Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Done. I Wash My Hands Of It.

My father reminded me of a very simple, logical truth during the initial swirl of Racefail 09.

"When someone has to attack you, instead of attacking your argument, they've already lost the debate."


I'm a bit guilty of striking out against people who've struck out against me. I admit it. I'm not ashamed of it. Naming names doesn't mean much when you can just read my back entries for the year 2009.

Last night a friend of mine and I had a bit of an argument. He doesn't like the phrase DIAF. He thinks that even when people are using violent terms against you, one shouldn't use violent terms against them. And our argument was mainly about the fact that violent terms have so often been used against me I don't give people the benefit of the doubt.

DIAF to me is equal to "I wish your existence erased from humanity / You are a waste of energy and carbon molecules / Life would likely be better if you were to drop dead." Because to me, what other response can there be for continued defensive misdirection, straw arguments, and now the outing of a blogger's legal name by a white woman in SF with an axe to grind and who thinks bloggers have no rights. She's wrong by the way.

People who wonder why I don't call myself a feminist? Remember this.

2009 seems to be the year when things will get ugly, because a paradigm has begun to shift, just a little bit. There's a whole lot of white people in rescue boats, lost at sea because of the merest hint of new in the status quo - who're dealing with things by showing the pimpled moons of their asses and farting loudly as if it were speech.

Taking a page from Zvi-Likes-Tv's book, I name William Shetterly, Katheryn Cramer, Theresa Neilsen Hayden, OUTLAW. I move that they be automatically pre-banned from the journals of POC in the blogsphere. I move they be killfiled (via greasemonkey or whatever is best appropriate). I move that people send email and snail mail to conventions that would have them as guests, and state that the undesirable presence of these individuals will lead to loss of revenue. I move if you go to conventions and see them that they be avoided and shunned. I move if you have books by those involved in Racefail 09, you sell them to a used bookstore and contribute the little cash you get as a start up gift to VERB NOIRE.

Of course, I'm not Queen of the POC. But this is how I personally plan to handle them; expulsion from my reality, I disown them from my human tribe. And personally I will be sticking Peter David on my NOT WANTED list.

To me the KKK has a new little brother or sister, Speculative Fiction's White Institutional Privilege. SFWIP. Sheets not required, just a well relaxed anal chute and the dexterity to bend over and show all.

This has gone beyond FAIL and DO NOT WANT, this is a group of white people circling the wagons, battening the hatches, posting snipers on the roof, because the world is changing and they can't open their minds to change with it - not even as slowly as it is going.

The 12th PoC in SF & F Carnival is up, reflecting on the almost six years of recent conversation we've been trying to have with those who refuse to listen, or learn. That's enough time spent banging our heads against a white wall. That's enough leeway. That's enough hope and patience. We cannot raise up those who do not believe they lie in filth. We cannot exhaust ourselves trying to help people who are not blind and who just refuse to open their eyes. We need to look out for ourselves now, to build and protect community and possibility. We need to nourish ourselves and our mentalities and sanities. It's time.

Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen!

12 comments:

  1. amen!

    amen!

    amen!

    (I can add shalom as well? the internet could use some wholeness restored and peace)

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  2. Fannyanns:

    Shalom is good! And other statements of positive peace confirmation.

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  3. *reads link*

    Dammit. I really LIKE Dogland. Why'd Shetterly have to join Orson Scott Card in the Giant Tool I'll Be Avoiding Future Work From pile. Stupid assmuppet...

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  4. I understand the frustration and the urge to give up and just focus on other things. Sometimes I wish I could. For the sake of my children I have to keep fighting, hoping that in the struggle some people learn something and get up on the clue train.

    I agree whole heartedly that a larger part of the focus needs to go to community building within our own pocket of fandom.

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  5. Lurker:

    Two things. The first? I initially misread assmuppet as asspuppet. Similar enough, but the first visual was painfully funny - it involved a hand and a decorated sock.

    Second thing? Well I think they think they get to be tools, because they believe no one will hold them accountable for their actions, because they are above the universal law of consequences for actions. They're older generation white males. As far as they're concerned the world revolves around them and what they decide is important.

    Oddly enough, Something*Postive has a very appropriate strip up today. Not that all of us have dicks or would be inclined to use them that way. But the entitlement? Oh yeah.

    Btw the link covers mostly Cramer and doesn't link directly to Sh*tterly's quoting of Gandhi as he tries to tell a South Asian woman she doesn't know anything about class and caste struggles the way he, a Western White Male does. And it doesn't link to how he insinuates that anyone (and one individual in particular) who goes to an expensive college couldn't possibly have gotten by via loans, scholarships and working therefore they're uppercrust scum who're slumming for something to agitate about when they point out his race issues.

    He actually compares having to work for 'spending money' because his trust fund only covered his education, to being working class.

    No lie.

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  6. Moondrake:

    I don't just want to focus on strengthening our community, I want us to build our own damn infrastructure. Maybe I'm becoming a bit of a separatist, but I don't want my younger siblings (or your children for that matter) having to trip over the same ignorance, pick themselves up, and explain that "Yes, your foot led to me hurting myself, I don't care that you're too stupid to see obstructing the path would lead to someone's pain."

    I don't want them to have to battle an old guard of white privilege who continue to say "THESE ARE OUR TERMS AND WE CAN MOVE THE GOALPOSTS OR CHANGE THE CONVERSATION AT ANY TIME."

    Dig a hole somewhere and bury that shit!

    I want Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani! In whatever languages and terms the various cultures of PoC can maintain them. All I know is that the 7 Principles never felt so visercally important before.

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  7. Ugh. I'm avoiding reading Shetterly's own posts, because they're full of crazy and stupid. But I just read the related LJ one by "deepad". And damn, the idiot manboy has some issues. Hell Bear pops into that post and comments to apologize for Will being (and this is quoting direct): Will is a friend and colleague of mine, and I think frankly that banning him is a good call, because he's an unreasonable idiot on the topic of racism/classism and he has one of the worst cases of Internet Dick Syndrome I've ever seen, and I don't mind saying so in public: I've said so to his face.

    Man. When your FRIENDS can barely "defend" you it might be time to stop going out in public and think about who you are...

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  8. Lurker:

    She also says that offline he really is a 'Nice Guy' - which personally I take to mean "He's nice to us white people, we're kind of upset he's being so skiffy now."

    Because when it comes to race issues, saying someone's a nice person otherwise, to me is like that neighbour on the news who goes "He was always such a nice, quiet lad. I had no idea he was murdering people and burying them in the backyard. He shoveled my walk and brought me fruit cake."

    To me they're barely defending themselves and it has nothing to do with him. If it did there wouldn't be statements buried in comments and his wife would have changed the password to their internet connection to save further grief.

    But I am full of WTF since finding out that people who've donated to SHADOWUNIT have their Paypal info accessible by Shetterly, not just via a shared email account - because even changing his access there, he still lives with Emma Bull.

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  9. I've still got to agree to disagree with you about DIAF. I fucking hate that expression, in part because when I was younger I witnessed the aftermath of one of my neighbors actually dying in a fire (an explosion resulting from a gas leak). That, and reading about what happened to Karen Ellis and her neighbor from a fire (Karen survived, her neighbor didn't) a few weeks back, really sour me on that expression.

    Just trying to give you another perspective.

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  10. On your main topic, I can't say anything coherent, except: these people are in publishing and they don't understand pseudonyms??! I was wondering how they could be so clueless and still be in business, but the evidence in coffeeandink's post ... *splutter*

    On the PoC Carnival, the link on the ofcolour page goes back to the same page, not to Hathor; I tried to comment there but couldn't get it to work.

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  11. Legible Susan:

    Thank you for letting me know about the link. It's been fixed.

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  12. Notintheface:

    Thank you for letting me know your feelings on the matter. I am reconsidering terms. (I'm lucky I have good friends who call me/have been calling me on things - nibbling determinedly like gnats). About ten years ago my parents' home burned down and luckily my entire family had been out of the house. And I am actually glad that Carla of Snap Judgements and her husband survived the California fires.

    I may have a post up later on this week discussing curses. It's fermenting in my head.

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