And then I thought, what the hell

[sholio]

If you're tired of LJ drama, RUN AWAY NOW.

I figured that since it's become fairly obvious that Patrick Nielson Hayden, aka pnh, is not going to unscreen the comments I posted at his blog yesterday in regards to the whole cultural appropriation failboating thing, I'd repost 'em here.


In response to this thread, I replied to this comment:

Listen, I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt here. I assumed that you saw a friend who said she'd been attacked, and stepped in to defend her without getting the facts of the situation. It happens. I've done it too.

But what I'm getting from this comment and others that you've left elsewhere is that you already knew what was going on, you'd been through the discussions at Bear and Monette's blogs and elsewhere, and you went ahead and jumped to her defense and made the "some people are smarter than others" comment anyway.

Since I've generally found "Making Light" to be thought-provoking and well-informed, you can't possibly be unaware of the long and nasty history of white culture portraying people of color as stupid, irrational and unreasonable. You are educated and intelligent and aware of race issues. Therefore, lack of awareness or inability to reason through the situation is not a defense that you can claim either.

Buddy, there's a reason why people are saying that you said a racist thing. You did. And right now, I'm regretting giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you just didn't realize the implications of what you're saying, because I'm getting the very strong impression that you know exactly what you said, and about whom you said it -- and you're defending it anyway.

And as for the disclaimer that you quote from mac_stone's post? If I may be so blunt -- bullshit.

It's buried at the bottom of 80+ comments.

She made a public post (and it's not as if it's difficult to lock posts on LJ), after having a very public dust-up on a well-known writer's blog with a relatively well-known blogger of color. She's already posted about the whole situation once within the last couple of days. Logically, what are people going to assume that she's talking about? And the rest of the commenters appear to be assuming that it is, indeed, the racism kerfluffle that's being discussed. If that's not what mac_stone is talking about, she had plenty of opportunity to say, "No, I'm not talking about Avalon's Willow et al". When the timing of the post is that suggestive, if she's not talking about the specific handful of people who are involved in the racism discussion, she'd better be damn clear about that. She did not say so; she has not; and yes, therefore, I think it is absolutely reasonable to infer that her list of abuse bullet points are meant to refer to the people she's been publicly arguing with online. Which makes her disclaimer look like just that -- a disclaimer, the weasel words that are stamped on the shampoo bottle so that you can't sue the manufacturer if you ignore them and eat the stuff.

If she (and for that matter, you, with this post) didn't want to make a very public deal out of that little dust-up on Bear's blog, there are plenty of other options. She could have made a locked post; she could have vented via email, in chat, in a dozen different ways. After having a widely-linked altercation at a blog with 2500 people watching it, it's not as if her own blog is a private little corner of the Internet at the moment. Unfair? Yes. But you can't be on the Internet for any length of time without noticing that nothing you post in public is private or inviolate. Don't stand up and talk trash about someone where they and their friends can hear you if you don't expect to hear from them, too.

If I observe that some people aren't very smart and a bunch of people I never heard of take personal offense, that's really not my problem.

Fair enough, certainly. One is not obligated to consider the impact of one's words on others. However, you have used those words to imply that a black woman is less intelligent than the white woman who is arguing with her, and "can't sort out the difference between [her] inner feelings and the exterior world of discourse", and then to protest that you didn't name names so you weren't talking about the people everyone thinks you were talking about. You used those words to hurt people, and now you claim no responsibility, and I find that behavior disgusting.

And then there's this thread, wherein I replied to this comment:

Oh, for pete's sake ...

It's not a false confession if you did hurt them, unintentionally or otherwise. You, and others in this discussion, seem to be assuming that if you didn't intend to cause pain, if the other person heard implications in your words that you didn't intend to put there, then you're not responsible for any effects that your words may have had. In essence, you become the sole arbiter of your own culpability. If you didn't mean to hurt the other person, then he must not be hurting! And there's sure as hell nothing you can do about it! Why would you even try? I mean, it's not your fault, and not your problem. And I'm getting the impression that it's far more important to you to be right than to ease another person's pain.

One possible "out" is that you can sympathize with their pain without saying "I did X." "I'm sorry you're hurting." Why is that so incredibly hard for people to do? Why don't we teach it in grade school as a simple life-coping strategy?

Or maybe, just maybe, you could decide that for someone who's rarely received an apology for a wrong done to them, it might mean a lot to them if you apologize, and cost very little to you.

You know what this reminds me of? Work. I supervise people, and it never ceases to amaze me how my little office staff of intelligent, educated, middle-aged white-collar professionals will absolutely refuse to say "I'm sorry" to each other. They'll nurse grudges for months, carefully marshalling blame and ranging their arguments as to just who exactly was responsible for what tiny fractional slight. Because no one can bend enough to admit that they might not have been 100% justified, their every action perfectly moral and upright.

Frankly, I'm stunned and appalled that the simple fact that another human being is standing there in front of you, hurting, doesn't make you want to ameliorate his pain, especially with something as simple as an apology. Instead, your response is to argue semantics, to make it about yourself, to tell him that you aren't to blame when, all the while, he's standing there hurting. I ... I just have no words.

Yeah, I know he's perfectly within his rights to leave them screened (it's his blog, after all), and this is probably quite petty, but ... gah. I'm feeling petty today.


Edited to add: If you're still following this, I recommend that you check out rydra_wong's latest linkspam (special "OH JOHN RINGO NO" edition). If not, seriously, all you need to know is that some of the biggish names in SFF publishing are making asshats of themselves. Again. And now I'm off to make tea. I need tea.

ETA2: I just realized that some of the concepts in the first above-cited comment were almost certainly appropriated from zvi_likes_tv's post here. At this point I think a lot of different arguments are percolating into my subconscious and popping out in various places, but I didn't mean to take your words and repeat them as my own.

ETA3: As of this typing, pnh, medievalist and mac_stone have ALL taken down their journals. (Well, in the last case, taken down all content and expressed intent to go read-only.) I've basically gotten past the WTF? point to where all I can do is laugh. I thought I'd seen some spectacular hissy fits in comics fandom, but this takes the cake.