# "Requires Hate" blog



## Nerds_feather

Here at the chrons we're a genial lot who can discuss all kinds of divisive issues without losing our cool. That's one of the big reasons I've come to love this place, and I do think it's the best way to hash things out.

That said, I want to bring the requireshate blog up for discussion, which takes a very different approach. It's a very caustic, but some would argue necessary, critique of SFF from a non-white, non-male perspective. Many people think it goes too far, while others think shouting is necessary to make the marginalized perspectives it represents heard. 

My own personal feelings about it straddle this line. I do think it goes too far at times, and can be unecessarily personal to the point of being defamatory; but I also see the importance of the critique and think sometimes a voice like this can help "keep 'em honest," so to speak. There is an interesting interaction somewhere on there (I'll dig it up when I'm at a proper computer later today) where the blog criticizes Joe Abercrombie for a rape scene, fans defend him, and then Abercrombie shows up and basically says "yes, that's right...I should have done it better." Caustic or not, I tend to find things that make me reevaluate my own assumptions interesting and worth reading. What do you think?

requireshate.wordpress.com


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## Nerds_feather

just realized i probably posted this on the wrong page...should be in the SFF lounge? sorry...will alert the mods...


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## Ursa major

...and moved. 


_By the way, I'm not sure anything requires hate. Passion, yes, and - if appropriate - a burning desire for justice. But hate? (Yes, I know it's just a name of a blog, but still....)_


_._


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## Nerds_feather

thanks!


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## Brian G Turner

Nerds_feather said:


> Caustic or not, I tend to find things that make me reevaluate my own assumptions interesting and worth reading. What do you think?



The problem for me is that's it's a long-standing mantra in marketing that one proven method of making something popular is by making it offensive. 

That means some people run troll sites for the sake of trolling, enjoying the mass outrage they generate.

A site like this I would give very little attention to, unless it showed itself as providing a clear intelligent depth to the commentaries, as opposed to mouthing off with obscenity or hate for the sake of it.


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## J-WO

Wow! Nice to see some well-articulated dissent. Very often with SF lit blogs, everyone's too afraid of hurting someone's feelings. This made a change.

The only thing that let's it down is the reliance on internet comedy terms, like 'neckbeard' or those tired bloody bingo card things. Next thing you know it's 'boatload of fail'. I loathe received humor, especially on the 'net. In fact I hate the internet when it's too internet.

Still, I'll be checking in on this site, I imagine.


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## Nerds_feather

I said:


> The problem for me is that's it's a long-standing mantra in marketing that one proven method of making something popular is by making it offensive.
> 
> That means some people run troll sites for the sake of trolling, enjoying the mass outrage they generate.
> 
> A site like this I would give very little attention to, unless it showed itself as providing a clear intelligent depth to the commentaries, as opposed to mouthing off with obscenity or hate for the sake of it.



she's definitely a professional sh*t stirrer, and i broadly agree about the superiority of reasoned, intelligent commentaries over aggro sh*t stirring. 

that said, I do think, underneath the aggression, there are some important points to be made about the (non)portrayal of marginalized people in SFF. and i sort of find the phenomenon of this blogger's outsized influence on things pretty fascinating.

here's an example (from former apex editor catherynne valente) about the kind of blowback that can emerge from this kind of thing. 

http://catvalente.livejournal.com/679023.html

i wonder why/how RH has grown so "powerful" in the SFF blogosphere?


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## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> i wonder why/how RH has grown so "powerful" in the SFF blogosphere?



Perhaps because some of us take her criticism seriously?

Though she'd be the first to admit to shock at that...


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## HareBrain

Ugh ... bleary eyed from reading a lot of her book reviews.

Very amusing and thought-provoking. She does a good rant.


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## Mouse

Um. I don't get it. Are we supposed to like her? I don't find any of it funny. It all comes across as a jealous person (and I thought it was a man til I saw the 'she/her' here) who is so full of themself that what they say is right and everybody else in the world is wrong, and I hate people like that. 

Gotta admit, didn't read much cos I skimmed and saw a lot of going on and on and on about rape and the same with bashing white people. So? Again, I don't really understand. Maybe I'm missing the point. (What is the point?)


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## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> Perhaps because some of us take her criticism seriously?
> 
> Though she'd be the first to admit to shock at that...



it's clear that many take her VERY seriously. some may take her TOO seriously. i think some author or another (forget who...not someone i read) declared he was quitting writing because of what she'd said about him. seems a bit extreme of a reaction IMO, but whatever.

it's just interesting to me that a blogger (and let's face it, most bloggers have, at best, a marginal impact on writers) has managed to change the terms of debate with a number of established and well-respected writers. am i saying that's a good or bad thing? no. am i convinced its wholly serious? again no. but it is very interesting to me, intellectually.

do you know her personally, ian? or follow her blog regularly?


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## Nerds_feather

Mouse said:


> Um. I don't get it. Are we supposed to like her? I don't find any of it funny. It all comes across as a jealous person (and I thought it was a man til I saw the 'she/her' here) who is so full of themself that what they say is right and everybody else in the world is wrong, and I hate people like that.
> 
> Gotta admit, didn't read much cos I skimmed and saw a lot of going on and on and on about rape and the same with bashing white people. So? Again, I don't really understand. Maybe I'm missing the point. (What is the point?)



you never know with the internet, but she says she's a woman from thailand. 

i don't agree with white bashing, but suspect it's deliberately over-the-top in the time-honored internet tradition, and not entirely serious. 

being fully serious for a moment, though, i have to say i do agree that there's an unfortunate excess of explicit rape scenes in fantasy nowadays.


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## Teresa Edgerton

Clearly I am old and out of touch with net-speak, or received-humor-speak, or whatever-the-heck-the-speak-she-is-speaking-might-be, because I only understood about half of what she was saying (and that was mostly the violent parts).  I think I got the gist of what she was attempting to elucidate, and _if so_ I am in agreement with most of it, but I wish she would calm down enough to speak a language I understand, at least long enough for me to be sure that I agree with her basic premise.  

So I think I'm with Brian in thinking that some "clear intelligent depth" would be welcome.  I like a good rant, but I like to see it stop short of gnawing on the keyboard and spitting out chunks of plastic, which I always find distracting.


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## Nerds_feather

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Clearly I am old and out of touch with net-speak, or received-humor-speak, or whatever-the-heck-the-speak-she-is-speaking-might-be, because I only understood about half of what she was saying (and that was mostly the violent parts).  I think I got the gist of what she was attempting to elucidate, and _if so_ I am in agreement with most of it, but I wish she would calm down enough to speak a language I understand, at least long enough for me to be sure that I agree with her basic premise.
> 
> So I think I'm with Brian in thinking that some "clear intelligent depth" would be welcome.  I like a good rant, but I like to see it stop short of gnawing on the keyboard and spitting out chunks of plastic, which I always find distracting.



i've heard her described as doing "performance rage." 

think you and i see eye-to-eye on this: a lot of important points being made in a fashion we don't necessarily care for. at least some of the time...at other times i think she's quite funny


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## HareBrain

I found her book reviews much more readable and less shouty than the blog posts.


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## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> it's clear that many take her VERY seriously. some may take her TOO seriously. i think some author or another (forget who...not someone i read) declared he was quitting writing because of what she'd said about him. seems a bit extreme of a reaction IMO, but whatever.
> 
> do you know her personally, ian? or follow her blog regularly?



I don't recall anyone actually stopping writing because of something she's written, though I do know of a couple of people who have been very badly affected after getting into an argument with her. She raises important points about genre fiction - especially in regard to racism, colonialism, orientalism and sexism... and this is three years after Racefail 09, which seems to have changed very little. Her style gets her noticed, and it's unlikely anyone would listen to her if she did it nicely. Having said that, people's defences of their work after one of her reviews have generally been much worse than anything she's written. She'll eviscerate a book, but they go straight for the ad hominem attacks. There was one only recently on Live Journal.

I don't know her personally, but we correspond on Twitter.


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## WmPreston

What an interesting convergence (for me, anyway), as a friend just put me on to that site a few days ago when discussing my most recently published story. From what I've read of her work (which is only a thin slice), she does a great job raising necessary questions. And what elevates the work is that the tone is more "It's right to ask this question" than "My conclusions are always right." I appreciate that.


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## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> I don't recall anyone actually stopping writing because of something she's written, though I do know of a couple of people who have been very badly affected after getting into an argument with her. She raises important points about genre fiction - especially in regard to racism, colonialism, orientalism and sexism... and this is three years after Racefail 09, which seems to have changed very little. Her style gets her noticed, and it's unlikely anyone would listen to her if she did it nicely. Having said that, people's defences of their work after one of her reviews have generally been much worse than anything she's written. She'll eviscerate a book, but they go straight for the ad hominem attacks. There was one only recently on Live Journal.
> 
> I don't know her personally, but we correspond on Twitter.



assume you're discussing the liz williams thing? pretty bizarre...i've been trying to follow it but it does my head in with all the diversions and such.

agree on the need for more critique, but i disagree on the notion that SFF hasn't changed. well, some things haven't. i remain disturbed by the graphic, gratuitous and often unnecessary depictions of sexual violence in fantasy.

but some things have changed for the better, inclusiveness being one of them. i look at the hottest authors right now and i see a lot of non-white people: ken liu (nebula SS winner), e. lily yu (hugo and nebula nominee), mk jamisin (multiple nebula and hugo nominee in multiple categories), charles yu (who may not have gotten award nominations yet, but has now become one of the rare spec fic writers to get regularly featured in the New York Times Book Review section) and others like saladin ahmed, amal el-mochtar who aren't at the awards stage, but are very visible, rising figures in SFF. plus you have, through the work of people like charles tan and lavie tidhar, greatly expanded interest in SFF from beyond the anglosphere. this is all a very good thing, mostly very recent and to a large degree, post-racefail. 

with regards the "i'm quitting" fellow...here, i found it. colum paget. i'd never heard of him before, but i guess he writes short fiction? here's the passage:



> I guess this means my departure from spec-fic. I won an award, I've got some stories out right now that who knows, might get published, I guess that's enough for me. It's very hard to justify having a hobby that causes people to defame you and make death threats. Who knows where that might go once you've got legions of people coming through 'requires_hate's page, who might meet me at a con, or god knows what.
> 
> I now know that when my story comes out in interzone, this person's going to pick over it for whatever they can find to make me look bad, so something that I should enjoy now becomes something that I should fear.



http://thesingularitysucks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/meet-new-hate-same-as-old-hate-and-you.html

can't say i completely understand how a single blogger's review would push you out of writing, but whatever.

last thing i'd add is...while yes, a lot of her detractors have gone ad hominem in the worst way, she has done so as well. see: treatments of paolo bacigalupi (who i consider a good writer, though agree wind-up girl is flawed), r. scott bakker (who i don't care for, because i find he write "cruelty-porn") and others. the ad hominem business is deeply problematic to me, especially when the language and imagery of critique are expressly violent. again, i often appreciate the critique but find the approach too extreme and, as a result, often cheapens the point being made.

still, i agree it can be useful to stir the pot sometimes, and i don't understand why some of the people react to it the way the do...don't they realize they are just making things worse for themselves??


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## HareBrain

WmPreston said:


> And what elevates the work is that the tone is more "It's right to ask this question" than "My conclusions are always right."


 
Hmm ... I didn't see evidence of a great deal of doubt that her conclusions _were _always right. 



Nerds_feather said:


> again, i often appreciate the critique but find the approach too extreme and, as a result, often cheapens the point being made.


 
She can sometimes be too extreme, I think. She accuses Sarra Manning, author or "Adorkable" of being "kind of racist" solely on the evidence (it seems, since she provides no other) of this one sentence:

*



			his dad was Chinese so he had an exotic Eurasian thing going on; there was even an ode to his cheekbones on the wall of the second-floor girls’ loos at school.
		
Click to expand...

* 
which looks like someone searching very hard to find offense.



> still, i agree it can be useful to stir the pot sometimes, and i don't understand why some of the people react to it the way the do...don't they realize they are just making things worse for themselves??


 
Authors seem to lose brain cells by the gazillion when their works are attacked. I've even seen one turn up on Amazon to rebut bad reviews, making himself look a prize idiot.


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## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> but some things have changed for the better, inclusiveness being one of them. i look at the hottest authors right now and i see a lot of non-white people: ken liu (nebula SS winner), e. lily yu (hugo and nebula nominee), mk jamisin (multiple nebula and hugo nominee in multiple categories), charles yu (who may not have gotten award nominations yet, but has now become one of the rare spec fic writers to get regularly featured in the New York Times Book Review section) and others like saladin ahmed, amal el-mochtar who aren't at the awards stage, but are very visible, rising figures in SFF. plus you have, through the work of people like charles tan and lavie tidhar, greatly expanded interest in SFF from beyond the anglosphere. this is all a very good thing, mostly very recent and to a large degree, post-racefail.



This is true, tho it seems more recent than 3 years old.



Nerds_feather said:


> with regards the "i'm quitting" fellow...here, i found it. colum paget. i'd never heard of him before, but i guess he writes short fiction? here's the passage:



I saw Colum at Edge-lit. I don't think he's going to actually quit - he was angry, that's how he responded.

I think this talk of a blacklist for people who don't denounce Requires Hate, however, is absolutely disgusting.


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## WmPreston

HareBrain said:


> Hmm ... I didn't see evidence of a great deal of doubt that her conclusions _were _always right.



Perhaps I only read her in one of her moderate moments. I'll read further.


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## RJM Corbet

Instant bookmark. For all the wrong reasons. 

Cool Nerdsf


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## Nerds_feather

HareBrain said:


> She can sometimes be too extreme, I think. She accuses Sarra Manning, author or "Adorkable" of being "kind of racist" solely on the evidence (it seems, since she provides no other) of this one sentence:
> 
> 
> 
> which looks like someone searching very hard to find offense.
> 
> Authors seem to lose brain cells by the gazillion when their works are attacked. I've even seen one turn up on Amazon to rebut bad reviews, making himself look a prize idiot.



that is a silly statement to make on the basis of one, largely throwaway sentence, but she has a thing about the word "exotic" when used to describe asians and asia. i agree it's banal, but in fiction you write from the perspective of characters, and many people--and especially teens--think in very banal terms. i don't see how writing from the POV of characters in an (apparently) largely monoethnic setting makes the author "kind of racist."

on your second point, totally agree. john scalzi says it best (paraphrasing): "look, i don't expect everyone to like my books, and that's totally fine."



iansales said:


> This is true, tho it seems more recent than 3 years old.



well, ken's been getting props for a few years now, as have charles yu and mk jemisin. my personal favorite new author is also asian-american: alice sola kim. i think its completely baffling that her stories "the other graces" and "hwang's billion brilliant daughters" didn't win anything, but she is definitely getting serious props, and i think it won't be long before she does win an award or two. 

ken's also done a lot of translations of chinese SF, which i've been meaning to check out. 



iansales said:


> I saw Colum at Edge-lit. I don't think he's going to actually quit - he was angry, that's how he responded.



i guess i can understand that. did he say anything else about it?



iansales said:


> I think this talk of a blacklist for people who don't denounce Requires Hate, however, is absolutely disgusting.



i don't like the idea either, though i'm not sure how much traction that would get. i only know about it through oblique references from catherynne valente, who seems rather torn up about this whole thing, but wasn't very forthcoming with details...and as much as i respect her, i'm not going to just believe there's an actual, real and potentially powerful blacklisting movement without seeing some more evidence of it. do you know more about it, like who is pushing the idea?


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## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> well, ken's been getting props for a few years now, as have charles yu and mk jemisin. my personal favorite new author is also asian-american: alice sola kim. i think its completely baffling that her stories "the other graces" and "hwang's billion brilliant daughters" didn't win anything, but she is definitely getting serious props, and i think it won't be long before she does win an award or two.
> 
> ken's also done a lot of translations of chinese SF, which i've been meaning to check out.



I wasn't that fond of his Hugo-shortlisted story, though I did like the E Lily Yu one. But check out Aliette de Bodard's 'Immersion' on Clarkesworld for a story that should be on shortlists next year.



Nerds_feather said:


> i don't like the idea either, though i'm not sure how much traction that would get. i only know about it through oblique references from catherynne valente, who seems rather torn up about this whole thing, but wasn't very forthcoming with details...and as much as i respect her, i'm not going to just believe there's an actual, real and potentially powerful blacklisting movement without seeing some more evidence of it. do you know more about it, like who is pushing the idea?



That's about as much as I know.


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## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> I wasn't that fond of his Hugo-shortlisted story, though I did like the E Lily Yu one. But check out Aliette de Bodard's 'Immersion' on Clarkesworld for a story that should be on shortlists next year.



LOVED it, and also have a lot of respect for her commentary on SFF. great up and coming writer, and of course no surprise that it was clarkesworld that published it. i think clarkesworld and lightspeed are the gold standard for short fiction ATM (of course there are other great short fiction magazines as well). 

interesting to bring her up...she is sort of in RH's sphere, at least to the degree that she comments regularly the RH blog, but RH doesn't go after her for "appropriation" even though she writes a lot about aztecs (and isn't Mexican)...RH, after all, has said that she doesn't think people should ever write from the perspectives of cultures they are not from. 

i don't agree...think it's more about how you do it, and there is a right way (and many wrong ones). of course it's possible RH personally has a more moderate view than she sometimes espouses publicly. maybe even probable, but since i don't know her i can't say. 

have to say, all these online social-interactional dynamics are really fascinating to me on an intellectual level.


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## Nerds_feather

on the "blacklist," i have a feeling it's one person pushing for it, and it won't be very successful, but who knows?


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## J-WO

I can see how it might hurt people of a different temperament, but I'm personally pleased that there's something out there like this (And the hard fact is there always will be now in this here social media age, so we're better off adjusting to it). I'd rather someone call me out as bigoted when I'm not then no one call me out if I am.

(In fact, like most things, I suspect- given a couple of years- it'll become an institution and writers will be dearly hoping to get torn a new one on it- it'll be like winning an agro-Hugo or something).

I just wish the invective would be more original and not so web-fad dependent. Its language won't age well. I mean, go back to Racefail and- despite its positive intentions and effects- its aged badly within the space of five years. Everyone keeps using the terms 'Showing your ass' and 'boat load of fail' which drowns the point being made under a load of received tosh. The lesson? Always strive for fresh analogies.


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## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> interesting to bring her up...she is sort of in RH's sphere, at least to the degree that she comments regularly the RH blog, but RH doesn't go after her for "appropriation" even though she writes a lot about aztecs (and isn't Mexican)...RH, after all, has said that she doesn't think people should ever write from the perspectives of cultures they are not from.



Writing about other cultures isn't wrong, writing about that badly, or from a western perspective is. Hence orientalism and the use of "exotic". Look at the use of the rambutan in the opening chapter of *The Windup Girl* - a textbook lesson in how not to do it.


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## RJM Corbet

iansales said:


> Writing about other cultures isn't wrong, writing about that badly, or from a western perspective is. Hence orientalism and the use of "exotic". Look at the use of the rambutan in the opening chapter of *The Windup Girl* - a textbook lesson in how not to do it.



I very seldom do this, as in 'what I write' but am careful not to give my characters a colour, it can be difficult, but in the internet age they have to be open to anybody ...


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## Teresa Edgerton

So she makes a lot of unpleasant noise and by doing so grabs a lot of attention  for some important issues — but once she has their attention, if people agree with her, is it not the case that she is preaching to the choir?  And when they disagree, will she convince them they are wrong by screaming vile insults at them?  From the examples you've given, it seems that she only causes them to become more entrenched in their views*, and is managing to stir up enough bad feelings all around to make some innocent bystanders feel absolutely wretched.  

Perhaps people who have no opinions on these subject _might_ sit up and think, "I never considered that before," but while she clearly has notoriety and influence within the inner circles (people who are already part of the dialogue on these issues), will those outside those circles even know that she exists, or if they do, regard her as anything other than a sideshow?


*Well, apparently not Joe Abercrombie, if he admitted that he could have handled a scene better, but perhaps he was already having second thoughts.




			
				iansales said:
			
		

> Having said that, people's defences of their work after one of her reviews have generally been much worse than anything she's written. She'll eviscerate a book, but they go straight for the ad hominem attacks.



Things of that sort tend to escalate; that's a given.  Once someone takes out a knife and goes for the gut, it's no surprise if the scene of debate ends up looking like a shambles.

I realize that people ought to behave like adults, and it's childish to say, "She started it first," but it goes both ways:  Just because they behave badly, it shouldn't mean that she gets a (retroactive) free pass.


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## iansales

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I realize that people ought to behave like adults, and it's childish to say, "She started it first," but it goes both ways:  Just because they behave badly, it shouldn't mean that she gets a (retroactive) free pass.



OTOH, to ignore what she says because of the way she says it is the tone argument. If she was more polite, _how_ she says things would change but not _what_ she says. If she was nice in her reviews, she'd be ignored. She's not being ignored now.

Having said all that, she's been reviewing books for a while. R Scott Bakker threw his dummy out of the pram a couple of months ago over a 6-month old review. Now it's Liz Williams' turn. RH hasn't changed anything she's done. She's been there for a while. But, a few people get all upset and another LJ tempest in a teacup develops and next thing you know someone is talking about blacklists and denunciations...


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## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> Writing about other cultures isn't wrong, writing about that badly, or from a western perspective is. Hence orientalism and the use of "exotic". Look at the use of the rambutan in the opening chapter of *The Windup Girl* - a textbook lesson in how not to do it.



no, no...you misunderstand me...i totally agree. and i mentioned in the post you're quoting from that there's a right way and many wrong ways, and also wrote earlier that i think *the windup girl is problematic* (though i did really like *the drowned cities*). plus rambutan is one of my all-time favorite fruits, so it really should be left alone. 

what i was saying here is that RH has taken a more extreme view, here:



> Here’s something knee-jerky (but, I think, not unjustified): I don’t think it’s possible for white westerners to write about any non-dominant cultures–and this includes, for example, Eastern Europe–without being exotifying, appropriative, and perpetuating western/first-world supremacy.



she then goes on to make some interesting points about insider/outsider perspectives, and how an outsider can problematically infuse outsiderness into an insider narrator in a story, which i thought was interesting and incisive.

but that said, aliette de bodard is from france. may not be "white," per se, but you can see how this gets a bit tangled up when we're talking about a french national of vietnamese origin writing in mexico. i don't have a problem with this, provided it's good, but the logic of RH's statement precludes her from the flexibility needed to come to the same conclusion. this is where i cannot agree with RH. 

other "postcolonial" type critics (jaymee goh, for example) similarly dislike appropriative/exotifying stuff (goh actually criticized *the windup girl* before RH did on the same grounds), but has stated very clearly that she sees no reason why it can't be done right...just that it often isn't. 

if you're writing about other cultures--and "culture" should really be conceptualized as more than just "nationality" or "racial categories," since both are socially constructed and not always the most relevant paradigms in a given social setting--then you do have a special responsibility not to objectify or orientalize the subjects, to know a lot about the place and time you're describing, avoid stereotyping (whether of the denigrating or exotifying type) and so on. absolutely. but it can be done right, and being too militant about this kind of thing, in my opinion, inadvertently adds to the groupthink consensus that "all SF is America/Britain and all F is Western Europe."

it's a big world out there, and a whole lot of people are international in orientation. this can and should be reflected in literature, and people shouldn't be afraid to go there because someone will criticize them on grounds of "authenticity" or whether they conform to an "ethnically correct" checklist. i'd rather we just judged writing on the merits of the product, and whether an author "did it right" or "did it wrong."


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## Nerds_feather

Teresa Edgerton said:


> *Well, apparently not Joe Abercrombie, if he admitted that he could have handled a scene better, but perhaps he was already having second thoughts.



i thought that was actually super interesting. his response especially.


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## Colum Paget

# can't say i completely understand how a single blogger's review would push you 
# out of writing, but whatever.

Writing is just a hobby for me. The first thing I knew was that someone was calling to have me beheaded. Later I saw what I considered to be race-hate statements, and spoke to them. I did then blog about a 'darkness' I'd encountered, and I guess that provoked the attack on me. It wasn't a review, it was an attack.

The whole thing freaked me out completely, I've never seen anything like it. I consider what RH is doing to be hatespeech, but others think differently, and maybe they're right. Some people say that some of the comments (like the beheading one) are jokes. I've never encountered anything like this before, and didn't expect to see it where I found it. 

As writing was just a hobby and I'd gotten into such a nasty situation through it, quitting did seem the best thing to do, and for a while I was 'off'. But I went to edge-lit and enjoyed that, so I'm back 'on' now. I have quit twitter, and that I won't be going back to. 

The whole thing has made me think about hate, and question if I hate, etc, etc. I've come to believe it's a good exercise to check oneself for hate as one might check for cancer. I also think that hate can be catching! So, I'm gonna stay away from places where there's hate (hence, leaving twitter). (Although the internet is full of hate, but I can't live without the internet, so I've got to risk that.)


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## Teresa Edgerton

Colum Paget said:


> (Although the internet is full of hate, but I can't live without the internet, so I've got to risk that.)



Then stick around here, Colum, and see if you like it.  It's as near to risk free as you'll find on the internet.  We don't allow hate-speech.  Sometimes our debates can become heated, but that's as far as it goes.  Anything that goes beyond the bounds of civil discourse gets shut down or removed.

All the same, we manage to have lively discussions, representing a variety of viewpoints.


----------



## WmPreston

Colum Paget said:


> But I went to edge-lit and enjoyed that, so I'm back 'on' now. I have quit twitter, and that I won't be going back to.



Glad to hear you're back in the writing column, Colum. As for Twitter: I treat it more as a data feed than a way to "connect"; Twitter does the work of giving me headlines from important sources. It is possible to keep its social-networking aspects at arm's length and use it as another kind of tool.

Be well,

Bill Preston


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

iansales said:


> OTOH, to ignore what she says because of the way she says it is the tone argument. If she was more polite, _how_ she says things would change but not _what_ she says.



_First a disclaimer:  I haven't read enough at that website to claim to know what kind of person she is or whether what I read there is typical behavior.  I'm simply responding to points brought up in the discussion here.  Consider what I say as hypothetical._

I'm not talking about whether people are polite or not, but whether they sound credible or not.  If someone sounds like they should be on medication (or off it), how am I to trust the information on which they base their arguments?  And when you add vulgarity and threats, sometimes it's just not worth digging through the filth to get at whatever of value (perhaps) might be buried there.

Witness the potty-mouth discussions at Ain't It Cool News, where you have to wade through acres of adolescent wet-dream nastiness before you get to the news you are looking for. 



> If she was nice in her reviews, she'd be ignored. She's not being ignored now.



But if being obnoxious is required to gain attention and be taken seriously, we can _all_ do it. There is nothing special about _that_.  I could be as hateful as you please, given a forum that allowed me sufficient latitude.  Oh yes.  And so could any number of us here.  It's not that we haven't the ability; it's the desire that is lacking.

The internet is already shrill enough.  If it is incumbent on everyone now to raise their voices to the level of screeching obscenities and death threats at each other in order to be heard, I'd rather return to communicating with paper and ink.


----------



## TheEndIsNigh

Colum Paget said:


> # can't say i completely understand how a single blogger's review would push you
> # out of writing, but whatever.
> 
> Writing is just a hobby for me. The first thing I knew was that someone was calling to have me beheaded. Later I saw what I considered to be race-hate statements, and spoke to them. I did then blog about a 'darkness' I'd encountered, and I guess that provoked the attack on me. It wasn't a review, it was an attack.
> 
> The whole thing freaked me out completely, I've never seen anything like it. I consider what RH is doing to be hatespeech, but others think differently, and maybe they're right. Some people say that some of the comments (like the beheading one) are jokes. I've never encountered anything like this before, and didn't expect to see it where I found it.
> 
> As writing was just a hobby and I'd gotten into such a nasty situation through it, quitting did seem the best thing to do, and for a while I was 'off'. But I went to edge-lit and enjoyed that, so I'm back 'on' now. I have quit twitter, and that I won't be going back to.
> 
> The whole thing has made me think about hate, and question if I hate, etc, etc. I've come to believe it's a good exercise to check oneself for hate as one might check for cancer. I also think that hate can be catching! So, I'm gonna stay away from places where there's hate (hence, leaving twitter). (Although the internet is full of hate, but I can't live without the internet, so I've got to risk that.)


 
Never used twitter - never would. As I understand it you send a text message to a publically avilable address that someone has set up in order that complete strangers can unload their opinions into your life.

Why would anybody do that?

In what way is my life enriched by being told some geeky teenager's innermost fantasies? 

(though s/he would have to be a very sad case to have such, if they concerned me . More a plea for help I would say)

I can't understand why twitter isn't forced by law** to only allow tweets to people from those they have agreed to receive them from. That way at least offensive comments can be 'cut off'.

**My view is that the messenger is as guilty as the sender and it should be made their responsibility to 'extract' offensive' content - But hey, when I rule the world you're all going to see some changes - let me tell you

I'm also mystified by how people get to set up 'troll' sites. When I joined FBook, I had to provide all manner of personal details, DNA samples and teeth 'X'rays to get in. So why aren't troll sites taken down at the first complaint with 'contact details' passed to the police. 

Is it because us 'inter netters' are as bad as the rest. By this I mean would you rat out a mate for 'minor' offenses. Not many people do, Take the old lady claiming more than she should - Oh shes a nice old dear just trying to make ends meet on her meagre state pension - Until you find shes claiming from ten addresses and getting twice your salary then it all seems a bit different. It does go on. 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/norfolk_pensioner_must_pay_back_100_000_1_1468757

Firstly, as all SFF moderators must know, I hold you all in high regard. I have never seen a site so well run and 'policed'. 

However, out of interest, if I let forth with the most god awful diatribe against another member of this site including hate, threats of personal violence, death threats what would happen? 

I could probably expect to be barred, but would the moderators take it any further? Would I be reported to my IP provider, or the police?


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

I don't know that we would have any way of reporting you to anyone, but I can say that your post would disappear as soon as it came to the attention of a moderator.  In your case, or in the case of any longtime member whose previous behavior led us to believe that you _could not_ have written such a despicable diatribe as you describe, we would try to find out what was up, who had been tampering with your computer or your account.

But let us assume we knew for a fact that it was really you:  You'd be permanently banned.  No appeal.  No second chances.  Gone.

You could also be banned for making death threats against someone who was not a member and had nothing to do with this site at all ... say a writer whose work you really, really hated.


----------



## iansales

TheEndIsNigh said:


> I can't understand why twitter isn't forced by law** to only allow tweets to people from those they have agreed to receive them from. That way at least offensive comments can be 'cut off'.



Er, that _is_ the way Twitter works. You follow people, you get to see their tweets. However, people you follow can retweet stuff tweeted by people you don't follow. You can also block people you don't want to receive tweets from.



TheEndIsNigh said:


> **My view is that the messenger is as guilty as the sender and it should be made their responsibility to 'extract' offensive' content - But hey, when I rule the world you're all going to see some changes - let me tell you



If you start penalising the messengers for the content they carry, then the messengers will soon decide it's not worth their while carrying messages. No more internet, no more post, no more telephones. Plus, who gets to decide if something is offensive? Some officious busybody at the Royal Mail or your local ISP? Or a court of law once a complaint has been made? I vote for the latter.


----------



## iansales

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I'm not talking about whether people are polite or not, but whether they sound credible or not.  If someone sounds like they should be on medication (or off it), how am I to trust the information on which they base their arguments?  And when you add vulgarity and threats, sometimes it's just not worth digging through the filth to get at whatever of value (perhaps) might be buried there.



That's just the slurs being put about by the people attacking her. She doesn't sound like she needs medication. She reviews books and provides evidence from the text for each of her assertions.



Teresa Edgerton said:


> But if being obnoxious is required to gain attention and be taken seriously, we can _all_ do it. There is nothing special about _that_.  I could be as hateful as you please, given a forum that allowed me sufficient latitude.  Oh yes.  And so could any number of us here.  It's not that we haven't the ability; it's the desire that is lacking.



Not everyone has the luxury of being listened to, no matter how important their message. Would you ignore someone who made important social commentary because they did it as a comedy routine? It makes you laugh, so it can't be important...

RH's latest review is of Victoria Foyt's *Revealing Eden: Saving the Pearls*. It's a book that has already generated a lot of commentary for its racist content. RH provides quotes from the book to show this. Read her review, and then tell me it's nothing but hatespeech.


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

As I said, I only read a few things on her blog, and they were not reviews.  What I read was angry, violent, and almost incoherent.  Thus my reaction that medication _might_ be in order. Comments about mashing someone's testicles do not inspire my respect.




			
				iansales said:
			
		

> Would you ignore someone who made important social commentary because they did it as a comedy routine? It makes you laugh, so it can't be important...



I have no idea what I might have said that would have provoked this question. 

Comedy can be an excellent vehicle for social commentary.  And I think laughter is important.


----------



## iansales

Teresa Edgerton said:


> As I said, I only read a few things on her blog, and they were not reviews.  What I read was angry, violent, and almost incoherent.  Thus my reaction that medication _might_ be in order. Comments about mashing someone's testicles do not inspire my respect.
> 
> I have no idea what I might have said that would have provoked this question.
> 
> Comedy can be an excellent vehicle for social commentary.  And I think laughter is important.



I was trying to draw an analogy. Obviously it wasn't a very good one 

Check out the Foyt review, though. I think it's a good demonstration of what RH does. (It's not all negative reviews either; I used her review of *The Snow Queen* on SF Mistressworks.)


----------



## Mouse

I'm with Teresa. I only got so far as seeing all the bile over the front page that I didn't even bother reading any of the reviews. Again, I'm not understanding the point? But I don't like nastiness anyway.


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

From the passages she quotes, I didn't see any evidence of fascism or racism, just a half-baked story with some clumsy and ham-handed writing.  

It didn't seem clearly articulated enough to determine _what_ the writer's beliefs or intentions might be. 

If the passages quoted are really representative, that is. In a review, one always has to take that on trust, of course.


----------



## iansales

You don't think a book in which whites are called "pearls" and blacks are called "coals", in which a black male is described as "beastly" and bestial", in which a white character adopts blackface - in the book and in book trailers - you don't think this is racist?

And you're seriously questioning RH's honesty because you don't like the way she writes her reviews? I don't like what you're saying, therefore you must be lying. That's a classic derailing technique.

If my language sounds intemperate, I don't mean it to (oh, the irony . But I do want to know why people are all too quick to jump to the defence of RH's detractors and to discount what RH does. Those detractors have thrown around just as many insults - in fact, they're worse, because they've accused RH of everything from racism to mental illness for no good reason other than the fact she pointed out something problematical in their books in language they didn't like. See Liz Williams' LJ post, see R Scott Bakker's many blog posts and comment threads...

Refusing to take RH seriously only trivialises the issues she raises. Should Foyt get a free pass on self-publishing a racist YA novel just because RH reviewed it? That would be completely messed up.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Well, having read some of the reviews on that site, all I can say is that I'm now carefully revisiting how I handle issues of sex, gender, and multiculturalism in my WiP. 

As for the blog itself - I think the title, "Requires Hate" is a bit of a giveaway, though. 



TheEndIsNigh said:


> However, out of interest, if I let forth with the most god awful diatribe against another member of this site including hate, threats of personal violence, death threats what would happen?
> 
> I could probably expect to be barred, but would the moderators take it any further? Would I be reported to my IP provider, or the police?



You'd be banned, maybe your IP blocked - but no further action as frankly the authorities don't take these things seriously. I've tried this when people have attacked with DDoS or hacking, and it goes nowhere.

Additionally, as the chronicles server is located in the USA, I would be expected to raise the issue with the FBI, or local law enforcement, which takes me well out of my depth.

Bottom line is that we can try and keep this community relatively safe and friendly for people with interests in sff, but there's little I can do outside of that.


----------



## allmywires

Well, safe to say I won't be re-visiting that blog. 



iansales said:


> You don't think a book in which whites are called "pearls" and blacks are called "coals", in which a black male is described as "beastly" and bestial", in which a white character adopts blackface - in the book and in book trailers - you don't think this is racist?



But she's fishing with this book. The best thing with this kind of stuff is to ignore it, not give it a platform for publicity. Everyone with even a pinch of racial awareness knows that Revealing Eden is sending a racist message; I originally saw this book vilified on ONTD, I've even read the first few pages and by god, is it awful. Just for starters, as you say, the 'pearls' versus 'coals' imagery is, consciously or no, positive versus negative imagery. So she knows it's bad, and writes a spittle-flecked review of how awful it is, and sits back and grins at all the comments telling her she's right.

The way this blogger approaches reviewing is wrong, IMO, and while I agree it's good to call authors out when they've ostensibly done something wrong, she obviously gets a kick out of being an insufferable a*se about it and that's what I have a problem with. You should always be able to find something positive in writing. You get no prizes for dissing things, although it seems these days there's a culture of 'it's cool to hate', for example with all the vitriol over 50 Shades of Grey.

Edited to say: I don't think there's too much wrong with how she 'reviews' the novels, as a whole, except for when she gets to something perceptibly racist or misogynist, and honestly, I don't think dissolving to insulting the author with the F-word and accusing her of being a member of the KKK is someone who's judgement I should trust.


----------



## Nerds_feather

Colum Paget said:


> # can't say i completely understand how a single blogger's review would push you
> # out of writing, but whatever.
> 
> Writing is just a hobby for me. The first thing I knew was that someone was calling to have me beheaded. Later I saw what I considered to be race-hate statements, and spoke to them. I did then blog about a 'darkness' I'd encountered, and I guess that provoked the attack on me. It wasn't a review, it was an attack.
> 
> The whole thing freaked me out completely, I've never seen anything like it. I consider what RH is doing to be hatespeech, but others think differently, and maybe they're right. Some people say that some of the comments (like the beheading one) are jokes. I've never encountered anything like this before, and didn't expect to see it where I found it.
> 
> As writing was just a hobby and I'd gotten into such a nasty situation through it, quitting did seem the best thing to do, and for a while I was 'off'. But I went to edge-lit and enjoyed that, so I'm back 'on' now. I have quit twitter, and that I won't be going back to.
> 
> The whole thing has made me think about hate, and question if I hate, etc, etc. I've come to believe it's a good exercise to check oneself for hate as one might check for cancer. I also think that hate can be catching! So, I'm gonna stay away from places where there's hate (hence, leaving twitter). (Although the internet is full of hate, but I can't live without the internet, so I've got to risk that.)



hi colum,

thanks for coming here and telling us how you feel. sorry if i seemed a bit blase...i was not the target of anything and thus didn't really know how you felt or feel. i guess i was trying to get at how a blogger being mouthy could drive an established writer off from SFF, and didn't quite understand it. glad to hear you are still writing!

i do think, and this is the heart of the dispute over the blog, that there are some legitimate critical points being made over there. not all the critical points made are, IMO, legitimate (as i mentioned in an earlier response to Ian Sales), but some at least are. the question then is both whether specific targets of ire (like yourself) are appropriate conduits for making that point, and whether the delivery helps or harms the cause of bringing those critical points into the broader conversation.

i don't like the violent imagery at RH at all. i mean, there's enough actual violence in the world. i don't think it's funny and i don't think it "helps the cause," so to speak. i think it hurts it, because it allows people to dismiss the underlying arguments as the "ravings of a lunatic."

but FTR, i do think it's an attempted joke and not actual serious calls for violence.


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> The way this blogger approaches reviewing is wrong, IMO, and while I agree it's good to call authors out when they've ostensibly done something wrong, she obviously gets a kick out of being an insufferable a*se about it and that's what I have a problem with. You should always be able to find something positive in writing.



Why? Because the writer is entitled to it because of all their hard work in writing it? If something is bad, it's bad. It's dishonest to say otherwise. A book has to earn positive commentary by doing something well, and if that something is trivial in light of its faults then what's the point in mentioning it? "This book is racist, but kudos to the writer for the correct use of the subjunctive." It' making one equivalent with the other, and that's just plain wrong. (I'm not, of course, saying that anyone actually does do this in reviews - it's to illustrate my point.)


----------



## Nerds_feather

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Then stick around here, Colum, and see if you like it.  It's as near to risk free as you'll find on the internet.  We don't allow hate-speech.  Sometimes our debates can become heated, but that's as far as it goes.  Anything that goes beyond the bounds of civil discourse gets shut down or removed.
> 
> All the same, we manage to have lively discussions, representing a variety of viewpoints.



seconded. this place is awesome. i've never encountered such a genial and respectful bunch of people in an internet forum. i was almost taken aback at first...such a pleasant shock.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> Why? Because the writer is entitled to it because of all their hard work in writing it?



Honestly, I think so. Though it doesn't make me right, of course, but the writer must have done _something_ right in getting her book published. (Unless she self-published, which would explain why no editor/agent has picked up on the achingly obvious racism the book exhibits).

However, the woman who writes the RH blog is not the only person in the world to see this book is bad - so I don't see why we should give her credit for being frankly quite so unpleasant and smug about it.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> You don't think a book in which whites are called "pearls" and blacks are called "coals", in which a black male is described as "beastly" and bestial", in which a white character adopts blackface - in the book and in book trailers - you don't think this is racist?



I just want to point out something with regards the context of *Save the Pearls,*...and that's the paranoid fear of being "outbred" that you hear from white supremacists in the US, and various racists and ultranationalists in all kinds of other settings (in the 80s and 90s, Serbian radical nationalists talked about Kosovo Albanians like this, the far right in Israel talks about Palestinians like this, Filipino Catholics talk about Moro Muslims like this, etc.). To base a book around this is, at the least, ignorant of the history of racism and was the first thing to strike the alarm bells in my head when I heard about it.


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> Honestly, I think so. Though it doesn't make me right, of course, but the writer must have done _something_ right in getting her book published. (Unless she self-published, which would explain why no editor/agent has picked up on the achingly obvious racism the book exhibits).



I don't know, I've seen published books that baffle me as to how they got published. I mean, what exactly did Pudsey the dog do right to land a £300k advance for an "autobiography"?



allmywires said:


> However, the woman who writes the RH blog is not the only person in the world to see this book is bad - so I don't see why we should give her credit for being frankly quite so unpleasant and smug about it.



I'm not giving her credit solely for her review of this one particular book. I'm saying that it surprises me people are siding with her detractors, even though their language has been worse. I'm saying it surprises me that people can't see beyond how she says something to what she says.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> I'm saying it surprises me that people can't see beyond how she says something to what she says.



Oh, I agree with you on that - she is right in criticising the author, but like I said, it's an easy target, and I don't like the way she's gone about it: writing a scathing review of a bad book to make herself look clever.


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> OTOH, to ignore what she says because of the way she says it is the tone argument. If she was more polite, _how_ she says things would change but not _what_ she says. If she was nice in her reviews, she'd be ignored. She's not being ignored now.


After following various links and finding the twitter exchange (the first page), Requires Hate comes across as a complete troll**. And by what they said, and not with the way they said it.

(I am, of course, assuming that the Requires Hate in the Twitter exchange is the same person as the Requires Hate from the blog.)


** - If they're not trolling, they're a good deal more than unpleasant.


----------



## allmywires

I looked at Requires Hate's Twitter, and read some of the - somewhat disturbing - exchanges she's had on other blogs on the Internet, and honestly, she seems almost quite deranged. The amount of time she mentions faecal matter and male genitalia when insulting authors is quite incredible, and she doesn't save it all for men: she's got a special penchant for insulting 'white, college-educated women' as well. 

I do believe RH has owned up as a troll - and she must enjoy it, since she keeps a gallery of all the people who've reacted to her. Exhibit A: https://requireshate.wordpress.com/gallery-buttmad/ 

Honestly, this girl needs a hobby.

(Disclaimer: I don't agree that racism/sexism is good etc etc just really don't agree with what SHE says.)

EDIT: I've just come across this and I think this says everything you need to know about RH (troll or not, it's irrelevant really):

(In response to a fan who had the temerity to take her on for insulting a book they actually liked)



> My word, you are dense. And yes, you are a racist f*ck, a misogynist, and on top of that it appears you are quite the ableist as well, commanding all the rhetoric you might expect a *sheltered little college boy* might command. *This is why nobody likes whiteys*. No, really, it amazes me that you believe yourself entitled to show up here and fly into a sh*tf*ck martyr complex rant while acting as though you are above it all. It’s not just that *you are a worthless human being*–you are that–but that you’re disappointingly, tediously banal. You are a cliché.
> 
> *I’m proud of being a whitey-hating misandrist.*
> 
> Also? Banned, lololol.



An all-round top-notch specimen of a person, really.

(If anyone needs receipts, it's at the bottom of comments on this post: https://requireshate.wordpress.com/...st-and-talentless-stunning-combo/#comment-527)


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

iansales said:


> You don't think a book in which whites are called "pearls" and blacks are called "coals", in which a black male is described as "beastly" and bestial", in which a white character adopts blackface - in the book and in book trailers - you don't think this is racist?



I said I don't know whether it's racist or not going by the passages I read in the review.  It just seemed like a mess.  

Ian, I work with new writers as a developmental editor, and it's not unusual for me to see a book where what the writer seems to be saying is the exact opposite of what they are trying to say. They'll use words ignorant of their history, their alternate meanings, the greater implications, the baggage they carry — not in recent projects, thank goodness, but I've seen language mishandled to that extent often enough to know that it's not unusual for people who think they can write.  So the Pearls and Coals thing just strikes me as stupid. Males in romance novels often _act_ beastly or bestial, so it doesn't surprise me to hear one described that way -- it's only because he's black and the word carries so much baggage that her use of it is ugly. It is clear that the writer has a tin ear when it comes to race, but, going by what I see in the quoted passages, that seems of a piece with other aspects of her writing.  

So I'm not accusing anyone of lying.  I don't think RH is a liar; she just seems to me, from what I have seen in her blog, someone whose opinions I cannot, personally, rely on. And I don't say that the book _isn't _racist.  I simply say that the review does not _convince_ me, particularly because it comes from someone who strikes me as having a clear agenda of her own.  I would have to know more about the book, and I would have to hear it condemned as racist by a reviewer that I hadn't seen go off into incoherent rages* on other issues, and on the same page as the review!

I've never read one of your reviews, Ian, but from what I know of you, you would be a _far_ more reliable source.  So if you've read the book, not just those selected passages in the review, and if you tell me it's racist, I'll believe it.


*The review was a bit incoherent, too.  I wouldn't have read it past the first few couple of paragraphs if you hadn't suggested that I should.  Frankly, I'm surprised that you chose that particular review to convince me what a fair and honest reviewer she is. Suggest something else, where she sounds more composed and dispassionate, and I'll read it.


----------



## iansales

I picked that review because what RH is saying isn't simply her on "one of her crusades", as others might phrase it. This is a book which has been picked up by many as clearly racist. RH provides context and quotes for her complaints. That's the important point. No, it's not "fair" but it is "honest". RH has never claimed to be fair.

Foyt is not a new writer. She's had one book published by HarperCollins. It's been said she self-published this one because her agent and publisher wouldn't take it, but I don't know the truth of that. If it _is_ true, I'm not surprise.

It still sounds to me as though people are finding excuses not to accept that RH makes valid points. If you choose not to read her because of her language, that's fine. But don't denigrate or trivialise what she says because of the way she chooses to say it.

Incidentally, there are plenty of my reviews here on SFFC, Teresa, and one or two of them have got me into arguments


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> (In response to a fan who had the temerity to take her on for insulting a book they actually liked)



And because they liked the book, it didn't deserve the review it got?

The language is over-the-top, I'd be the first admit it. The invective can be a little scary, this is true. But Rh is responding to someone trying to badly defend something which really doesn't deserve a defence.

Imagine you've reviewed Mein Kampf and said it is a piece of fascist, racist rubbish that should be banned. Then someone leaves a comment saying it's misunderstood, it's not as bad as all that, and what's wrong with genocide anyway.


----------



## Jo Zebedee

I haven't gone into her posts in a lot of detail, but I think I've seen enough to say it's not for me. Whether she makes valid points or not, if she wants me to take her seriously as a crit they would need to be done in a professional manner and ranting at a fan and calling them a s**tf***er doesn't seem especially professional. Or clever. I'm sure she's filling a niche, and the internet does seem to allow scope for people to behave in a way that would empty a bar where I live, but I don't really want to be subjected to it. It's like someone swearing in a bus, it puts me on edge.(not that I don't swear, but it's in my own time to people I know aren't offended by it.) 
I understand the point you're making, Ian, that just because she is offensive in her language and attitude doesn't mean the criticisms she makes aren't valid, but she chooses to do so in a manner which will alienate people, and if some of us choose to be alienated by it, I think that's understandable. Not a place I'll visit, life's stressful enough without reading that.


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

iansales said:


> It still sounds to me as though people are finding excuses not to accept that RH makes valid points. If you choose not to read her because of her language, that's fine. But don't denigrate or trivialise what she says because of the way she chooses to say it.



But I do think she makes valid points some of the time ... where I understand what she is saying ... but if someone chooses to take on a false persona (as some have suggested) in order to play to her audience, how am I to trust her on issues where I am undecided?  If she is false in the one way, is there not a likelihood that she would be false in other ways if she finds it to her advantage?

You seem to be saying, Ian, that she does this in order to be heard.  Or maybe you are just saying that she _is_ heard because of that persona and wouldn't if she was quieter and more polite.  But in both cases it's a double-edged sword.  Some people are more inclined to listen to her because of it; some people aren't.  I don't see that one is more fair or unfair than the other.  If you say it doesn't change the validity of what she is saying, then the loudness shouldn't make people take her any more seriously either.

And I am afraid that it looks to me like _she_ is the one who trivializes the things she says, by making them part of a sideshow.


----------



## iansales

Teresa Edgerton said:


> You seem to be saying, Ian, that she does this in order to be heard.  Or maybe you are just saying that she _is_ heard because of that persona and wouldn't if she was quieter and more polite.  But in both cases it's a double-edged sword.  Some people are more inclined to listen to her because of it; some people aren't.  I don't see that one is more fair or unfair than the other.  If you say it doesn't change the validity of what she is saying, then the loudness shouldn't make people take her any more seriously either.
> 
> And I am afraid that it looks to me like _she_ is the one who trivializes the things she says, by making them part of a sideshow.



Interesting point. I think the persona gets her heard where "being polite" wouldn't. But I also think the responses to her reviews blow it all way out of proportion, and I think it's unfair to her and what she does to demonise her and trivialise her because of their temper tantrums.

Someone said earlier in this thread that SFFC is a remarkably well-behaved forum, and I think this discussion on a topic as emotive as RH has very much proven it. I'm tempted ot say - though it would be cheap of me - that if this had been LJ, I'd have been black-listed by now  So I, er, won't


----------



## Brian G Turner

> *I’m proud of being a whitey-hating misandrist.*


Well, _there's_ a revelation. 



iansales said:


> It still sounds to me as though people are finding excuses not to accept that RH makes valid points.



She does actually make some good points, namely that the role of women, use of sex, and handling of race is sometimes clumsy at best, and downright offensive at other times, in sff. It's a very valid set of concerns. 

And as Harebrain points out, some of her reviews are actually quite interesting, especially the positive ones, not least on Dan Abnett, Cory Doctorow, and her comments on China Mieville (simply the authors I've read she covers).

However, she is, by her own definition, a_ troll_, and a fierce one at that. The intention of any troll is to shock, and solicit an emotional reaction by covering a grain of truth in obscene invective.



Teresa Edgerton said:


> And I am afraid that it looks to me like _she_ is the one who trivializes the things she says, by making them part of a sideshow.



Very much agree:

- Jim Butcher is a "misogynist" because Harry Dresden thinks women tend to like chocolate and opens doors for ladies, in the setting of the noir detective genre famous for its rampant masculine posturing; 

- Joe Abercrombie is villified because his torturer character, Glokta, whispers sexual threats to a lesbian, but she seems entirely uncorned about the same character ripping teeth from male characters, especially ones who are nothing more than underclass agents for the oppressive rich.

Other blogger criticisms have been far more interesting for their substance, not least one she linked to criticising Liz Williams with what could be best described as "disappointment" in her failure to invest Chinese culture fully in one of her novels:

http://tevere.dreamwidth.org/37967.html

I also read a good piece today on another blog about the pitfall of the "exceptional woman":

http://funnyfeminist.com/2011/07/25/ginny-weasley-the-exceptional-woman/

In both instances, criticism and commentary delivered without the need for theatrics.

The surprise, really, is that so many people are allowing themselves to be drawn into a battle with her. You cannot defeat a troll other than being more mean and hateful than they, which is a pointless fight to get into.

I guess maybe it's a shocker to see this sort of person publishing in the sff blogosphere, but they have been very active in the political one for a long time, especially NeoCon Christian fundamentalists, who frankly, can make her look like a tame sheep.

It's the interwebs. Pinch. Of. Salt. Required. 

If anyone has to read it, take note of the points within the diatribes and leave enriched. Focus on the performance and you'll get lost in the hate. Which as she says, is "required".


----------



## Mouse

Funny how every female (I think) on this thread so far has just said that she sounds like a nasty piece of work, whereas some of the men find her funny.

I don't get how she can say other people are racist when she is herself? Pot and kettle, methinks.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> Imagine you've reviewed Mein Kampf and said it is a piece of fascist, racist rubbish that should be banned. Then someone leaves a comment saying it's misunderstood, it's not as bad as all that, and what's wrong with genocide anyway.



Er...bad analogy. This ain't exactly Mein Kampf.

Just read a great essay from just after racefail over at whatever, that i think poses less extreme and more productive vision of race in SFF than the one you get from RH, while sharing the essential concerns brought up by that blog (at least some of them), which i agree are legitimate:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/12/mary-ann-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-i/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/13/mary-anne-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-ii/

RH also covers other things, like "rapey" turn in fantasy. i have to admit this has always made me uncomfortable, and she sort of put into words feelings i've had for a while. probably not the same way i would have put them, but i did feel similarly. it's a thin line between depicting "realism" in a violent world and gratuitous cruelty for the "enjoyment" of the reader, and a lot of fiction falls on the wrong side of that line.


----------



## Nerds_feather

I said:


> Well, _there's_ a revelation.
> 
> She does actually make some good points, namely that the role of women, use of sex, and handling of race is sometimes clumsy at best, and downright offensive at other times, in sff. It's a very valid set of concerns.
> 
> And as Harebrain points out, some of her reviews are actually quite interesting, especially the positive ones, not least on Dan Abnett, Cory Doctorow, and her comments on China Mieville (simply the authors I've read she covers).
> 
> However, she is, by her own definition, a_ troll_, and a fierce one at that. The intention of any troll is to shock, and solicit an emotional reaction by covering a grain of truth in obscene invective.
> 
> 
> 
> Very much agree:
> 
> - Jim Butcher is a "misogynist" because Harry Dresden thinks women tend to like chocolate and opens doors for ladies, in the setting of the noir detective genre famous for its rampant masculine posturing;
> 
> - Joe Abercrombie is villified because his torturer character, Glokta, whispers sexual threats to a lesbian, but she seems entirely uncorned about the same character ripping teeth from male characters, especially ones who are nothing more than underclass agents for the oppressive rich.
> 
> Other blogger criticisms have been far more interesting for their substance, not least one she linked to criticising Liz Williams with what could be best described as "disappointment" in her failure to invest Chinese culture fully in one of her novels:
> 
> http://tevere.dreamwidth.org/37967.html
> 
> I also read a good piece today on another blog about the pitfall of the "exceptional woman":
> 
> http://funnyfeminist.com/2011/07/25/ginny-weasley-the-exceptional-woman/
> 
> In both instances, criticism and commentary delivered without the need for theatrics.
> 
> The surprise, really, is that so many people are allowing themselves to be drawn into a battle with her. You cannot defeat a troll other than being more mean and hateful than they, which is a pointless fight to get into.
> 
> I guess maybe it's a shocker to see this sort of person publishing in the sff blogosphere, but they have been very active in the political one for a long time, especially NeoCon Christian fundamentalists, who frankly, can make her look like a tame sheep.
> 
> It's the interwebs. Pinch. Of. Salt. Required.
> 
> If anyone has to read it, take note of the points within the diatribes and leave enriched. Focus on the performance and you'll get lost in the hate. Which as she says, is "required".



i moderated the politics page on a music forum for about a decade, and we had some nightmare trolls. and yes, everything you say about them is correct. if you're a normal person, you can't win because they will always take it one step further. they will follow you to different internet communities, they will hound you and they will always take it too far. 

the thing that makes RH unique is that, while she does troll, she's also--as you note--more than just a troll. some of the reviews are actually pretty interesting, and as we've both noted in this thread (as have others), she writes about some things that do need to be addressed. a critic in troll's clothing?

in terms of responses, the only instance i've seen of an author getting the better of RH was Peter Watts when he was defending R Scott Bakker, and that was, i surmised, because he was defending someone else's work and just wouldn't back down. (RSB did not, for my money, get the better of his own interaction with her.)

but the strategy of direct confrontation fails for most people because, at the end of the day, authors are typically sensitive souls who worry about their works and how they are perceived. it isn't long before they reach a point where they feel they are "damaged" by the interaction.

because of this, if i ever knew anyone who incurred her wrath and they asked me for advice, i would say:

"first of all, don't respond to her, either on her blog or yours. but do look hard to see if there's a legitimate critical point in there, the kind of thing that can make you a better writer. and if you think there is, try to publicly acknowledge it in a setting of your choice."


----------



## allmywires

I agree that she does make some salient points in her 'reviews' (though for some of them I use the term loosely) but she is simply incapable of having people who disagree with her. On one review, a commenter posted a fairly mild disagreement with her - which she completely dismissed as 'missing the point' - asked her for her own suggestions on improving (oddly enough I believe it was about Strong Female Characters, Lord knows what she would make on our thread on the subject - probably 'misogynist, white-man fantasy') which she again roundly ignored. The poster then apologised, only asking if she would reply reasonably to him, for which she again insulted him. In the example I posted above, she BANNED someone from commenting on her blog because they called her out. 

Ian, like I've said a few times before, I'm not calling her out on what she's saying - her underlying message is the right one, it is NOT okay to treat women and people of colour this way in SFF. Yet it is ALSO not okay to be militant about it, and enforce censorship and dismiss a reasoned argument when someone dares to disagree by saying they are a worthless human being and you hate them for their race and gender (the exact thing she is telling us NOT to do...)



Mouse said:


> I don't get how she can say other people are racist when she is herself? Pot and kettle, methinks.



Completely agree. Even if she's 'trolling' and trying to be subversive with her comments on 'whiteys', what kind of message is that sending anyway? That it's all right to racially abuse (I don't care in what spirit she's doing it - it is abuse) someone who disagrees with your opinion? Honestly, I'd like to see what she actually thinks is good. And I'd like to see what she thinks could make these books better, rather than relentlessly slamming them for no other reason that her own amusement, or so it seems. 

She's angry, but there's no product. Just a lot of hot air.


----------



## Teresa Edgerton

Having experienced something of what it is like to live as a minority among people of a different race -- I once lived several years with my family in a part of Oakland where we were practically the _only_ white family -- I have had _quite_ enough of being insulted because of the color of my skin, and so I don't appreciate reading things about why "everyone hates whiteys."

Partly because I long ago grew sick of dealing with people who think that way, and partly because I learned that it wasn't true.


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> It still sounds to me as though people are finding excuses not to accept that RH makes valid points. If you choose not to read her because of her language, that's fine. But don't denigrate or trivialise what she says because of the way she chooses to say it.


But it sounds to me that you're turning a blind eye to Requires Hate's appalling views/trolling. Just because she may have a point** about the contents of various books doesn't mean that we have to read the misandrist racism (whether she believes it or not).

If Requires Hate chooses to express herself that way, she (and you) should hardly be surprised if people make no more than one visit to her blog. Who wants to follow someone who's either a crude troll (my guess) or deeply unpleasant?


** - A point that is lost in the heat she brings to the subject, when she'd be far better bringing more light. Being controversial is one thing - it may bring first-time hits to her blog - but by maintaining that voice, and delivering it elsewhere (e.g. in the twitter of that author), is she likely to covert anyone? Why would those other than the ones converted to her view wade through the random abuse to follow her arguments? Frankly, she's wasting her time by drowning her message in the midden of her chosen voice.


PS. I didn't realise, when I wrote this, that there was a page of posts after the one I've quoted.


----------



## WmPreston

Thoughtful, productive discussion without meanness. Glad I've joined this forum. 

Cheers.


----------



## HareBrain

Nerds_feather said:


> (RSB did not, for my money, get the better of his own interaction with her.)


 
Having read something about this, I was interested to read an review on Amazon of his latest, _The White Luck Warrior_, which expressed pleasant surprise that he had suddenly introduced, seemingly from nowhere, two main female characters "with agency". The reviewer made no mention of his spat with RH, and I don't even know if he wrote that book after it, but I wouldn't mind betting he did.


----------



## Kylara

Not having read through much of her stuff (writing like that always makes me uncomfortable, especially in that setting) does she manage to differ between books being racist, accidentally racist, or racist on purpose to prove a point? (I know and have had to study and compare these from society, what it tells us, where they are coming from etc, not a topic I find particularly riveting, but there are some clever theories out there) It is sometimes hard to tell them apart and also whether or not it is intentional in any case...but just wondered if she reviewed to such depths or just went with "Racist. End of." (admittedly not that nicely :wink: ) Also the whole women thing, whilst I agree that not all women should be like this, there is definately a place for characters like this in fiction, they give depth and can be there to show another side of another character...you may suddenly realise that he's not as nice as you thought...but I admit it can get a bit gratuitous...

P.S. and the best way I've found to deal with trolls is reply to them evenly, politely (,humourously) and totally ignoring their rude/swearing/vitriol, this annoys them, and also makes them defend themselves...it can turn into them just swearing and going away, or they actually try and be a bit more eloquent, and once I even had one change their mind and agree with me...however this may not happen all the time...


----------



## Boneman

Hmmm... so let me get this straight: if you write a book, and one of your characters does not fit RH's idea of what is correct in writing, then you, the writer, are racist? And if you like a book that similarly does not fit, then you're a racist? What twisted world does she live in? Does she even understand the word 'fiction'??? 

I don't find her funny at all, I find her quite pathetic, and I'm certain she's the literary equivalent of the Sex Pistols, who were supremely untalented, but attracted attention simply because they were such 'bad boys'. Shout loudly enough and you'll attract attention. Her own agenda means that her reviews are worthless, unless you are just like her. Saying she's produced some good reviews is aklin to saying the Sex Pistols produced a good track... She has amply demonstrated it is impossible to trust her reviews, because of her unbalanced agenda, so I'm not even going to waste time looking at them.


----------



## J-WO

The Sex Pistols were the shot in the arm complacent 70's Britain required. I'm tempted... almost... to say your analogy holds true right the way through.

What 'Requires' is doing was going to happen sooner or later and will continue to happen here on in. But I can't shake off the feeling someone else will come along in the next few years and do it a lot better.


----------



## iansales

Boneman said:


> Hmmm... so let me get this straight: if you write a book, and one of your characters does not fit RH's idea of what is correct in writing, then you, the writer, are racist? And if you like a book that similarly does not fit, then you're a racist? What twisted world does she live in? Does she even understand the word 'fiction'???



If your book is not about racism, does not discuss racism, why would you put racism in it? Unless it were an unquestioned attitude you held? In which case, yes, that makes you racist.



Boneman said:


> I don't find her funny at all, I find her quite pathetic, and I'm certain she's the literary equivalent of the Sex Pistols, who were supremely untalented, but attracted attention simply because they were such 'bad boys'. Shout loudly enough and you'll attract attention. Her own agenda means that her reviews are worthless, unless you are just like her. Saying she's produced some good reviews is aklin to saying the Sex Pistols produced a good track... She has amply demonstrated it is impossible to trust her reviews, because of her unbalanced agenda, so I'm not even going to waste time looking at them.



No, her reviews are sharp, and she provides plenty of evidence for her assertions. Her agenda is to point out racism and misogyny in genre fiction. Why would you object to that? She's doing more to address the topic than 99.9% of the rest of genre readers, writers and commentators. Dismiss her and we're back at Racefail09.


----------



## iansales

J-WO said:


> What 'Requires' is doing was going to happen sooner or later and will continue to happen here on in. But I can't shake off the feeling someone else will come along in the next few years and do it a lot better.



I'd sooner hope no one has to do it a few years from now because it won't be needed. Sadly, I don't think that's going to be the case.


----------



## HareBrain

I never liked the Sex Pistols much, mostly because I was a quiet, shy child from a comfortable background. But I came to like a lot of what came in their wake.

Because none of our lives is free from some kind of hardship, it's sometimes easy to forget that a lot of us do write from a position of privilege, and we should be vigilant for how that might affect our writing. As supposedly imaginitive people, it's only right that we should be asked to turn that imagination to how those of other genders, sexualities and backgrounds would perceive our writing, and what that writing is saying about us and how we view the world. Whether we then choose to change it is up to us.

Like IB, her reviews have made me think about my own stuff, and though I believe she goes over the top sometimes, I think hers is a point of view worth engaging with.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> If your book is not about racism, does not discuss racism, why would you put racism in it? Unless it were an unquestioned attitude you held? In which case, yes, that makes you racist.



In my novel, I have a POV character who is mixed race. Other characters occasionally make comments about him that would be perceived to be racist. Does that make me a racist for addressing the issue and being a white woman? If I were black, would anyone question it? 



iansales said:


> Her agenda is to point out racism and misogyny in genre fiction. Why would you object to that?



I've said it before, but I'll say it again: her underlying message I agree with. Racism and misogyny are WRONG. But should they be countered by misandry and racism again 'whiteys'? Absolutely not. Besides the fact she is incapable of having a discussion with people who disagree on her opinion (or in fact her way of delivery). She does not provide any answers. She is only a reactionary.

The thing is, she's perfectly able to be pleasant to people who agree with her. It's only the ones who question her that get the bile. So I'm asking: if she's 'trolling' them, what's the point? Is she trying to mock people (extremely poorly) who are racist? Or does she genuinely believe what she says when she insults people? I'm afraid I just don't get 'it', whatever 'it' is. And I'm of the Internet generation, so I don't consider myself out of touch.


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> In my novel, I have a POV character who is mixed race. Other characters occasionally make comments about him that would be perceived to be racist. Does that make me a racist for addressing the issue and being a white woman? If I were black, would anyone question it?



Why do they make those racist comments? So you can comment on racism?




allmywires said:


> I've said it before, but I'll say it again: her underlying message I agree with. Racism and misogyny are WRONG. But should they be countered by misandry and racism again 'whiteys'? Absolutely not. Besides the fact she is incapable of having a discussion with people who disagree on her opinion (or in fact her way of delivery). She does not provide any answers. She is only a reactionary.
> 
> The thing is, she's perfectly able to be pleasant to people who agree with her. It's only the ones who question her that get the bile. So I'm asking: if she's 'trolling' them, what's the point? Is she trying to mock people (extremely poorly) who are racist? Or does she genuinely believe what she says when she insults people? I'm afraid I just don't get 'it', whatever 'it' is. And I'm of the Internet generation, so I don't consider myself out of touch.



People she accuses of racism usually deny the charge, often quite hotly, despite evidence to the contrary. They might not have _thought_ they were being racist, but they were. The best response in such a situation is for them to learn what they did wrong and not do it again. As is often said in discussions on this topic, being called a racist is not worse than being a racist. But from some of the invective thrown at her for making the charge you'd be forgiven for thinking it was.

Also, there is racism, and there is prejudice against whites. There's a difference. And misandry is a tiny piddling little thing compared to misogyny.



allmywires said:


> She is only a reactionary.



Reactionary: I do not think it means what you think it means


----------



## Toby Frost

For me, there are only two types of people on the internet: those who use sensible, level-headed discussion, and those who can shove it up their arses. Until she starts talking like a grown-up, I'm not interested.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> Why do they make those racist comments? So you can comment on racism?



Of course - is that wrong? Should I have ignored it altogether? I ask again, if I were black would anyone comment on it?




iansales said:


> The best response in such a situation is for them to learn what they did wrong and not do it again. As is often said in discussions on this topic, being called a racist is not worse than being a racist. But from some of the invective thrown at her for making the charge you'd be forgiven for thinking it was.




I don't disagree that some of the authors (Bakker for example) responded untactfully to her. But when RH is calling people 'a f*cking dolt' and telling them to go join the KKK, can you see why they might be only the tiniest bit rankled? That's not criticising the writing - that's personal abuse. In no way constructive or helpful to anything.



iansales said:


> Also, there is racism, and there is prejudice against whites. There's a difference. And misandry is a tiny piddling little thing compared to misogyny.



Disagree. Definition according to dictionary.com:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races  determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race  is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
*3. hatred or intolerance of another race  or other races.*

I repeat - does that make misandry right? She wants tolerance, or I suppose she does, so why is she fostering hatred towards people who are different to her?



iansales said:


> Reactionary: I do not think it means what you think it means



Fair enough - I got that one wrong. What I meant is that she only reacts to things - she does not provide proactive solutions.


----------



## Kylara

iansales said:


> If your book is not about racism, does not discuss racism, why would you put racism in it?


 

Ok, for a start a book is not just about one thing. It doesn't have to discuss racism in order to make a comment on it. I am going to use couple of wildy bad examples here but go with it...Elrond. Now he is totally disenchanted with Men as a species, and says so, bluntly this makes him racist against Men. However LOTR is not racist, is not about racism and Tolkein was not a racist. Elrond is later proven wrong, but he is happy to be proven thus, and his 'racism' stems from personal disillusionment. Or Eddings in the Belgariad/Mallorean - practically everybody there has racial sterotypes, and not many people like the snake people...Eddings has placed negative characteristcs onto a race, but he is not being racist.

Racism is a very hard topic to do well and is covered, briefly, subconsciously and in a very glancing manner in many books. Just because they do not go in depth and struggle out why, what, how etc the racism comes about, does not make them or their book racist. How often do you call out a friend for being racist if they comment on the fact that black people (namely Africans) are better at running, it's not racist, it's true (they have different muscle types allowing better running, hunter gatherer style). I am not commenting on their blackness, only their physiological superiority to white people when it comes to running. The same way that men are predisposed to muscle than women, that is their biological design. I am not being anti-male/female. 

By putting in brief comments from a character that is 'racist', slightly 'racist' or not 'racist' at all, it does not make you any more or less of a racist. It shows that the author understands that racism exists, has commented on it (which characters? What reasons could they have?) and moved on. They have said - 'racism, yes it exists, but I will go no further into it, it is not important for my story'. 

And Toby, I totally agree.


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> Of course - is that wrong? Should I have ignored it altogether? I ask again, if I were black would anyone comment on it?



It's those unquestioned attitudes which sneak in that should be watched out for. If you're making a point about racism, then it makes sense to mention it. And it has nothing to do with the colour of the writer.



allmywires said:


> *3. hatred or intolerance of another race  or other races.*



Racism is why some people don't get paid as much as others for the same job, why landlords will refuse to rent them property, why they fail to get into universities, why their opportunities are constrained, why people reach for animal metaphors to describe them, why their intelligence or habits or sexual practices are questioned... and so on. Racism is a history of that and its current effects. It doesn't happen to white people.

The same is true of misogny versus misandry.



allmywires said:


> I repeat - does that make misandry right? She wants tolerance, or I suppose she does, so why is she fostering hatred towards people who are different to her?



She attacks books and, since authors are responsible for what they write, applies those same faults to the authors. After all, it's not like it's a failure of craft - bad plotting, clumsy writing, tin-eared dialogue, etc. It's an attitude of the author that has found its way into the story.

Look at it this way. She eviscerates some of R Scott Bakker's fiction. He goes ballistic, and in the process proves every point she raised about his book. OTOH, she does the same to Joe Abercombie. He says, you're right, I wasn't thinking, I'll try and do better next time.


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> It's those unquestioned attitudes which sneak in that should be watched out for. If you're making a point about racism, then it makes sense to mention it.


Sorry, Ian, but banning characters in books because they're racist, misogynist/whatever-ist, unless you dump a lot of comment about just how awful they are, is total nonsense. If you are writing an urban fantasy in, say, contemporary Europe or Northern America, are you expected to give a bowdlerised version of your setting? Because that's what you'd be doing if you're changing the book to avoid the wrath of Requires Hate.


Imagine your main character fleeing through a city - they are (or think they are) being chased - and seeing a beating where a person of one culture is beating up someone of another. The main character quickly runs down an alley to avoid being caught up in the fight.

How many sentences or paragraphs of pondering the evils of (assumed**) racism/culturalism before getting back to the main story would satisfy, say, Requires Hate? Do you have to put off your main character being jumped on in that alley while you, the author, make your apologies (albeit lightly disguised as the thoughts of the, perhaps non-human, main character)?

Or are you saying the beating must be monocultural? (Which would suggest people of different cultures don't fight each other. Is that realistic in a multicultural city?)



** - The main character doesn't know the background behind the beating, which may be "a domestic", an encouragement to pay a debt, or two acquaintances/friends high on something nasty.


----------



## Boneman

iansales said:


> If your book is not about racism, does not discuss racism, why would you put racism in it? Unless it were an unquestioned attitude you held? In which case, yes, that makes you racist.
> 
> 
> No, her reviews are sharp, and she provides plenty of evidence for her assertions. Her agenda is to point out racism and misogyny in genre fiction. Why would you object to that? She's doing more to address the topic than 99.9% of the rest of genre readers, writers and commentators. Dismiss her and we're back at Racefail09.


 
But according to RH, if I don't put racism into my book I MUST be a racist. Ergo, if I don't put fascism in my book, I must be a fascist; if I don't put sexism into my book I must be sexist, and so on. Falling back on 'an unquestioned attitude' making me a racist is about the most facile argument I've heard, one that is used when the argument is so weak and shows that proper, sustained intellectual propositions are beyond her. But then I wouldn't expect different from her, since she has categorically stated that *she is a racist* - the very thing she 'supposedly' despises. And she's a virulent racist, who won't brook arguments from anyone who disagrees with her.  Basically, what she is saying is : "I am the sole arbiter of what is racism in genre fiction and if you don't agree with me, you're a racist." 

I am convinced that she is doing this purely to gain attention, NOT to actually provide, as you put it: 





> Her agenda is to point out racism and misogyny in genre fiction.


 I'm not prepared to listen to the arguments of a rabid racist, especially when she is incapable of listening to *any* arguments, and that is quite disturbing. It's akin (since you mentioned him) to saying Hitler had some excellent ideas about industry and road-building, therefore we should listen to his arguments. We should never listen to the arguments of racists who are incapable of listening to others - she doesn't! And in not inviting proper, constructive responses from any person who disagrees with her, she has no moral ground to preach from - she has become a caricature of her own arguments, which does a great disservice to the issues that she is trying to justify.

And since you mention Racefail09, here's a comment by Patrick Neilsen Hayden: 



> Evidently, for commiserating with a couple of friends who've been bruised by a recent widespread LJ argument, I'm a racist. Or some kind of bad guy, at any rate. I'll live. Worse things happen to the victims of actual racism


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> If you're making a point about racism, then it makes sense to mention it. And it has nothing to do with the colour of the writer.



Yet you said if your book is not about racism then racism should not be mentioned. As horrendous as it is, racism is a HUGE part of our history. Ignoring it in an imagined culture would be tantamount to ignoring religion, say.

And I completely disagree that is has nothing to do with the colour of the writer, sorry. For someone like RH, it has _everything_ to do with it. As well as the writer's sexuality and upbringing. 




iansales said:


> Racism is why some people don't get paid as much as others for the same job, why landlords will refuse to rent them property, why they fail to get into universities, why their opportunities are constrained, why people reach for animal metaphors to describe them, why their intelligence or habits or sexual practices are questioned... and so on. Racism is a history of that and its current effects. It doesn't happen to white people.



Well, yes, that is the main definition. But hatred of another race is another definition of racism. Again, I refer you back to the comment I posted in which RH admits she hates 'whiteys'. That isn't racial prejudice, that is pure and vile hatred.




iansales said:


> Look at it this way. She eviscerates some of R Scott Bakker's fiction. He goes ballistic, and in the process proves every point she raised about his book. OTOH, she does the same to Joe Abercombie. He says, you're right, I wasn't thinking, I'll try and do better next time.



Joe Abercrombie was too courteous, I wouldn't have wasted my words on her.


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## iansales

Ursa major said:


> Sorry, Ian, but banning characters in books because they're racist, misogynist/whatever-ist, unless you dump a lot of comment about just how awful they are, is total nonsense. If you are writing an urban fantasy in, say, contemporary Europe or Northern America, are you expected to give a bowdlerised version of your setting? Because that's what you'd be doing if you're changing the book to avoid the wrath of Requires Hate.



If you put in racist characters because, well, real people are racist, and make no comment on it, then you're perpetuating racism. And urban fantasy... come on, they're all about othering. It's what vampires and werewolves and whatnot* are about.

In the real world, we have the Daily Mail. Why would you put something like that in your fantasy world?

(* not an actual supernatural creature)


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## iansales

Boneman said:


> But according to RH, if I don't put racism into my book I MUST be a racist. Ergo, if I don't put fascism in my book, I must be a fascist; if I don't put sexism into my book I must be sexist, and so on. Falling back on 'an unquestioned attitude' making me a racist is about the most facile argument I've heard, one that is used when the argument is so weak and shows that proper, sustained intellectual propositions are beyond her. But then I wouldn't expect different from her, since she has categorically stated that *she is a racist* - the very thing she 'supposedly' despises. And she's a virulent racist, who won't brook arguments from anyone who disagrees with her.  Basically, what she is saying is : "I am the sole arbiter of what is racism in genre fiction and if you don't agree with me, you're a racist."



For someone who doesn't listen to her, you seem to be quite convinced you know what she is saying. As for the "unquestioned attitude", have you not seen the recent studies on "colour blindness"? In study after study it has been shown that people who profess to be "colour-blind" are still racist to some extent. The "unquestioned attitudes", incidentally, are not her words but mine. If you don't question your attitudes, how do you know you're not racist? Check your privilege. I assume you know what that means.

Put it this way: you know when you get increasingly strident letters from your bank asking you to pay off your overdraft, and then you hear some banker complaining that his bonus this year is only going to be £10 million and not £12 million? Not pleasant, is it? And that banker, he didn't mean to upset you. It's not your fault, after all, that you have no money and he has more than he knows what to do with. You could have ended up in the same situation as him, after all - if you'd gone to the right schools, known the right people, been the right colour, etc...

Having said all that, the main problem seems to be that people get more heated in their responses to her than she is in her initial attacks. No one likes being insulted, but is your first instinct really to insult back, impugn the attacker's motives, their sanity, their identity? And do it again and again and again?


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## Kylara

iansales said:


> If you put in racist characters because, well, real people are racist, and make no comment on it, then you're perpetuating racism.


 
Umm no. Cba right now to retype my entire post from earlier (further up the page if you want to read it; here for the lazies amongst us :wink: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/537483-requires-hate-blog-6.html#post1631356) so I'll just bounce on from that. You're not perpetuating it, you are commenting on it in a much subtler way, giving an insight into the life of the comentee, whether there is an undercurrent of racism in their family/city etc or whether they have had negative experiences with someone that has caused their irrational fear/dislike for certain types of people. Racism exists a lot in subconscious ways, and throwaway comments in fiction show this; the charcater may not think of themselves as racist, or they may be making a joke, but any option is still a comment on racism, whether you like it or not. Just because the author makes no blatant in your face comment on their 'racist' character it does not mean that they are not commenting on it. You need to look at the whole society, the other characters, how they react with the 'racist' character...often times it is subtle, very subtle, much better than everyone jumping on your 'racist' character and yelling at him, that brings too much attention to your "oh I'm looking at racism" and many authors may not want you to think that, but they will want you to subtly have it brought to your attention throughout the story...it is much more complex than you are suggesting.


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## Brian G Turner

Ursa major said:


> banning characters in books because they're racist, misogynist/whatever-ist, unless you dump a lot of comment about just how awful they are, is total nonsense.





Boneman said:


> But according to RH, if I don't put racism into my book I MUST be a racist.





allmywires said:


> Yet you said if your book is not about racism then racism should not be mentioned.



I don't think the issue is one of whether a writer actively tries to handle prejudice - as much as inadvertently injects their own cultural prejudices into their work.


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## Ursa major

iansales said:


> If you put in racist characters because, well, real people are racist, and make no comment on it, then you're perpetuating racism. And urban fantasy... come on, they're all about othering. It's what vampires and werewolves and whatnot* are about.
> 
> In the real world, we have the Daily Mail. Why would you put something like that in your fantasy world?
> 
> (* not an actual supernatural creature)


Because, sadly, the Daily Mail exists in the real world. Do all close-to-reality fantasies have to be free of all the things you (or, more importantly, I) don't like? (In a world without the Daily Mail, wouldn't the Grauniad's CiF be a pale shadow of its current self?) The real world contains all sorts of things that, when they are incidental to a book, are not commented upon, only mentioned.

We wouldn't be having this discussion if there were no racists in the world. And as there are, unfortunately, racists in the real world, they should exist in fiction based here (or hereabouts).

You also seem to be confusing the author with their characters. If one's non-human, recently arrived, main character doesn't care about human differences, except to note that they vary in appearance (e.g. in the way we don't read anything into the different breeds of cats and dogs), why would they comment on this?

To be fair (no pun intended), not to comment would be making a point: that the superficial differences between people don't matter (except to racists, misogynists and misandrists). Would I be right in believing that Requires Hate wouldn't agree with me on this? And would that be because of her proclaimed (though possibly fake) misandrist racism?


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## allmywires

iansales said:


> Having said all that, the main problem seems to be that people get more heated in their responses to her than she is in her initial attacks. No one likes being insulted, but is your first instinct really to insult back, impugn the attacker's motives, their sanity, their identity? And do it again and again and again?



I'm sorry, Ian, but I vehemently disagree and you seem to be wilfully ignoring things she herself has said. Read any of the comments on some of the nastier critiques she has done. Absolutely any time anybody tries to engage her in debate she either bans them, laughs at them for being a 'geeky, white, straight man trying to 'mansplain' something', or abuses them in some other form. As I posted several times ago, she said to a poster who had disagreed with her (not even insulted her!) that his life was worthless. Do you honestly subscribe to her way of thinking?

Kylara, you're spot on. It's much more complicated than 'racist characters' = 'racist author'. Like I said, if you ignore racism, you ignore a huge, yet unpleasant, facet of human society.


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## iansales

Kylara said:


> Umm no. Cba right now to retype my entire post from earlier (further up the page if you want to read it; here for the lazies amongst us :wink: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/537483-requires-hate-blog-6.html#post1631356) so I'll just bounce on from that. You're not perpetuating it, you are commenting on it in a much subtler way, giving an insight into the life of the comentee, whether there is an undercurrent of racism in their family/city etc or whether they have had negative experiences with someone that has caused their irrational fear/dislike for certain types of people. Racism exists a lot in subconscious ways, and throwaway comments in fiction show this; the charcater may not think of themselves as racist, or they may be making a joke, but any option is still a comment on racism, whether you like it or not. Just because the author makes no blatant in your face comment on their 'racist' character it does not mean that they are not commenting on it. You need to look at the whole society, the other characters, how they react with the 'racist' character...often times it is subtle, very subtle, much better than everyone jumping on your 'racist' character and yelling at him, that brings too much attention to your "oh I'm looking at racism" and many authors may not want you to think that, but they will want you to subtly have it brought to your attention throughout the story...it is much more complex than you are suggesting.



I don't mean you have to put in bloody great signposts saying it' s commentary. Subtle is good, subtle is probably best. But featuring completely uncritical racism? Whether intended or not. That's bad.


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## Ursa major

I said:


> I don't think the issue is one of whether a writer actively tries to handle prejudice - as much as inadvertently injects their own cultural prejudices into their work.


Or the quite natural cultural prejudices of their characters?

Are all our characters meant to be real people or ciphers for the perfectly right-thinking? (Surely one perfect person per book is enough? )


I agree we ought strive  to avoid stock characters and stereotypes, but shouldn't that be true of _all_ aspects of our characters?


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## HareBrain

Ursa major said:


> Or the quite natural cultural prejudices of their characters?


 
Surely it would be difficult for a writer to *inadvertently* (the crucial word in Brian's post) inject his characters' cultural prejudices, unless they were also the writer's?


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## iansales

Ursa major said:


> Because, sadly, the Daily Mail exists in the real world. Do all close-to-reality fantasies have to be free of all the things you (or, more importantly, I) don't like? (In a world without the Daily Mail, wouldn't the Grauniad's CiF be a pale shadow of its current self?) The real world contains all sorts of things that, when they are incidental to a book, are not commented upon, only mentioned.



But this isn't the real world. It's fiction. It's fantasy. Exactly what do you gain by putting stuff in your story you don't actually need? How many novels have you read where the characters go for a crap two or three times a day? That happens in the real world.



Ursa major said:


> You also seem to be confusing the author with their characters. If one's non-human, recently arrived, main character doesn't care about human differences, except to note that they vary in appearance (e.g. in the way we don't read anything into the different breeds of cats and dogs), why would they comment on this?



No, I'm pointing out that an author can't help but embed their sensibilities and attitudes in a piece of fiction - not unless they make a serious effort to question and address them.

There's also racist descriptive prose as well, of course. Such as the earlier mention of the "beastly" black lover in *Revealing Eden*.



Ursa major said:


> To be fair (no pun intended), not to comment would be making a point: that the superficial differences between people don't matter (except to racists, misogynists and misandrists). Would I be right in believing that Requires Hate wouldn't agree with me on this? And would that be because of her proclaimed (though possibly fake) misandrist racism?



Bakker insisted his novels were commenting on misogyny, but his chosen way of doing this was by writing a misogynist book and assuming the reader would realise he was deliberately making it misogynist as commentary. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. All he ended up with was... a misogynist book. As an author you can't rely on extra-textual knowledge being known to the reader; nor should you. Critics and reviewers will only write about what's on the page.


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## Kylara

All racism in fiction is a comment. Just by putting it in there, it comments on every aspect, from the situation it arises. Just because it isn't commented _on_ it doesn't mean it isn't a comment on racism...critical racism is impossible to do because you will inevitably fall into the trap of being 'racist' in your critique...in order to comment successfully on racism, the 'racist' moments have to blend seamlessly into the fiction and in doing so create a comment on the fiction, the world created and thus, on racism itself. To include or not include racism in a story where it could be included shows us _everything_ we need to know about the 'racism' views the fiction is trying to tell us. I didn't mean huge signposts being shoved in everywhere, but racism always stands out on its own merit, it doesn't necessarily need to be _commented_ on more than the actual moment of it occurring...it is there to make us think for ourselves, not have an opinion fed to us, that will only cause other issues...


Oh and I find it amusing when 'beastly' and other animalistic words only tend to be picked up when considered 'racist'...


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## iansales

HareBrain said:


> Surely it would be difficult for a writer to *inadvertently* (the crucial word in Brian's post) inject his characters' cultural prejudices, unless they were also the writer's?



Remember the fuss about Midsomer Murders last year? Everyone in the village was white. People complained. The writers didn't deliberately make the village all-white. They just populated with the sort of people they thought they would find in a small English village. But in doing so, they excluded minorities and whitewashed the UK of Midsomer Murders.


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## allmywires

HareBrain said:


> Surely it would be difficult for a writer to *inadvertently* (the crucial word in Brian's post) inject his characters' cultural prejudices, unless they were also the writer's?



That comes back to whether having racist characters makes a writer racist. For example, I have two characters (both reasonably minor) who racially insult my mixed-race character. I would _never_ call anyone a blackie, but they would. It's about putting yourself in their shoes. Besides, it is quite apparent that they are in the wrong. 

By this vein of logic, surely writing from the POV from a murderer would be hard unless you yourself had murderous thoughts?


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## Ursa major

HareBrain said:


> Surely it would be difficult for a writer to *inadvertently* (the crucial word in Brian's post) inject his characters' cultural prejudices, unless they were also the writer's?


That's why the third paragraph of my post is there: to suggest that we ought to be careful when dreaming up all of our characters'... er... characteristics.

But if something is truly inadvertent, how would we know? Does Requires Hate run an editing service, removing inadvertent racism, misogyny?


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## Brian G Turner

Ursa major said:


> I agree we ought strive  to avoid stock characters and stereotypes, but shouldn't that be true of _all_ aspects of our characters?



Absolutely agree - I'm taking this whole debate as a wake-up call to look more deeply at how I use characters, and their various conflicts.

Perhaps that would develop naturally as I'm already looking at how to make the character experience more developed - but I'm also taking extra care that my female characters do not fall into sexual stereotypes through either ignorance or laziness.


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## iansales

Kylara said:


> All racism in fiction is a comment. Just by putting it in there, it comments on every aspect, from the sistuation it arises. Just because it isn't commented _on_ it doesn't mean it isn't a comment on racism...critical racism is impossible to do because you will inevitably fall into the trap of being 'racist' in your critique...in order to comment successfully on racism, the 'racist' moments have to blend seamlessly into the fiction and in doing so create a comment on the fiction, the world created and thus, on racism itself. To include or not include racism in a story where it could be included shows us _everything_ we need to know about the 'racism' views the fiction is trying to tell us. I didn't mean huge signposts being shoved in everywhere, but racism always stands out on its own merit, it doesn't necessarily need to be _commented_ on more than the actual moment of it occurring...it is there to make us think for ourselves, not have an opinion fed to us, that will only cause other issues...



Ah well, I disagree somewhat here. I think racism does sneak into people's writing, intended or not. And I think even as readers we let a lot of it pass without comment. You know, books where the hero is white and the only Chinese that appear are the villains. A lot of people insist they only read "to be entertained", they don't want to think when they're reading. You write a story set in inner-city Birmingham which features an all-white cast, and perhaps most readers won't question it. But they should do.


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## iansales

I said:


> Absolutely agree - I'm taking this whole debate as a wake-up call to look more deeply at how I use characters, and their various conflicts.
> 
> Perhaps that would develop naturally as I'm already looking at how to make the character experience more developed - but I'm also taking extra care that my female characters do not fall into sexual stereotypes through either ignorance or laziness.



And that is really all that I think people should do - though not just for writing, also in their reading. RH's tactics are loud and obnoxious and have offended lots of people. But if she makes us think twice about what we were about to commit to paper, then it has been worth it.


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## Boneman

iansales said:


> For someone who doesn't listen to her, you seem to be quite convinced you know what she is saying. As for the "unquestioned attitude", have you not seen the recent studies on "colour blindness"? In study after study it has been shown that people who profess to be "colour-blind" are still racist to some extent. The "unquestioned attitudes", incidentally, are not her words but mine. If you don't question your attitudes, how do you know you're not racist? Check your privilege. I assume you know what that means.
> 
> Having said all that, the main problem seems to be that people get more heated in their responses to her than she is in her initial attacks. No one likes being insulted, but is your first instinct really to insult back, impugn the attacker's motives, their sanity, their identity? And do it again and again and again?


 

Actually, I did read an awful lot, to see exactly what it was she was saying. I, at least, was prepared to see what her arguments were. 

Why do you not adress her own racism? She is, by her own words, an appalling racist. If a white person printed what she'd said about other races, a hail of criticism and attacks would (rightly) have descended on them. Yet you seem to find it acceptable. No form of racism is acceptable, I think we actually agree on that. But you seem blinded to the fact that she is a racist, and (correct me if I'm wrong) want to balance that - make it justifiable, even - by the appalling catalogue of racism that has, and yes, continues to be perpetrated against different races. Do you seriously think that is the way forward? As has been shown here, many people are completely turned off and won't read her diatribes, because she is a fanatic, who won't engage in reasoned argument. 

Are 'unquestioned attitudes' which may show evidence of 'unconscious racism' worse than the kind of racism she extolls? There is something decidely wrong in the world, if that is true. And believe me (since you know nothing about me) I have questioned my attitude, throughout my life, and, like you, I abhor racism in any form. Which is why I cannot, and will not, listen to HRs racism. Do you find that hard to understand? Because it seems to me that you're falling into an attitude that only white people are racist, and any comments by other races are not. Her divisive actions will never achieve what is necessary, they run the risk of the opposite.

And your second para (above) is about her isn't it? Because it fits her exactly to the letter.

ps: Ian, the very fact that you are having to argue her case for her, because she refuses to answer criticism is a very sad reflection on reasoned argument, and the possibility of understanding and progress on a vital issue.


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## Kylara

Ah yes, I see your point, you're going more for the author's views unconsciously slipping in...this is still helpful to us as readers and critics, so much of a book is from context. Think back a few years to books with certain 'negative n black words' in, they used them because at the time it was written, and the author's surroundings etc that was what people said. Now people don't use it except in very derogatory terms...but again, any racism, intended or not, tells us something about the fiction. Whether the fictive world, and character or the real world and author. All of society is in fiction and if an author has grown up in an area where the majority are white, and there was a nasty group of chinese people running the local music shop, then they will have negative views on them as a race because that is their greatest distinguishing factor to them, (interesting aside: have you ever looked at children's drawings of people? They all tend to look like the child or child's family...ie black, pink, brown, yellowybrown with brown hair, black hair, yellow hair, red hair etc). By knowing more about the author, we can see the influence in their fiction, and to know more about the world in which the author lived, we can know even more about the fiction...everything in that book that is purposeful or accidental when it comes to racism, is a commentary on racism...it got in there, so you think how? why? and then discover things about the author and their society which explains it...just because it was unintentional, doesn't mean it doesn't comment on it.


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## Ursa major

iansales said:


> Remember the fuss about Midsomer Murders last year? Everyone in the village was white. People complained. The writers didn't deliberately make the village all-white. They just populated with the sort of people they thought they would find in a small English village. But in doing so, they excluded minorities and whitewashed the UK of Midsomer Murders.


Until a few decades back, the only non-white people I saw in the (southern) town of 100,000+ people where I live were my fellow engineers, people running restaurants and youngsters here for English language training. (There wasn't a University here in those days.) Even recently**, after the town has added 40% to that population, 95.98% are said to be "White British". Most immigrants here seem to be equally (if not more) "white" people from the eastern parts of the EU. (My family came from Cumbria via Bedfordshire, so I too am an incomer here.)

Given all that, I can easily imagine villages with only white people living in them, even though many of them will be rich incomers who've displaced much of the equally white, but much poorer, original population by driving up the cost of housing in those places. In those circumstances, would you really expect to see a lot of poor people from ethnic minorities in truly rural villages? (Rich non-doms, maybe....)


None of which excuses Mr True-May's comments about Englishness or whatever else he was rambling on about.



** - So far, the most recent census (2011) has provided figures only for total numbers of people and age distribution, I think.


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## HareBrain

iansales said:


> Remember the fuss about Midsomer Murders last year? Everyone in the village was white. People complained. The writers didn't deliberately make the village all-white. They just populated with the sort of people they thought they would find in a small English village. But in doing so, they excluded minorities and whitewashed the UK of Midsomer Murders.


 
Then the characters' cultural prejudices _were _the writer's, which they injected into their cahracters. The point of my post was that it's difficult to ****inadvertently**** inject cultural prejudices into characters which are different from one's own, because creating a character with different cultural prejudices than one's own requires thought.




allmywires said:


> By this vein of logic, surely writing from the POV from a murderer would be hard unless you yourself had murderous thoughts?


 
It would at least require thought, which is the opposite of "inadvertent".

(Am I using the wrong word? Did I make it up in a dream?)


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## Toby Frost

To my mind, this all boils down to the fact that all you can do is your best as a writer, especially when talking about race, gender and that sort of thing. It helps, I think, to approach each character as an individual rather than the inevitable product of a set background, and to take extra care when entering difficult territory. I also think that if you try really hard, you can find racism or sexism in anything, and like witchcraft, if the charge is made with enough anger, it's hard to escape.

Frankly, I've been waiting for someone to accuse me of being a rampant bigot for ages now. Luckily readers seem to get the joke and understand that it is possible to like a thing whilst ridiculing its faults. At any rate, I think I would rather people think me tactless once in a while than straight up malign - better an accidental and occasional racist than a full-time deliberate A-hole, to put it bluntly, uncomfortable as the notion is.


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## allmywires

HareBrain said:


> It would at least require thought, which is the opposite of "inadvertent".
> 
> (Am I using the wrong word? Did I make it up in a dream?)



Apologies, HB, missed the inadvertent there. I suspect it's because I think - no, I know - I'm never inadvertently racist. I always think about how I will portray people of different races in my book. (I have several). In the end I decided on, for the most part, not mentioning it, but I won't be scared off noting in the text that they are different ethnicities. Hence the racism I put in (it's literally only in one paragraph). For most of my characters, it's a non-issue. I put it in to show how insular this group of people are, how separate from the rest of their continent, and ultimately how distrusting they are of any foreigners. 

I would be sincerely worried for anyone (ie RH) who interpreted that as me pushing a racist agenda.


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## Ursa major

Toby Frost said:


> Frankly, I've been waiting for someone to accuse me of being a rampant bigot for ages now. Luckily readers seem to get the joke and understand that it is possible to like a thing whilst ridiculing its faults.


I'm relieved to hear that you're not really a Ghastist (and so aren't, actually..., er... a ghastly person).


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## iansales

Boneman said:


> Why do you not adress her own racism? She is, by her own words, an appalling racist. If a white person printed what she'd said about other races, a hail of criticism and attacks would (rightly) have descended on them. Yet you seem to find it acceptable. No form of racism is acceptable, I think we actually agree on that. But you seem blinded to the fact that she is a racist, and (correct me if I'm wrong) want to balance that - make it justifiable, even - by the appalling catalogue of racism that has, and yes, continues to be perpetrated against different races. Do you seriously think that is the way forward? As has been shown here, many people are completely turned off and won't read her diatribes, because she is a fanatic, who won't engage in reasoned argument.



She would be racist, yes, if you could be racist against whites. Besides which, this isn't a zero sum game. If someone is more of a racist than you, you are still a racist. There are no prizes for being less racist.



Boneman said:


> Because it seems to me that you're falling into an attitude that only white people are racist, and any comments by other races are not.



When black people tell me you can't be racist against white people, I listen them. Because  that's their experience talking. I have no conception of what it's really like to be on the receiving end of historical and institutional and unconscious prejudice. Some black guy insulting me is not the same.



Boneman said:


> ps: Ian, the very fact that you are having to argue her case for her, because she refuses to answer criticism is a very sad reflection on reasoned argument, and the possibility of understanding and progress on a vital issue.



I'm arguing her case because I think we all need to think about the points she raises and not simply dismiss her because we don't like the tone of her voice. And this discussion has raised a number of points to think about. It has been remarkably even-tempered for such a difficult subject.


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## iansales

HareBrain said:


> Then the characters' cultural prejudices _were _the writer's, which they injected into their cahracters. The point of my post was that it's difficult to ****inadvertently**** inject cultural prejudices into characters which are different from one's own, because creating a character with different cultural prejudices than one's own requires thought.



Ah, but if the characters share a similar-enough background, then perhaps some of those sensibilities do slip in without realising. You know, like all those Eurocentric epic fantasy novels with all-white casts


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## allmywires

Ian, if she's not racist, then what would you call her?


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## Kylara

Everyone can be racist. Against anyone. Whether colour or country specific. Plenty of people don't like the 'white people', hehe this is what I said earlier, by trying to state racism you are falling into racism, as it is racist to say that only white people can be racist :wink: I shall stop now, because I dislike having to carefully word what I say around this topic...a 5 thousand word essay on the subject was plenty brain hurt enough for me hehehe

Oh and Eurocentric, if you're going for medieaval fantasy then that would be true to form, very little crossover of non-white people, to shove in other peoples would be being racist (it's confusing but sort of along the lines of - we can't have 4 white people, that's racist, I'll have a couple of token Asians, a token African, and an Eskimo - every instance of which is sterotyping and reinforcing the racist thoughts that led to this moment, there most likely would have been only white people there...just as there were only Native Americans in the Americas before it was colonised/invaded whichever way you think of it).


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## iansales

Toby Frost said:


> To my mind, this all boils down to the fact that all you can do is your best as a writer, especially when talking about race, gender and that sort of thing. It helps, I think, to approach each character as an individual rather than the inevitable product of a set background, and to take extra care when entering difficult territory. I also think that if you try really hard, you can find racism or sexism in anything, and like witchcraft, if the charge is made with enough anger, it's hard to escape.



Agreed. But it's not just avoiding the blatant stuff. There's the subtle stuff too. We are products of our environments and our worldviews reflect that. The same is not true of everyone who will read our fictions, and they may well find things in there that offend them - even though we had no intention of giving offence.


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## iansales

allmywires said:


> Ian, if she's not racist, then what would you call her?



Anti-white. And even then I think it's more anti-white-entitlement than it is actual skin colour.


----------



## Mouse

Finally caught up on this thread now. (And wow, it's grown into a monster!)

And Ian, you've said this a few times now:



iansales said:


> Racism is a history of that and its current effects. It doesn't happen to white people.



Ok, so those old signs on boarding houses back in the day that read: _No blacks, no Irish, no dogs_. That was only racist to black people? And I presume, only racist to the Irish if they were black?! Who has told you that you can't be racist to white people? I honestly don't understand that sentiment at all.

Edited to add, (Not aimed at anyone) I have a character who's a misogynist. Does this mean I'm a misogynist? I also have a character who's homophobic. Same rules? I'd love to see anybody try to accuse me of those two things!


----------



## Ursa major

Pulling back from the racism and sexism....

We tend to be prejudiced on all sorts of fronts - some more socially acceptable than others - which is bound to appear in what we write unless we take care. But even beyond this, inadvertent, not to say lazy, views can appear in our writing.

For instance, in a world full or powerful magic, why do its societies - assuming there is more than one - reflect life here on Earth? Is there an even greater magic that restricts the more mundane sort to the happenings of the plot?


So the rule should be: think about what you write, in case it says something you'd rather it didn't.



(Yes, I know; I'm displaying my magicist view of Fantasy. )


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> And even then I think it's more anti-white-entitlement than it is actual skin colour.



 I am not a racist, nor a sexist, nor homophobic. But I _am_ what RH would describe as white-entitled: middle-class white female, university educated. Yet should I ever find myself in an Internet exchange with her (which hopefully should never happen) she would throw that back in my face in the same way she perceives racists do to her - who is supposedly an Asian misandrist lesbian (therefore better than the rest of us white, straight people).

(It made me laugh when I saw she criticised Joe Abercrombie for making a 'cliched' character who was a man-hating lesbian. When, errrr, that is her to a tee...)


----------



## iansales

Mouse said:


> Ok, so those old signs on boarding houses back in the day that read: _No blacks, no Irish, no dogs_. That was only racist to black people? And I presume, only racist to the Irish if they were black?! Who has told you that you can't be racist to white people? I honestly don't understand that sentiment at all.
> 
> Edited to add, (Not aimed at anyone) I have a character who's a misogynist. Does this mean I'm a misogynist? I also have a character who's homophobic. Same rules? I'd love to see anybody try to accuse me of those two things!



I think it's a matter of terminology. Prejudice happens everywhere and to everyone to some degree. But racism is an institutionalised system of prejudice which has been in place for centuries. "No Irish" is prejudiced, yes; but those people who wouldn't have them as tenants would not refuse to frequent their local boozer because it served Irish people.

The same is true of misogyny. It too is an institutionalised system of prejudice, which is why women only got the vote less than 100 years ago, why women still often earn less than men doing the same job, why some jobs are considered less prestigious if performed by women...

It's not whether you knowingly write misogynist or racist characters, it's whether you unknowingly do so. Because if you're writing them knowingly, then there's a reason for it.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> I think it's a matter of terminology. Prejudice happens everywhere and to everyone to some degree. But racism is an institutionalised system of prejudice which has been in place for centuries. "No Irish" is prejudiced, yes; but those people who wouldn't have them as tenants would not refuse to frequent their local boozer because it served Irish people.



Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for 'Anti-Irish sentiment'. Sample quote:



> They [the Irish] were often called “white Negroes." Throughout Britain and the U.S., newspaper illustrations and hand drawings depicted a prehistoric "ape-like image" of Irish faces to bolster evolutionary racist claims that the Irish people were an "inferior race" as compared to Anglo-Saxons.



Another:


> After 1860 many Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED – NO IRISH NEED APPLY"; these signs came to be known as "NINA signs." (This is sometimes written as "IRISH NEED NOT APPLY" and referred to as "INNA signs")


----------



## Anne Lyle

Kylara said:


> Oh and Eurocentric, if you're going for medieaval fantasy then that would be true to form, very little crossover of non-white people



Actually, that's not as true as you think. Sure, there were fewer non-whites overall, and hardly any outside major cities, but it wasn't wall-to-wall white people from Ireland to Greece 

Just a few examples off the top of my head:

* In Roman times, African legionaries were posted as far north as Hadrian's Wall
* North African Muslims spread through most of Spain and even up into Southern France during the High Middle Ages (troubadour poetry was heavily inspired by Arabic love poems)
* King Henry VIII had a black trumpeter on his staff

And in secondary-world fantasy you have even less excuse for limiting yourself to a white, Eurocentric world...


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> I am not a racist, nor a sexist, nor homophobic. But I _am_ what RH would describe as white-entitled: middle-class white female, university educated.



And I'm even higher on the hit list: white, male, straight, from a western developed nation (though I grew up in a developing nation). I don't think educational level is an issue. But I try hard to bear that in mind in everything I do. I'm going to get it wrong sometimes, I accept that. And I accept the consequences should I do so. For example, I asked someone who's much better at this sort of thing than me to check a story for me once. His advice was to bin it.


----------



## Kylara

Haha I know Anne, but much less so than today...you would have found it very easy to go through village and town after town, full of white people, I was meaning that the non-whites were far less common, not that they weren't there at all! So you'd be forgiven for not having any in your world. Secondary fantasy I agree, but it is really only recently that we have become a truly (and I really hate this word) 'multicultural globocentric' world...


----------



## iansales

allmywires said:


> Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for 'Anti-Irish sentiment'.



We didn't buy and sell them. We didn't treat them worse than animals. We still don't ban them from getting married in non-Irish churches. We don't stop and search them because they "look suspicious". When they're shot and killed, we don't let the killer off because he "naturally assumed" they were a burglar.


----------



## Mouse

allmywires said:


> But I _am_ what RH would describe as white-entitled: middle-class white female, university educated.



So she only hates 'white-entiltled' (wtf?) people? I should be all right then! Working class, minimal education. (I bet she'd still hate me!)

I still think that _anybody_ can be racist. The whole 'can't be racist to white people' is so bizarre it kinda just makes me laugh. And anyway, racist or not, she is so utterly hate-filled and venomous that I wouldn't pay much attention to anything she said anyway. I kinda feel sorry for her, it must be horrible to be that angry all the time.


----------



## allmywires

iansales said:


> We didn't buy and sell them. We didn't treat them worse than animals. We still don't ban them from getting married in non-Irish churches. We don't stop and search them because they "look suspicious". When they're shot and killed, we don't let the killer off because he "naturally assumed" they were a burglar.



That as it may be, to deny the Irish (Irish Catholics particularly, and also Irish travellers, though that's a somewhat different issue) didn't experience racism - as you said earlier -:



> ...don't get paid as much as others for the same job, why landlords will refuse to rent them property, why they fail to get into universities, why their opportunities are constrained, why people reach for animal metaphors to describe them, why their intelligence or habits or sexual practices are questioned... and so on. Racism is a history of that and its current effects. It doesn't happen to white people.



is, quite frankly, untrue.


----------



## Mouse

allmywires said:


> ...Irish travellers...



Ah thanks. I was just about to mention that. And not just the _Irish_ travellers. All of them. You listen to them on all these shows at the mo (Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and what have you) and they talk about racism a lot. Are they wrong then? They're _not_ experiencing racism? They just _think_ they are?


----------



## iansales

Mouse said:


> So she only hates 'white-entiltled' (wtf?) people? I should be all right then! Working class, minimal education. (I bet she'd still hate me!)



The entitlement goes with the skin colour, I'm afraid, not the class or education.

Ever walked into a bar in a non-white country and assumed the locals present are staff? That's entitlement. Of course, not everyone does that, but it's not that extreme an example - especially in places like Thailand.


----------



## Kylara

iansales said:


> We didn't buy and sell them.


 
Sorry but now you are moving into slavery issues, and you are limiting racism now to only those who were slaves...what about indentured workers? They were basically slaves. Buying and selling does not imply racism, just slavery. Racism is a prejudice held against a sterotype of a race or a race, be it country, continent or colour related. You are running with the "white people own racism" idea at the moment, which is in itself racist...I don't know if anyone here ever lived in a town where they were the minority colour, but it is probably the same no matter which way round it is, I know in China if you are white with red hair, you get followed around, and grabbed and photographed, not quite racism, but still...


----------



## Mouse

iansales said:


> Ever walked into a bar in a non-white country and assumed the locals present are staff?



No. And I've never even heard that before in my life!


----------



## iansales

To drag this back to writing... (it's clear the racism v prejudice thing is not going to be settled).

There are some tropes that are racist, though at first blush they may not appear to be. Like *Avatar*. Can't be a racist film, surely? Except it's entire plot is based on blue man cannot defend himself from white man until a disaffected white man shows him the way.


----------



## iansales

Mouse said:


> No. And I've never even heard that before in my life!



Sadly, it happens. I've even heard of people walking into a bar in a white country and assuming the non-whites present are staff.


----------



## allmywires

Kylara said:


> ...I know in China if you are white with red hair, you get followed around, and grabbed and photographed, not quite racism, but still...



A friend of mine (blonde-haired, blue-eyed) was once asked by an Egyptian man in Cairo how much he could buy her for. We had a laugh about it, but it is, to all intents and purposes, something quite unpleasant.


----------



## iansales

Mouse said:


> No. And I've never even heard that before in my life!



I was once in a bar in Germany and the English bloke sitting next to me told me, in all seriousness, that no matter where you were you only needed to speak English slowly and you'd be understood. That's entitlement.

(Unfortunately, to prove a point, I then ordered two beers in German... and the barman replied, "You don't have to speak German to me, I'm from Scotland.")


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> We didn't buy and sell them. We didn't treat them worse than animals. We still don't ban them from getting married in non-Irish churches. We don't stop and search them because they "look suspicious". When they're shot and killed, we don't let the killer off because he "naturally assumed" they were a burglar.


 

Is there a rule book for all this? (I mention a book, because it sounds very complicated.) And does it depend on who "we" are? Are there many books? I'm thinking of one for each "race"/culture, telling them:

who they can treat differently because of who they are rather than for what they do,
who they should treat fairly, and
who is allowed to abuse them.
It all sounds very 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' to me. Wouldn't it be better to:

treat everyone fairly, and
criticise all those who don't do this?


----------



## Anne Lyle

Kylara said:


> Haha I know Anne, but much less so than today...you would have found it very easy to go through village and town after town, full of white people, I was meaning that the non-whites were far less common, not that they weren't there at all!



Oh I know - I grew up in a town like that in the 20th century! 

Just making the points that a) using "medieval Europe was universally white, sexist and homophobic" as an excuse for one's fantasy world shows ignorance of the facts, and b) perpetuating decades-old stereotypes of what fantasy worlds are "supposed" to be like shows ignorance of your current audience.


----------



## allmywires

Anne, I'd just like to quickly nip in and say I'm reading the Alchemist of Souls right now, and you prove that you don't have to write a medieval society that is entirely lacking in different races and different sexual orientations. And you do it very well.


----------



## Kylara

Very true, but it is something I can forgive, if you are doing the whole S&S in middle Europe, I can accept that it may be just white people around...from an historical perspective, but if they move to say the Arabic area and still only white people? Anger and a dropping of the author...
amw a friend of mine was offered a thousand camels and a goat, with the goat as prepayment, he would pay a hundred camels a year until his debt was paid off...she is very beautiful in an old school way, and being there with 5 brothers they managed to thank him for the compliment and laugh it off...but still quite worrying...


----------



## Anne Lyle

Thanks, AMW! (Not that mine is medieval, of course...)

And having read this whole thread, I just wanted to add this in defence of Twitter:



			
				Joe Hill said:
			
		

> I love my weird Lego/Firefly/Dr.Who/comic book obsessed, science-lovin', gay-marriage-diggin', book-addicted Twitter-village. Makes me happy



(Yes, that was _the_ Joe Hill...)


----------



## Anne Lyle

Kylara said:


> Very true, but it is something I can forgive, if you are doing the whole S&S in middle Europe, I can accept that it may be just white people around...from an historical perspective, but if they move to say the Arabic area and still only white people? Anger and a dropping of the author...



Yeah, that would be way weird. I made a real effort to include non-white characters on both sides when I moved Book 2 of my series into the Mediterranean. Difficult, because for my white English PoV characters, the Muslims are the for the most part the enemy - but a little historical digging came up with some great exceptions. Until I researched it, I had no idea that France was allied with the Ottoman Empire against Spain in the 16th century (though it makes perfect sense in light of later links between France and North Africa).


----------



## Mouse

I don't mean to sound stupid, but who's Joe Hill?

edit: Oh... The Heart-Shaped Box guy? (Is that a book? I feel like I'm mis-remembering/making stuff up!)


----------



## iansales

Ursa major said:


> Is there a rule book for all this? (I mention a book, because it sounds very complicated.) And does it depend on who "we" are? Are there many books? I'm thinking of one for each "race"/culture, telling them:
> 
> who they can treat differently because of who they are rather than for what they do,
> who they should treat fairly, and
> who is allowed to abuse them.
> It all sounds very 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' to me. Wouldn't it be better to:
> 
> treat everyone fairly, and
> criticise all those who don't do this?



If we are white, we need to be extra-vigilant. If we are male, we need to be extra-vigilant. You know that Scalzi post on his blog where he writes that he got all the bonus roles in life because he was born white, male, and straight? That.


----------



## allmywires

Anne Lyle said:


> Thanks, AMW! (Not that mine is medieval, of course...)



True, but it's in a similar vein 

Also, I have to say it's one of the reasons I don't like 'typical' high fantasy set in a faux-medieval European setting. You have a whole history - plus things people haven't imagined - to choose from, and that's the most popular choice? Why there isn't more Ancient Greece/Rome based fantasy I'll never understand... (Or Babylonia, Assyria, Nubia, Aztec, etc...)


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> If we are white, we need to be extra-vigilant. If we are male, we need to be extra-vigilant. You know that Scalzi post on his blog where he writes that he got all the bonus roles in life because he was born white, male, and straight? That.


No. If we are human beings, we need to be vigilant.


Is an ill-educated, destitute "white" person from a poor area of England (the scion of generations in poverty) really meant to be held to higher standards than a well-off African American professional (whose parents and grandparents were university educated and rich); or a maharajah?

Frankly, I feel I'm being tough by asking them to be held to the same standards. But I still do. Anything else would be both unfair and racist.


----------



## iansales

Ursa major said:


> Is an ill-educated, destitute "white" person from a poor area of England (the scion of generations in poverty) really meant to be held to higher standards than a well-off African American professional (whose parents and grandparents were university educated and rich); or a maharajah?



That white person would be welcomed in more places the African American would - churches, bars, buses, shops, streets after dark... That white person is less likely to be pulled over by police or airport security for a random spot-check. Remember the African American university professor who was arrested for trying to get into his house after returning from a holiday? 

So yes, higher standards. We made most of the mess, so why should we refuse to take responsibility for it?

It would be lovely if everyone was treated exactly the same by everybody. I believe in a progressive society, I believe we _have_ progressed socially. But it's an ongoing process and it doesn't happen by magic.


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> But it's an ongoing process and it doesn't happen by magic.


It seems that, like Requires Hate, you don't see the folly - a sad folly - of your approach.

You are asking people who are at the bottom of society to behave better than some of those at the top (including those who might very well be profiting from their poverty and discomfort). You're telling the disadvantaged that what some rich bloke did three centuries ago to make themselves immeasurably wealthier is somehow their fault and the only way to make things right is for them to accept that they and their distant descendants will always be the butt of what would otherwise be unfair and racist comments.

Good luck with bringing about the necessary social change, but you're completely undermining it. Who is going to campaign for their own (real, not relative) disadvantage? Only those who think they won't suffer because of the change.


"What Do We Want?"

"Fairness Only For Them!"

"Er... When Do We Want It?" * angry murmerings*

"Can I Get Back To You On That?"


----------



## iansales

Unfortunately, we're drifting into Racism Top Trumps territory, which is not a good place to be.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> People she accuses of racism usually deny the charge, often quite hotly, despite evidence to the contrary. They might not have _thought_ they were being racist, but they were. The best response in such a situation is for them to learn what they did wrong and not do it again. As is often said in discussions on this topic, being called a racist is not worse than being a racist. But from some of the invective thrown at her for making the charge you'd be forgiven for thinking it was.



Ian, I think it's fair to say that _some of the people she accuses of racism_ have presented material that can be considered racist, or at least, replicating problematic, internalized aspects of race and race relations. But to make a blanket statement that this makes the authors categorically racist in daily life is problematic. Take Paolo Bacigalupi for example. We agree on the problems inherent to *The Windup Girl*: the exoticism, the "extended stay tourist's view" of the developing world, the stereotype reinforcing of Emiko, etc. But *The Drowned Cities* (have you read it?) does a really good job tackling race in a near-future context. To say the novel *The Windup Girl* is "racist" would be one thing. However, to say Bacigalupi, the man, is "racist" is pretty problematic, no? 

In that sense, its completely understandable why someone--and let's be honest here, its only the progressive, liberal types writing in SFF who would even care to respond to her invective--would be insulted and grow defensive. Like I said earlier, it's not a productive reaction, but it's understandable. 

I think a fairer way to frame it would be that many of the texts she criticizes are indeed problematic on issues of race, ethnicity and other forms of categorical identity, and some--purposefully or inadvertently--replicate racist tropes. a few are unambiguously racist. I think it's important for people to be reading texts this way, and a great benefit of doing this publicly is getting others to start doing that as well. I think the whole "controversy" surrounding RH would dissipate if the invective were focused on the texts and not the persons, but then again RH has said she enjoys trolling thin-skinned authors and "neckbeards," so stirring the pot is part of the point I guess. 

At times this can be enormously entertaining, like the Joe Abercrombie incident, where fans were doing backflips to justify something Abercrombie himself has problems with (in restrospect). At other times it's not so funny.



iansales said:


> Also, there is racism, and there is prejudice against whites.



Never understood the appeal of this definition, as it conflates two very different things. Institutional racism depends on power relations and your position within them, but racism as an ideology just means you believe the merits of individuals can be judged by virtue of the racial category they are placed into, and that "races" can be ordered by value. Anyone can be a racist. Not everyone can practice or take advantage of/perpetuate institutional racism.

The concept of "white privilege" is that white people generally reap the benefits of institutional racism, even if they have little or no connection to the institutions that replicate the power relations. Yet by doing so, often in unthinking ways, they help sustain the system.


----------



## Ursa major

iansales said:


> Unfortunately, we're drifting into Racism Top Trumps territory, which is not a good place to be.


We started there, in Rightful Hates ugly blog.

It seems to me that most of us here have been trying to row away from it, and towards an equality-for-all position, in spite of the obstacles being placed in our way.


----------



## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> Ian, I think this is problematic. It's fair to say that _some of people she accuses of racism_ have presented material that can be considered racist, or at least, replicating problematic, internalized aspects of race and race relations. But to make a blanket statement that this makes the authors categorically racist in daily life is absurd, and its completely understandable why someone--and let's be honest here, its only the progressive, liberal types writing in SFF who would even care to respond to her invective--would be insulted and grow defensive. Like I said earlier, it's not the best reaction, but it's completely understandable.
> 
> I think a fairer way to frame it would be that many of the texts she criticizes are indeed problematic on issues of race, ethnicity and other forms of categorical identity, and some--purposefully or inadvertently--replicate racist tropes. a few are unambiguously racist.



I think point here is that without reflection on the part of the writer, those problematic issues will resurface in later works. Which means they have to change. It doesn't mean the author is a card-carrying white supremacist, but neither does it mean they are entirely innocent of the charges.


----------



## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> Never understood the appeal of this definition, as it conflates two very different things. Institutional racism depends on power relations and your position within them, but racism as an ideology just means you believe the merits of individuals can be judged by virtue of the racial category they are placed into, and that "races" can be ordered by value. Anyone can be a racist. Not everyone can practice or take advantage of institutional racism.
> 
> The concept of "white privilege" is that white people generally reap the benefits of institutional racism, even if they have little or no connection to the institutions that replicate the power relations.



It's my understanding that the term "racism" is generally now applied solely to institutional racism. I don't know how prevalent that use is, but in the conversations I've been having - on twitter, blogs, etc - that's been the case.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> If we are white, we need to be extra-vigilant. If we are male, we need to be extra-vigilant. You know that Scalzi post on his blog where he writes that he got all the bonus roles in life because he was born white, male, and straight? That.



You mean Lowest Difficulty Setting. Thought it was a really good essay. 

Of course, it's also a very American (or Anglophone) way of looking at things. I spend a lot of my life in another country (Indonesia) where the absolute most important sorting criteria is religion, ethnicity a close second, and gender third. Race is only important for a relatively small percentage of people living in multiracial contexts.

I think it's important to remember that things like stereotyping and group-ism are universal, but the actual categories and groups that are relevant differ tremendously from context to context, and their relative importance is not universal.

That said, in the very Anglophone SFF world, these things _are pretty universal_.


----------



## Anne Lyle

allmywires said:


> Also, I have to say it's one of the reasons I don't like 'typical' high fantasy set in a faux-medieval European setting. You have a whole history - plus things people haven't imagined - to choose from, and that's the most popular choice? Why there isn't more Ancient Greece/Rome based fantasy I'll never understand... (Or Babylonia, Assyria, Nubia, Aztec, etc...)



Between Tolkien-imitators and D&D, fantasy has been stuck in the European Middle Ages by default for the past 50 years - readers want more of the same-old same-old, publishers pander to that demand, resulting in a vicious circle. 

Shifting away from that would require a breakout series on a level with ASOIAF, I reckon.


----------



## Colum Paget

iansales said:


> It's my understanding that the term "racism" is generally now applied solely to institutional racism. I don't know how prevalent that use is, but in the conversations I've been having - on twitter, blogs, etc - that's been the case.



You're the first person I've encountered that's used this definition Ian, and as I said, this definition makes the term 'Institutional Racism' redundant, so the fact that 'Institutional Racism' is used implies a lot of people don't think of the term this way. It could be that your immediate circle is, like everyone's immediate circle, not representitive of the majority viewpoint.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> It's my understanding that the term "racism" is generally now applied solely to institutional racism. I don't know how prevalent that use is, but in the conversations I've been having - on twitter, blogs, etc - that's been the case.



apologies in advance for going a bit academic here...there was a long debate in sociology about whether racism was an ideology or a set of institutional power relations, the end result of which was that today most social theorists and scholars of race conclude that it's both, that the two are interrelated in different ways in different social settings, but that each has, to a certain degree, its own internal causes, dynamics and effects (also, largely, context specific).

the "institutional only" definition kind of ignores that the term racism (not just an objective reality of racial discrimination, which of course is much older) has its roots as a 19th century European pseudoscience applying a crude Darwinism to human relations, and justifying the need for (and not always reflecting the reality of) institutions perpetuating racial hierarchies. But it also doesn't obviate the systemic reality of race as institutional power relations either. Instead, it looks at their interaction and intersectionality (as well as with other forms of identity discrimination).

I like this way of looking at things, because it's very dynamic and less tied up with the political-institutional context of the US, where most of the institutional/power relational theory came from.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> I think point here is that without reflection on the part of the writer, those problematic issues will resurface in later works. Which means they have to change. It doesn't mean the author is a card-carrying white supremacist, but neither does it mean they are entirely innocent of the charges.



True, and I totally agree that the best outcome is for people to take the criticism to heart and think more carefully about what they write. I mean, we shouldn't avoid taking risks or talking about complex and important issues of race (and gender and sexuality and religion, etc.), but we should be careful about how we approach them...particularly if we come from a group that's in a dominant position and we're talking about people who don't share that position.

But do you think it's more fair to say a given piece of writing has things in it that are racist or to conclude on the basis of this that the author is, him or herself, racist?


----------



## Colum Paget

Ursa major said:


> No. If we are human beings, we need to be vigilant.
> 
> I agree with this, although it is worth asking oneself, regardless who one is, how vigilant one is? It cannot hurt if white people and males ARE extra vigilant, but it can hurt if everyone else slacks off.
> 
> I do feel that Ian's argument here, or possibly just the way I'm reading it, is dangerous, as the sins of tomorrow will not be the sins of yesterday, and nor will the perpetrators be yesterday's perpetrators. Don't Hutus and Tutsis both need to be vigilant too? Can peoples with no historical stains on the records (if such exist) get sloppy, confident that 'we never do such things?'
> 
> Do females not need to worry? One might say that they are rarely directly responsible for violence or hatred, but words that anyone writes can be 'moral kindling' for others.  Also, tomorrow's world is likely to put startling power into the hands of the individual, particularly with regard to DIY bio.
> 
> The claim that we, as whites, as Europeans, as males need to be uniquely vigilant implies that there is something uniquely problematic about those groups (of these you can make the strongest case for males, certainly). This is what I call the "Essentialist theory of evil", and the consequences of it are dire, for once you have identified a group who are the cause of the world's ills it becomes 'obvious' that eliminating the group will solve all problems and the world will be perfect. You may think "Well, I don't think that", but arguments you put forwards can be picked up by others to build the case (moral kindling again).
> 
> Saying 'we made most of the mess' implies that without us the world would be perfect.  It wouldn't be. It would look much the same. History has always been a bloodbath, and one of the reasons why is that when something happens we isolate a group and say "It was them". Then it happens again and we isolate another group and blame them. We never acknowledge that human beings keep on doing this stuff.
> 
> The 'communications age' has not resulted in much improvement in terms of people's ability to actually communicate with each other, and may actually be changing things very much for the worse. The world is facing ever-worsening scarcities of basic commodities like water, and other vital resources like rare-earth metals. All forms of religious extreemism seem to be on the rise, and the internet provides a transmission system for them. Where previously political movements used to be represented by chosen spokespeople, they are now more represented by any random extremist with a website who cares to usurp a cause. Hate crimes like today's Wisconsin shooting seem to be on the rise, and certainly there are a lot of people pumping up the hate.
> 
> I'm starting to slip into a "We're all doomed, I tell ye!" rant...
> 
> We all need to watch ourselves. Those who would grant themselves a 'pass' are the most dangerous of all.


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## Colum Paget

Nerds_feather said:


> True, and I totally agree that the best outcome is for people to take the criticism to heart and think more carefully about what they write. I mean, we shouldn't avoid taking risks or talking about complex and important issues of race (and gender and sexuality and religion, etc.), but we should be careful about how we approach them...particularly if we come from a group that's in a dominant position and we're talking about people who don't share that position.
> 
> But do you think it's more fair to say a given piece of writing has things in it that are racist or to conclude on the basis of this that the author is, him or herself, racist?




Absolutely you should say that the things are racist. Otherwise, you are saying that racism is something that some people are, and some aren't. We can all be racist, we are all racist to some degree (and sexist), scientists can wire up our brains and show that we react differently to people of different races (and genders, etc, etc). It's not something that you can ever get a 'clean' rating on, it's something that everyone has to struggle with constantly in their inner lives.

To say a person is racist is, once again, the 'essentialist theory of evil'. It says "They have a problem, we do not". It's not a question of being fair, it's a question of a worldview that treats problems like racism as being "your problem, not mine". 

Incidentally, if racism is institutional, then how can a person be racist, unless they're an institution? Is a person racist only if they act on behalf of some institution, like the police?

One must also be aware that just because someone sees something in a story that's racist, doesn't mean the author put it in there. Only recently I found someone who was critiquing my recent interzone story from the viewpoint that the two major characters were of different races, and that it was therefore racist. Fortunately there was clear evidence in the story that they were of the same race, but what if I'd cut that text as superfluous (because it doesn't really drive the story on)? What if I had made them different races, but the setup that was interpreted as racist was entirely accidental? Tiny editorial decisions can change the story dramatically, without any intent. 

I've seen startling arguments built from what people write, I've seen people find things in my words that I never knew were there (like jokes I didn't make, and had to have explained to me). On this basis one cannot draw conclusions about the author from what you yourself see in their work.


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## Colum Paget

iansales said:


> The same is true of misogyny. It too is an institutionalised system of prejudice, which is why women only got the vote less than 100 years ago, why women still often earn less than men doing the same job, why some jobs are considered less prestigious if performed by women...



Again, I don't recognize this definition. I've certainly met men who were woman-haters without it having anything to do with the institutions, they would be just as hateful if we were living in a matriarchy (probably more so actually). I suppose this could be called 'gender hate', but it's what I would have called misogyny previously. I don't know, why not use these words to simply mean prejudice directed at the respective group, and then use 'institutionalized' to mean that, it seems the best approach. What's this desire to limit the scope of these words?


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## Colum Paget

iansales said:


> Interesting point. I think the persona gets her heard where "being polite" wouldn't. But I also think the responses to her reviews blow it all way out of proportion, and I think it's unfair to her and what she does to demonise her and trivialise her because of their temper tantrums.
> 
> Someone said earlier in this thread that SFFC is a remarkably well-behaved forum, and I think this discussion on a topic as emotive as RH has very much proven it. I'm tempted ot say - though it would be cheap of me - that if this had been LJ, I'd have been black-listed by now  So I, er, won't



I should hope you wouldn't be black-listed, Ian! I might disagree with everything you say, but I'd rather see it, think about it, and then disagree with it, and know why I disagree with it, rather than not see it. Unfortunately I can't apply this logic to RH, because the things they say produce such a reaction of revulsion and alarm in me, that I can't read them. Perhaps this is because I see things that others don't, I've been fooled in life many times, and thus have a hair-trigger for certain types of rhetoric. I don't know.


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## Nerds_feather

[EDIT: responding to comment #159]

Colum,

On a global social life scale, I think you are absolutely right. The idea that "race," gender and sexual orientation are always the most important things is facile, as is the notion that only straight white males need to be vigilant. 

But in the smaller realm of Anglophone SF/F, I think these are the most relevant categories, and straight white males (as the ones with the most privilege, historically, and who make up the bulk of authors and fans) should probably be the _most_ vigilant. 

My take on vigilance, though, is not going to be the same as everyone else's. I think it means having characters who are complex, variegated and diverse; settings that are not just "America in space" or "Cybertokyo" or "Alt-Europe;" and special care to not accidentally reinforcing or perpetuating stereotypes that are hurtful to others (i.e. the "magic negro" or the "brainy math whizz Asian").

That goes against the idea that "you can't write about characters from different social categories, or set stories in varied places because you are not that person or born in that place," because let's face it--it's a global world and many of us (myself included) are not from monoracial, monoethnic or monoreligious families and don't live in monoracial, monoethnic or monoreligious places. Just placing someone in a "white" or "POC" category and then deciding that's all you need to know about someone's knowledge of a social setting or social interactions is deeply questionable, and even more so when it's done based on superficial interactions at cons or on the internet. 

Of course, writing about these things comes with a special responsibility that you don't have when writing about yourself in your hometown. I think this is something people should be aware of, accept and embrace.


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## Colum Paget

iansales said:


> If my language sounds intemperate, I don't mean it to (oh, the irony . But I do want to know why people are all too quick to jump to the defence of RH's detractors and to discount what RH does. Those detractors have thrown around just as many insults - in fact, they're worse, because they've accused RH of everything from racism to mental illness for no good reason other than the fact she pointed out something problematical in their books in language they didn't like. See Liz Williams' LJ post, see R Scott Bakker's many blog posts and comment threads...
> 
> Refusing to take RH seriously only trivialises the issues she raises. Should Foyt get a free pass on self-publishing a racist YA novel just because RH reviewed it? That would be completely messed up.



Oh, I take her seriously. The first lines I saw from her were calling for my execution. Then when I spoke to her she said things like "I'm putting the knee to the face of all whiney whites" (although, to be fair, that might be because I'd said things that annoyed her, so it could have been a completely uncharacteristic outburst, I don't know). She has an avatar that depicts (I think) a white person being stabbed in the head. She has the nickname "All that is required is that you hate".  You don't find any of this alarming?

Reviews? I've not read any reviews, it's got nothing to do with reviews, it's because to me this looks like pure race hate. 

That said, I may be mistaken about her own feelings, she has white friends. But even if she doesn't intend this to be a campaign of hate, it could grow into one. She has special anger for white expats, what if someone starts taking her words onboard to use in a more physical approach? It could happen. She's producing weapons-grade moral kindling. This is one of the reasons I freaked out so bad when encountering this, and left twitter. I don't want this in my list of 'known associates'. Where is this going? What will it look like if the outside world gets a hold of it? What would that 'stabbed in the head' avatar look like on the front of the daily mail?

Admittedly, I am a very paranoid person, so a lot of this could be ridiculous paranoia on my part, but for me it's better to be safe than sorry.


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## Colum Paget

Nerds_feather said:


> [EDIT: responding to comment #159]
> 
> Colum,
> 
> On a global social life scale, I think you are absolutely right. The idea that "race," gender and sexual orientation are always the most important things is facile, as is the notion that only straight white males need to be vigilant.
> 
> But in the smaller realm of Anglophone SF/F, I think these are the most relevant categories, and straight white males (as the ones with the most privilege, historically, and who make up the bulk of authors and fans) should probably be the _most_ vigilant.
> 
> My take on vigilance, though, is not going to be the same as everyone else's. I think it means having characters who are complex, variegated and diverse; settings that are not just "America in space" or "Cybertokyo" or "Alt-Europe;" and special care to not accidentally reinforcing or perpetuating stereotypes that are hurtful to others (i.e. the "magic negro" or the "brainy math whizz Asian").
> 
> That goes against the idea that "you can't write about characters from different social categories, or set stories in varied places because you are not that person or born in that place," because let's face it--it's a global world and many of us (myself included) are not from monoracial, monoethnic or monoreligious families and don't live in monoracial, monoethnic or monoreligious places. Just placing someone in a "white" or "POC" category and then deciding that's all you need to know about someone's knowledge of a social setting or social interactions is deeply questionable, and even more so when it's done based on superficial interactions at cons or on the internet.
> 
> Of course, writing about these things comes with a special responsibility that you don't have when writing about yourself in your hometown. I think this is something people should be aware of, accept and embrace.



I have to think about your opening point about what should be done within white Anglophone SF, because I've just bounced from disagree-agree-disagree and I'm not sure what I think about it.

The point about the 'brainy maths-wizz' asian is an interesting one, because in SF "the scientist" is a major role, and there's a danger of disenfranchising an entire class of people from that role. I can see that there might be other groups who don't often get their turn to be the scientist, but... I don't know. Presumably there's a way to handle an asian person in that role?

Full disclosure: I've got a story doing the rounds that features a mixed-race character called 'Kamiko Sinclair' who is a scientist, and fits the scientist trope of being somewhat socially inept (though in the end much of what we think we know about her turns out to be a deception). I particularly wanted her to be half japanese so I could use the concept of 'giri' (strong obligation) as her excuse for staying somewhere (in an empty station hovering above a black hole). Should I change her nature, do you think?


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## J-WO

Colum Paget said:


> Oh, I take her seriously. The first lines I saw from her were calling for my execution. Then when I spoke to her she said things like "I'm putting the knee to the face of all whiney whites" (although, to be fair, that might be because I'd said things that annoyed her, so it could have been a completely uncharacteristic outburst, I don't know). She has an avatar that depicts (I think) a white person being stabbed in the head. She has the nickname "All that is required is that you hate".  You don't find any of this alarming?



You know the wrestling? It's kind of like the wrestling. She's the PC Triple H.

And I know you've had it from her directly, but can we really expect any one upon reading RH to say-

 'Hmm... this obscure livejournal screed-piece by someone who claims to be an asian woman but could easily be a 20st white man from Basingstoke doing it for the Lulz _really_ makes me want to hunt, locate and grievously attack an almost as obscure mid-list SF author who once wrote an Afro-Carribean character called 'Leroy Winston Jones'.'

Won't happen. And if it did happen the perpetrator would just as easily have done it over Opal Fruits changing their name to Starbursts, ie- the individual would be a total nutter anyhow and the whole thing would be a lottery as to who they'd hurt.

(Anyway, welcome to the Chrons, Colum. I liked your story in Interzone, BTW)


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## Brian G Turner

Colum Paget said:


> You don't find any of this alarming?



It's intended to shock, but think of it as a performance. It's the internet. People put on personas for effect, some more extreme than others. Trolls want attention.

The best thing you can do with a troll is not feed them, by not even acknowledging them or talking about them. 

However, I think NF highlighting this blog helped underline various issues that have already been brought up on chronicles. 

Not least that some male writers seem to be very bad at writing women; and that there are too many Gary and Mary Stu's masquerading as protagonists.

I want to try and push this thread away from the "racism" discussion, simply because the examples she raises are either obviously clumsy or easy targets, or else intentionally misrepresented (ie, Abercrombie's "Gurkish" I would not expect to be intended as a slander on Islam, but instead a representation of the Turkish armies of Mehmet II).

Instead I would rather push the discussion into more constructive territory: for example, male writers looking more carefully at how they construct women characters and use sexual themes; how writers can look to make issues of multiculturalism more real in their world building; and similar issues.

Ultimately, how writers can create more convincing and believable characters, especially ones that exist outside of their direct experience.


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## Colum Paget

J-WO said:


> You know the wrestling? It's kind of like the wrestling. She's the PC Triple H.
> 
> And I know you've had it from her directly, but can we really expect any one upon reading RH to say-
> 
> 'Hmm... this obscure livejournal screed-piece by someone who claims to be an asian woman but could easily be a 20st white man from Basingstoke doing it for the Lulz _really_ makes me want to hunt, locate and grievously attack an almost as obscure mid-list SF author who once wrote an Afro-Carribean character called 'Leroy Winston Jones'.'
> 
> Won't happen. And if it did happen the perpetrator would just as easily have done it over Opal Fruits changing their name to Starbursts, ie- the individual would be a total nutter anyhow and the whole thing would be a lottery as to who they'd hurt.
> 
> (Anyway, welcome to the Chrons, Colum. I liked your story in Interzone, BTW)



Glad you liked the story, it's always nice to hear! 

As for obscure screeds though I do think these have influence, if not then why do we care about hatespeech at all? Most of it is obscure, but it legitimates hate towards certain groups.


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## Colum Paget

I said:


> It's intended to shock, but think of it as a performance. It's the internet. People put on personas for effect, some more extreme than others. Trolls want attention.
> 
> The best thing you can do with a troll is not feed them, by not even acknowledging them or talking about them.
> 
> However, I think NF highlighting this blog helped underline various issues that have already been brought up on chronicles.
> 
> Not least that some male writers seem to be very bad at writing women; and that there are too many Gary and Mary Stu's masquerading as protagonists.
> 
> I want to try and push this thread away from the "racism" discussion, simply because the examples she raises are either obviously clumsy or easy targets, or else intentionally misrepresented (ie, Abercrombie's "Gurkish" I would not expect to be intended as a slander on Islam, but instead a representation of the Turkish armies of Mehmet II).
> 
> Instead I would rather push the discussion into more constructive territory: for example, male writers looking more carefully at how they construct women characters and use sexual themes; how writers can look to make issues of multiculturalism more real in their world building; and similar issues.
> 
> Ultimately, how writers can create more convincing and believable characters, especially ones that exist outside of their direct experience.



I'm up for that, but as it's a change of topic, shouldn't we start a new thread?


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## Teresa Edgerton

Colum Paget said:


> I'm up for that, but as it's a change of topic, shouldn't we start a new thread?




Good idea.  And maybe close this one as perhaps it has run its course, with everyone repeating what has been said before and no one convincing anyone of anything they don't already believe.

What do you think, Brian?


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## Nerds_feather

Colum Paget said:


> I have to think about your opening point about what should be done within white Anglophone SF, because I've just bounced from disagree-agree-disagree and I'm not sure what I think about it.



cool. yeah it's a tough one, and i think anyone who _doesn't_ wrestle with these ideas and arguments isn't doing a lot of critical thinking. for me the process of untangling these things is often as enlightening as the result, which is why i posted this thread 



Colum Paget said:


> The point about the 'brainy maths-wizz' asian is an interesting one, because in SF "the scientist" is a major role, and there's a danger of disenfranchising an entire class of people from that role. I can see that there might be other groups who don't often get their turn to be the scientist, but... I don't know. Presumably there's a way to handle an asian person in that role?
> 
> Full disclosure: I've got a story doing the rounds that features a mixed-race character called 'Kamiko Sinclair' who is a scientist, and fits the scientist trope of being somewhat socially inept (though in the end much of what we think we know about her turns out to be a deception). I particularly wanted her to be half japanese so I could use the concept of 'giri' (strong obligation) as her excuse for staying somewhere (in an empty station hovering above a black hole). Should I change her nature, do you think?



hmm, okay...for me, i would say there's nothing wrong at all with the concept. i mean, you're right...the scientist _is_ one of the most pivotal archetypes in SF, and excluding Asians because you are worried about someone thinking "oh it's just a stereotype" strikes me as the wrong way to go. 

the thing that bothers Asians a lot about portrayals of Asians, though, is that they always seem to be typecast into a small number of roles, and _only_ into those roles...and even in these roles, they are subservient to a white boss or protagonist.  

for me, the path to this would be vigilance, in the sense of understanding and anticipating how Asian readers might react to the character, so that even if the character shares attributes with some of these stereotypes, they clearly transcend the stereotypes by virtue of having depth, interests and background that go past it. 

that's just me though!


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## Brian G Turner

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Good idea.  And maybe close this one as perhaps it has run its course, with everyone repeating what has been said before and no one convincing anyone of anything they don't already believe.
> 
> What do you think, Brian?



Agreed - if anyone wants to make any last moment summaries, feel free to make them here.

In the meantime, there have been so many different issues raised, it may better to start dedicated threads on them.


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## Nerds_feather

sure, no problem. i'll start one


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## Toby Frost

> If anyone wants to make any last moment summaries, feel free to make them here.



She may be a genius, but she sure sounds like a ranting idiot.


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## Kylara

And number of legs :wink:


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## Ursa major

I think it's only fair for the thread to be closed now that it has served its purpose.


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## Teresa Edgerton

Agreed.  Now closed.


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## Brian G Turner

I'm updating this thread simply to close it off with the fact that RequiresHate identity was revealed last month as Thai SF short story writer Benjanun Sriduangkaew:
http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/

Who has now apologised for her rampage - though whether anyone will accept it is another thing:
http://beekian.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/the-things-that-we-do-on-mistakes-on-apologies/


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