The slate of Hugo Award nominees has been announced, and it contains a sorry collection of right-wing has-beens who put together a set of Vox-Day-approved candidates and then went cruising through #gamergate, gathering assholes who would vote for them simply to poke Social Justice Warriors in the eye, rather than on the basis of the quality of the writing. They called it the “Sad Puppy slate”. I’ll just point out that there was no comparable effort to assemble a bloc of ideologically liberal authors and then ask people to vote for them sight unseen — which I would have also said was ethically questionable and rather undermines the purpose of a writing award.
The best take yet on the problematic nature of ballot-stuffing comes from Patrick Nielsen-Hayden.
(1) To the best of my knowledge, the campaign to get a slate of specific people and works onto the Hugo ballot hasn’t done anything that violates the rules.
(2) As anyone over the age of ten knows, it’s generally possible to do things that are dubious, or scummy, or even downright evil, without violating any laws or rules.
(3) Merely running a campaign to get a slate of specific people and works onto the Hugo ballot doesn’t really rise to the level of “evil”, but it’s definitely “dubious” at the very least. Which is to say, it violates a lot of people’s sense of how one ought to behave, and if you do it you’ll incur widespread disapproval. Prepare to deal.
(4) However, running a campaign to get a slate of specific people and works onto the Hugo ballot and reaching out to #Gamergate for support in this…in effect, inviting a bunch of people who traffic in violent threats, intimidation, and “SWATting” to join our community…well, that rises all the way to “downright evil”.
For complicity with this, the Sad Puppy campaign deserves our comprehensive rejection.
He also documents the efforts to recruit gamergaters, who proudly promoted the slate as a tool to slap down SJWs. End result: wankers like John C. Wright have six nominations, and Vox Day has two. Normally I’d be able to use the list of nominees as a rough guide to good SF I should track down and read, but not this year — I don’t know who got on the ballot because they are excellent writers, and who’s on there because they’re right-wing ideologues.
For those who don’t remember, Wright is the guy who had a weeping meltdown over the corruption of our youth by an anime that ended with two women holding hands. I guess he knew he couldn’t win on merit.
PZ:
Aye, me too, and it’s absurd that people won’t be able to do that, and authors won’t get recognition (or sales), either. It’s terribly pathetic that some people seem to have little life outside of “must slap down those glittery SJWs!”
Pathetic is a good word to describe this.
John C. Wright won the 2003 Campbell Award for The Golden Age, which is a good book (part 1 of a trilogy).
I’ll have to take your word for it, because I won’t ever be reading it.
I have no intention of giving Wright another cent because he’s an asshole but he wrote one book that I liked.
So is gamergate about ethics in stuffing ballot-boxes now?
What’s next, stuffing reviews of games? !?!?! OMG !?!?!?!
There are a few authors I agonize over (Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons) because, while they’re right wing nutjobs, they happen to be excellent writers (Although less so lately. I imagine fanaticism and bigotry erode the ability to create characters that aren’t one dimensional stereotypes.) Card was particularly tough because Speaker for the Dead is one of my favorite books, and it’s written with a level of empathy that I have a hard time believing came from a nutjob homophobic like Card. Thankfully I’ve never had to agonize similarly over Beale or Wright. They aren’t just assholes, they’re talentless hacks.
I enjoyed some of Wright’s stuff. Didn’t realize he was an asshole, though. Bummer for him.
@Quotidian – Card only wrote one book worth reading, and then he wrote it again and again and again,
If you haven’t tried Iain Banks, yet…
http://deirdre.net/the-puppy-free-hugo-award-voters-guide/
Your puppy-free voting and reader’s guide.
Al Dente @ # 3: … The Golden Age, which is a good book (part 1 of a trilogy).
I also liked it. What about the other two?
As a reminder, here’s a discussion from last year of some of Vox Day’s writing.
@Marcus Ranum – I have a disgusting love affair with the Culture novels. Banks will be sorely missed.
I guess my real question is if it’s possible – or even desirable – to separate the writer from the writing. I think I’ll have to go on a case by case basis. Take Simmons for example. Hyperion is one of my favorite books, and has sympathetic treatments of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and atheist characters. Flashback was a steaming pile of Glen Beck fueled garbage, rivaling Sam Harris in its levels of islamophobia. (And also for some reason relies on the 80’s trope that Japan will take over the world. It’s like xenophobic Russian nesting dolls.)
Hell, it even applies to authors who have the same politics I do. I loved Blindsight and Echopraxia, but I stay far, far away from Peter Watts’ blog because he’s something of a doomsaying lunatic. (Of course I think my greatest fear is that he’s right and we’re all going to die horribly.)
I guess my real question is if it’s possible – or even desirable – to separate the writer from the writing.
I don’t have an answer for that one, I’m afraid.
It has always seemed to me that authors that write books I like, think like I like. Which always sets me back when I find someone who writes something I like, but then I discover they are repugnant people. Wright is an example (though I found the last book of his that I read to be bOring, consisting of a single endless fight scene..) As I was reading some of his books I caught myself thinking that the female characters were, basically, cardboard cut-outs… Hmmm… That’s a “tell” – of a bad book, never mind the author’s beliefs. I think they’re connected, in other words, but not absolutely. Banks’ and Pratchett’s writing (Ditto Haldeman, Scalzi and Stross) seems to be socially even-handed. When there is genocide or ill to be done it is clearly labelled as such (unlike in Card’s work, where it is whined about) I don’t think, for example, that Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 would be anywhere near as powerful as it is, were it not suffused with his horror at wars. There is a philosopher’s trick to seeing conflict and problems from many sides, which I look for in authors. It’s almost certainly because that’s something I value.
I guess my real question is if it’s possible – or even desirable – to separate the writer from the writing
The writer is not a silent medium who merely channels the writing from the Elemental Plane of Literature, a mere conduit who imparts no stain of humanity on the words emerging therefrom.
I mean, I do get it. Ursula LeGuin famously said that one should never meet the author of a cherished book. And the discussion about Enjoying Problematic Things is complicated by issues like “how much are the author’s views reflected in the work?” and “by buying this book, am I giving money to a bigot?” But it is complicated, and much more so than simply deciding that if I like a book, that’s all that matters.
OK, I read this post and will head over to read the longer source material by Patrick N. H.
I’m not deeply worried about the Hugo vote being gamed because, to the best of my recollection, one has to buy a WorldCon membership, which costs around $40, in order to vote. There is an expectation or guideline or something that people should read all the submitted works in a category before voting. There’s no enforcement of this guideline afaik. (I bought a membership last year because it included the whole of the Wheel of Time series in ebook form, but I didn’t vote.)
This voting system skews quite a bit toward affluent people who have the money to travel to cons.
@neverjaunty – Wait, writers don’t have secret access to a magical conduit of creative energy? Shit! I thought once I got my MFA they’d give me an amulet that let me summon the dark god Literarius and cast my words for onto pages through the power of his dark blessing!
But I take your point. If I want to grow as a writer and a person, I have to interrogate fiction, and not just uncritically absorb it. Which I try to do, really. It’s just that some really good writing has come from real assholes, and I like to think it’s possible to judge a work on its own merits and not whether or not the author is a good person. (Mostly because 1) I’m actually a terrible person and 2) I really want people to read my work.)
Ignoring the assholes who were nominated, what did people think of Ancillary Sword? It was a quieter and more geographically limited book than Justice but I enjoyed it far more than I expected to.
what did people think of Ancillary Sword?
Loved it. I hope Leckie does lots and lots of good work for our entertainment!
Interesting, if long, take here by an Author who was nominated on the basis of a puppies slate and declined. His interrogation of the puppies stated worldview and his disagreements with it is exhaustive, personal and enlightening.
If you don’t want to use the Hugo noms as a source of good reading material, might I humbly suggest the annual LOCUS recommended reading lists? No ballot stacking there.
Fortunately Hugo ballots always have ‘no winner’ as a choice so even if the ballot is stacked they can still lose.
Leckie is good though I confess I’m really looking forward to the promised new Bujold book.
If you’re looking for reading suggestions, you could also try the Tiptree Awards, which are up front about their bias, and stacking the ballot isn’t really a meaningful concept. It’s a juried award, with new jurors every year, and each year’s process is whatever those five jurors feel like using.
Disclaimers: one of this year’s winners is a close friend of mine, and I was on the Tiptree jury a dozen years ago.
Just another step in the dominionist 7 pillars strategy, taking over the literary arts.
Go look at http dub dub dub dot 7culturalmountains dot org
Having been acquainted with a fair number of Sf/F writers over the years (and, for that matter, being married to a minor author in the field for nearly 44 years), a *good* author can separate his own ideologies from his writing. A poor author…not so much.
I picked up Wright’s “Golden Age” at a used bookstore about ten years back. It’s still got some really nifty ideas.
parts 2 and 3 in the trilogy are… questionable.
Perhaps coincidentally, it was shortly after the publication of book 1 that Wright announced that he was embracing Catholicism.
(But then, it would be wrong to attribute his decline in quality to Catholicism; Gene Wolfe, for instance, is also Catholic.)
@ravenred (20) thanks for that link it was a terrific read, once I got past the pre-amble.
As a D&D player I liked this discussion:
Someone call up Harlan Ellison for epic ranting (normally i like it when SJW get poked in the eye, not literary, duh, but when you have stupidity of being incense by a relationship that was never explicitly shown but not incense by say torture and suicide and murder, just where is your so called moral compass pointing?)
I have no idea what ranzoid is ranting about, but I can tell he’s kind of a dumbass.
I am completely unable to parse what ranzoid was attempting to communicate.
Ranzoid, who exactly are you talking about when you mention the moral compass? You say that you like it when people who are against bigotry and discrimination get ‘poked in the eye’, but then are whining that a bigot was bigoted? Whence then is your moral compass?
Ranzoid was attempting to communicate the fact that Ranzoid is incapable of communicating. Ranzoid was paradoxically successful in this endeavor.
I think Ranzoid is saying that:
• Harlan Ellison is better at delivering an epic rant than Wright
• Xe likes it when SJWs are figuratively poked in the eye, but not in this case bc…
• Wright’s tirade shows how fucked up his moral compass is
Now I don’t know about the first point, and Ranzoid is correct about the third point, but the second one? It makes me question hir moral compass.
Okay allow me to elaborate: I view Social Justice Warriors as hyper reactionary. It has been my exposure and experience that a SJW will explode into a tizzy fit over the most trivial issue, thinking that it’s a grave and glaring miscarriage of social justice; they have a tendency to over analyze everything well beyond the point of absurdity and can not take even the most constructive criticism well. When you become rigged in your beliefs you open yourself up to to being fragile, one good hard smack and everything you believe in will shatter like a brick through a window.
In context of this Sad Puppy Slate situation I didn’t know anything about Vox-Day or John C. Wright despite being an avid SciFi reader. So after quickly looking these “gentlemen” up i came to the conclusion that these are people who i would not enjoy having a conversation with and agree with PZ’s stance that Wright is acting like a little wanker.
Wright criticizes Legend of Korra for having an implied homosexual relationship in a children’s TV show (this relationship is later confirmed, much to the glee of fans). Yet he dose not criticize the repeated acts of violence on LoK, which includes the murder of one character through Air Bending. Wright brilliantly show cases the great American Double Standard: Sex is bad, violence is good.
(And Vox-Day just comes off as a complete fucktard, I like John Scalzi)
Minor point: The Legend of Korra is not actually anime.
@Ranzoid
Is this your “exposure and experience” or your definition of SJW?
You know what? Wright did not win a Campbell award, in 2003 or any other year. I don’t know where that comes from. I’ve seen it twice. If you look at the list of winners at either the Gunn Ctr for the Study of Sci Fi or at Wikipedia, his name is not among the winners.
Ranzoid @ 33
“Reactionary” does not mean “tends to react strongly”.
Ranzoid @33:
Perhaps you should elaborate on your elaboration and give specific examples rather than speak from generalities.
That conclusion you’ve reached–that SJWs are hyper-reactionary and get outraged over trivial issues? It’s based on your perception of their experiences. That trivializes the lives of others. It treats your opinion of their experiences as superior to their own. What makes you the arbiter of what is bad and what is minor for other people?
Btw, in the future, rather than saying “You’re overreacting. Calm down, _______ is really not a big deal.”
You ought to say: “I see that you’re angry, but I don’t understand why. If you’re willing to, could you please explain why you’re mad”
DanDare @27
Yeah. I think he actually made too much of a presumption of good faith in his opponent’s arguments, but it was systematic and even handed. His point about the stupidity of using Star Trek as a good example of old-timey non-SJW Sci Fi was also apt.
Every goddamn art form contains the assumptions and worldview of its creator. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, but the idea that this can somehow be pared back to a “pure” artistic form is unbelievably reductive.
Fortunately, The Goblin Emperor was amazing, so at least that’s the novel category taken care of.
Ranzoid @34:
Cut.
That.
Shit.
Out.
You’ve commented here long enough to know that ableism is not tolerated around here. Find another epithet to use that doesn’t compare someone you don’t like with people who have mental disabilities.
So, tjey are Basically the kid who, since. They cant win fair decide to flip the board over. This time together with their pathetic friends
Also, Scalzi and Day. One writes snarky blog posts and the other one denies the humanity of most of humankind. They are basically the same, right?
( rant ) I like Clark Ashton Smith, Keith Laumer, I have a two volume set called A Treasury of Great Science Fiction and I like the stories in there. I also like H. G. Wells. I have a wonderful book called Astounding Science Fiction Anthology edited by John W. Campbell and I like the stories in there. I don’t know if any of the authors represented are bigots or SJW’s and I’m not going to research to find out. I like reading the stories. I also like the works of Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler. Maybe I shouldn’t listen to Wagner ’cause he was liked by the nazis, maybe I shouldn’t listen to Mahler ’cause he was a Jew. I went to a wedding in a fundamentalist church and one o the musical numbers was by Chaikovsky. I choose to read or listen to what I like based on whether or not I like it not on the author’s social life. ( /rant ). I like H. Rider Haggard too.
VRevrum
So being like the Nazis is like being jewish?
And your likes and dislikes are things that fall from heaven, right?
At least you could acknowledge that in the case of contemporary stuff you are making a decision to throw money at people
It’s a pity they nominated Skin Game, it’s a good book. The Dresden files series keeps getting better. That being said, I’d probably vote for Ancillary Sword. Even if it’s half as good as Ancillary Justice.
I’ve read Ken Burnside (SP and RP nominee in the related works category) via gaming and his great contributions to the website Atomic Rocket for some time. Great technical writer that’s trying to get a gaming company off the ground for about a decade so that he can quit his day job. Hugo winner? Maybe in a year with a shallow bench. However, what pains me is seeing him try to have it both ways. From what I’ve read, he’s denounced the ‘gaters, but his editor is Vox Day.
I feel sorry for the guy who’s dream of getting a Hugo nomination has turned into collateral damage in a Kulturkampf issue.
@ Giliell #46
Contemporary stuff: yes I acknowledge that, in that authors get paid in relation to how many books they sell. My local library always seems to have current books there that you can look at. Though I don’t. I read the link in the OP and found that I didn’t recognize any of the names (well, I recognized Campbell but that was an award not an author).
Being like…: no, the point is that there are some who despise Wagner for his supposed anti-Semitism and there are others that would decry listening to Mahler (and Mendelssohn, et. al.) because he was a Jew. He had problems getting appointments for that reason. Or, perhaps you misread ‘being liked by….’
I don’t understand about falling from heaven. I read two or three pages in front, two or three in the middle, two or three about ¾ through to see if I like the style, story, etc. If it doesn’t pique my interest, I lay it aside. Otherwise I’ll give it a try. On short stories, I’ll start it but if it hasn’t gotten my interest in the first two or three pages, I’ll put it aside though perhaps not permanently. I’m now reading The Edwardians by Sackville-West and like it very much. I recently finished Conversation at Midnight which had a few lines in it that reminded me of the Lounge. I liked I Promessi Sposi too, but I don’t see how the reasons I liked these books would’ve fallen from heaven. But then I’m not even sure I could really articulate why I like some stories and not others. Perhaps that’s what you mean by falling from heaven?
Yeah, thanks @ravenred #20, been reading http://www.blackgate.com/2015/04/04/a-detailed-explanation/ and it’s really interesting despite the length.
VReverum
Shunning sbdy cause they are jewish and shunning sbdy because they are a nazi are in no way similar and there is no neutral moral superiority here.
As for tastes falling from heaven, try Bourdieu some day
@ Giliell #51
I’m not talking about shunning anybody. I listen to both Wagner and Mahler. I’m not trying to establish any moral superiority or moral anything for that matter. I’m showing that there are people that think I should not listen to this composer or that composer because of something other than the quality of their music. I chose two very popular composers that are on opposite sides of the same issue. The only thing I said about Nazis was that they liked Wagner. For this reason Barenboim received a lot a criticism for performing Wagner’s works. There are also people who think I should not listen to Parsifal because the story line is repugnant to Christians. IMHO it’s the best thing he wrote. I even think it’s the first minimalist opera.
I will research Bourdieu. It looks interesting. I tend to be a hard determinist. I have scanned the Wikipedia article and have noted that while my musical interests point to elitism (Wagner would be offended to think that enjoyment of his music would be an elitist trait.) my diet definitely points to “… the lower end of the social hierarchy…” though, as with anything else, a cursory examination can be misleading. But I will look into it.
Wow, I didn’t realize just HOW out of touch I had gotten with the SF world (I used to read it a lot). I recognize maybe 2-3 writers’ names. Given the tone of the post and comments I’m not inclined to explore this particular crop, either.
Stephen Timberlake @37
I understand where I got confused. The list I was looking at (KU Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction Campbell Award) lists the books that were nominated for the award. Wright’s The Golden Age was nominated but didn’t make it into the top three finalists. I apologize for the mistake.
Korra isn’t anime, and the characters are word of god bisexual. Careful about that erasure on the “holding hands” thing.
Jews and Nazis, just “opposite sides of the same issue”. Gotta hear both sides!
@Ranzoid #33:
As has already been suggested, “hyper reactionary” isn’t the phrase you were likely looking for. “Reacting hyperbolically”, perhaps? Which would be ironic, given that your following sentence is so hyperbolic itself. And your final sentence could easily apply to your own level of belief, as stated in your second sentence. Well done.
‘Reactionary’ has a specific meaning. In this case, it is Ranzoid and his misogynistic buddies who are the reactionaries. Also Ranzoid, kudos for unironically using SJW in a negative way, it clears up that you are indeed a fucking idiot, as if we didn’t know that already.
Like that incident a few years ago, when a feminist politely asked not to be hit on in an elevator late at night, saying the words “Guys, don’t do that” in an explosive tizzy fit, which led to a lot of guys calmly providing constructive criticism in the form of rape and death threats?
Yeah. You’re an idiot.
On the subject of separating artists from their work, George Hrab gave a pretty thoughtful answer to that in a recent episode. He seems to be of the opinion that art can, or at least should be able to, stand on its own. The aforementioned Wagner and Card come up in his response, too. It’s at the 29:15 mark of the episode.
http://geologicpodcast.com/the-geologic-podcast-episode-396
Didn’t Vox pull a similar stunt last year? It’s especially hilarious that Ranzoid thinks that voting for favored books is an opportunity to get in some digs at the evil SJW’s. It’s just so bizarre to have a whiny troll defending a hyperbolic, no talent hack like Vox who flies into a tizzy whenever he is reminded that he is an unsuccessful author/ flaming sword/ flying eagle/ really bad writer. On a unrelated note, I watched Starship Troopers last night and nearly fell off the couch when the hardass teacher started spouting EL’s “governance is violence” dogma word for word. Want to know more?
And, empirically, adorable.
That’s nice, dear.
Charles Stross spotted something interesting.
Opps! blockquote fail!
“Supposed anti-Semitism”!? Just read any halfway decent biography of Wagner his anti-Semitism was not “supposed” it was vicious, blatant and disgusting. Wagner was also on top of that element of vileness thoroughly repellant as a human being. People put up with his horrible behavior because he was a musical genius. Since Wagner’s death there has been a cottage industry n trying to explain away Wagner’s anti-Semitism and downright horribleness as a human being.
In fact Wagner is the perfect example of the fact that geniuses can be thoroughly repellant human beings.
Castalia House was (per wikipedia) founded by Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) in early 2014 in Kouvola, Finland.
Sounds legit.
@ MHiggo #60
.
Thanks for the link.
Al Dente, no apology required. I have an annoying tendency of wanting to set the record straight, even when it’s not really very important.
RE: SJW and being reactionary -I guess I was way over the line about objecting to a male student in my physics class asking me if I was “on the rag” when told him I was being made uncomfortable by his (and other student’s) remarks.
Tethys @61
He tried to get a Hugo for his novelette “Opera Vita Aeterna”. It placed sixth in the voting, behind No Award. The work was posted on the internet. It was horrible.
I should of been smart enough to say that.
Okay, very much indeed, my personal face to face with SJW is limited and it could be that i was just exposed to a bad sample size, i also do not have the same set of experiences that these people have faced. But i do on a regular basis interact with a group of people who faced social and even criminal injustice. For instance, my roommate was raped. I have a few co works who are black who where discriminated against. These people didn’t become activist, they just moved on. When i showed my roommate the stories about how college campuses where down playing the problem of sexual assault and the term rape culture being used, the first thing she said was “why didn’t these women just go straight to the police? The school really can’t do anything.”
So what makes me the arbiter of what is bad and what is minor? Glaring contradictions in a SJW standards that other people can see. What contradictions? Well Miss Sarkeesian’s Miss Man video, i think that video undermines her whole point as she attack some of the most well known female video game protagonist, (we just have to wait and see with her new series on a positive female characters.) When Sarkeesian appeared on the Colbert Report she literally had a Sarah Palin moment when she could not name three games that where blatantly misogynistic.
Now I agree with Myer that this Sad Puppy Slate is wholly stupid. I never said that i support it. Day should drown in a pool of his own loathing and maybe become a better writer instead of giving the finger to John Scalzi. The Hugo’s should be nothing but awarding the best SciFi material.
A good analysis and a proposed response here
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2015/04/the-day-fandom-ended.html
So your issue isn’t really with “SJWs” being loud or obnoxious or mean to you; your issue is that you think people who “faced social and even criminal injustice” should just shut the fuck and keep their heads down. Or, in the case of your roommate, blame the victims rather than the perpetrators.
You also seem to be following ‘Miss Sarkeesian’ rather closely for someone with decidedly few interactions with “SJWs”.
What neverjaunty said. Fuck of ranzoid, you disgusting piece of shit.
Ranzoid #72:
So why didn’t you just say that? You know—stayed on topic.
Ms Sarkeesian, rape culture, ‘SJW explosions into tizzy fits over the most trivial issues,’ and all the rest of your personal whines, are not the topic here. If you disagree with the positions of ‘SJW’s on other topics, you could just wait until those topics come up, and address them when doing so is on-topic. But no, you took a thread on a particular topic and tried to turn it into a thread whose focus was on you and your opinions about other topics. Egotistical, much?
Also, please be aware that the proper tag for quotes is <blockquote> not <q>.
Versus the glaring contradictions is those whom are criticized in MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, where those who kept saying “I agree with you, but now is not the time”, were excoriated.
Either you are for discrimination, or you are against it. If you are for it, SJW is a pejorative. Which makes you THE PROBLEM. And you are the problem, but you aren’t intelligent or mature enough to admit it. Only if you are solving the problem, which you aren’t, are you part of the solution.
I tried to, but i had use other examples from other issues to get my point across, Yes i realized that i made a piss poor first post that was badly written and try to correct it to make it more clear. But the group think here is absolute. One dose not question, for the lack of a better world, narrative. Look what happen to Liana Kerzner, a feminist blogger who nearly quit her work from videogame blogging from all the harassment she got from questioning Anita. I would like to use an example from Science Fiction Literature but i couldn’t find any, if anyone does know of any please share them.
Ooh, group think! Nice one! You’re really clever to think of that one all by yourself. I mean it can’t just be that you’re xompletely wrong, it’s all about the groupthink!
And fucking rape victims, amirite! You sure know exacly how they should be behaving themselves.
Seriouly man, fuck you. You don’t know jack shit.
Ranzoid #78:
If you don’t have an example of whatever the fuck it is you’re whining about which is pertinent to a discussion of SFF, then, quite simply, your whining is not pertinent, is it? If you have whines to make which are not pertinent to the topic at hand, please take them to either a thread where they are, or to the Thunderdome.
It’s really not “groupthink” when a number if people reach the same conclusion based on the same evidence.
And you don’t have a valid point.
Like this excuses #gamergate harassment, or was a vehement/violent as AS or RW Receive continuously? You have some serious issues.
Oh, it’s “Anita” now?
Regarding Ms. Kerzner, she blogged about getting harassed by the Social Injustice Warrior crowd – you know, the same people ‘questioning’ Sarkesian and other feminist bloggers, and supporting doxxing and harassment?
Go on, let’s see your next round of JAQing off. You’re not doing a very good job so far of pretending to be a naif.
Oh i am against it. It’s the methodology that is being use. Do you try to lay out the issues and the weakness of any given argument with impeachable evidence? Do you make sweeping claims with no info to back you up (which i end up doing sometimes and should really stop) or do you just hammer your point across with ad hominid attacks?
Sorry, you are for discrimination. They methodology against it doesn’t matter. only the results.
Look in the mirror, and ask “what are you DOING to end discrimination. I see nothing. Try showing us what YOU are doing, other than complaining about TONE.
What, because the police are going to do something? Tell that to the thousands upon thousands of rape kits sitting on shelves.
TELL THAT TO THE FUCKING OFFICER who said he wasn’t going to do anything after my stalker tried to break in, because I took 3 hours to get enough courage up to leave the closet I was hiding in and get to a phone. No, instead he told me “How do I know you didn’t just have an argument with your boyfriend?”
Tell that to the rape victims who are asked “What were you wearing? What were you doing there? Were you drinking? Were you leading him on? Are you sure you don’t simply regret having sex?”
You want to know why SJWs seem ‘hyper reactionary’ to you? Because of you, you bloody asshat. Your dismissive as fuck tone is going to make people annoyed as fuck.
So, feel free to go forth and kindly fuck off sideways, into the sea.
ad hominid attacks
This is the best thing Ranzoid has said so far.
Ranzoid, #72
Fuck you.
I particularly like the “well, I don’t have any evidence that my opinion is right here, does anyone else have any evidence they could give me?”
And here I thought “there is evidence, Google it” was the rock bottom.
Ranzoid
Have you considered not commenting while you’re drunk?
Oh, and Ranzoid, you must provide not only provide an alternative to our present protest, but, must with third party evidence, show it works better than what we are doing, and words faster.
I’m not holding my breathe. There isn’t a method….
Ranzoid has made this thread all about hirself.
I’ve never understood the concept where not complaining about discrimination ends discrimination. It only ends talk of discrimination, which must take place until discrimination ends. There must be a screw loose somewhere to think that burying ones head in the sand is a viable option to end discrimination….
When Sarkeesian appeared on the Colbert Report she literally had a Sarah Palin moment when she could not name three games that where blatantly misogynistic.
No, she didn’t. The fact that you think she did tells me a lot about your inability to understand spoken communication. She declined to name three games on the grounds that it would be singling out a handful as the problem when the problem is pervasive and extends across the gamut of games that are on the market.
There is one funny thing about this: the presenters for the Hugos this year have already been announced. They are David Gerrold and Tananarive Due. If the Sad Puppies manage to pull ahead of No Award anywhere on the final ballot, the ensuing pictures could be very entertaining.
I once tried to get the campus police to help me locate a missing woman. The campus cop sneered and said that obviously she was off shacked up with a college boy – I couldn’t think of a good way to tell him that *I* was the college boy that she was shacking up with, so I just repeated that the best explanation for the circumstances was that she was being held against her will. He scoffed some more, and refused to let me into the building where she had been supposed to be. I was trying to convince him to escort me within the building, to the room where she had been scheduled to be, when she came out through the dark hallway. As it turned out, the meeting had gone long, the building had been closed up despite the people being in it, and the campus officials in charge of the meeting had indeed been holding the people who wanted to leave until they gave in and agreed to college plans.
So there was abuse of power by college higher-ups, incompetence by building staff, contempt and rudeness and laziness by the cop, and no concern at all about a woman’s safety or needs. And I got to hear the cop say, “See, I told you she was fine.” When actually she wasn’t off shacking up, and she was indeed in the closed building, and had really been held against her will.
So, no, I don’t assume that women’s safety is a campus concern, nor do I think going to the city police would be any better. And I am more activist now.
wow fuck you
@aaronpound: I doubt he actually watched the segment; he’s probably just parroting whatever he read on some GG site.
@Ranzoid
There is a pattern at work here that you are unaware of. It’s part of the same pattern that has spawned this attempt to game the Hugo award vote.It’s one of those things they tell us has to do with privilege and it is one that it took me a while to see. But once I saw it I could not unsee it, and honestly that has been for the better. I can’t stand dishonest BS and our culture has a ton of it.
The reason that you are getting harsh treatment is because there is an instinct driven emotional war that white people, particularly white males like me, have been fighting for a long time. A result of that war is a stranglehold on the language and communication that people need to talk about what is causing their suffering. There are a hundreds of little ways that we have set this up, and hundreds of little excuses for ignoring or resisting changes to those ways.
One example of it is when an article is written that tries to draw attention to something a minority community is suffering, and you see the comments flooded with something that is predictable. People trying to drown out the signal with noise or another signal. An article on women issues gets flooded with people demanding that we pay attention to men’s issues, when the honest thing to do is talk about men’s issues in parallel. An article on the racism choking our system is flooded with people making a thousand excuses for why there is no problem, or somehow the problem is all the fault of the group in question, anything but having to look at the literal discrimination and prejudice that we allow.
You did that kind of thing here. I will explain how.
In your first comment at #28 you brought up a term that has probably been directed at everyone here, SJW. From our point of view that word pretty much means “social justice I don’t like”. Pick a social justice theme, any theme, you will discover that people are hurling SJW at it. You used “fighting words”. You immediately burned everyone here, and distracted from the article.
You second comment at #33 basically told the average commentator here that what they care about is a “trivial issue”, and that the way they go about doing politics (that is what we are doing, you too) is “hyper-reactionary” and absurd. You told them they can’t take criticism, and that they over-analyze things. Finally you told them that their beliefs are delicate things and that they are weak.
You showed that you already assumed that everyone here would be unreasonable and illogical, making people justifiably upset and continuing the distraction.
Your third comment at #34 is pretty much meaningless at this point because of how you just sent all the wrong signals for a polite and reasonable conversation.
In your fourth comment at #72 you dig the hole even deeper. You said,
Emphasis mine.
You literally don’t want people to be activist. You literally wanted to share the story of a community pushing the problem of solving rape off to someone else. At this point you told everyone that you think their social justice is illegitimate, they are over-reacting and now that you don’t want people being activist and working on the problems at the social level in the immediate area of the problem.
I hope you are noticing a pattern.
In your fifth comment at #78 you started following some of the pattern you described earlier, you can’t take criticism and seem hyper-reactionary to the natural results of insulting people and insisting that what is bothering them is not important. You said,
I see people actually responding to you up there. There is real content, you are ignoring it. You have the need to accuse people who are describing similar experiences of “group think” without taking the time to explain how this is different from people with similar experiences acting similarly. Your assertion, your argument. A narrative is a shared story and it’s your job to show that this is a false story. I see it too now.
Finally in your latest comment at #84 you are edging closer to a pattern I have seen hundreds of times now. An effort to get people to stop displaying emotion that is an honest reflection of how they feel. Emotions which are perfectly natural parts of human communication and exist for a purpose.
SJW is a sweeping generalization. The three words social justice warrior. They are a neutral thing together. People struggling for what they see as social justice is something that literally everyone does. A warrior simply fights, a metaphor we see every election season and in a hundred other social related contexts. Those three words applied to something that is supposed to be an extreme person essentially renders all social justice extreme. The intended meaning is a lie because it is meant to let a person dismiss any social justice they don’t like, and at the group level every social justice becomes correlated with it.
Your final sentence there completes the picture. You claim someone is using an ad hominem and you don’t name names and point to examples. I do not believe you have any after the whole pattern you set up here.
You came in here and distracted from the topic by using a word that everyone here has had used on them.
You described things in a way that made it clear you will not accept what people here think.
You showed that you basically want people to avoid struggling for what they care about and ignore the social factors that cause the problem in the immediate community.
And when people here acted justifiably insulted you resorted to literally undefended assertions of group think and ad hominems. This is why the insults and mean tone exist.They are needed to get over bullshit like this.
I think we’re done here.
I read a blog the other day that made a very good argument that the biblical Jesus didn’t die to pay for anybody’s sins. He died a social justice warrior, standing up for the poor and helpless, knowing that he would get killed for it.
(The money-changers in the Temple were part of the religious exploitation of the poor. The idea that he died for our sins has been built up in the last 500 years or so.)
Oh, speaking of the Bible: I do giggle whenever I see someone who cannot read, write and spell well, arguing literature. And that is an ad hominid.
Huh, the former President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers doesn’t think that the Hugo are being rigged.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/04/20/no-the-hugo-nominations-were-not-rigged/
Ranzoid, did you even bother to see what the date was for that article?
April 20, 2014
Here is what John Scalzi had to say about this year’s list of nominees.
huh
Does anything Ranzoid say measure up to reality?
I completely disagree with Scalzi on this.
It’s clear that many of the nominees do not, in fact, deserve to be on the ballot and was only nominated, in their own words, to “humble SJW in sci-fi”. He’s entitled to his opinion, but he is wrong in this case.
My bad, to the nth degree.
While I still persist in my stance that the most visible Social Justice Warriors are being reactionary and absolutist I full conceded that my research and arguments are utter shat. I could blame a funky version of computer tunnel vision for not seeing dates but there is nothing to excuse bad research and lines of reason. It was intellectual laziness at it’s worse and very deserving of wearing that silly cone hat with the word ‘Dunce’ on it.
I hope to be a Contrarian on this issue, as well as most of Freethought, because no one should be in any kind of ideological (or sociological) bubble, however it’s grossly apparent that I was not ready to take such a stance.
Who exactly are these ‘most visible SJWs’?
Don’t you think ‘trying to be a contrarian’ is itself an ideological bubble? Maybe instead of ‘trying to be a contrarian’ you should try ‘trying to be right’.
You are being reactionary and absolutist. You want no progression in society toward no discrimination. You show NO plan to get their on your own. YOU show only YOUR problem with those trying to get there. That makes you by definition the reactionary. What an abject idjit you are to pretend you are doing anything other than holding back society.
Ranzoid, #107
You admit your arguments are shit but persist in the stance the arguments were supposed to support.
Neat.
Lets get on Ranzoid about their use of reactionary, whose definition is :
Ranzoid is the reactionary, not wanting social justice and equality. Those are progressive ideas. All Ranzoid wants is everybody to shut the fuck up about being discriminated against so Ranzoid can remain comfortable in their privilege, and not change anything. Of course, not using words such as reactionary properly is a sign of a weak mind, or a guilty conscious. Which is it Ranzoid?
Ranzoid
Well Ranzoid, this is very simple: give one example. Only one. Or shut up forever, you dishonest hack.
Ranzoid, you probably think of yourself as a rational human. Well, there is absolutely nothing rational about believing something as strong as “most visible Social Justice Warriors are being reactionary and absolutist” and not being able to give one example of it.
Also Ranzoid, besides multiple people pointing out to you that ‘reactionary‘ has a specific meaning which is absolutely not applicable to SJW, but is very much applicable to the other side, you still decide to use it in a wrong way?.
You are totally incapable of learning anything, and debate is impossible with someone as dishonest as yourself.
Possibly, if the sky is pink with two moons, one of which is home to flying unicorns, and the other of which doesn’t contain any cheese.
…I view Social Justice Warriors as hyper reactionary. It has been my exposure and experience that a SJW will explode into a tizzy fit over the most trivial issue…
In other words, Ranzoid has no idea what he’s talking about. Moving on…
I have yet to see an account of “SJWs” that would not be the same as yammerings about “communists” outside of the USSR thirty years ago.
As PNH notes, the Puppies played by the letter of the rules, even as they messed with the spirit. There’s a sort of double-pronged outrage both at authors like Day and Wright and the general spirit of one group organizing to force their own choices as the nominees*. So it depends on with rigged means: a small group of nominators got what they wanted without outright breaking rules, but violated the community norms.
(The analogy I’ve seen is from gaming, which are min-maxers: basically the sort of gamer who uses intricate knowledge of the rules to get massive power compared to the other players’ characters while still being legal outside of Rule 0**. While some folks might min-max as a thought exercise and not use such characters in play, usually the sentiment is that a min-maxer is undesirable as they make the game about who can do the most imaginary damage to imaginary monsters, and less social and cooperative. Because they operate in the rules, you can’t make rules against them beyond Rule 0, just make it clear that you won’t play in games where the goal is to min-max, rather than to play cooperatively.)
* Even at the expense of things they actually might like as well as us evil SJWs’ girl-cootie books. Day admitted that he would have put “The Three Body Problem” on his slate if he’d known about it in time. If Day hadn’t tried to organize a slate, it seems likely that would have been on the Best Novel Ballot given how much buzz it’s been getting in the general fandom, and he would have been introduced to a new excellent book that could have won a Hugo. Someone also noted they knocked off Volume 2 of a biography of Robert Heinlein from Related Works.
** Rule 0: The GM can override the rules as written if it advances ‘everyone having fun playing’.
Obviously compassion is an ideology that should be opposed lest we fall into a hivemind of morality and goodness throwing hizzy fits over trivial issues like crime and hate. Sure, rape and discrimination happen, but it’s nothing to get all activist about. Plenty of people don’t take issue with injustice so when you think about it, it’s so over analyzed, really! /sarcasm
I swear it’s like these people are trying to become parodies of themselves.
So, Ranzoid is back to whining about Anita Sarkeesian? They return to taht topic like a dog to their own vomit.
Boring, boring, boring.
+++
Ranzoid @ 107
What is this I don’t even…. You acknowledge that you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about but you’re going to believe your claims anyway because it’s VERY VERY IMPORTANT to disagree with people for the sake of disagreeing. I mean, I already knew you were an ignorant fool but, holy shit you’re an ignorant fool.
So what ever happened to the VoxDay nomination last year. It seemed like there was a lot of fuss that such a crappy thing could be nominated but much of the response seemed to be that being nominated is absolutely nothing; that the system had checks and balances that although crap could get nominated via nutjob agenda such nominated crap could not win without actual merit.
So, did the checks and balances hold? Did VoxDay fail to win?
Yep. Came in below “no winner”. I suspect there is some revenge going on for that embarrassment.
Happy, Happy Kittens
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