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Racefail '09: Still failing, but also with not!fail
I keep thinking about posting on this and then not doing so, because there's so much I could say and at this point, trying to sum up the WTF? of the whole thing would take a book. I was thinking about bringing up the things that make me heartsick and furious, but I was also thinking about saying something about how I really do feel for people who are sitting this one out, especially at this point when the whole thing is getting so self-referential, despite the tireless efforts of some people to link and annotate and sum up. Because from the outside, it really does look like yet another Internet blogfight, and I can understand people dismissing it as such -- except, if you start following the links and reading the posts, it isn't really that at all. [ETA: I wanted to add that I wrote the above before reading this post. I do respect anyone's desire to remain impartial or to simply not engage with this. That, however? Is not remaining impartial.] [ETA 2: Avalon's Willow has a fantastic post refuting the insularity argument that is well worth reading.]
But I can't find the words, and also, my blog reading has been incredibly haphazard over the last week or so, and I haven't been saving or bookmarking anything; all I have now is a lot of vague recollections of posts that made me think or wonder or, in some cases, hit the ceiling with rage.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
livrelibre has an excellent post today with lots o'links, including a number of summaries of the whole thing at the very top of her post, and some thoughts on jumping into this ongoing conversation in the middle.
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verb_noire is a new startup project aimed at increasing the representation of POC characters and underrepresented authors in scifi/fantasy/speculative fiction. I really think it's one of the best and most positive things that has come out of this sorry mess, and they're currently soliciting donations. I am a huge and ardent supporter of small press publishing, and I would love to see them prosper and thrive. (They're actually over their donation goals at this point, but as you can see when you click the link, the goal is very modest, and I know from my own experience in self-publishing that there are a massive whopping lot of unforeseen expenses in any venture of this sort.) Besides, as a reader, what does this mean for me? MORE BOOKS. More books are GOOD.
More fannish happymaking:umbo is seeking examples of characters of color done well in the media, nextian has an awesome meme (where I'm now being completely shameless about pushing Being Human, because more people should know of the awesomeness that is Annie/Lenora Crichlow!), and (more tangentially appropriate than directly related to Racefail) tealc_ficathon has signups until March 14th!
But I can't find the words, and also, my blog reading has been incredibly haphazard over the last week or so, and I haven't been saving or bookmarking anything; all I have now is a lot of vague recollections of posts that made me think or wonder or, in some cases, hit the ceiling with rage.
livrelibre has an excellent post today with lots o'links, including a number of summaries of the whole thing at the very top of her post, and some thoughts on jumping into this ongoing conversation in the middle.verb_noire is a new startup project aimed at increasing the representation of POC characters and underrepresented authors in scifi/fantasy/speculative fiction. I really think it's one of the best and most positive things that has come out of this sorry mess, and they're currently soliciting donations. I am a huge and ardent supporter of small press publishing, and I would love to see them prosper and thrive. (They're actually over their donation goals at this point, but as you can see when you click the link, the goal is very modest, and I know from my own experience in self-publishing that there are a massive whopping lot of unforeseen expenses in any venture of this sort.) Besides, as a reader, what does this mean for me? MORE BOOKS. More books are GOOD.More fannish happymaking:
umbo is seeking examples of characters of color done well in the media, nextian has an awesome meme (where I'm now being completely shameless about pushing Being Human, because more people should know of the awesomeness that is Annie/Lenora Crichlow!), and (more tangentially appropriate than directly related to Racefail) tealc_ficathon has signups until March 14th!
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Our blogs are our own space. No one should feel pressured to chime in, and I really *don't* think anyone is being judged for remaining silent. (At least, I can tell you that I know *I'm* not judging my flist. I'm glad people are still posting about fannish things rather than 24/7 fail!) Nobody's making lists. People are a lot more likely to remember and hold grudges for hasty, ill-considered posts than for not posting anything at all.
Scalzi's got a history of being an opinionated, snarky bastard, and I like that about him. (I kinda like Mallozzi too; I know that isn't a popular opinion, but ... I do.) However, he has, at this point, chosen to weigh in with an opinion, a fairly inflammatory one considering how intensely emotional and personal this discussion/fight/debate/wank/imbroglio is for a lot of people. I respect that he tried to stay out of it probably knowing that his opinion would piss people off; I think that whoever tried to force the issue was being a total wanker; but he could have handled the situation in a much less inflammatory and dismissive way, and I think it's fair to take him to task for it.
Just my 2 or 3 cents, though.
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Mallozzi mostly amuses me, though he can irritate when he expresses some stuff that is coming out in RaceFail in a major way, how superior some published/pro writers feel to be over fans. The main reason I find RaceFail in its current form problematic is because it's become divided along the lines of internet culture vs pro culture - outing is breaking the law of internet fan culture; it's the act of a "criminal", a troll - and you can't have a debate with a troll. If people "break the law" of internet debates, then the whole debate is rendered invalid, becomes wank, ignorable by internet common practice. Right now, no one can defend Shetterly et al because outing is by its nature an indefensible crime in fan culture; so the topic of race is getting lost, because rather than saying "these people have the wrong idea and here's why" you can simply say "these people are WRONG" and any decent online fan has to agree. It's stopped being about race and has become about being Right or Wrong, Us vs Them; and that's not a debate; that's a flamewar...
Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
And she points out that she's pretty pissed about being characterized as part of a spittle-throwing horde by Scalzi.
His response: Oh, I wasn't talking about *you*. Feel free to think of yourself that way, though, if you want.
Tempest then points out that making blanket statements about a group of people is a great way to hurt people in that group, and it doesn't help to backpedal and say "But I didn't mean you as an individual!" if you're not being specific about which individuals you're talking about. Also, she's very hurt and angry, especially since she thinks of him as a friend. (And she was damned polite about it ... probably a lot more so than I would have been at that point.)
Scalzi then says that he's not naming names because he doesn't want to point fingers at anyone. (Right! It's so much better to characterize *everyone* involved in the discussion in one bad-behaving group.) He doesn't apologize; he doesn't seem to indicate that he's bothered by the fact that he hurt a friend and dismissed her concerns, and he gets in an opportunity for another dig at the LJ discussions while he's at it.
There's a lot in the comments that vaguely rubbed me the wrong way, but that really made my blood pressure rise, especially since she's been, from everything I've seen, so fair and even charitable to the people on the pro-author side of things -- and not in a "protect my career" way but a "these are nice people, I know them, please don't judge them harshly" kind of way.
And this is what she gets back.
And it made me stop and think about the whole way that Scalzi's conducting that discussion, and its outcome -- he seems to be putting in a lot of effort to keep it "civil" (with back-patting...) but reading through the comments, I'm realizing that the reason why it's staying civil is, basically, because many people who are being insulted by the commenters' characterization of the LJ thing don't feel comfortable to speak up in Scalzi's space to defend themselves or to bring up the points that his commenters are blatantly overlooking. Apparently it's quite all right to characterize the LJ discussion folks as (just to grab a few adjectives from various comments on Scalzi's blog) conceited, arrogant, silly, over-sensitive, and engaged in a "mud-slinging hate fest", however.
And then that made me realize that one of the main reasons why this whole Racefail thing looks so loud and angry to people on the outside is because people are speaking up, talking about their hurt and anger and alienation. Scalzi's comment thread is remaining "civil" because people who are being insulted do not feel that they can speak up and say so -- it's not that the anger isn't being felt, it's that it's not being expressed there. In light of that, Scalzi's cheerful comments about keeping his space polite seem like utter white-guy lack of clue -- it's not that LJ's a cesspit and your blog is a bastion of enlightenment, you fool, it's that LJ is a space in which people can talk openly about their experiences, and your blog isn't.
Re: Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
In light of that, Scalzi's cheerful comments about keeping his space polite seem like utter white-guy lack of clue -- it's not that LJ's a cesspit and your blog is a bastion of enlightenment, you fool, it's that LJ is a space in which people can talk openly about their experiences, and your blog isn't.
This is what I was talking about - some of this debate has become, not clueless whites vs PoC & allies, but lj vs bloggers. Is lj being disregarded because much of a more permissive space for PoC - or because it's a more *female* space, with more female rules of interaction & communication, including the expectation of discussing hurt feelings? Is Scalzi's "bag of feral cats" actually people of color, or cat-fighting women?
(I say this all with the caveat that I've been changing my own mind about how I feel about this whole thing, because I think it *is* important, and maybe it couldn't happen other than it had, though I'm still finding it problematic now because I fear it's going to scare away more people than it's going to invite in, and that's the opposite of what's needed. I don't know how to change that, though; I've been trying to figure it out...)
Re: Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
Most of my formative social interaction was in mixed-gender groups or male-dominated spaces -- my close friends in college were more male than female, and my early experience with online interaction was in areas like comics fandom, where it's mostly guys. I wasn't really used to female-dominated fandom; in fact, the first time I remember using the word fangirl, I thought I'd coined it from fanboy -- I didn't know very many self-identified female geeks. You were the first fanfic writer I got to know as a person and not just words on a page.
But the more time I spend in fanfic fandom, the less comfortable I'm becoming in the other fannish spaces where I used to play. I find myself doing a sort of ... hmm, it seems frivolous to say code-switching for something so minor, but that's basically what it *is* -- the fannish terminology is different, the modes of interaction are different. I recognize the general climate of Scalzi's blog; it feels familiar from the old comics boards I used to hang out on. And I really don't feel comfortable; I remember how I used to go on for pages, debating philosophical points on the comics boards, but I don't really want to do that anymore. I used the word "squee" unironically the other day on one of the message boards where I used to post a lot, and was (gently) mocked for it, which reminded me how very much I didn't let the fangirl side of me out to play until I got a Livejournal. I never talked about h/c, I never talked about fanfic or slash and was even sort of reticent about going on and on about a TV show or actor, except to discuss it in more clinical or analytical terms.
I really hate to draw lines and say "men talk this way, women talk this way", especially since there are people of both genders on both sides of the communication divide. But it is definitely true that the social climate of LJ fandom is very different from male-dominated comics fandom, and I feel more comfortable here, more free to be myself, than I generally did in comics fandom. And that was despite having found a lot of female comics friends; it was just the whole social climate was different and less conducive to the kind of discussions that I wanted to have.
Edited to add: My comment aside, I don't think it's been derailed as much as all that -- I do think it's tending to wander down various goat paths, as online discussions do, but the fundamental issue of race and representation is still very much there, still being addressed by a lot of people. While I think that different communication modes are probably contributing to the outside view of Racefail as "a bunch of people yelling at each other", I don't think it's what kicked off the whole thing and I think it's a very minor part of what's keeping it going.
Re: Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
Back in college, I got into a couple major arguments with my boyfriend at the time, about the differences between men and women, because he was pretty adamant that there were some fundamental ones (he had been raised by his mother and grandmother, and in some ways was very much an old-school gentleman type - he'd hurry to open doors for me if I didn't rush ahead and beat him to it.) While as I'd always been raised with the general belief that men and women are the same.
Nowadays...there are no absolutes, you can't apply generalizations to individuals - but by and large, women do seem to interact and communicate and maybe think differently from men. Maybe it's biological or maybe it's just social conditioning, but either way, yeah, there's differences.
I like the "male" style of communication sometimes - in some things it can be easier going, because it tends to be more straightforward, more direct...but I'm a non-confrontational person by nature, and especially when it comes to things like fanning, things I do for pleasure, yeah, I've come to accept that while I like male-aimed *media* (I do like shoujo, but I like shounen more...) I tend to prefer female fanning spaces.
Which totally weirds me out to admit. But it's true.
(One thing that amuses me is that, growing up, my main partner in fanning was my brother (my sister was too young at the time.) But since I was the eldest I tended to dominate the conversations, so I tended to bring my brother more into what I now recognize as more "female" fanning modes - we'd have long discussions about character relationships and such. He's more a classic fanboy now - though if the sis and I tie him down, we can get him to discuss, say, slash subtext, in detail! - but I suspect he might have been happy to discover gaming fandom, and the male-style fanning more suited to his tastes. Though we still fan together on many things, and I really enjoy the different ways of looking at things that he brings. Even if it meant he hated SGA - that's just not a good fan show for a cerebral fanboy, even as it supplies endless fascinating fodder for the cerebral fangirl ^^;)
Re: Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
While I think that different communication modes are probably contributing to the outside view of Racefail as "a bunch of people yelling at each other", I don't think it's what kicked off the whole thing and I think it's a very minor part of what's keeping it going.
Largely agreed, though I'm very curious how minor it is. It's hard to measure. I really don't think everything the "bad guys" have been doing is because of latent racism - though at the same time I think it's an undeniable aspect of it.
It seems (to me - and I've been haphazard in my link-clicking, so I'm getting an undoubtedly skewed viewpoint) that part of what's driving RaceFail now is an effort to engulf the internet (or at least lj) - to bring everyone in, to make everyone choose a side, or at least acknowledge that there are sides. To set fire to the field and smoke out everyone who wants to hide; to roar so loudly that everyone must hear it.
And that - I'm torn. Because on the one hand, I'm wondering if it's maybe the only way. This is a part of human nature that's been going on as long as we've existed, but it's one the majority's always been able to hide from (and the minority never can; that is, I suspect, the primary privilege of the majority). So if we're ever going to move on from it - then damn straight, everyone needs to hear about it, whether they want to or not.
On the other hand - the majority *can* avoid it. Most white people can afford to put their heads down and let this blow over - or, if it doesn't blow over, then build up their walls, fortify their communities against it. Isolate themselves from it. And some of those people, it's not that they're evil, it's not even that they're ignorant, or that they don't care, but that they just can't handle the conflict, whether because of temperament, or because they've got their own burdens, or whatever. And those people - they don't need to be smoked out; they need to be coaxed out. They need to be shown that the benefits of working this out outweigh the pain of dealing with it; they need to be convinced that our side is the better way. It's those people who I worry that RaceFail may drive underground - and the longer it goes on for, the deeper they'll bury themselves. And we can't afford to forget about them, because "if you're not with us you're against us" doesn't work, not in this; it's only going to work if we find away to get everyone (or at least a majority) *with* us.
I really want to post some positive stuff - coaxing material. (I don't mean "happy" stuff, exactly, because when you're talking about pain and hurt and betrayal it's hard to be happy - but stuff that's not about condemnation but explanation, stories about trying more than failing...) But RaceFail is so charged that even the essays I read that are balanced and wonderful and thought-provoking get such negativity in the comments that they're going to scare away folks...
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I'm at work so my answer will be shorter than the topic deserves (I want to expand, but don't really have time right now) -- but what I'm really curious about is, *where* is this perception coming from? Because it's not just you that I've seen express that general opinion, but it doesn't fit at all with what I'm seeing as I'm reading the blog posts dealing with the whole Racefail thing. So I'm curious ... why do people believe this? (You can take this to email if you're not comfortable exploring this in public.)
What I'm not seeing, I guess, is anyone being pressured. Lots of people are just carrying on about their normal fannish activities, or their normal fannish activities plus a few posts dealing with Racefail (such as me). The only behavior that's being "attacked", as far as I can see, is that which is well beyond the pale, like outing fans, or putdowns and insults and slurs. And there are places in this discussion where the anger makes me very uncomfortable, but even there, I can see where it's coming from.
...they don't need to be smoked out; they need to be coaxed out.
But there are a lot of coaxing posts as well -- by which I mean, a lot of posts that link to basic privilege-101 discussions that have taken place earlier, a lot of posts that explain where the pain and anger is coming from, etc.
Maybe the problem is, at least in part, that Racefail isn't really taking place at a Racism 101 level of discussion? Especially after two months and change -- most of the privilege-101 posts were pretty early on, and what's happening now is that when someone says, "Hey, what's this Racefail thing?" they get linked to those earlier posts, while most of the new posts are people talking about what's happening *now*.
I think that if you want to make a coaxing/explaining post, it would be a very good thing to do, but you'd want to try not to imply that it's because you feel the discussion isn't being done right and you can do it better -- that was Scalzi's big mistake, basically. It's very dismissive of people who have been putting themselves out there and explaining and baring their souls from the beginning, and it smacks of "I am a white fan, I can do this better than all those upset fen of color!" (I am not accusing you of this, mind. But anything that enters into the discussion at this point, I think, should be pretty clearly standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before, not "O HAI, I'm here to rescue you from the morass of your unproductive discussion!" Which is what Scalzi did.)
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what I'm really curious about is, *where* is this perception coming from?
At least for me, it's not the main body of RaceFail itself, but rather livejournal's general zeitgeist. And it depends entirely on the person. In my case, in the last couple weeks, I've been seeing daily posts on RaceFail - not just you and the couple others who have been active in it from the beginning, but a bunch of people chiming in who currently hadn't been involved. It's taking on the feeling of a meme (especially since many of these posts follow the same format, with links, some personal commentary, and comments screened because it's not about them.)
Such isn't necessarily intended to be pressure; it just *feels* like it. (Especially when a lot of these posts tend to stress, "please do look into this, even if it's hard, it's too important to miss.") I haven't seen anyone attacked for not commenting, but the way lj works, there's a sort of general peer pressure now to say something. (interestingly, at least on my flist, it's the white allies who are speaking out; those who I know are PoC haven't commented, at least not on their ljs. That might be just a difference in fandoms, however, as the anime collective doesn't seem that active in the discussion?)
And as I said, I don't think this peer pressure is actually a bad thing. There is an impression that if you're not saying anything, you're siding with the "other side," and that's reinforced by the dogpiling on those who comes in uninformed and don't choose a clear side right away. Anyone who criticizes the debate is automatically assumed by some people to be on the "other side" - e.g. your own quote: And there are places in this discussion where the anger makes me very uncomfortable, but even there, I can see where it's coming from.
I don't know how you actually meant this, but to me it sounds like you're talking about the anger on the side of the PoC fans and allies, not the anger of the SFF cabal. Scalzi's anger was roundly criticized, after all - and rightly so, and he responded to it well. But at the same time - I did understand where he was coming from, even before his apology; he didn't get a full view of the debate, but he was dragged into it against his will, and it's so enormous now that it's difficult to get that full view. Even with all the posts indexing and linking, if you happen to start at the wrong place - if you happen to jump in on one of the later posts, you can get the wrong impression. (Especially if you're new to Racism 101 - by "you" I'm talking privileged white people here.) And then if you read the earlier posts, colored by that impression, you won't be as receptive as you could be.
RaceFail, as far as I can tell, encompasses a bunch of different things, tied together. The main ones seem to be:
* Giving PoC fans a chance to express their pain.
* Explaining this pain to white fans who might or might not have heard of it before, "recruiting" allies from those who haven't, and seeking solutions for it.
* (White) SFF pros being perceived as trying to stop/silence the first and second, and taking them to task for it.
To most of the people actively involved in the discussions, RaceFail seems to be mostly about the first two, with the last a necessary corollary. So anyone who criticizes RaceFail is seen as criticizing PoC fans, trying to shut them up. (Which is probably true in some cases.) But from the outside perspective, the last seems to be a significant part of RaceFail (especially if you have friends on the SFF pro side) - that part raises the most active conflict, is the part that people are liable to stumble into uneducated; and what clueless white folk are most likely to misinterpret.
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Okay, so, now that you've explained, look back and compare the situation you've described to the way you characterized it the first time around:
...an effort to engulf the internet (or at least lj) - to bring everyone in, to make everyone choose a side, or at least acknowledge that there are sides. To set fire to the field and smoke out everyone who wants to hide; to roar so loudly that everyone must hear it.
What you're describing is, at worst, very mild peer pressure, not in the sense of actually being directly pressured but more like "Most of my friends are doing it, so I feel like I should be doing it too, even though no one said so". And in fact, a number of people -- including me! -- have said that it's okay to be quiet, it's okay to post about other things ... so how does that merit a comparison like "setting fire to the field and smoking out everyone who wants to hide" -- which implies concerted effort, conspiracy, force and aggression -- when you're actually talking about the individual actions of a number of bloggers who are discussion their own experiences and concerns, and aren't trying to enforce their will on other people?
I mean, half my f'list right now seems to be hung up on Merlin, a show which holds no appeal for me whatsoever, but it doesn't make me feel like they're trying to attack or convert me (even the "OMG! You must watch this show!" posts don't feel like that). Does it feel that way to you? Do you feel like you're actively being attacked, like it's a negative thing they're doing to you? If not, why does this situation make you respond so differently?
I'm not trying to attack or shame you in any way -- I'm just trying to hold this comparison up to the light and say, why? Why, when you see a bunch of people posting about racism that directly affects them, and a bunch of white people speaking up to support and defend their PoC friends in that discussion, does it generate that reaction in you -- which I'm reading as a sort of "circle the wagons, ack, I'm being attacked!" reaction.
I'm asking this because a lot of times in the last few years, since I've begun reading the rounds of Racefail-style discussions online, I've run into things like that with me: not this specifically, but I'll have a knee-jerk reaction to something I read ("OMG that person is so wrong!" or "Gosh, what a bitchy thing to say!" or "Why are they all dogpiling on her?" or whatnot). But when I start analyzing it and breaking it down, and looking at the actual facts of the situation, I honestly cannot figure out any rational reason why I reacted that way. Which has got to mean that what's attacking me is, in fact, my subconscious -- or, more accurately, all the internalized garbage composting in there from a lifetime of books and movies and school curricula and parents and ... well, all of the subtle little messages that pile up and tell you how to interface with the world, which includes messages like We Do Not Talk About Race and The World Is Just Fine Like It Is and Only Over-Sensitive People Worry About Stuff Like That.
I've been seeing a ton of that in Racefail, especially in the way that the snowball got rolling in the very beginning. I was honestly boggled to see how Willow's critique of Bear's novel was taken out of context, misrepresented and used against her; if you put her actual words next to what they were claiming she'd written, it was like two totally different things. There were a dozen places where the whole thing could have reversed course -- I mean, look at how the Scalzi thing is going: he put his foot in it, then apologized and is apparently trying to make it better. Bear started off with a ton of goodwill among her readers (mostly liberals, lots of PoC) and the fact that she blew it wasn't something they did to her; it was all in her and her allies' reactions.
(tbc...)
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But I have seen people saying they feel like they're being pressured into liking Merlin; I've seen people saying that they feel like they're being campaigned into disliking Keller because others are posting about it. As I've said myself, I became anti-Keller at least in part because my whole flist seemed to be pro-Keller, and that inspired conflict in me.
If a bunch of your friends/acquaintances/flist are all talking about something you haven't been talking about, it tends to start feeling like peer pressure. Even if it's entirely unintentional. I don't think this is unique to racism discussions. But people are a lot more sensitive to racism discussions, because it is socially acceptable to say, "I don't like McKeller" but it is not socially acceptable to say, "I don't like discussions of race." --And it shouldn't be! these discussions are important! But it means the stakes are different, the pressure greater, and people are more likely to feel cornered, to get defensive.
By "people," I mean, specifically, white people, many of whom don't want to talk about race or racism because they don't have the education for it - PoC know what racism is; they have to, it's a fact of everyday life. Most white people don't get that experience - and so don't know how to talk about racism, don't know what to say about it, don't know what is socially acceptable to say about it. One reason racism doesn't get discussed is because no one likes to admit ignorance, and a lot of white people (myself include) *are* ignorant. And confronted with that ignorance, will get defensive (especially when they're outright told they're being clueless, usually by white anti-racist allies), will try to blame their ignorance on other people. People as a rule are bad at saying "my bad".
--and yes, there are a ton of posts explaining this already, but people also don't take well to people they don't know telling them stuff. Which is why I think the flist engagement is important, is a good way to spread this message, because it's people you do know telling you stuff, people you're already inclined to listen to. Which brings me back to why I think it might in fact be important for all of lj to come on board this - this might be a meme we *should* all adopt. Like I said first off, I am torn. Part of me honestly thinks we should be setting fire to the internets, that this is something that needs to happen, and sooner rather than later. Lj is my community, and I want my community to be anti-racist!
And then part of me thinks this is a bad idea - or rather, not the best way to go about it - and a lot of my flailing now is trying to reconcile that conflict of opinion.
(The actual wording I used, the setting fire to the field, was directly inspired by the Avalon's Willow post you linked: "RaceFail 09 created a Hydra and one who has evolved past the fear of fire on the stumps. A Hydra grows new heads for every one cut down (silenced) and that is what you're seeing here." I didn't invent the battle metaphor, but it seemed to be stirring to a lot of people, and since you're linked it I thought you were thinking in that vein yourself. I must have called upon it inappropriately, and I apologize for that.)
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... okay, and call me crazy here, but didn't we just go through a rather long debate in which you and a number of other people told me and a number of other pro-Keller people that we were being idiots (paraphrased) for feeling that way based on posts that weren't directed at us? And didn't I eventually say you're right, I *am* being an idiot (again, paraphrased), and decide to stop worrying so much about what other people post and take care of my own corner of fandom instead?
So take your own advice, then. ;p (Though I obviously recognize that the two situations are not cognates in meaning or intensity.)
It really is up to you -- whether you want to post about this, what you want to post, whether you're willing to risk the chance of saying something unwittingly asinine and being called on it, or, on the flip side, discovering racist attitudes in your f'list that you never wanted to see, and taking flak for suggesting that all is not hunky-dory racial harmony in the world. (I'm actually quite lucky that I appear to have a very cool and tolerant f'list ... although at least part of that, I think, is that I'm such a doormat when it comes to upsetting my friends that I can't even have a proper fight for a good cause -- in other words, I roll over too easily, and I don't tend to come up with fighting words in the first place ... more like links and waffle-words. But I'm trying!)
In the case of Racefail, I've been posting about it much more than I usually talk about this stuff (again, I'm not a confrontational person; I really have to push myself) because I worry about my friends and I want to get their backs, you know? Sure, on some level there's a bit of "making the world a better place" and so forth (because yes, that'd be awesome too, and I hope every little bit does some good!), but what it really comes down to, I guess, is that this has a face for me, and it's the faces of people I care about. I don't want the world to be a cruel and hostile place for my friends, and god forbid I don't want my blog to be; I want them to be able to trust me to be the kind of person who'd back them up if someone hurts them -- not the kind of person who would sit down with a hurting friend and say "Oh, it doesn't really hurt as much as all that!" or just ignore their pain completely. Er, which reminds me, I said something stupid a bit earlier and I have an apology to post somewhere else, to someone else. *goes to do that*
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Yes, exactly! And I am trying to take my own advice! XP
Also, I am really exceedingly sorry if it feels like I'm trying to get you to stop talking about this, or that I was thinking that you were pressuring me and was calling on your for that. I swear, that was never my intent, and it only just dawned on me that it could be seen as that way. The only criticism I had with your original post was your ETA where you brought up Scalzi, and the only reason I commented on that was because I'd seen it happening elsewhere on the flist, and you were the only place I felt comfortable enough to bring it up. (and then, it *was* the right course to confront Scalzi, to tell him he was screwing up, because he listened and apologized.)
I think you're brave to be posting as much about this as you are, because it is worth fighting for, for just the reasons you name. If I'm feeling pressured to post myself, then it's more than anything the pressure of my own conscience.
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Also I'm not brave, just mouthy. *g* And I did have major problems with what Scalzi said (though I'm glad he backed down and apologized -- you know, if Bear et al had done that at the beginning, we wouldn't be here now ...) or I wouldn't have said so; on the other hand, I certainly don't mind you bringing up the problems that you had with what I posted -- you know you can always disagree with me. (Well, except on certain aspects of SGA right now, in my journal at least, as it's something of a sore spot. XD)
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(I think, again, that flist-skew is affecting our perspectives; on my actual flist, I've been seeing RaceFail pretty much secondhand, entirely one-sided, and mostly from white allies. There's only been one post by a PoC about it, and that was early on and only tangentially related. I've been reading various essays and such as linked, but most of the posts I've been seeing are links to/discussions about the nature of RaceFail. So I'm actually more criticizing the critique, more than the event itself. Which leads to weird impressions!)
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And also, yeah - I've said it before, but my opinions are really in flux here. If I say one thing, and five minutes later say its exact converse - it's not you misreading, most likely it's my own flailing...]
Why, when you see a bunch of people posting about racism that directly affects them, and a bunch of white people speaking up to support and defend their PoC friends in that discussion, does it generate that reaction in you -- which I'm reading as a sort of "circle the wagons, ack, I'm being attacked!" reaction.
I don't feel like I'm being attacked, exactly. I'm feeling more like, if I want to say anything whatsoever on this topic, I have to choose a side. And if I choose a side, then I have to support that side 100%, because if I say anything counter, then I am in cahoots with the bad guys; then I am secretly, perhaps subconsciously, anti-anti-racist, however much I want to be anti-racist. (And, as a corollary, if I think that some of RaceFail is negative and problematic, then I am decrying the whole event, and wish that the PoC had never started it. Which isn't how I feel, either.)
And that's what's freaking me out. Because I am 95% on your side; I agree with 95% of the posts you've linked (er, I mean, the posts you agree with, not so much the ones you linked to show how badly people can screw up.) But I'm a devil's advocate by nature, and in any debate I try to empathize with the other side, figure out where they're coming from. And then, there's that 5% I don't agree with, and that's the stuff that really concerns me, because it's where my feelings are undecided, so I keep poking at it, trying to decide.
But it feels like if I try to mention that 5%, if I talk about it, I'm going to be losing friends and making enemies, because I'll be perceived as being against the other 95%, too. (Perhaps especially because I'm not as vocal as I should be about expressing my support of the 95%, mainly because most of that 95% seems so obvious to me that it boggles me that anyone can question it. Yes, white privilege exists; yes, PoC have a lousy showing in media, especially SF; and of course people are upset about that poor representation. I mean, duh!) So I'm not saying anything.
I've written half a dozen comments to various posts on my flists, and then never posted them (or posted-and-quickly-edited away.) You're the only person I'm actively dialoguing with on the topic, because I'm confident that you're not going to defriend for it, even if I upset or anger you.
Which I understand. I am not saying that people are being *over*sensitive - I think people are *sensitive*, but it's something people should be sensitive about, because it's so damn important. But this means I am treading very carefully. And composing long posts in my head and not daring to write or post them, and, yeah, freaking out.
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And if I choose a side, then I have to support that side 100%, because if I say anything counter, then I am in cahoots with the bad guys; then I am secretly, perhaps subconsciously, anti-anti-racist, however much I want to be anti-racist. ... And then, there's that 5% I don't agree with, and that's the stuff that really concerns me, because it's where my feelings are undecided, so I keep poking at it, trying to decide. But it feels like if I try to mention that 5%, if I talk about it, I'm going to be losing friends and making enemies, because I'll be perceived as being against the other 95%, too.
*unravels this thoughtfully*
See, the thing is -- I don't think anybody agrees with the people around them on 100% of their opinions, 100% of the time. That would be freaking creepy! I think you can pretty much figure that there are a lot of people who are thinking about it and opting not to bring up their objections to x,y,z in the argument in order to not detract from agreeing with a,b,c and d. Or they're bitching about it under heavy f'lock or in email to friends.
I also know from experience how one's brain tends to seize on the 5% disagreement and chew over it while skipping right over the 95% agreement. I suspect this has something to do with how the human brain actually works -- we're drawn to controversy and questioning; we want to mull over the things we don't understand in order to understand them. Also, if we read a post and agree with everything in it but one tiny little thing, that one tiny little thing will leap out like it's huge.
It's something I've struggled with myself, in all kinds of areas, from something as big as this, to something as frivolous as deciding whether, when I post a fanfic rec, should I mention the problems I had with the story (typos & whatnot) or just post the squee?
I guess the question is ... does talking about the 5% help? Is mulling over the 5% in public a necessary thing for you to do? Or can you let it go, say "this doesn't matter as much as the rest of it, and it's not worth derailing something worthwhile" and leave it alone?
If you read 50 worthwhile posts and five that upset you, do you think that it's worth the derail to the overall discussion to bring up the ones that you didn't agree with, or is it more useful to point out some links to the worthwhile posts, and (if you need to) complain in private email to your friends about the ones that upset you?
I'm posing it in the form of a question, because, well, it *is* a question. My general thought on the matter is to ask yourself, What does it say about ME if I read 25 posts today in which PoC women talked about their experiences with racism, and one post by a white ally guilting me for my silence, and that's the one that I fixate on? Is it in any way beneficial, for me or anyone else, if my sole contribution to the discussion is to post complaining about it? And you know, the answer may not be "no". There's not a hive mind operating here ... really there's not; among my PoC friends, as among my white friends, the range of opinion on this whole thing is all over the map. It doesn't mean that you're a gigantic racist if you fixate on this one little thing in the whole discussion and want to post about it -- but I think it's a really good idea to think beforehand about why you're posting it and whether you feel like you could defend it (to yourself, and to other people) if you are challenged on it.
(Sorry for edits, aargh.)
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Hmmm. This is an excellent point, and I think is articulating what I've been troubled by, from two ends. It's why I haven't been inclined to post direct responses to the PoC responses to racism, because even when I have gut-instinct protests, I immediately check myself and find my reasons for responding wanting.
But there's a converse - if everyone feels this way, if everyone is willing to cheer on the 95% and let that troubling 5% go - that's part of the problem here, letting things pass, telling people to drop things because they're unimportant. The things that trouble me, the reason they trouble me is because they're the things I'm *not* seeing discussed. At least not in the places I frequent. I'm mostly seeing tons of support, and no dissent, except for from the "other side." When the only people arguing the 5% are arguing against the other 95%, too - I don't want their arguments; the few good points they make are buried under their generally bad behavior. But it doesn't change the fact that they're good points, and I'm troubled to see them lost/overlooked.
Especially when it comes to the white ally posts. Because I'm honestly concerned that the tone of a few of those posts (and yes, I used the "tone" word, for lack of a better term; can it be noted that I use it consciously and slightly ironically?) might, well, scare off potential allies. And then it's a matter of whether the straightforward approach is more or less important than trying to bring people around...and I don't know.
I guess - okay, one example of something that's bothered me. I've seen in a few places in this thing, the idea that the white SFF people's hurt feelings shouldn't matter; that their pain is deserved, that it's small recompense for what PoC fans endure. And I get that, but...it's not so much a matter of sympathy, of not causing more pain, that's important; it's that those people have clout, have power, have privilege, and making enemies of them might cause more trouble than it's worth. It's unfair as hell, but that's the way the world is. So maybe it's worth coddling them, sucking up to them - trying to seduce them into becoming an ally, rather than bludgeoning them into it. Saying, not, "you're clueless and need to get over yourself," but sympathetically, "hey, I felt the same way, but maybe if you look at it like this..." Because if that's the only way to get through to them - it sucks, but it's better than not getting through to them at all, maybe?
And I know some people have been trying this, and it often doesn't work, but the bludgeoning approach has an even lower success rate (and can screw up seduction attempts), even if it is more emotionally satisfying. And maybe that emotional satisfaction is worth it; I don't know. It's pretty easy to see when things don't work, and so much harder to say what will.
(This is why I tend to feel like it's the white allies' duty to go recruit more allies, and to defend PoC spaces, and such, because PoC fans have enough to deal with in everyday life without making nice with (still more) white jerks with their heads up their asses. And anyway there's sort of racial pride on the line, isn't there, for me to try to help pull my white brothers' and sisters' heads out...)
(...and now you see why I'm not posting about this, because I have yet to figure out non-crude metaphors!)
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I don't agree with everything that every person on the anti-racist "side" has posted throughout this whole discussion. I don't think that's possible -- there are just too many people and too many opinions. (Also, I think it's interesting how our respective f'lists have guided our view of the situation, because apparently my f'list contains a fairly different cross-section of LJ fandom than yours -- because all the posts are available in Rydra's link lists, I had been thinking that the context was available to everyone, but I'm seeing that it's really not the case ...) But right now it feels like it would be very petty and counter-productive to bring up any of my minor points of disagreement. The one time that I've felt like I had to step away because I didn't want to be publicly associated with the behavior of my "side" was, like I said, right after Bear's post, and in retrospect I think they read the situation more accurately than I did. Anyway, I didn't do any public distancing; I could not countenance some of the posts I was seeing, but I still supported the cause overall, so I slipped quietly out the back door for a while and came back later.
Obviously I don't think you should never bring up problematic behavior on your own "side" (and I keep putting "side" in quote marks because I really don't think this is nearly as us-against-them as it's been painted). This whole thing is more or less about that, after all (because it was Bear's friends defending her that really caused it to spiral out of control). But you also need to think about what is gained and lost by bringing up those counter-points relative to the rest of the situation. If someone you know said something hurtful or stupid, or something you just can't understand, maybe it would work better to approach them privately. And if you don't know them, are you reacting negatively because what they said is wrong -- or because it hit you a little too close to home, and maybe you need to deal with that (in emails, under f'lock, or just by mulling it over).
For one thing, I have a strong suspicion that some of the posts that struck me as "too much" might, in a year or two, seem like perfectly reasonable responses to the situation. Like I commented to
(Sorry for edits again! IS YOUR INBOX FULL YET?)
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And what you say about not undermining the cause - yes, exactly, I do see that, and that's also why I haven't been posting anywhere. Except to you - because I do know you, and think I do understand where you're coming from. And I'm comfortable discussing things with you. (And maybe I should've taken this to email, but I'm hoping talking about these things publicly does more good than harm...) Apart from my fear of jackassery, I really don't want to hurt people.
(Which is another thing that makes this debate hard for me, because this isn't a case of "if you can't say something nice..."; in this case speaking up *does* hurt feelings, but silence is even more painful. The white SFF people who are hurt by being called racist, I do have genuine sympathy for them, but it's hard to explain that this sympathy doesn't mean I think those wronged should've stayed quiet. Because if the PoC - if any of us - don't speak up then we're hurt, then we're going to keep being hurt, and that's far worse. I really wish there were a way for these things to be said without hurting anyone - but I don't think there is. And that's something I have trouble coming to terms with...)
(My inbox, she can take it! she is strong! and besides, you've witnessed my typos enough, no? XD)
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Because yes, a lot of them are being jerks, and a lot of them are willfully blind to privilege, are ignoring or denying real pain. But then, as I see it - a lot of them are more flailing defensively because their world view is being undermined; the post-racist society they want doesn't exist and by perpetuating that myth they're contributing to the problem in a major way. And that's really hard to see; it's hard to acknowledge that you're not only WRONG but you've been wrong for years. So...I feel for them. I want to talk to them gently, give them space, give them room to turn around and come over to our side.
The PoC who have been putting up with this shit for all their lives - if they don't have patience, I understand that. I get bothered by PoC who are angry with white people, because, hey, yeah, this is me they're talking about - but I understand it, and I won't try to defend myself from that anger and pain. I haven't been inclined to argue with any post by a PoC that I've read in this thing, because it's not my place; whatever emotions their pain stirs in me, it's up to me to deal, without piling even more crap onto someone who's got more than enough.
The white allies who are unforgiving, though - them, I have a bit more trouble with. Because most of them were probably blind to at least some of their privilege, for most of their lives (or else were privileged to be educated in it!) and can't they have sympathy for those who are still blind? They're the ones I'm inclined to argue with; and they're the ones I feel like if I misstep, I might not easily be forgiven.
But then, a couple people on my flist have posted Scalzi's apology, too. So maybe it's not as judgmental as it feels like - I'm oversensitive myself (I don't even know *why* I'm hurt by defriendings, even though I have been) and I analyze things to death because in my first-off, emotional gut responses, I'm prone to misreading. (And, of course making it all about me - because, well, I'm human. That's just what we do!)
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I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I am going to say stupid things, and I am going to have to apologize or kick myself for them later on. I regret some of the things I've said in the Racefail discussions; in one case I had a friend call me on one of my comments privately, and retract her public support for me in that instance because she felt I'd gone too far. It hurt -- but we're still good friends.
On the rest of it, though ... here's the problem: it doesn't really work. You can't be polite enough to convince someone of something they don't want to see. Heaven knows I certainly didn't want to hear it when I mouthed off about Pam Noles and got (rightly) called on it. It took me a long time to understand where I'd gone wrong and what all the problems were with what I'd said about her and her family; it took me a lot longer than that to get over feeling like it was a dirty secret that I wanted to hide, and now I'm just a) determined to never do that to anyone ever again, if I can help it, and to learn as much as I can so that I can conduct myself like a reasonable human being, and b) incredibly impressed with her grace and class at handling my stupidity and ignorance.
But I didn't arrive there overnight, and that's even without the media circus (for lack of a better word) that's surrounded the Bear thing. Let me put it this way: it was back in late '05 or early '06 that the Pam Noles thing happened. It took a good solid two years of reading and thinking and watching fandom spin on the you-called-me-racist carousel before I got to the point where I felt even remotely qualified to start speaking up in public about it. And this was despite having had plenty of friends, good friends, who weren't white; despite having considered myself widely read, and open-minded. I never knew how much I didn't know, and I certainly didn't react well to being told so in the beginning.
Just based on my own experience, I don't think that most white liberals have the "tools" to deal with being called out for a racist action. But you can't shove those tools into their hands and expect them to know how to use them -- it doesn't work -- and in order to teach them how to use the tools, you have to do so over their protests and often while being insulted along the way.
OH DEAR GOD I HAVE TO GET UP IN SIX HOURS. Bed now! More talking in morning!
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Hmm, yes...were you constantly pushed into it, though? Or were you presented with the tools, given a shove, and then slowly started investigating on your own? Because as far as I've come (which isn't that far, maybe; but anyway...) it's been mostly on my own - I mean, reading a lot and talking and such, but not anyone forcing me into it. It's the kind of thing that is so humiliating for a white liberal to admit to that it's very difficult to do in public. Even with you - if Pam Noles had been less gracious about it, would it have taken you longer to come around?
(Can white allies talk sense into whites better than PoC? Because that seems possible...and okay, it sucks sucks sucks that white people won't/can't/don't know how to hear PoC pain - but if it's really that hard for them, for us - then do we kick all those people to the wayside, or do we send in the white allies? do we write off white people as a whole as a hopeless cause, save those few ones lucky enough to have a breakthrough; or do we try to find new ways to get through? It's horrible to admit it, but maybe empathy is more taught than innate, and if so we better find a new lesson plan...)
This is why I think that RaceFail - the aspect of RaceFail that involves recruiting white allies - might be problematic. Arguing it out with the white authors* is liable to entrench them even deeper in the opposition. Or maybe it's not - I don't know! I think it depends on the person, what they respond to, what they'll listen to. Either way, I understand that RaceFail isn't all about proselytizing to whites; maybe the only problem it has is trying to use it that way, instead of making it entirely about PoC experiences (but then, the community this discussion is occurring in is a white-majority community, so, yeah, white people are making it about us. And since we're the problem anyway...argh! I don't know! The solution is *not* silencing PoC voices, that much I'm sure about. Everything else, though, I have no idea...)
*By arguing it out, I mean, actually attacking them on their blogs; I don't mean posting critiques, open letters, etc. Taking the battle to them doesn't seem to help...but then, it worked with Scalzi. So...I don't know! Where am I? What time is it on Mars? Why can't we all just get along?!
[Good night! or morning now, hopefully! Hope I didn't keep you up all night mulling! ^^; (I tend to do that myself, anyway...)]
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Right! And that's why I think that essentializing it too much is bound to fail, and one reason why the tone argument is full of crap: because there's no one-size-fits-all approach that'll work on everyone. Every situation is different and unique. What didn't work on Bear, worked on Scalzi (and Bear might come around yet; I dunno). What worked on me might have entrenched someone else deeper, or it might have made yet another person swing around immediately and go "Oh, I see what you mean!" right away.
And most people making posts in Racefail aren't, I think, doing it for any specific reason (to convert allies, say) -- they're posting for the same reasons anyone posts anything to LJ: "I have something to say"/ "I just read this stupid thing and OH GOD THE STUPID IT BURNS" / "I just read this smart thing and look, smart stuff over here!" / "Oh f'list, I hurt right now, and here's why". I am very wary of trying to aggregate it and then read patterns into the whole, especially for us as white girls trying to armchair-quarterback the whole situation. Because we will miss stuff, and the picture we end up with may be very erroneous and wrong. I'm not saying "Don't draw conclusions" but, be wary of any conclusions that you get from flawed and incomplete data.
I do think that it works much better to do a lot of this processing in private -- most people don't want to see other people's dirty laundry, and you probably don't want a trail of dirty laundry littered about the internet, marking where you've been! (And obviously I'm not trying to say "This conversation is a waste, stop talking now!" Not at all. On the other hand, I think that reading and thinking is probably more useful than discussing, at least up to a point.)
So I may have been in error when I said, or implied, that you have to teach them to use the tools. Most people, I guess, are capable of being shown where the toolshed is, and then figuring out how to use the tools on their own, in private, as long as they recognize the necessity of doing so. It's trying to get them to do that which is the hard part, I guess...
... and now I'm going to be late for work, heh! Must go get pants on ...
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Yes. Sorry for being vague. At the risk of committing a Scalzi here, I'd better say exactly what I mean: it was the reaction to Bear's meltdown post back in February. (I just now went and looked for it to link to, but I can't find it; either it's been privatized, or I fail at blogsearching; anyway, it's not the latest one, but the earlier one.) At that point, I was still giving her the benefit of the doubt; her reaction still seemed to me like the understandable reaction of someone who didn't want to be forced into the position of having to condemn or distance herself from her friends, and the general response from the anti-racist blogosphere seemed very unfair to me, made me uncomfortable, and made me take a long step back for a while.
But here's the thing: Based on the way that Bear returned to the whole debacle, they were right all along. I was the one who was wrong; when they said that she was speaking in bad faith, based on her later behavior I'd say in hindsight they were absolutely correct. And that is another very important thing to tuck under my hat for these conversations: someone who has been dealing with racism all their life is much better at accurately reading the racial undercurrents in a conversation than someone like me who's spent most of her life cruising along on an oblivious whitegirl cloud. It's awfully hard to step back and say "My instincts are wrong here; I'm reading the situation wrong" because, well, we all rely on those instincts to navigate social situations; we're used to relying on our instincts being accurate (it's a survival trait, even) and it's hard to say "I am not an expert on this -- maybe I should defer to someone else's expertise, even though I still don't see their point of view (yet)." It's not difficult to let go on a subject where you know you aren't an expert; it's just that I'm still learning to recognize that this is one area in which I'm not an expert, can't be an expert -- all I can do is listen to people who have a lot more hard-won experience than I do.
Besides, the other thing is that not every discussion on the Internet is addressed to me. A lot of the Racefail posts have been, essentially, people who've been hurt shoring up walls and holding hands and basically trying to get past it enough to be functional again -- or, in some cases, explaining their pain in the hopes that it'll help prevent it from happening again. For an outsider to step into a discussion like that going "Hey, wow, why don't you all just calm down here?", or even to point and do it from the outside, is incredibly rude and insensitive.
I think it's getting to the point where I have a kind of a bristling, defensive response to sentiments like the ones you've expressed above, because I've seen a lot of pain in these posts, and I don't want to see it swept aside and trampled underfoot and forgotten, so that it'll just happen again with a new round of fail.
To most of the people actively involved in the discussions, RaceFail seems to be mostly about the first two, with the last a necessary corollary.
Um ... actually, I don't think that's true. All I can do is rely on my own impressions here, but I think for most people within the Racefail discussions, it's mostly about misrepresentation of PoC in genre fiction, and white authors' bad behavior when they're called on it. Everything else has been spawned from that.
(Edited for HTML fail...)
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And see, this is a difference in perspective, because these are not the posts I've been seeing as much - these were the early ones, and the ones I find positive and important.
Like I said before, from what I've seen, a lot of the fail of RaceFail isn't the main posts, but the comments - it's people on both sides misunderstanding and misinterpreting, generalizing and insulting. And *far* more on one side than the other, from what I've seen - the SFF pros have been way more out of line than "our" side. But they've still dragged the conversation off-course - and since a lot of them have a lot of readers and more notoriety, they're the main force responsible for making this look like wank instead of a true discussion.
To most of the people actively involved in the discussions, RaceFail seems to be mostly about the first two, with the last a necessary corollary.
Um ... actually, I don't think that's true. All I can do is rely on my own impressions here, but I think for most people within the Racefail discussions, it's mostly about misrepresentation of PoC in genre fiction, and white authors' bad behavior when they're called on it. Everything else has been spawned from that.
Ah, okay, I think this too is the difference in perspective. On my flist of late, several people have been using RaceFail as a springboard for talking about privilege, and a call to arms, especially for white allies, or white-allies-in-training. The prevalence of this on my (mostly white) flist has made it look more central than it actually is to the main imbroglio.
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There are quite a few roundup and recs posts floating around now; because it's open in another tab, I'll link you to this one which was recommended by
*Is it derailment to register my displeasure with the term "white ally"? I feel like a poser using it; it seems so very jargony. Hell, a lot of the terminology in these discussions is like that, but if you want to talk about something, you have to use the most descriptive words, and the jargon exists because it's hard to talk about it otherwise...
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I'm now wondering, from hearing your side of it, if white allies* speaking up is actually making the signal-to-noise ratio worse, by producing a bunch of relatively content-free "me too!" posts that have to be waded through by anyone coming in from outside.
I wonder if this might be true (though as you wisely point out in your other comment, trying to generalize about any of what's happening is a bad idea - this thing is so massive, and there's so many people involved and so many different facets...it's hard to say what might be obscuring the important stuff when no one can say what the truly important stuff is.)
(Does it count as derailment if it's a private conversation? I mean, this is technically public forum, but we're not really in the limelight...at any rate, yeah, I have issues with a lot of the jargon. It's important to have terms because it's hard to talk without words, and these are things that need to be talked about, but, yes, I'm not comfortable with all of them. Because they are such new words, so there's not quite consensus or common knowledge what they truly mean...it's easy to be misinterpreted. Especially when I am not totally clear on all the nuances myself...!)
Okay, off to watch Being Human!
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SQUEE! ...um. I mean, I hope you like it. XD
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Re: Squeaking in under the comment limit... (edited for typos)
Yes, exactly.
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On the other hand, I just poked gently at his blog again, and discovered a newly posted caveat/apology post that sounds like the real deal to me. I fully expect comment!fail (of the "...but you didn't do anything wrong!" variety), and I know that insincere apologies are a dime a dozen in this debacle, but this time around it does sound like he actually listened to at least some of the people who were trying to point out where he'd gone off the rails.
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I had to start link grouping just so I could organize what was going on for myself. I can't stop reading! But I seriously need to disengage (really! for sure this time!) or else I'm going to go away with no laundry, dirty dishes, and none of my work done:) Thanks for the reminder on the tealc_ficathon (and I am going to have to get Being Human)!
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The really sad thing is ... I was thinking the first while I was writing the above post, and I have actually used the second in a comment somewhere else, in the last couple of days.
I'm totally in love with "Being Human" right now. I wish there was more fanstuff for it -- I think this will probably be one of those really intense, then rapidly-fading fan crushes for me because there just isn't really much of a fandom to keep my interest up, and only six episodes with no new ones 'till next year. But it's lovely fun, and Annie, the ghost, is a sweet, adorable dork. Her character arc is not entirely without its problems, but I felt that it redeemed itself later on for some of the things that bothered me at first; YMMV, of course.
My racefail link-fu is pretty much non-existent at this point; I really appreciate the people (like you!) who are doing roundups -- it's the only thing that's keeping me from totally losing track of most of the posts I wanted to read.