Privilege and Passive Racism In My Comics

Remember this jackass? I mentioned him back in March; Tom Brazleton of Theater Hopper. Apparently he's since pulled that page down on his lj feed. He's the one that didn't see what the big deal was about black face in current movies.

Well it seems like he has a web comic twin or possibly a fan in racist stupidity; Chris Daily of Striptease.

I was enjoying Questionable Content as I ate and tried to feel better (a/c apparently tricks your brain into thinking you don't need water. But oh you so do otherwise you end up feeling like crap). Questionable Content had a guest artist today.

So apparently the iPhone's best possible anthropomorphization, the best personality in a comic strip for this phone is as a - what was that? Was that a rich black thug? Or a rich black thug, rapper/musician?

"Call me 3G" + lack of conjugation of the verb 'to be' + misogyny.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

WHAT THE FUCK, Chris Daily??? It's not enough that when checking the cast of your comic, we find the hypersexualized Asian female and the magical sexualized gay negro (who opened some white chick's eyes to 'possibilities') - Jezebel much? And the lone black male - one Tommy - holy shit did you even think about that name? Though I'm calling Tommy black based on his goatee and baldness. He might be meant to be white. There aren't any other real signifiers on the cast page.

It's not enough, Chris Daily, that you have stereotypes and token minorities in your strip. You have to go contaminate Questionable Content? You have an otherwise bright spot in my day be one more instance of OTHERING?

~*~
I actually like Questionable Content and its regular writer/artist. Yes it's basically like F.R.I.E.N.D.S only more interesting, with music instead of coffee and the city has actual people of colour. Granted the PoC's seem to be mostly East Indian or of East Indian Descent; a drummer, a forensic doctor. But they just are. There's no big deal made about them. They don't get very special strips.

And the women in the comic kick ass. As well as the handling of several major traumatic/psychological issues. It treats sex well. It treats relationships between women well - it so passes the Bendel test and then some.
~*~

But unholy living shit this guest comic is just so full of racist failure. It's not funny. It's not cutting edge. It's not savvy. And it sure as hell isn't satire - unless 3G, a product made by Apple, which is owned by rich white men is the technological slave for said white men - oh wait. That wouldn't really be satire would it.

And then there's Windslow, in a tie, getting to look down at the hip, new, uncouth bit of technology.

DIF, Chris Daily. Just die in fire already.

ETA: And damn you, Jeph Jacques for thinking it was actually funny and letting it get posted.

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eta: Amir the drummer might be of ME Decent.

Ami's Rant

The link's been changed in Dear Feminisphere, PUT ON SOME DAMN PANTS . But here too is a link to Ami's Rant On: My sexuality, gender identity and ethnicity are NOT accessories that come with the Ami doll! >:|

Or as Ami and I have said in comments here on Seeking Avalon, non white peoples, non cisgendered peoples, non abled bodied, non heterosexual peoples DO NOT WANT to be white, able bodied, hetero and cisgendered deep down inside.

We are not Mr. & Mrs Potato Head Figures, with our ethnicity, sexuality, gender and functionality clipped and pasted on, ala plastic lips and hair.

Announcement / Thoughts

Ami of Ami's Rants of Doom, which was linked in my post Re: The Femiblosphere Better Put On Some Damn Pants - is going to post her rant in her public blog. I'll link it here and mention when she does and change the link on the post itself.

2nd Announcement.

Bellatrys' - The Intersectionality of Hate: Name Magic in the 21st Century. It's a long essay. It's a really long essay. And it's taken me a day to work up to reading it.

Bellatrys often has interesting things to say. But she doesn't blog; she doesn't write conversationally. She writes thesis papers. There's always a little of classical greek philosophy in her essays and more than a touch of history. There are essays to make you think about the world and the places in it where everyone stands and how we got to those places and who put us in those places. This last essay especially does so.

It's spawned a bit by Helix and William Sanders and a couple other names in the mess that keeps on revealing self-inflated bigots who won't listen and will likely never change. I found it very insightful, though I seriously had to put on my thinking cap to read it.

The most interesting part of her essay is about Name Magic, a concept most SF fans know; the power of one's true name gives an opponent power over you. However IRL, in 'meat space' so to speak, Bellatrys argues that in our day to day lives the true power is in not using the real and proper name. That in fact the institutionalized power hierarchy is set up so that individuals who want to belittle or silence you or make you not exist will constantly not use your correct name, bitch about using said correct name, bitch further about having to call you by a group name you specify (ie; blacks, African Americans, African Europeans, Asian Canadians, of Polish Descent), etc...

I hadn't really thought about that before but it pinged to me of my mother being insistent that in America I never let anyone give me any sort of nickname, that my birth name was important and shouldn't ever be set aside. I was pouty and furious because nicknames seemed to be an inclusive thing and not using one seemed to be voluntarily labeling myself an outsider. But now I see that as an adult my mother had far more experience with how teachers and others could have tried to erase me by giving me some diminutive little name, as if I were a pet - or a slave.

There's so much respect involved in naming. We don't call our parents by their first names, in general, and if we do it's not until we're adults ourselves. Mr and Mrs are titles of respect. There was a big deal back in the day about Ms vs Miss and what that said about the speaker and the named. There's the fact that for years white children were expected to call white adults Mr and Mrs, but encouraged to call black adults by their first names or by terms like 'boy'.

Bellatrys even touches on language as a living thing that can be co-opted or twisted and how modern times are times filled with buzzwords and sound bytes that everyone's expected to understand but which actually are codewords or have meanings that are different depending on who started using them, who co-opted them, and who's listening and which meaning they know - the original or the co-opt.

Example:

"Women's Issues are about ALL WOMEN."

Sounds the same as it did at the first stirrings of the feminist movement and women fighting for equal rights and the vote. But along the way of said movement, the women of colour were left by the wayside, forgotten by history, shoved in a corner.

Are there women today who say "Women's Issues are about ALL WOMEN" and they actually mean all women? Sure. But the majority of people using that phrase are white women and the issues they're referencing are white women's issues and when someone really does start bringing up an issue that's more relevant to ALL women than one portion (small portion) of the women in the world - they get told to form their own damn movements and leave feminism to feminists.

Which, by the way I have done. Secular Womanism for me. Hurrah.

But naming and the power of names and the power grabbed by abusing names and not using names and the upset folk have at being called a racist vs having actual concern about BEING a racist - Bellatrys is right, I think. It is all name magic and it is a type of modern sorcery and chicanery that's used to hide hate.

Most potent to me was this bit here that she takes from Alice in Wonderland:

Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right --' he began.

'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.

'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right -- though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now -- and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents--'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.'

The added emphasis is mine, btw.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

Now, doesn't that sound familiar?

Dear Feminisphere, PUT ON SOME DAMN PANTS

Heidi Schnackenberg would like to apologise say some MORE SHIT for having written a piece in AlterNet News subtitled Women will continue to be oppressed unless they stop prioritizing other causes over their own.

Can you guess which causes she put on the back burner?

Well for those of you who don't currently have a gold star proudly on your foreheads, I'll link and snip you her FIRST explanation/apology/what-the-fuck-ever which ISN'T on AlterNet. It includes:

I have never met a white feminist who doesn't care deeply about what I have to say. I've always gotten the impression that white feminists would welcome the opportunity to improve women's lives in all the areas I mentioned above. Maybe they don't always know about the issues and don't really know what to say, but I haven't seen an intentional dismissal of the unique needs of women of color (in post- modern times).

Apparently Heidi Schnakenberg wasn't alive earlier this year when shit went down with BrownfemiPower and Amanda Marcotte's utter skankiness.

Ms. Schnakenberg then goes on to drop these gems in her second follow up :

• ...A friend once described me as the Eminem of feminism—a white person who hasn't had an easy life and has been ostracized by white folks and feels more comfortable with people of color as a result...



• ... And yes, white women have work to do—they've got to be more inclusive and stop being so ignorant. But I can forgive them a little bit, just like I try to forgive the many white women who were cruel to me when I was growing up, because they are victims themselves...



• ...I'm not necessarily opposed to intersectionality as a theory--I can understand why women of color, especially, must fight against the piles of oppression stacked up against them. I don't want to get in the way of that, but I see how everything else in that lens--race, class, economics, etc., is taking priority over gender...



• ...I'm not necessarily asking for a banishment of intersectionality-- I'm asking for reform...

Go click the link for yourself. Read the foolishness first hand. Foolishness that persists even though according to this article, she's raising a biracial child.

I guess she hasn't yet connected to what it means to raise a SON who isn't white. Or maybe she'll raise him to believe he's white, despite her claim to multiculturism. Perhaps that's how she reckons to keep him safe.

If you want to read someone pissed off at Heidi Schnakenberg's rampant privilege go read Ami's Rant Here.

I don't want to rant at this woman. I want to cut a bitch. Because she has the GALL to write this shit:

Ask any white woman who has endured daily street harassment or the multitudes of white women who work in the sex industry; they can assure you that men of all classes, races and nationalities are united in the pleasure they take in seeing all types of women being sexually humiliated. If that fact alone doesn't unite white women and women of color, I don't know what will.

All I got to say to her is BITCH SHUT THE FUCK UP. Because I see a parade of little black girls that white women didn't give a fuck about; raped and murdered and tossed to the side. The daughters of their maids and cooks. I see the fucking parade of black women who get tossed to the side everyday too - but don't let no little blonde female go missing. Post modern times my black ass.

RAMONA MOORE. RAMONA MOORE. RAMONA MOORE

Also = Commenter Jan VanDenBerg on the Alternet article? StormFront's calling you to join their ranks. You ARE racist enough.

Carnivals!

If you wanted to submit something to the 11th PoC Carnival of Sci Fi & Fantasy, the deadline's tomorrow, July 18th. Information on where to submit here at Part 1 of the Carnival.

Also...



~ Announcing the Women of Color & Beauty Carnival ~

"This Carnival is intended to focus on beauty and what it means to and about women of color. In particular, I would like to see discussion go beyond a focus on the ways in which women of color can internalize self hatred to the ways in which women and communities of color recognize and celebrate beauty." -- Delux Vivens

Submissions from women and men of color are welcome, focusing on these areas:


• What does beauty mean to women of color?



• What is the difference between beauty and ethnically based sexual stereotyping?



• How does stereotyping and white supremacy affect our concepts of beauty, and how can we create change?



• What kind of responsibility do white women who identify as allies have to analyze and take ownership of their privilege in this area?



• How do popular standards of beauty based on generalized whiteness affect our relationships with ourselves, each other, and between different groups of people of color?

Carnival submission deadline is August 5. Please post submissions here.

The Carnival will be posted at the livejournal community YENNENGA.

Who's Been Eating The Tainted Rye?

There's more William Sanders PROVES HE LIVES TO BE A JACKASS over at the ever classy and gracious Tobias Buckell and clicking to the very next post there shows links to Sanders' decision to charge writers who no longer wish to be associated with him and his magazine.

And then there's the New Yorker and WTF ever they were smoking when they published this:



I'm tired. I'm really tired right now. It may be a good thing that the whole world's gone mad and decided to show us who is who by them all frothing at the mouth and doing other things to show their level of madness (cause surely such levels of stupidity and bigogtry and racism have to be as un-yet denoted mental illness). No, madness, mental illness is a disease. These people make choices. They consciously decide to be this way or do these things.

But I am tired. It's a lot all at once and it feels like the best solution is to line some individuals up against a wall. Except I'm aware that this is a symptom of the very wrong choice group they continually make. So I just need a rest.

I just need a rest.

This may not be the most coherent

So I finally get my hands on the updated New Universal.

I'm a few pages into issue 3.

I'm upset.

But let me put a word down first: Post Evolutionary Being. I'll get back to that.

[ POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW.....]

*

*

*

*

A premise so far in the new* New Universe is that when superhumans show up within humanity, they should be hunted down and killed because when a different, a superior, form of life emerges, evolves, it annihilates the weaker competition. So humanity, to save itself, must destroy these superhumans.

And y'know I couldn't, I honestly couldn't help thinking about Obama, black and white politics in America and the concept of reverse racism. I really and honestly couldn't. It's the only similarity to what I was reading that I could think of to wrap my brain around the concept that fear was going to, and in the past had led to, antagonism and murder (including infanticide).

I know I've always kind of boggled at the fear that 'If black people get power and things become truly equal, they'll push that power right into a revenge scenario and whites will end up enslaved and suffering' . The fear is so big, is so prevalent that that's where the concept of reverse racism comes from; people want to make that possibility seem to be happening now in order to excuse their actions which result in in-equality, sometimes extreme actions and often things which are brutal and inhuman. As a side note, something can be subtle but brutal at the same time. White is beautiful, black is ugly, the lighter you are, the more desirable you are? Subtle. But brutal. It results in generations that are incapable of accepting their ancestral features. It results in them feeling lesser and if they feel lesser and someone is also treating them as lesser, well, there's less chance of that revolution, isn't there?

I have always boggled at this concept of the 'inevitable race war'. As if white folk really do believe that just like with the French Revolution when Marie Antoinette got her pretty little neck sliced from her body, there will be a Race Revolution the MOMENT, the exact MOMENT, black and brown folk, but particularly black folk, get any sort of 'real power'. There's talk of "But when it comes down to it, you know which side he (Obama) or she (Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, whomever) will pick."

Fuck damn it makes humanity seem small; really, really, really fucking small.

And what's complex and confusing to me is that I had a similar sequence of thoughts while watching 'An Inconvenient Truth'. I found myself thinking that George Carlin, in his stand up routine, was right. Humanity, which I've lately found myself thinking of as Western White Humanity, is full of itself and yet in reality IS really fucking small.

And yes I realize that Western White Humanity isn't the only aspect of humanity that's concerned about the environment or how we move forward. But, and this is a big but, Western White Humanity is in the position of power, of having used resources in a certain way with a certain carelessness for a certain period of time and is now having to deal with the fact that the earth doesn't give two rat shits about 'Western White Humanity' as a concept.

That is, the Earth adapts. If the ice caps flood and the land sinks and new species have to evolve and other species die, the Earth will still keep going. What's in danger is civilization as we currently know it. In other words, Western White Humanity isn't really at the top of the food chain, not when it comes with to the Earth and how it's affected and how those effects will affect humanity. The only reason to be concerned about maintaining the Earth, protecting the environment, caring about the ozone layer and the shifting weather patterns caused by carbon increases and heat indexes rising and more fresh water ice caps falling into the salt water seas effecting current circulation patterns and thus livability on varied land masses - is because a type of homeostasis is needed in order for things to remain the same; things to remain as they are, with no land loss and no dramatic weather pattern changes which can change growing seasons and where populations are able to live.

Post Evolutionary Being. I told you I'd get back to that. The concept in the issue of New Universal I'm currently reading is that it means a being that isn't going to, that doesn't have to, compete for resources. It's a concept of 'the next stage'. Which brings me to the concept of the 'inevitable race war'. Why is it that there's this general fear that should the oppressed become equal, they will in turn become the oppressors? And so the oppressors must never, EVER, let there be an opportunity for the tables to turn.

I know, I know that's happened in Russian Communism. The working men became the new elite and the previous bourgeoisie classes became the working poor; reviled and hated and without resources and in the middle there was corruption. But you see, that's because revenge can happen in a REVOLUTION. Like Marie Antoinette and the Guillotine. If people have to shed blood to get the median, most basic measure of respect (and good leadership) then of course revenge will play a factor, and a large one at that. Emotions and passions are alight when blood needs to be shed for a cause, usually because what's wanted, and what's needed has to be pried from the cold dead fingers of those previously in power.

So is this what White America, White Western Civilization is saying? That the only way equality could ever come, is when it's pried from their cold, white (purple) fingers? Therefore they're going to do everything possible to ensure that revolution never happens?

And if that is the working theory, how the fuck are they going to get that to work? It seems pretty obvious to me that the more you stamp down a group, the angrier you make that group. The more likely they are to pull towards leadership that tells them they have every right to be angry....

Which leads me to comics again, because doesn't that sound a lot like the true magnetism of Magneto? That he just stood there and let non mutant humanity do all his hard work for him? He let their bigotry lead his followers right to him? That he believed their time had come, doesn't change the fact that non mutant humanity believed it too and believed there was no way they could ever possibly understand... 'those people'.

And ok, that was an unconscious crackshot at 'worm brained mentality' but it's not just in discussing possible terrorists that one finds such a phrase. There are straights who feel they'll never understand gays - cause for crying out loud they push shit out of their asses, why would they want to imagine something going in. And yes, they never seem to put lesbians in the same eeeewh category. But then again in the hierarchy currently on earth, lesbians are women and women aren't at the top.

I used to think it was guilt, that it was white guilt about slavery and all the horrible, horrid, torturous, bloody history there. And the guilt made them incapable of believing that a people could want just to move on and be seen for who they are individually and for the pain to be understood but without a need to lash every white person alive to a pole and give them a marked brand to remember; an ache in the bones to last through generations. But I'm not too sure anymore it is 'white' guilt. And I'm not too sure it's guilt. I think it's fear. I think it's self absorption and hubris and fear.

So much of history on this planet has been about conquest. And for such a long, long, long ass, old ass, time, Western White Civilization have been the conquerors and everyone else has been the conquered. And even among themselves Western White Civilization was fighting about who would be SUPREME CONQUEROR and who would be the one with the smaller dick. And in that kind of paradigm there is no moving forward, there is no something for everyone. There are winners and losers and if they are no longer the winners well that means they're the losers and losers suffer because they've been making the losers suffer for so long. Making the losers suffer is what they'd do, it's what they know.

It's twisted, I think. Because it means that people who tell me they just want to understand and learn, really do understand. They understand about being made into victims and about being put in a place of powerlessness. Because IT'S WHAT THEY FEAR. That's why they don't like to think about it. That's why it's removed from their day to day consciousness. And the most forward thinking, the supposedly liberals are the most aware, which is why they're so easily affronted at any hint they have more to learn/ they've gotten some things wrong/ they've prioritized wrong, because they KNOW just how small they are, how small White Western Civilization really is; the Earth's only been telling them that for the last thirty years or so.

Which is all a long winded way of my saying that I don't know if I can follow New Universal when it starts up in the fall, because the long arc plot to stay on top no matter what, is shit I deal with every damn day. And I really don't want to watch another group dealing with murdered children and fear mongering and propaganda and violence and this acceptance from leaders, from supposedly moral/ethical examples that a stealthy campaign of othering is the right choice. This whole "They're not human -enough-. They're not like us. Our way of life as we know it is more important than any measured thinking, any change, any new possibilities..."

Especially, especially, when the meta of such an argument in NU is that when in the past there had been a time with acceptance, the whole of humanity moved forward. That's just too painful to bear.

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* Premise: If this premise was in the old version my childhood self reading it, missed it - I got the comics all out of sequence and order and tried to piece the story together myself.

The Romans brought devastation, but they called it peace

Following links surrounding the "BUT YOU CAN'T PUBLISH MY RACIST REJECTION LETTER!", I came across a beautiful gem from Betty Candy on The Hathor Legacy.

The essay is entitled; Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test. Wikipedia 'Bechdel Test' with 'Dykes to Watch Out For' if you need a definition. This essay is simply beautiful, simply brilliant but not for the obvious reason. You see this essay exemplifies to me the mentality of dominant comic book industry powers. And it's summed up beautifully in this part of the final paragraph.

There was no way Hollywood really believed what it was saying about boys who’d grown up with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor as action heroes, and so there was no way to change the system from within. I concluded Hollywood was was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the “target audience” - a construct based on partial truths and twisted math - to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage. Where we didn’t talk. To each other. About anything other than men.

Why does Dust's niqāb and modest dress, incorrectly referred to in panels as a burqa, have to tug at her body to show the round fullness of her breasts against the black cloth, or pull against the curve of her ass or drape tightly near her waist?

Because Dust is an exotic female other.

Why do female superheroines wear bathing suits without even a modest skirt flap, or not wear pants, or like Misty Knight are portrayed as bra-less with ample bosoms drawn bouncing (despite her level of physical activity, her having been a former cop, or the pull against the flesh her bionic arm would have on her pectoral muscles)?

Because they might be heroes but they're secondary and they should be a bit of decoration and titillation while the real heroes, the white male heroes are getting things done.

Inconvenient and useless peepholes to the navel or chest? Fighting THONGS despite the factual reality of gravity and ride ups? Apparently male heroes think ahead enough to wear a cup to protect themselves in battle. But Wonder Woman, among others, has to stop mid-fight to pick her thong out of her genital cracks or misplace a kicking blow because something just pulled very uncomfortably around her nether lips.

More distasteful and painful for me, within this beautifully rounded theory is the realization that when these men were growing up, there WERE NO minority characters in prominence. So their continued fantasies don't include PoC, or homosexuals, transexuals or the disabled and certainly not anyone over a certain age. These are the fantasies of youth!

Batman Beyond was more ground breaking than I realized when I was watching it on Saturday mornings. Bruce was old but still extremely vital. As was Barbara Gordon! Max was black and female and a genius! Even if she was underused. Dana was Japanese. And even if I couldn't stand her - interracial relationship right there! And Epilogue shows she stayed with Terry to the end (quite possibly life became easier once he told/or she learned of the truth).

So it's not all of this old guard filled with perpetual Peter Pans. But it is enough. Enough that Vixen can't be dark skinned because dark skinned women were never in the youthful sexual fantasies of those now in power. And there's no need for them to pay attention to the message they're sending of "All black men look alike", when they make all the black male heroes bald and only discernible via their costume/colours. Because only politics is forcing them to include black male characters into their power fantasies as other than comic relief and lackeys. So black heroes get stuck in the background as scenery so they don't intrude into the fantasy any more than is absolutely necessary.

Gays? Nonexistent. They never fantasied about queers.

The disabled? Matt Murdock can see via other senses and Barbara Gordon used to be a librarian so she's used to sitting on her ass all day. Do note too that Barbara in a wheel chair didn't come alive as a three dimensional character until Gail Simone ¹ because her childhood fantasies sure as hell included a whip-smart woman and a whip smart woman wouldn't let her still functioning brain go to waste.

Transexuals? Please. They're only good for odd bodyswitching arcs for a good laugh. Cause 'eeewh'.

Polynesians? uhmmm What?

East Asians? Hey, we have kungfu masters! Ok, kung fu master who teach white guys! But they're there doing their job, giving the Western world a mystical edge!

South Asians? ...? What's a South Asian?

Middle Easterners? Aren't they always the enemy? We've got plenty of bad sheiks.

North Africans? Say what? Huh, Egypt's in Africa?? Well I guess we have a couple mystical Egyptian powers somewhere, granted to white folk. But that's all mummy's and crap. Oh, Morocco is in North Africa? They have all those women in the mysterious sexy clothing. Total scene background.

South Africans? This isn't a political comic.

Over at K-Box in the Box, Kirk's been keeping track of the sales of Brand New Day. They're not good. And there's talk pooled in corners of the blogsphere about the division growing in Spidey fans because one man got the chance to re-create from scratch his adolescent fantasy about his hero.

In a follow up essay, Betty Candy goes on in another brilliant piece of layered out thinking to discuss the perpetuation of biases and promotion of pro Anglo Westernism and how laziness and stubbornness prevents industry from mining profit from disenfranchised groups.

Laziness and stubbornness .... put them in a pot, stir them around what do you get? Fear of change.

I had someone anonymously comment to one of my recent posts that 'being PC is thought control and changes language by cutting out and forgetting words and phrases'. I'm summarizing, mind you because they sure as hell aren't getting a direct c/p for such tripe. Tripe, because languages change! English wouldn't exist if German and Latin hadn't changed, if Greek hadn't changed. Dutch wouldn't exist if German hadn't changed. The languages that don't change, DIE. Languages also die, because the people who speak it were ignored or killed. A living language often means a living people, non-stagnant, a growing, evolving civilization.

The language of film is stagnant at the core, around the edges, in independents and minority supported festivals it's changed and so lives and grows.

The language of comics is also stagnant at the core. Around its edges are small supported projects, trickles, where there's growth and diverging pathways, where new words are discovered and shared and with it new ways of seeing the world.

I can't help thinking about the fact that Rome fell. It didn't fall in a day. But fall it did and now we have what's left after the ravages of the Dark Ages took their due. There are monuments and clues and hints as to this great civilization and the amazing thought they had at the time. But then they stagnated; they dismissed and tried to ignore others, the need to change, the fact that some words, some concepts would need to be put aside in order for new growth,like a plant that needs pruning, Change was smothered; and while it struggled for breath, it was maybe even laughed at.

The world is changing. The audiences are changing and becoming more global. Film should change. Publishing should change. Comics, should change. They should expand and incorporate. They should be more than the old glory dreams of a priviledged few, who fiddle while it all burns around them.

_____

1. I am corrected by LurkerWithout, who's been corrected by Elayne   Re: Simone & Ostrander / ie Kim Yale (Ostrander).

I <3 my readership! I<3 that I have readership.

The person who invents 'Shoot Whitey' as a video game will make a shitload of money.*

I shouldn't have pressed the link to the Asimov forum. I stumbled right into the phrase I hate the most.

"standard issue example of political correctness run amok"

If there was anything that'd make me pull a gun (I do not own) and pop a cap in someone's ass....actually that wouldn't be satisfying enough. A tranquilizer dart and as many hours as I needed to painfully instruct them as to their wrong thinking is likely the only thing that would soothe me.

I hate this phrase. It's bullshit.

It's an idiot's excuse to be bigoted, biased and prejudiced.

Treating human beings, thinking of them and responding to them and their lives with respect and a sense of equality has been reduced to doing what's politically viable in modern times. As if anti-racism (or anti-homophobia/transphobia/religious tolerance) were a damn lobbyist group(s) to be appeased if they throw enough money.

Being offended at something, even being hurt by it, is minimized with a glib, empty. "Oh that's just taking political correctness too far." aka "You're going all OCD about appeasing the non whites/freaks. Silly ninnny. Don't expect me to stress out that much over folks who don't look/act/pray like me."

And if you happen to be one of the 'Other', being upset and angry about it is over-reacting; "Can't you take a joke? I didn't mean any offense by it. They're just words." Because don't those people get upset about nothing, they should be grateful we're not still whipping them, bombing them, or putting them into camps.

People who open their mouths, or type out their thoughts online and communicate the concept of political correctness going out of control - I immediately identify as not being worth my time. There's not even a way to breed that level of stupidity out. You just have to wait for the idiots to die and their seed to be stamped out forever.

This means of course my torture fantasies about painfully making them get the point, are really all about me getting to hurt, humiliate and dehumanize them. It's revenge fantasy because sometimes you need the middle road instead of the higher one. And no, I'm not taking any requests to dominate submissive white men and call them little piggy worm nothings. Cause that's still all about them and my world's too full of their wants and needs and influence sprawled everywhere like a fart on the world that never airs out.

[* Yes I'm aware my title is inflammatory. I did say sometimes I need to take the middle ground instead of the high.]

Heavens Give Me Strength...

"Your actions, which I'm calling unprofessional, which exposed my racism/prejudice/extreme America-centrism and privilege mean that you will never have a story accepted by our magazine."

The above is my summary of the comment left by an editor, Mr W. Sanders, of Helix SF Magazine in response to a lj posted comment revealing his personal rejection letter on a particular story.

Last post a sociology major was telling people of colour that they were doing it wrong. He's got a degree and he knows people of colour don't use the term people of colour anymore. Also, white allies need to stop being sanctimonious in pointing out racism.

This post it's an editor who first refers to - hell I'm going to c/p it.

No, I'm sorry but I can't use this.

There's much to like. I'm impressed by your knowledge of the Q'uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don't really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn't engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.

However, as I say, I can't use it. Because Helix is a speculative fiction magazine, and this isn't speculative fiction.

Oh, you've tacked on some near-future elements at the end, but the future stuff isn't in any way necessary to the story; it isn't even connected with it in any causal way. True, the narrator seems to be saying that it was this incident which caused him to take up the jihad, but he's being mendacious (like all his kind, he's incapable of honesty); he was headed in that direction from the start, and if it hadn't been the encounter with the stripper it would have been something else.

Now if it could be shown that something in this incident showed him HOW the West could be overthrown, then perhaps the story would qualify as SF. That might have been interesting. As it is, though, no connection is shown and in fact we are never told just how this conquest - a highly improbable event, to say the least - came about.

There are some other problems with the story, but there's no point in going into them, because they don't really matter from my viewpoint. It's not speculative fiction and I can't use it in my magazine.

And I don't think you're going to sell it to any other genre magazine, for that reason - though you'd have a hard time anyway; most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads. I think you might have a better chance with some non-genre publication. But I could be wrong.

Sorry.

William Sanders
Senior Editor
Helix

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Please note: It's on the internet and I'm reposting it. And I think Mr. Sanders is just realizing one of the harsh realities of racism - assuming the person he's speaking to / writing to is 'one of his' and not 'one of them'. That is, he assumed it was safe to to 'tell the joke' or 'make the comment' and didn't think about the impact of his words.

Which is an odd thing for an editor to do, don't you think? Not to think about the impact of his words.

This ended up online due to the common practice of sharing rejection letters with fellow friend writers. That it happened online vs offline doesn't change the practice or suddenly pull a veil of privacy over the communication. It's a rejection letter, a piece of official mail by a representative of a company.
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Remember my summary at the top? Here's the link to Sander's actual response to the posting. It's a responding FU. It truly is.

Actual Excerpt:

Of course none of these people have read the story, and so they fail to grasp the context - that I was talking not about Muslims, or Arabs, or Oompa Loompas or any other religious or ethnic group, but about terrorists and violent extremists. (That being, after all, what your story was about.)

Yes, Mr. Sanders. I believe you. Not. 'Cause you see, last time I checked, no one was calling Timothy Mcveigh or the Creationists who built a museum, 'sheet heads'. Also, can you point me to the homeland of the Oompa Loompas and their holy/sacred buildings? Cause that little titbit was news to me. Seriously it was.

ETA: The original poster, the writer who received the rejection letter, has commented to this entry pointing out a fuller explanation at his blog here. He's alarmed and aghast at the outcry and says Mr. Sanders is being taken out of context. So, I have asked him, given the content of his comment and that blog entry if he was the originator of the terms Mr. Sanders used in the rejection letter (here). I will update with his answer should I get a response.

The response from Luke aka Solipcyst.Blogspot.com. He did not word feed Mr. Sanders the bigoted and racist words.