s a misappropriation of the word “Homophobic”.
IIRC The term was created by a Gay Rights Activist (not a Mental Health professional).
IMO it was created in order to claim that anybody who didn’t support his views was mentally ill.
IMO a word created for that purpose can’t be “misappropriated”.
That’s a good point, Paul. Misappropriation would imply that there is an appropriate use for the word, and since, as you say, it was created to demonize those who disagreed, it’s a loaded word that has no neutral meaning. If it really did mean a true phobia, then belittling people or hating on them by using the word would be quite mean. We don’t, after all, throw “claustrophobic” or “agoraphobic” at someone and expect that to be a legitimate argument or use it to insult someone for crossing some line. If someone has a phobia, that’s an intense fear that they themselves know to be irrational and have no control over. If someone truly did have a phobia of gay people, they would be someone to be pitied and to try to get help for because they’d be suffering from an uncontrollable mental condition. (Besides, linguistically, homophobia should mean ‘irrational fear of sameness’.)
But yeah, using a word like homophobia is designed to shut down any actual discussion by instantly demonizing the opposition and, as you say, implying that they are mentally unstable and therefore not worth debating with. As soon as someone uses that word, I know that it’s no point trying to talk to them about any issues related to homosexualit at all.
*shrug* I have no doubt that, somewhere out there, there’s someone who gets the dry heaves just thinking about Boy George or the Indigo Girls (listening is another matter). The point is that allowing SJW’s to tar all dissenters with the stigma of psychological illness is to cede most of the argument. It’s like when Leftists whip out the ‘Racist!’ screech.
After a brief check of the history of the term, it appears that it originally meant “men who fear being considered homosexual”.
It became “general knowledge” as meaning “people who fear/dislike homosexuals” and apparently was used that way by gay rights activists.
So it doesn’t have a “good usage” in the minds of the general public.
Homophobia is like Islamaphobia: It’s a made up word with no basis in fact.
What you’re basically seeing with SJWs is two groups. One group is your everyday racial and sexual bigot. They have perfected convoluted arguments about social justice to mask their racism and bigotry.
The second group buys into these arguments as fighting oppression.
From the outside it’s all the same – hate speech.
There is no room for something like that in a genre like SFF. In fact it’s as odd a place to find something like that as I can imagine.
These people have got to go; every damn last one of them. Anyone who supports them, or says “Thank you for that post,” or encourages and enables them.
Politics is one thing, this isn’t that. I draw the line at hate speech. I don’t care if it’s a hundred of them. They all got to go. Don’t buy their books, don’t publish their books, don’t associate with them professionally. Say why or don’t, but isolate them. They have asked for that and they deserve it.
The Social Justice Wannabes inevitably turn on their own. The problem isn’t just in the SF world, the SJW entryists are trying to take over organized atheism and skepticism. When decent people who agree with 95% of their political views don’t accept everything they say as dogma, they get smeared: http://www.michaelnugent.com/2014/11/04/chronology-of-misrepresentations-and-smears-in-the-atheist-movement-by-pz-myers-and-others/
As Orwell noted “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” I’m glad to see the authoritarian left is finally showing its true face.
Well, that’s the Marxist influence on the SJWs showing its true face, there. Self-criticism – and the occasional trumped-up show trial – is an important part of the dialectic. And if you can’t find something to criticize and abase yourself for before the collective, rest assured the collective will find some pretext to do it for you.
One of many reasons why I’m losing patience with all the “discussions” the Left wants to have on various social issues, and have settled for “Because FUCK YOU, that’s why” as an all-purpose response.
I began writing a book many moons ago, a fantasy novel where the main character had dark reddish skin, like an Indian. but culturally, that’s not where I was coming from at all. In the world I created, his race had been seafaring people for ages, so it made sense for them to have darker skin. I was scared to finish it at one time because I am a white man, and I was going to use his skin color as a way that his race was identified and persecuted, and we all know that white men never experience discrimination.
Thanks to people like you and Sarah Hoyt, I don’t worry about people reacting badly because white men can’t write about things like discrimination and persecution. Now I’m back to worrying about how to finish the damn plot…
Glad to hear that. Morons don’t get a say in your writing unless you let them.
When I first started writing, I was actually trying to get away from writing about politics. I was kind of burned out on it and really wanted to appeal to the masses as much as any science fiction writer can. However, somewhere along the way, I realized that the Left wouldn’t really let that go. Everything, to them, is about politics. I even had a guy comment on my blog that everything was political (never did answer as to how pissing standing up was political, though I know what it would have been).
Now, I’m not worrying about it. I’m a writer. I tell the stories I want to tell in the way I want to tell them. Call a character’s inclusion “tokenism” because I chose for him to be black. I. Do. No. Care.
I figured out that the kind of stories I tell, the ones where heroes are actually heroic, wouldn’t appeal to the SJW crowd anyways, so they can go screw themselves sideways with an aircraft carrier. No lube.
I’m going to sell my books, make money, and laugh in their faces from here on out.
I applaud your integrity, sir.
Incidentally, I’ve heard multiple folks from GamerGate declare that when they’re done reforming gaming, they’ll come over and help us in SFF.
May they finish quickly. We need the help.
The fine folks at MHN can help speed things up with just 5 minutes of their time per day. Give 1 follow, 1 favorite, and 1 retweet to people in GamerGate daily.
For a deeper and even more productive level of involvement, consider joining the email campaign to bleed advertising $$ from SJW sites like Gawker, Kotaku, Jezebel, etc. (It’s been highly effective.)
http://gitgud.net/gamergate/gamergateop/tree/master/Operations/Operation-Disrespectful-Nod
And if you prefer taking the initiative, go ahead and start using GG’s successful tactics to establish a beachhead in SFF.
Thanks for voicing support!
By the end of this post, I found myself shirtless, wearing a kilt, clutching my claymore, with my face painted blue, shouting “FREEDOM” and I still have no recollection of how that happened.
Do you care how it happened?
And the next day you’re in front of the cameras bawling an apology, and you have no idea how that happened, either.
“…and my wife’s ancestors were legal to shoot on sight in Missouri.”
Dangit! I knew one of ‘em got away!
Larry, I get called a lot of things, but for some reason the skeletons seem to fear calling me a racist. Why do you get all that gooshy-filled, wonderful, cannon-fodder hate and I have to scrimp?
By the way, great post.
You read Empress Theresa. Even they figure you’ve suffered enough.
Pity is a human emotion. They do not possess this. No, I think I’m not big enough yet.
Thank God it’s Taco Friday.
Maybe. I just can’t figure out how you could have missed being called a racist. I get called one at least once a week, and despite reading my name on the Wall Street Journal, I know I’m just a small fish.
Well, if you’re not white, you can’t be racist. The most “they” can say is that you have “racist ideas”. [Sad Smile]
But if you commit wrongthink, you are no longer not white.
Because they can figure out a Spanish last name, but they can’t figure out a Portuguese one, and if you say you’re Lusitanic they figure you come from a long line of oceanliners.
Yes, you’ll have to be bigger and better-selling before you can ascend to honorary white… what do they call that? “White hispanic”?
One of the reasons (at least in writing) that ultimately they are going to lose comes back to how their vitriol influences those that come after.
RH drove away new writers, gave others psychological damage, and (from the looks of it) attacked her competition for the savory sop of being the special high victim who thereby deserves all the praise they can heap on her.
You, Brad, Sarah, and the ‘neutral’ writers like David Farland and Kevin J. Anderson support new authors, go on about how awesome their work is, and offer actual help.
But its more than just that. (Though that is a huge deal) They may have each other convinced that their PC angsty drivel is cutting edge and fabulous, but it isn’t swaying the new (and soon to be former) readers.
When I write action I ask “What would Larry do?” When I am trying to capture the awe inspiring nature of space and exploration I go to Brad’s writing. When I want to work on my prose I read John C. Wright. Through the simple fact that they’re obsessed with identity politics to the detriment of the story they are aborting the continuation of their ideas and worldview by driving away the up and coming who need inspiration and examples to aspire to.
RH drove away new writers, gave others psychological damage, and (from the looks of it) attacked her competition for the savory sop of being the special high victim who thereby deserves all the praise they can heap on her.
And in doing so, discouraged new Leftist writers: she did very little to discourage actual Rightist writers, who are used to this abuse and hence shrug it off.
Oh, exactly my point – keep that trend up for a decade or two and they’ll make sf/f center/right by default. And that doesn’t even factor in issues of sales.
Ha, yeah, the SJWs are working so hard to cripple/scare off new writers who actually care about that sort of thing, maybe by default all that’ll be left in a decade or two are those of us who know that those things matter less that telling a good story. So, in trying to brow-beat everyone to conform to their idea of what SF/F should be, they’ll end up causing the exact opposite of what they want. And SF/F will be better off for it. Maybe we should just leave them to it and let the SJW snake eat its own tail.
I’ve read many a comment from people claiming they gave up on the idea of entering SFF as writers. It had nothing to do with Requires Hate. It was the Social Justice Warriors and their eternal crusade of harassing racism.
Me, I’m more inspired than ever to make it as a writer. Because the SJWs are accidentally right about something: #WeNeedDiverseBooks. We won’t get them playing by their rules.
If I’m being completely honest, I must admit that I seriously considered not pursuing SF/F as my main genre when the Sad Puppies stuff got to its worst. My plan was to instead write Romance that heavily featured SF/F, despite not really reading any Romance, simply because, as a mostly female genre (at least perception-wise, I know there are some very successful male authors of Romance) it seems to have escaped the SJW calls for equity of numbers. Go figure.
Thankfully I am not at the point where my response to that idea is ‘screw you.’ I may still end up writing Romance at some point, as it would be an interesting change of pace, but I’ll be damned if I let these morally bankrupt illogical cowards force me to change how I live my life.
I didn’t know any better, so I wrote sci fi. I suspect if I ever sell enough, someone will scream about some of my protagonists (and I) being traitors to their sex (or species-ism, or something). Big woop. It would probably help my sales at the rate the Special Snowflakes are going.
…And I forgot to hit notify via email. Lol.
Thank you sir for the wonderful post. May the light preserve you for ages to come. :D
My problem is that I don’t enjoy confrontation. I need to find a way to stand up for myself and others without fighting.
Trolling the internet works great! That’s what the SJW do, so give it back to ‘em in spades.
If you do something creative in your own way and not theirs, that is standing up to them. If you live your own way without hiding and are unashamed of it, that is standing up to them.
If I may suggest: Go about your business as if your detractors aren’t there, and as much as possible don’t respond to their slings and arrows. (That’s why writers aren’t supposed to respond to negative comments on Amazon. If they know they can get a rise out of you, they’ll keep poking you like a chimp in a cage.) Being “pushed around” doesn’t just mean letting someone tell you what to do; it also means doing something just because they said not to. Either way they’re influencing your actions. They have power over you.
Don’t fall for it. Do what YOU think is right. Your success is a more telling response than anything you could say in the heat of the moment.
I’m with you on that, Arwen. Dave’s advice sounds pretty good to me. I try not to let myself get dragged into online arguments, but it’s hard (especially when a reasonable discussion sometimes descends into being an argument, which is when I need to decide when to bow out of it).
Thanks for all the advice. I appreciate it.
Live right, do well, be happy, enjoy yourself, have fun doing what you do as a hobby – and NEVER STOP DOING IT for as long as you want to.
That seems to piss them off RIGHT fast.
I continue to enjoy watching you fight this and have found some of your advice – how to spot various trolls, etc invaluable. However – the real reason I stopped by is off topic:
I was strolling through my Kindle library and realized I bought but never read Bad Penny way back when you recommended it. Got into it last night, love it and am enjoying your cameo.
Keep fighting the good fight…and keep recommending worthy authors.
And the behaviour is driving away readers, too. I was perfectly willing to give writers like N.K. Jemisin or Ann Leckie a chance until it became clear that the SJ contingent thought readers like me *owed* my reading time to such books, purely because of their representational value.
The problem with politicizing everything is that once you have, you become terrified of *de*-politicizing *anything* for fear of an opponent re-politicizing it *against* you in exactly the way you once did.
Unfortunately timely post given that the SJWs just collected another scalp – on what should have been the best day of Dr. Matt Taylor’s life.
This. So much this.
People are whining about a supposedly “sexist” shirt potentially discouraging theoretical women (who obviously don’t actually CARE that much about science in the first place, or else a simple shirt wouldn’t be enough to stop them) from getting into science, when their ridiculous witch hunt is discouraging an ACTUAL, REAL LIFE brilliant scientist who LANDED A PROBE ON A FUCKING COMET from doing his job, in real life.
I just saw an article where apparently this guy’s sister talked about how he’s not so good with practical, everyday things, like sometimes he can’t find his car in a parking lot. Never mind that this is totally normal for a lot of people–this sort of thing is actually so common with brilliant people that it’s pretty much expected. And here they are apparently trying to use this to demean him in some way.
I don’t think that shirt was the best fashion choice he could have made, but people are overreacting like crazy.
It’s an ALOHA SHIRT. By default it’s a horrible fashion choice. But as far as choosing aloha shirts, that’s one that’s not retina burning, and nowhere near as horrible as some of the ones I’ve had the misfortune to see.
The said shirt is sold out on the link that was put up over in ATH.
Yeah. And these are the people who like to pretend they actually DO SOMETHING USEFUL.
When they go to the Middle East – and not in Israel- and start campaigning for women’s rights there I may take them more seriously. Until then, they’re whiny bitches who should be beaten like the fat, helpless barking harp seals they are.
So mad right now.
I’d love to buy a shirt like his and wear it proudly, but from what I’ve heard it was a custom job by a friend of his for his birthday.
Achillea: look here
http://www.alohaland.com/whats-new/new-gunner-girls
They’re awful spendy, though.
The SJWs who say they are against Stormfront use and support the exact same language and demonization theories. SJWs use the same demonization theories that mainstream and normalize hate speech that led to mass genocide in Europe and Rwanda in short gluts of only a few years, or even months.
The SJWs who threaten to boycott conventions unless they institute racial and sexual harassment policies are the worst racial and sexual harassers and stalkers in SFF.
The SJWs who claim they are against the reactionary fifties want a Comics Code of Authority in video-gaming and SFF art. That means no Frank Frazetta, no Daisy Duke.
The SJWs who claim they want equality have no use for our Fourteenth Amendment. There is no equal protection in SJW-land.
The SJWs who claim they are against segregation continually adopt formal racially segregated “safe” rooms, dinners, symposiums, writing workshops, anthologies, and web sites. They do the same for women and homosexuals. Conversely, any accidental white or male Table of Contents or anything else is insulted. There are no such formal entities for straight white males in SFF.
There are gay, non-white and women’s awards and grants I cannot win, while the SJWs complain about exacting percentages of who wins come-one, come-all awards which, by their language, straight white males created for everyone, the same way straight white males created the Constitution SJWs have no use for, except to distort the Fourteenth Amendment to protect their own special groups.
SJWs use insane arguments like the mere absence of women, gays or non-whites is proof they want in and are being excluded. That argument is never applied to anything dominated by women, non-whites or gays. Not anywhere in the world.
SJWs argue women, gays and non-whites can’t really be bigots because they are punching up, which is like saying the Nazis weren’t racists until they came to power and that the KKK and neo-Nazis in America today aren’t racists. Conversely, mistaken identity and the historically inaccurate portrayal of a non-white character by straight white men in a novel is “racism.” By the same token curse words or tight tank tops on a woman are “misogyny.”
In SJW thought there is no such thing as a white indigenous population anywhere in the world. Certainly not one that deserves its heritage left intact. Conversely, any non-white population in the world is said to be indigenous, even if it is the descendent of a Turkish invader in Egypt, or Mughal invader in India. Any non-white population must have its demographic and heritage respected and maintained. Any non-white population has the right to diversify any white nation even to the point of subverting its demographic.
Any idea Africa is not diverse is laughed at as racist by SJWs, even while they continually portray white nations as a “monoculture” and Whitey McWhiteland.
In SJW history there is no such thing as non-white colonialism, or white postcolonialism. Tolkien’s fantasy documentation of a very real thousand year event is said to be a demonization of “easterlings.” There is no such thing as a non-white slave trade.
Nothing an SJW says makes any sense. That’s because their “privilege”-power arguments and ideology of man-hatred and heterosexuality originate from and have been refined for almost a half-century by psychotic lesbian gender feminists. These arguments are kafkatrapping black hole circular arguments that are employed by rote, not in actual rhetoric of debate. That’s why SJWs tolerate no dissent and censor their blogs and block people on Twitter. After delivering their torpedoes about privilege or racism, they speed away because they can’t answer questions put to their own insane, sociopathic and toxic theories.
SJWs racially and sexually attack straight white men every single day. When straight white men retaliate that is seen as proof of a male ideology of anti-women, anti-gay and anti-non-white. Who do they think is going to respond to targeted group defamation: Arabs?
Any disagreement with an SJW defaults you to reactionary, a “troll,” a conservative and extreme right-winger.
None of this is merely my opinion or a cute reverse argument, but things I have learned reading them and then documented again and again to the point of iron-clad absurdity and the repetitious droning of an insect. If the U.S. had the same lack of First Amendment protection, the same hate speech laws as Europe and the U.K., I reckon SJW editors, award nominees, literary organization officers, serial convention panelists/organizers and bloggers could be prosecuted for hate speech at a rate of 50 to 1 in terms of the people who are in opposition to SJWs.
>The SJWs who say they are against Stormfront
> use and support the exact same language and
> demonization theories.
Yeah, but the Stormfront people set up their own forum and pretty much stay there, as opposed to griefing the forums and blogs of people they don’t like.
Which instantly makes them so much better than the SJWs prats because they don’t BOTHER ANYONE ELSE. If nothing else, just for that reason alone.
Wow. Never thought I’d see the day when actual racists were nowhere near as bad as the SJWs who scream, bark and bleat about racism nonstop in places where they’re not wanted.
Seriously, woah.
This needs to be framed:
“However, if you are a SJW approved writer you can write tweets that are so blatantly, absurdly bigoted and racist that if you do a find and replace of White Man for Jew it would read like a Heinrich Himmler speech.”
Remove “approved writer” and replace “tweets” with novel, newspaper column etc… it fits every sjw out there
I have actually seen a SJW say that this proves that they don’t engage in those tactics, since they have problems with RH.
To receive the obvious counter that witch hunters don’t want to be burned at the stake as witches.
That is the dumbest freaking logic I’ve ever heard.
After all, if we have problems with RH, does that mean it proves that none of us engage in these tactics? I bet there’s a reason why that logic doesn’t apply to us at all.
I was into punk and alt long before The Great Seattle Marketing Blitz; when someone tells me I offend them or ‘make them feel unsafe’ because of some truthful or accurate thing I’ve said, I don’t get apologetic: I just feel as if I’m doing something right.
Ayn Rand did in fact have a couple of things right. One of them was that you should never allow anyone to use their own weakness as a weapon against you, and that’s exactly what all the SJW bleating of “I’m offended!” and “You frighten me” is. They don’t really feel offended or frightened: if they did, they’d not tolerate ANYONE behaving like that. Instead, their core belief that offensive speech is subjective based on the color (preference, religion, et cetera) of the speaker and the listener shows that it’s not the speech but the desire to regulate the speaker.
So to all: If someone says “You offend me!” … THANK THEM for the positive feedback!
Reminds me of when I was publicly mocking someone for saying something dumb and counter productive to cover their mistake, they rolled out “I feel insulted”. To which I countered “Good, I was trying to insult you”.
“Who the hell do you think you are to tell an American not to culturally appropriate stuff?”
Words of Iron. If I were an American, I’d wear this on a shirt. :-)
Yeah, I liked that line. Because isn’t that kind of what America’s all about? Heck, even our entire population (or those who aren’t Native Americans) is culturally appropriated. The engraving on the Statue of Liberty flatly states our desire to culturally appropriate.
We’re pretty much the Borg is what I’m saying.
There were some native american drummers at a function I
attended some years ago. One of the drummers hung up his
jacket on a chair before going to work. What did the jacket say on
the back? “DALLAS COWBOYS.”
Who is appropriating whom, eh?
It’s like most of the people bitching about the Washington Redskins mascot. They’re a bunch of white, privileged statist jackasses.
Most of the American Indians I know aren’t bothered by it. We’ll, they don’t like that the team sucks, but I can’t blame them for that one.
It’s okay for Natives to appropriate from their white imperialist oppressors. It reminds me of a stupid poster I once saw. It read: “Department of Homeland Security: protecting America since 1492″. It shows three Native men . . . carrying firearms.
Tome, I remember when someone asked the Seminoles what they thought about the University of South Florida’s team. Short version: “They can use the name . . . as long as they’re winning.”
Because it’s me,
and I love me some tropes,
have a link to those who have come across the seas
…hey that rhymed, I see.
Resistance is futile!
*flee!*
Here in the Western word, we have a government from the Greeks by way of the Romans by way of the British. We speak that b*st*ard tongue of all languafes, English. Our religion is Jewish by way of the Romans with a Reformation from the Germans. Our provinces and states have names taken from the Native Americans. We don’t care who your ancestors were. We’re bound by ideas instead of blood. Cultural appropriation? How could we *not* be?
Hell, we’ll take anyone’s holidays if it will give us a good excuse to drink.
The term also gives the impression that there’s theft going on, that what was ‘appropriated’ is somehow gone from the original culture: that, somehow, black men stopped playing Delta Blues because of Elvis and Led Zeppelin and the Boy Scouts killed off all the Indians.
This is, of course, total bullshit.
@Joe in PNG – I’m told Aussies do that too. Because any excuse is a valid one. =)
Well, it’s still a valid statement, even if the wearer is NOT American, aye?
I’ve been asked through the years. “Why do you debate atheists, you won’t change their opinions?” My answer, for the nearly 20 years I’ve been on usenet/Facebook. is always the same. “I’m not trying to change _their_ opinions. I’m trying to reach the readers that might have an open mind.”
I think that you’re doing ti for the same reasons.
Ha, I’ve been the saying the same thing for years as to why I debate Christians :)
But I think more importantly – by demonstrating that you can have a debate, and not just an argument, you can humanize the other side.
Nothing better than piercing the veil of us and them. Even if you think they’re wrong, as long as you can believe they’re decent, earnest people, we can at least not be dicks to each other.
Thank you Larry.
I’m not a wordy kind of guy. This post of yours is brilliant. It applies not only to the issue with RH, but all the other SJW outrages of the day. Race riot tourism, South of the border voter registration drives and Government takeover of healthcare by deceit.
You wrote exactly how I see and think, yet lack the wordsmithery to express on my own. So really, thanks.
I’d better never hear anyone use the cultural appropriation label with me, because that’s all I do with the stuff I write, and I don’t give a fig. It makes other people I know nervous, but I feel like after all of the study time I’ve put into it and so forth, I feel I’ve earned the right to speak in this arena.
“Nothing done by any human is alien to me.” Some old Roman guy said that.
You should release my Tweet of Gould’s from moderation. It’s brown and sounds like a bell.
I’ve run across bleats from SJWs that in addition to male, white and straight protagonists, able-bodied protagonists must be eliminated from stories too. Just when you think they’ve reached the limits of human stupidity, they top themselves.
Only Crippled Black lesbians need apply?
Their selection of protagonists is surprisingly non-diverse. ;-)
Well, my WIP has a major character who has lost both legs and both arms in war.
Of course, since he’s a cyborg, it’s not really holding him back too much.
DC’s Oracle was a great example of a disability leveraged into making a character better. Of course, many of Oracle’s defining stories were written by that evil right-wing misogynist, Chuck Dixon. ;-)
Then when you politely suggest that they write such stories and try to sell them, you get a baffled look in response.
They really mean, they want YOU to write the stories for them.
I have a question. How do you find the energy to respond to people this stupid/evil? I find it difficult to even grasp the evil ridiculousness filling their heads, much less dignify it with a coherent response other than profanity and a full stop on contact. I can’t imagine not driving myself insane if I gave every SJW I crossed paths with a response. Do you just pick your battles or do you just have boundless anger towards these people?
Wow. Awesome and left invigorated.