Some guy named William Lehman has written an essay, Destroy the myth, destroy the culture, that starts off with a reasonable premise and then goes totally off the rails, in an entertainingly oblivious way, and as it’s crashing, invents a new label: the “SJW Glittery hoo ha crowd”. I love it, even though I don’t have a hoo ha, glittery or otherwise. I’m still happy to be associated with glittery hoo has fighting for social justice.
Anyway, the part I agree with is the importance of foundational myths to a culture — we need aspirational ideas, and something to give us a worthy cause. Where Lehman goes wrong is that he identifies with science fiction culture, and proceeds to regale us with a completely nonsensical vision of our foundational myths. Read and be astounded.
Are we not a culture? Hack us off, are we not pricks? Wrong us do we not seek revenge? Seems to me NBC figured out that we were, back when they killed Star Trek…
Say what you will about the SJW Glittery hoo ha crowd, they get this. I speculate that they get it because while we (the guys that grew up watching STOG and said “Hey those doors are COOL, how would you do that for real? Those communicators, could you do that?) went to engineering and hard science classes and started building the future that we wanted, the aforementioned individuals where going to the soft sciences (not real sciences at all in my NSHO) and studied how cultures work.
Our plan for the future was that we would tell the stories of how we wanted it to be, and then go forth and MAKE it. Our myths where written during the “golden age of SF”. Steered by guys like Campbell, even when the myths involved the soft sciences, it made them into hard science (Foundation, anyone?). Well our view of the future has virtually no intersection with the preferred future of the SJWs, or at least so it seems to me. Their view of the future seems, in science fiction to be more driven by Silent Running, etc etal.
So, since they DIDN’T go to engineering schools, they use the tools that they have to try to drive the future they want. They have been working diligently at it for about forty years now. They are doing it by attempting to destroy the myths that are the foundations of our societies, and replacing them with their own, or with NOTHING. They’re pretty far along in England, but then they started earlier there, and had the advantage of a nation exhausted from two world wars that destroyed many of the best and brightest of three generations. In national politics they are working at it with things like attacking George Washington as someone who not only owned slaves, but was a virulent supporter of the institution. If they can destroy the myths that we base our cultural view on, they change the culture.
Whoa…the guiding star of his ethos was the original Star Trek? And he watched it and thought it was all about doors that go swoosh and communicators and tricorders and spaceships? I’m thinking he must have been watching Star Trek in that alternate mirror universe where everyone was evil and wore goatees, because that’s not what the Star Trek in my universe was all about. My Star Trek was a humanist utopia that focused on social justice issues, sometimes in a heavy-handed and corny way, and the gadgets were just the glittery hoo ha thrown in to make it science fiction. Gene Roddenberry was openly humanist and made it crystal clear that that was an essential part of his optimistic vision for the future.
Ask Scott Lohman of Humanists of Minnesota — he’s a die-hard trekkie, and I’ve heard him rhapsodize about the progressive themes of the show more than once.
Or better yet, I have David Gerrold, an original writer for the show, right here to set the story straight.
But where Lehman has completely missed the point is that he uses Star Trek to justify his own beliefs while overlooking the much more important fact that Star Trek, The Original Series wasn’t about the engineering as much as it was about the "Social Justice Warriors Glittery hoo ha" stuff.
I was there. I know what Gene Roddenberry envisioned. He went on at length about it in almost every meeting. He wasn’t about technology, he was about envisioning a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out. Gene Roddenberry was one of the great Social Justice Warriors. You don’t get to claim him or his show as a shield of virtue for a cause he would have disdained.
Most of the stories we wrote were about social justice. "The Cloud Minders," "A Taste Of Armageddon," "Errand Of Mercy," "The Apple," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," and so many more. We did stories that were about exploring the universe not just because we could build starships, but because we wanted to know who was out there, what was our place in the universe, and what could we learn from the other races out there?
Star Trek was about social justice from day one — the stories were about the human pursuit for a better world, a better way of being, the next step up the ladder of sentience. The stories weren’t about who we were going to fight, but who we were going to make friends with. It wasn’t about defining an enemy — it was about creating a new partnership. That’s why when Next Gen came along, we had a Klingon on the bridge.
It blows my mind that someone could praise Star Trek and at the same time think it was an inspiration for getting out and learning how to design automatic doors. Completely missing the point, dude. The idea that the future we want is one where white guys have more toys and gadgets is totally trivializing. Maybe he needed to take more of those liberal artsey literature and communications courses in school.
P.S. I hate to break the news to Mr Lehman, but anthropology, psychology, history, theater, and literature are often more scientific than engineering. I don’t consider engineering to be a science at all, in my NSHO. I also think it’s a terrible idea to use scienceyness as the measure of the worth of a discipline. Engineering is good and important, and so is literature, and it is a category error to try and scale their value along a single metric. That’s an error Roddenberry would not have made, but apparently Lehman is prone to it.
P.P.S. Most of the founding fathers of this country did make excuses for slavery, and set the US off on a grossly racist course that led to a bloody war and many generations of racism that we still haven’t recovered from. I think it’s very important that our stories about our culture offer an honest and realistic picture of ourselves, because there is no other way to become better. Sugar-coating the past as he’d like to do interferes with that process of improvement.
Wrong us do we not seek revenge? Seems to me NBC figured out that we were, back when they killed Star Trek…
I’m guessing he has no idea who was in charge of the movement to save Star Trek.
All I got out of this is a lovely new addition to my ‘nym.
Isn’t “attacking myths” also known as “standing up for truth?”
I suppose Lehman is correct that if long-held myths are overturned, the cultural assumptions which they are based upon will also be undermined. His error is seeing this as a bad thing.
To expand: Lehman totally missed that each and every STOS story was a story about _US_. The extra-terrestrial setting and characters was just a metaphor. Our (current) failings were cast as the ET’s failings, that the Enterprise crew were there to correct, for Kirk to verbalize.
The technological innovations, that were modeled after ST gadgets, is just a ‘side-effect’, not the primary intent of the series.
Did he miss the ethnic composition of the bridge crew, to expressly highlight how _everyone_, regardless of ethnicity, has value, and can be utilized productively?
It’s okay to recognize SFology as a valid myth to include as part of our heritage, but it ain’t the only one we need to keep.
It takes an impressive level of willful blindness to miss the emphasis on diversity and equality in the original Star Trek, or any of the STs for that matter. While some of the episodes were just monster-of-the-week or focused on futuristic gadgetry, the best episodes always got into more social matters. Gerrold gave some examples from ToS, but I’ll add a few from TNG. “Measure of a Man”, which focused on what it means to be sentient and to have rights. “Drumhead”, which focused on the dangers of sacrificing freedom and liberty out of fear and paranoia. “Darmok”, which focused on the importance and difficulties of trying to find peaceful common ground between radically different cultures (and discovering that they’re not so radically different after all). The list goes on. Lehman couldn’t miss the point harder if he tried.
I loved the Star Trek series’, and one of my disappointments as an adult (along with finding out shortly after high school that the world is run by people who never socially matured post high school) is that as we make ever more impressive technological advancements, we seem to be socially stunted. As you said, in the Star Trek universe, Earth is basically a utopia … no war, no famine, no MONEY. The sole responsibility as a human born into the world is to learn. Self-improvement. They had to explore space to run into the drama and strife that befits a network TV show, because Earth was comparatively boring. Dunno why people seem to forget that. I always had that in the back of my mind as I watched ….
Wut? The best part of sci-fi is imagining the societal implications of new technologies. The technologies themselves are only a backdrop.
* The Federation is a post-scarcity economy – very different from our current culture, even though we have also have communicators and automatic doors (and we’re closing in on tricorders!).
*City on the Edge of Forever, the indisputable best damn episode of all time, managed to win that acclaim with a plot about love, ethics, and the meaning of a person’s life, using only the technologies of stone knives and bear skins. ;)
*”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” – Spock, Glittery Hoo-Ha SJW
(I guess Next Gen doesn’t exist for this guy, either. I’m sure Q would love being called a glittery hoo-ha.)
Gee…a black women and a white man kissing, on TV, in the 60s was NOT an act of social justice? Either someone is seriously young and never watched the original Star Trek in the 60s in order to understand the magnitude of the scene (at least in the U.S.) or is someone who never really learned about Star Trek.
Probably distracted by the bells-and-whistles….
Leads me to believe he is a teabagger and/or staunch opponent of the common core. Wasn’t it in Texas, or Oklahoma, that banned AP history because the AP course dare to present a full frontal, no-holds-bar evaluation of America – its moral triumphs and its moral failures?
News note to William Lehman : The Founding Fathers were not gods. Much like the atheism movement today, the Founding Fathers had great ideas, but at times; they also failed to implement or follow those great ideas if it went against their personal motivations.
Wow, some of the TOS episodes were so blantantly trying to make a point that it should, statistically, have been impossible to miss. The epsiode with the white/black and black/white striped guys trying to kill each other because they were the wrong colour (while noone on the Enterprise could tell?). Definitely all about the transporter they used to get those two on board. Nothing in there about prejudice or racism.
First off, aww, not a science? I’m hurt now. Second, Lehman ignores the i-word, interdisciplinary, which is everywhere. I studied engineering and had, among many other things, to learn about human factors and psychology. Because someone thought an engineer should have some idea how the human body and brain fit into whatever is being engineered. Soft sciences my arse, I’ll stick to what’s useful and what isn’t. Although the ‘useless’ parts I might enjoy just for the heck of it.
I can provide glitter. In many colours.
One of the major things that differentiates Science Fiction from Fantasy is that SF is usually about social issues, while Fantasy tends toward the “noble hero fighting evil” tropes. Generally speaking, of course.
But that’s why some people call Star Wars “Fantasy in Space” rather than Science Fiction.
Communicators – just don’t try to use one to say anything important!
I think he’s missing the fact that the internet technological revolution is driving social justice by allowing more people to talk to more other people faster, cheaper and more often. Thanks, sci-fi geeks.
@komarov
Ergonomics, anyone?
It’s not just Star Trek, it’s the science fiction genre in general. There is a significant chunk of “fans” who think SF is all about space battles and technobabble and violently balk at any exploration of themes deeper than “pew pew pew,” especially when those themes challenge their pre-existing political/religious views.
Do you have any that is hypo-allergenic?
I was not told about the glittery hoo-has!
It was my understanding that we were here to help reduce suffering among our fellow persons. But if there are glittery hoo-has that is also awesome.
Humor aside, it’s nice that this William Lehman has chosen to admit that they utterly ignored the social concepts in the series in favor for the technological ones. I’m not particularly fond of the “my car is awesome and that’s all that matters!” crowd. As a result in creating his future he has utterly neglected the social, which is a pity since the fact that he enjoyed the original series suggests that they may be friendly to some of the themes. Maybe it’s the social connections developed over the years that make them so hostile to the social themes. The funny things about social emotions is that the can lead people to all sorts of ways of thinking and acting with absolutely no connection to reality.
And all hail Tpyos! Hopefully offering that missing “e” in my ‘nym will spare my writing at work today.
Reminded of a bit from Mass Effect where the scientist concludes a species is a slave race based on their anatomy and utter lack of culture (IIRC he even sites the utter lack of ergonomics as evidence)
“”No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”
“Disrupts socio-technological balance. All scientific advancement due to intelligence overcoming, compensating, for limitations. Can’t carry a load, so invent wheel. Can’t catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates. Works other way too. Advancement before culture is ready. Disastrous”
Technology is to facilitate culture. Removing culture and you make a society a tool without a task.
Isn’t it telling that for a white man Star Trek was about ” a future withcool things to have” while for others it was about “a future in which we are treated like people”?
Spot-on. Perfect example of privilege. More concerned about when he gets better toys than when everyone else gets treated the same way he does.
Well, he certainly is, but I don’t remember that particular line from Shakespeare. Come to think of it, wasn’t that entire speech a bit of SJW-ing on Shakespeare’s part?
I went to urbandictionary.com, and it looks like, depending on who you ask, a “hoo-hah” is either female genitalia (the top definition said “vagina (pussy)”, which suggests that they were skiving off during their female anatomy lesson), or else genitalia of either sex.
In any case, I don’t have any experience with glittery hoo-has, but it sounds like something that would look a lot cooler than it would be to have (or to have intercourse with) and would actually be pretty uncomfortable and maybe downright unhealthy. Might make some interesting if improbable porn, though (rule 34.)
And, yeah, I’ve run across people who believed that Star Trek was all about the gadgets. In fact, I had the distinct impression that the guy that did the Star Trek remake movie a few years ago thought that way. There was certainly no trace of social justice sensibility in the movie.
Campbell may have been a great SF editor, but, according to several of the people who wrote for him, he was into a lot of pseudoscience, including Dianetics … later to become scientology.
Go fuck yourself with a barge pole, William Lehman. It’s all too often the best and brightest who survive a war, and they are the sort of people who go on to build a society willing to offer free healthcare and free education for all.
“My future is made of THINGS, not PEOPLE”
Sounds like a SF story right there. The Lonely Engineer, alone and unassailable in his anti-gravity ivory tower, losing his mind to the seductive powers of his Holodeck, while below him the planet burns for want of resources and energy he has diverted to build his techno-heaven.
Rich Woods @ 24
That is, until the Torries get a hold of it.
He’s also not paid much attention to Asimov’s Foundation series.
The thing he seems to think was “soft science”, psychohistory, was applied Mathematics. In my world [a Research University] Math and Stats [Stats, which is not Math!] are part of The Division of Physical Sciences.
As for George Washington and slavery: 50 years ago, when I was a boy in the Ante Bellum South (well, it was Ante Bellum in spirit), I learned that George Washington was a slave owner. And that he was philosophically opposed to slavery, but not enough to actually do much about it. I knew that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, and, unlike Washington, didn’t make any effort to free his slaves upon his death. So if there’s some destroying of myths about George Washington going on, it was already done long before I was born and, I assume, before Mr. Lehman was, either.
In fact, any myth that Mr. Washington wasn’t a slaveowner must have died even before Mr. Washington, given that it was common knowledge even back then.
But then, it sounds like Mr. Lehman’s idea of a Fact is “something I make up.”
Foundation was about completing the project of history and psychology, not dismissing them. Ultimately, those fields were the central advance in the human condition in those books.
And I really don’t think dude wants to bring Asimov into a conversation about valuing “hard” science over “soft” science. The guy loved learning and wrote about everything!
Ultimately, the name for dude’s attitude is “anti-intellectual.” That’s the one thing you can’t be and still call yourself a “nerd.” Real nerds don’t make excuses about why they don’t know about something. They suck it up and learn!
@25
And so it goes.
*
Can I point out too, that technology and science in Star Trek are always to be employed in the service of justice? We are told over and over again that Logic. Is. Not. Enough. It’s always the humanity that sets things right in the end, whether that comes from Kirk relying on both Spock and Bones, or Spock’s human side coming to the fore, or Seven realising that the Borg’s definition of perfection isn’t so perfect at all… I mean, has this guy never heard a Picard speech, FFS?
“Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” – Captain James T. Kirk, Glittery Hoo-Ha SJW
Another illustration of the catastrophes that can occur when you attempt to mix art and conservatives.
Also, this is rich. From same site: https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/of-star-trek-sociology-and-why-it-doesnt-work/
Short version in two quotes:
“we praise the technology of Star Trek because it works and gives us something to strive for”
” Roddenberry envisioned a future society in which everybody had the ability to fulfill all their goals. However, it only works on television and we generally don’t praise things that don’t work in reality. The unfortunate truth is that we cannot fulfill Rodenberry’s vision because people are people”
Teleporters and spaceships: Realistic goals to strive for.
Peaceful, diverse, cooperative human beings: Unrealistic, so stupid, what are you even talking about.
Also, what’s with the false exclusive binary Lehman sets up between engineering and social sciences? Can he really not imagine that someone could get degrees in, say, BOTH anthropology and engineering? (I’m not doing this, but a friend of mine is, so I know it’s totally possible.) Can he not imagine that maybe people directing their efforts toward understanding social systems and enacting social change aren’t doing so becasue they (we) can’t hack engineering but becasue they (we) think making a thinner smartphone is an actively harmful exercise on a planet that’s being crippled by hyperconsumption-driven pollution? Does he think the only way to get a grasp of the knowledge, techniques, and technologies necessary to invent or innovate is to go to engineering school? Does he not realize that engineers might read feminist social analysis or linguistic studies or psychological theory or history books or anything else in the realm of the “soft” (i.e. human-oriented*) sciences in their free time? Does he think all engineers lack any social connections any any interest (and thus involvement) in social systems or politics? None of the quoted passage makes the slightest bit of sense to me.
*Why, exactly, have we collectively decided to deride the branches of scientific study that have to do with ourselves as somehow lesser than those that don’t deal with human beings directly? Shouldn’t anything dealing with human beings directly be regarded as MORE important by human beings?
@ 33 –
Because we don’t yet have convincing and workable large-scale theorems or paradigms in any of them, equal to say evolution or general relatively. In terms of development they may be at about the same stage as the hard sciences at the start of the 18th century. Maybe. But that doesn’t make them non-scientific, it just makes them at an earlier stage of development and deserving of more work and attention. Especially considering their importance.
I never thought engineering and mathematics was science, but that’s just because of some categories we decided. Traditionally, mathematics is considered an art, and engineering is just it’s own thing.
But I really have no desire to diminish any of it. Whether something is considered a science (or ‘soft science’) doesn’t really matter to its interest, depth, or even its practicality. I really have no idea why people choose to act so damn elitist about everything.
And those italics were supposed to just contain “art”, but oh well.
@22 Colloquial speech has so thoroughly conflated vagina and vulva that hoo ha can mean either or both, depending on context.
I think the “glittery” thing is a reference to vajazzling, which is another example of that unfortunate conflation. I guess vuljazzling doesn’t sound as “fun”?
Of all things to point out as cool space age technology, he points at this? When I first saw Star Trek in the late sixties, early seventies (My father was a huge fan of the show.), the doors did not inspire awe for me. I saw that as being the same as the weight activated opening doors that that one can see at any super market. Not that I did not think they were not cool, like any young child, I loved playing with such doors.
Those sliding doors were not mysterious “how did they do that” objects.
@38 To make his point, he has to choose the most mundane tech on the show.
The cool things, like transporters, warp drive, time travel etc. are so far beyond our capabilities that you wouldn’t study engineering to try and emulate them. In fact, they are probably more useful to explore philosophical issues (does the transporter kill you? does time travel allow causality violation?) than engineering ones.
Totally agree with PZ and David Gerrold’s point.
I guess it depends on how you define ‘science’, but I have seen many episodes of Nova where archaeologists want to rediscover how the ancient Egyptians raised their stone obelisks, or how ancient Romans lifted lions to the arena level of the Coliseum, or whether Leonardo’s design for a glider could really fly (it can!), and enlisting the absolutely necessary help of engineers to do these experiments, and IMHO, those engineers were in fact doing science.
Janine @#38
More to the point, the Klingons also had automatic doors, transporters, and phasers (well, disruptors). So if you want to live in a Star Trek world, having the gizmos certainly won’t ensure that. Social Justice is the prerequisite for Roddenberry’s vision, not 3D chess.
Thankyou, Rawnaeris, Knight of the Order of the Glittry Hoo Ha, I shall now shamelessly copy your idea and add it to all my ‘nyms as well.
FTW!
I was too distracted by his constant misuse of “where” for “were” to pay attention to his shitty argument.
I imagine that this kind of person reads “1984” and their only thought is: “Ooo, those telescreens sound cutting edge, how neat, how prophetic”. I’m sure he would also find a way to mock social sciences and feminists in the process as well, somehow.
He also missed a key point about Asimov. In both of his major series, the scientists attempt to take traditionally “humanist” disciplines (history/sociology in Foundation, and ethics in the Robots series) and recreate them as “hard” sciences.
And both attempts are utter and complete failures.
The historiography of the Foundation series fails at a critical juncture because extraordinary individuals (the Mule/Napoleon) are impossible to predict by examining sociological trends. And the Three Laws of Robotics, which seem to impose an inescapable moral web of obligation upon the robots, seem to fail in every single story, and eventually end up completely shredded due to a glaring loophole (“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”)
Asimov had plenty of problems. But when you get right down to it, he was still a humanist.
The sad thing about that entire article was that he wasn’t really seeking to reform science fiction. His real goal is to split it apart along political lines (just like everything else is being split apart these days).
Back in the old days, when you went to an sf convention, you could at least generally assume that everyone there tended to hold a few of the same values and vision for the future. But the political divide in this country is reaching farther and farther into every other institution. Now we have conservative and liberal atheism, and video games, and cell phone plans, and heck, fried chicken restaurants. So I suppose we’ll have to have conservative and liberal sf as well, and never the twain shall meet!
I wish I could imagine a way that this situation would improve, but for the life of me I can’t.
brucegee1962:
When anti-bigotry and pro-tolerance segments of a group start getting louder, the bigoted segments try to take the ball and go home. That’s the core of it all. There isn’t a fix to that. The only fix is hoping that bigots are seen clearly as bigots and fence sitters and the more reasonable among them back away slowly and decide to throw their clout in with the Radical and Controversial Egalitarians instead of the Traditional and Common Sensical Bigots.
I don’t understand all this discipline comparison rubbish. Everything is either mathematics or some flavour of applied mathematics.
I have to admit that I was an SF fan from an early age because of the gadgets. I can’t deny that I am and have always been a technophile. So, yeah, spaceships, talking computers, flip-top phones, whizzy things that make android duplicates of you, machines that teach you how to be a brain surgeon, photon torpedoes; all good stuff.
But, damn if I haven’t stayed with the genre for the social justice and the humanity shown by creators like Roddenberry and Gerrold. I haven’t seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, but I’ve seen a superman with just hours left to live tell his creator that he wants more life, fucker! I’ve seen god-like beings fight each other to exhaustion because one’s pigmentation was the mirror-image of the other’s. I’ve seen a man commit an unspeakable attrocity because he had to win at all costs, and then spend the rest of his long, long existence trying to make up for it. I’ve seen apes become men, and men become gods, and gods destroy themselves. I’ve seen terrible mistakes and awesome triumphs. I’ve seen people more machine than man lose their souls and then find them again. I’ve seen things Mr Lehman wouldn’t believe.
Heh. Love that Gerrold chimed in. Let there be McLuhan moment.
As to engineering, art, and science: I see engineering as a branch of art. Or several, even. And this is by no means meant disparagingly. In my somewhat simpleminded dichotomy: artists make things, scientists figure out how things work. That neither gets far without the assistance of the other is just one especially compelling and elementary argument in favour of pluralism, both in your reading list and in who you talk to. (And, likewise, a working engineer is likely to do some science in their workday, toward that goal of making things, and a working scientist may well build things to figure things out, but if I must classify, I’ll look at those end goals.)
NelC, that was awesome.
Agreed re NelC!
By the beard of Kahless, this man’s a fool. Without an exploration of the societies that utilise fictional advanced technologies or inhabit strange new worlds, Star Trek – indeed, the entire genre of science fiction – might just as well be a wish-list of Awesome Toys That Don’t Exist (Yet).
If all Lehman’s gleaning from Star Trek is a line of aspirational merchandise, he’s confused it for Star Wars. It wouldn’t surprise me if he thought Bladerunner was about flying cars and origami.
I’m currently working my way through STOS, prompted by the recent death of Leonard Nimoy (LLAP). I watched the original broadcasts when I was about 9, sneaking into my Dad’s study after bedtime. I am now struck by how many indelible images remain in my mind over 50 years later, but I am more struck by the deep humanism of many of the stories, that almost blew past me at the time. Lehman has surely missed 99% of the cultural significance of the series.
NelC, I agree with the others. Very well done.
When I was younger, I watched some Star Trek (but I wasn’t a big fan). An episode or two of TOS and more than a few Next Generation episodes. At that age though, I had no understanding of social justice or humanism. Nor were my critical thinking skills developed enough to see the social issues being addressed in those episodes. Having read the OP and the comments in this thread, I have a newfound respect for Gene Roddenberry and all the creators of the various Star Trek series over the years. While 10-year-old me didn’t appreciate what lay at the heart of Star Trek, 40-year-old me definitely does. I am seriously considering watching the entirety of TOS.
I have come to the conclusion that if I should ever start a rock band it will be The Glittery HooHas
Holy fucking shit that site.
Speaking of other Nerd Arenas divided by bigotry, their recent articles on gamergate on full of fail.
https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/a-gamers-view-of-gamergate/
“It’s totally not about gender you guys! It totally wasn’t about Zoe Quinn! But Zoe Quinn’s game was so awful you guys! And Anita Sarkeesian Grrrr! But it is totally about ethics in journalism! People are getting paid off! And sometimes paid off with sex! Like with Zoe Quinn! Except not, because that probably didn’t happen, but the point still stands for some reason!”
And they have another similar article from A Female Gamer! A Gamergater Who Is Female! Debate Settled!
https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/pardon-me-but-i-like-things-the-way-they-are/
In other words: “Some games acknowledge the existence of LBGT people and don’t treat women like sex objects, so go play those and STFU.”
@John Horstman #33
My niece is in her first year of engineering (currently declared biomedical, but planning to transfer to mechanical) and she was looking though options for required electives and told her mother that she wanted to take all the history courses and now wants to get a history degree too. She might change her mind before the time comes, but why does this guy think one can’t be interested in both. I have an MA in Medieval Studies, but the only thing that prevented me from considering something more “sciencey” out of high school (I had all prereqs and had taken physics, chemistry, and biology throughout), was an aversion to dissecting and experimenting on animals.
Perhaps it’s because once women started to study the humanities in greater numbers, those fields suddenly became denigrated and considered too facile and soft for competent, intelligent men to bother with.
@Anne Fenwick #34
I think someone had better dig up Herodotus and tell him he’d better get a move on.
@James 42, feel free :)
Are you going to keep the misspelling or fix it?
My office mate and I were laughing so much. It was her idea to use “Order of”
***
At this point in the conversation I feel that i should confess to never having watched more than a few episodes of Star Trek. It’s just never captured my imagination.
@60 Ibis 3 — yeah, hard to believe that we’ve a bit of a problem in maintaining the participation of women in STEM, if the fields are populated by douchebags like this guy who believe that they’ve got special Star Trek Vulcan Boy Brains while girls just have hoo ha cooties.
@ Rawnaeris, Knight of the Order of the Glittery Hoo Ha
HERETIC!
John Scalzi went over this too. I’m yet to read his books but based on his blog there is a HIGH likelihood I’ll like them
Hank_Says #54:
Yeah, but Lehman and people like him went out and they made those paper unicorns.
PatrickG, what words do you have for me? I am someone who love science fiction yet I hate both Star Wars and Star Trek.
Hrmm. For Star Trek I’ll stick with “Heretic”. For Star Wars, I’ll just sort of throw a word that sounds like “Meh” in your general direction.
PatrickG @67:
A word that sounds like ‘meh’, eh?
@Tony!: The law of word identity says that a word sounds like itself, thank you very much.
I learned so much from Star Wars: Beam Me Up Scotty, and …
“Feh” is a word that sounds like “meh”.
“Feh” is an exclamatory sound. “Meh” is a word.
What’s that behind you?!
PatrickG runs away before the dictionaries and grammar guides hit him
brucegee1962: “Back in the old days, when you went to an sf convention, you could at least generally assume that everyone there tended to hold a few of the same values and vision for the future.” Not really. There was a split along largely political lines in 1939, at the first Worldcon, with left-wingers interested in socialist and utopian speculation and also in honest sound publishing practices pitted against conservatives keen to defend Hugo Gernsback’s shady, grasping business practices. Right-wingers have been trying to push left-wingers out of SFWA as long as there’s been an SFWA; the other way around happens occasionally, but you have to rise to Vox Day’s level of impressively self-destructive hate-mongering for it to work.
It’s been more than thirty years since I first had libertarian sf enthusiasts explain, to my face, that it would be better for someone with my chronic health problems to die off and free up space for someone eugenically sound than for them to be taxed even one cent for a social safety net. This shit isn’t news; it’s always been there. You may be noticing it more, but those of us who are of color, or queer, or disabled, or otherwise not “eugenically sound” have seen it our whole lives in fandom.
So is “beh”, which is popular in Italy. Google translate says it means “well” (the throat-clearing sort of “well” you emit at the start of a sentence, rather than “in good health” or “hole in the ground with drinkable water at the bottom”, I assume from the contexts in which it occurs). Not as popular as “allora”, which means just about anything you want it to mean.
Likewise. I thought maybe this was a side-effect of being British.
Superb post, hiddenheart.
The roseate glow of yesteryear is ever a false light — the confabulated dawning of a day that’s never been.
You really wanna go there? Dude, some of us studied physics. I’ll not have a mere engineer give me this bullshit.
I’d reserve that accolade for the TNG episode “Inner Light”… I’m guessing this guy really couldn’t see the point of either.
The comment by Latveriandiplomat @ 37 was acute & deserves to be underlined.
‘Clarke’s Law’ was never anything more than a way to generate plot ideas.
NelC and hiddenheart, thank you for starting my day with beautiful writing.
Glittery hoo-ha? Couldn’t I just, well, buff it up a bit?
The doors did not go “whoosh.” They went “Sheila.” That is why they are Sheila Doors. Jeez.
ice
@77:
!! Me too!
I sometimes discuss such trivialities with a friend who prefers Darmok, which I totes don’t understand at all. The language “barrier” was inconceivable and went way over my head. But Inner Light was so much more a personal, internal, character, story.
but that’s just my treknerd talking,
Back to topic—————->
Darmok will always and forever stick in my mind because of someone I know who was born with a severe language disorder, who actually and for realz communicated for several long years in a way extremely reminiscent of this (something which I now, years later, have the luxury of considering fascinating).
But seriously, how can anyone look at ST:ToS or at STNG and think “this is about technological gizmos”? Puh-lease ::near-fatal rolleyes::. What programme were they watching?!?!?!?
Akira @14
Which is why I’m always confounded when SF gets classified as ‘light’ or ‘unserious’ reading (for example, locally, all the time). I think of authors like LeGuin and Tepper and many others, and I wonder how their topics and exploration thereof can be considered ‘light’ or ‘unserious’.
Dunc & twas brillig – sorry but the best Trek episode ever was “Far Beyond the Stars” with “Darmok” a close second. ;)
(OK just in my personal opinion. *waves tiny DS9 flag*)
There’s been this split as long as I’ve been alive. I first started reading the Old Guard, Clarke and Asimov and that sort of thing, and discovered the New Wave…in the 1960s. I quickly decided which I preferred.
The New Wave authors could actually write, unlike that Gernsbackian shit.
The guy who runs the site tagged me on twitter.
https://twitter.com/PatrickRichar33/status/580883898344701954
That makes no sense. He seems to have the idea that “freethought” means we don’t evaluate and criticize — we are supposed to just sit back and passively agree with any random fucking thought anyone has.
It’s a Thunderf00tian error. Stupid and gargantuan.
Well, as someone who was growing up while the original series was on the TV, but in a house without a TV, I can say that even I knew about the technology, but I never heard anything about the social justice aspects. I dunno if it was not getting through to people, or if it just took longer to communicate to me – fifty years, like.
(I don’t know which iteration had the communicators on the chest that were slapped to activate, but I picked that up instantly and actually did imitate it for quite a while.)
Somebody disagreed with me, help, I’m oppressed.
A serious problem is that those guys who are privileged on all the important axes of oppression simply have no fucking frame of reference.
I know some of you here get it, and I’m glad you do. But for the lot of them, they simply cannot understand what actual oppression looks like any more than I can understand what seeing in ultraviolet means or how bats navigate by sound.
But they hear that there’s a lot of oppression around so the first time their life is not perfect and somebody doesn’t kiss their ass they feel like this must be it.
They are like that princess in Pratchett’s Wee Free Men who got health, beauty and happiness from her fairy godmother and who sent a lawyer after her when she didn’t feel particularly happy one day. Unfortunately we can’t turn them all into toads.
You mean the one where the whole Trek universe is a black man brutally beaten by cops and silenced by his employer dreaming of a future where he and those like him are treated like people? Oh. Right.
For many years, probably since I first started reading SciFi, I’ve felt that the genre is an excellent base for addressing social justice issues. By putting things in some future or other planet, an author gets a head start on pulling the reader out of “what is” and into “what may be.” It’s less threatening to read about or see two aliens fighting over coloration than it is to address racism in current society. A writer can propose a whole new social structure and explore how it might work without starting with destroying the current society. Speculative fiction provides a layer of abstraction that makes these things more palatable.
I am surprised that Lehman cited Star Trek. If he wants gadgetry without social justice, he should be looking at “Doc” Smith and the other pulps. Smith’s Lensman and Skylark series are all about the technology. The heroes are almost always white hetero males (with the occasional good-guy alien thrown in.) The villains are evil aliens. The women all know their place (when one is promoted to the same level as the men, she down-plays it as “I’m more of a pink Lensman.”) The story lines are all about good vs evil and there aren’t any nuances. Kill or be killed is a constant theme.
It was an interesting experience rereading Smith after many years. Stuff that I wouldn’t have noticed (or only noticed in a very casual way) stood out like sore thumbs. The racism and sexism were so obvious that I’m embarrassed that I missed them the first time around. It’s amazing what a little bit of maturity can do for one. As an aside, the racism and sexism are common features of popular literature of the time. I just finished a compendium of Sax Rohmer (“Fu Manchu”) and there were places that were very hard to get through because of that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lehman would be perfectly comfortable with it.
As for Foundation, that whooshing sound was not a space ship flying by but the point missing Mr. Lehman by a couple of parsecs. The “hard science” in Foundation is pretty mundane as far as SciFi is concerned. I can’t recall anything that I haven’t read in many other books. But then, I’ve never been able to finish the series: Azimov’s writing just doesn’t cut it for me.
As others have noted, many of the authors in Lehman’s “Golden Age” addressed social and philosophical issues a great deal of the time. One of my favorite books is Clarks The City And The Stars. It’s got technology up the ying-yang (or hoo ha if you prefer) like immortality through recorded memories and lab-grown bodies. The real meat of the story is about questioning what a utopia is, along with what happens to someone who doesn’t fit in. It’s also an extreme example of cultural xeno- and agoraphobia.
There’s nothing wrong with literature and TV that don’t constantly address social justice issues. Sometimes a bit of escape is nice, but citing only that kind as some sort of cultural core is wrong. It’s putting your fingers in your ears and chanting “nah, nah, I can’t hear you” when something challenges your world view.
Ibis @ 90 – yes? That episode is one of the best written, best acted, most profound episodes of any Trek series for my money.
@85: “Far Beyond The Stars” certainly was a very, very good (double) episode. And I would definitely say that DS9 was my favourite franchise.
I’m gonna have to disagree about “Darmok” though. Interesting episode, nice conceit, but not a patch on (e.g.) “Measure of Man”, “Drumhead”, “Duet” (a criminally under-rated episode, IMHO), or many others.
It’s obviously the glitteryness which gives hoo-ha’s their magical abilities to manipulate teh menz. Fun fact: the close proximity of the bum to the GHH is also the reason why women fart sparkles.
@PatrickG;
Would it help if I said my favorite SciFi author is probably Anne McCaffrey? Both Pern and Acorna have special places in my heart….
I grew up reading Pern books. Therefore, I withdraw my accusation of heresy.
I’m sure you’re greatly relieved. :)
Gads, I hope you didn’t mean to lump Clarke into the Gernsbackian category.
@78: Reptile Dysfunction, thanks for your support, but I think you meant my post @39 which fits better with the rest of your comment.
As an aside, I would like to reassure both @37 and @39 that I love all my posts equally and do not have a favorite. :-)
Can I confess that the high point of the original series was, for me, correctly identifying which point of light would turn into the zooming Enterprise during the opening credits?
In space, no one can hear you swish.
I didn’t know we had a vajazzle club.
I was just reminded on Facebook that a monthly event (held by members of a feminist club on campus) is happening tonight. It’s literally called “Star Trek and Social Justice”. They literally talk about social justice themes in Star Trek.