An example: a man in a restaurant, unprovoked, starts spewing racist slurs at a family.
Jordan Chan, the woman who posted the video, told KION the incident happened as her family was celebrating her aunt’s birthday on the Fourth of July and that man was insulting and harassing her family with racist language, saying, “F— you Asians,” “Go back to whatever f—— Asian country you’re from” and “You don’t belong here.”
The video starts with the woman asking the man sitting one table over to repeat what he had just said to them. The man stares at the camera for a few seconds, then extends his middle finger and says, “This is what I say.”
The man then says, “Trump’s gonna f— you,” as he stood up to leave, followed by “You f—— need to leave! You f—— Asian piece of s—!” A server then immediately yells at him “No, you do not talk to our guests like that. Get out of here,” the waitress could be heard saying in the video.
He gets thrown out of the restaurant. Cancelled! Sounds good to me.
The man turns out to be Michael Lofthouse, CEO of a Silicon Valley tech company (why am I not surprised?). There seem to have been repercussions.
Multiple publications Tuesday identified the man in the video as Michael Lofthouse, CEO of San Francisco cloud computing firm Solid8. A message to the company asking for a statement has not been returned.
A message sent to an Instagram account apparently used by Lofthouse was not returned. In addition, his LinkedIn account appears to have been deleted and his Twitter account has been suspended.
Whoops. Consequences! I’m thinking that must a synonym for “cancelled”.
That was dramatic and obvious, but I think most “cancellations” work like this:
Sounds familiar, actually. I haven’t read any thing by Orson Scott Card in ages, and I won’t in the future, either. My reaction to JK Rowling is the same — nope, won’t read (or buy!) the books, won’t watch the movies, and actually, I just remembered that I might have one or two books on a crowded shelf that could use some lightening. Am I not allowed to throw away my copies of her books? Is consumption of JK Rowling media now mandatory? Am I now not allowed to say, “fuck you, lady”? Whose free speech is being compromised?
There are plenty of works by good authors and artists who are NOT raging bigots.
I never read Rowling or Card. Now I don’t think I ever will. I’ve never seen a Harry Potter film, and now I never will. Not interested. I wasn’t that interested before, but hearing that pushed me over the edge. Sorry J.K. you get none of my money ever.
Just out of curiosity, is there any LGBTQ positive fantasy /sci-fi recommendations out there? About the only one I can point to that I have read is “Monstrous Regiment” by Terry Pratchett.
Giving them away is like retweeting. He should save them until winter and get some useful heat from them in his fireplace.
It’s respect! We respect their opinions and words so highly that we listen carefully to them. Than, we may conclude they are repulsive people we don’t want to listen to any more – bit it’s all very considered and respectful.
It’d be disrespectful to go “gosh, J K Rowling sounds like a TERF but her opinion doesn’t matter so I’ll ignore it and keep reading whatever comes out when she turns the crank.”
Just out of curiosity, is there any LGBTQ positive fantasy /sci-fi recommendations out there?
Try some of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga. Start with Shards of Honor and Barrayar
LOL
No. A non-racist person who respects people of all races doesn’t say those things due to “losing control.” Many of us lose control due to stress and anger. We don’t say several sentences filled with very racist shit and we don’t all of a sudden invoke Trump.
That waitress is a hero.
There is also Sam Delany’s Dahlgren
Why is it so hard to figure out which Company he is CEO of? So we know which Company to boycott! eh?
Thank you @5 and @8. I’ll look those up.
Unlike PZ, I am pretty shocked that the guy spewing the racist bile was a Silicon Valley CEO. Silicon Valley is full of Asians and some tech firms have more Asians than whites. It is almost a given that his firm has Asian employees. I’m not so naive as to imagine that no CEO harbors racist views but I thought they had the sense to keep their views to themselves.
I hear some of the edgier leftist pundits complain a lot about cancel culture of late but Im not certain what specific examples they are pointing to as part of that culture?
People writing letters and signing petitions about academics they dont like for example, has always been a thing. Its on groups to use their judgement with regards to such complaints.
Its disappointing and somewhat baffling to see some people complain more about cancel culture than the actual divisive language and behaviour within their own movements. Purity marginalises the average working class folks we need apparently? But why is it ok to marginalise the people already on your side who want to fight injustice on multiple fronts? Those people can fuck off I guess?
If someone does have good examples of a renewed trend of cancel culture that is causing harm, I would be genuinely interested to have a look.
Btw- My approach with artists who abuse their platform is to not only not give them my money, but to keep my praise of their work to myself. If I do see one of their movies at a friends house and I enjoy it, I dont give them extra social capital by promoting them and their art because they have proven that they cannot be trusted with that social capital. So its not just about financial punishment, but not actually contributing to their reach. Similarly, if their work is bad (Like Louis CKs ABYSMAL movie) I will be glad to tell people how utterly shit and clueless it was. (Seriously, if his abusive behaviour had not caught up to him, this movie was enough to ‘cancel’ over.)
@mastmaker: it’s in the OP – cloud services company Solid8
Ray, I recommend anything by Seanan McGuire, who also writes as Mira Grant, Ruthanna Emrys, and Ann Leckie.
Also recommend NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy.
Wait, no, Ruthanna Emrys is a whole different (also excellent) writer, not an alias of Seanan McGuire, and I think Ann Leckie is too!
I just Googled Orson Scott Card. Among the entries is a FAQ with one question that asks, “What is wrong with Orson Scott Card?” (Answer: Homophobic bigot.)
“cancel culture” is one of those things I call a political perjorative. It’s SJW for crowd decisions. Instead of doing social justice activism the “wrong way” this is doing social consequences for bad behavior the “wrong way”.
It looks fine to me. There need to be consequences for bad behavior. If the people who don’t like it want something different they will have to do the work of finding and role-modeling something that actually “works” with “works” defined by stopping the bigotry.
@2, @5
The blog www/tor.com frequently has reviews and discussions of LGBTQ positive fantasy /sci-fi.
Ray @2 — LGBTQ positive science fiction or fantasy suggestions:
For sci-fi, there is the graphic novel “Artifice”, by Alex Wolfson, where a military android develops an emotional bond with his target. Engaging characters, and well-done art.
For fantasy, there is the beautiful short gem, “Breakheart” by Mel Keegan, where just a bit of magic combines with blizzards, wolves, bondage, betrayal, and desperate risk-taking in the pursuit of justice and affection.
And ther is the recent Simon Snow young-adult series (2 books, “Carry On” and “Wayward Son”) by Rainbow Rowell, where an overly-powerful student magician works though his paranoia concerning his vampire roommate (at a British school of magic, of course), and then in the sequel their mutual friend ropes them into a road-trip from hell through rural America.
@ Ray Ceeya, # 2: If you like short stories, try “Genderflex,” edited by Cecelia Tan. (I have an autographed copy!)
Seconding tor.com as a source of reviews of both LBGTQ+ SFF and of BIPOC SFF.
Not the only thing wrong.
I read his early work and it was OK.
Then it all went way downhill.
Many years ago, I was reading one of his books and thought, “why am I wasting my time on this” and gave up.
Which is uncommon for me. I will at least finish what I started.
All of this was before he came out as a born again Mormon bigot.
Seanan McGuire is definitely a great writer.
Her, Every Heart is a Doorway, and sequels hit it way out of the park.
Wikipedia “The story is set in a boarding school for teenagers who have passed through “doorways” into fantasy worlds only to be evicted back into the real world.”
The premise pretty much sums up American life.
Most of us were born into the wrong universe and there could be better ones out there. Or should be anyway.
I remember that a long-ago plotline of “Something Positive” with that same character (the blond one; Mike) doing exactly that “separating the work from the author” — despite being told that author X was a homophobe, he went to a signing by author X (where X was a stand-in for Orson Scott Card, not actually Card by name).
Wow. 15 years ago. Starts here:
https://somethingpositive.net/comic/mike-s-favorite-author-pt-1/
But 15 years is more than enough time for someone’s feelings on the issue to flip, especially if the author keeps getting more bigoted, and his writing declines in quality as well.
If there’s one thing the rich and powerful fear more than anything else, it’s being held accountable. So even the tiniest of efforts to do so, such as no longer supporting a rich or powerful person or corporation (i.e. what “cancel culture” is), is treated as the most existential threat to the very idea of freedom and liberty!
But only if the support is being cancelled for a rich or powerful person, naturally. You can’t find a freeze peach advocate or member of the intellectual dork web whining about cancel culture all the time who came to Natalie Wynn’s defense when she was the target of a cancel-culture-esque response by people in the LGBTQ+ community who are even lower on the social hierarchy than she is (thanks to her sizeable online presence, despite still being very low on the totem pole of society overall, she isn’t at the bottom).
I got pretty suspicious about Card about 15 years ago when I read beyond his main works onto one that was a retelling of the Mormon story of the founding of Deseret, all persecuted and never doing anything wrong.
Which I knew enough about to know was he just whitewashing.
I consider myself to be a (white-priviledged, ça va sans dire) NW European. Why do I not understand what the fuck the broomstucky thingy with the two fingers and the hairy head is??
Some u = i.
I love Harry Potter and the series itself doesn’t dehumanize trans people. It’s easy to seperate the work from the author. To me, JK Rowling “died” years ago when she started providing stoopid background information for the HP universe. So I will continue reading fanfiction, etc.
OTOH, OSC’s works do dehumanize LGBTQ people in-story and promotes other regressive views such as forced-birtherism. So I cannot bear to read his books anymore even though I used to like them.
Presumably the signatories of the Harpers letter would side with Michael Lofthouse, and consider it a threat to freedom that he’s lost some social media accounts. After all, he tells us himself (link from Saad@6) he just “lost control”.
@5 Marcus Ranum Bujold is a superb writer of characters and I would definitely recommend her in general. However her early works have bits that reflect the times and may jar and though she has LGBTQ characters there aren’t a huge number (well other than on Athos). On the other hand she is very good at having the reader reinterpret an event in an earlier book in an entirely different light and make it work (e.g., Admiral Jole and the Red Queen showing every appearance of Jole in earlier works is not quite what it seemed from the viewpoint of the character who saw and narrated it).
Owlmirror @24: Well, Mike’s original character was being the smartmouthed a-hole that nobody liked and then went on multiple redemption arcs where he tried to become a more responsible human being, one of them being the birth of his son by his then-girlfriend (who is, in fact the character he’s talking to in this page).
Rene @27: It’s a Harry Potter flying broom toy.
numerobis no. 26
“I got pretty suspicious about Card about 15 years ago when I read beyond his main works onto one that was a retelling of the Mormon story of the founding of Deseret, all persecuted and never doing anything wrong.
Which I knew enough about to know was he just whitewashing.”
Let me guess. He ignored or explained away the Mountain Meadows massacre.
Other authors to recommend: Gail Carriger’s steampunk fantasy series starting with Soulless has a wide variety of LGBTQ characters.
Tanya Huff writes urban fantasy, high fantasy and military science fiction with again, lots of LGBTQ characters.
Mercedes Lackey has a very long running fantasy series with LGBTQ characters (one of whom I think appears in more books than any other character, I think 7 books?).
Those are the ones that are coming to mind off the top of my head (and a quick look at the bookcase) that haven’t already been mentioned.
On Orson Scott Card: Back before he was quite so vocal about being a homophobe he was the speaker at my husband’s college graduation. The gist of his talk was that you only get one good idea in life, and you get it young, so you’d better figure out what it is fast and then milk it for the rest of your life. He used Einstein and himself as examples (apparently Ender’s Game was based on a dream he had when he was 15).
This idea really threw me for a loop when I didn’t get into grad school straight out of college and was very much adrift in a place of “is this a job or a career?”, and really didn’t help the depression that followed. Honestly, the thing that got me out of the idea that I’d failed by 22 was reading the biography of Julia Child that had just come out and realizing that this amazing person who changed the world of food and TV hadn’t gotten “started” until after she was 30, and maybe I wasn’t a total waste.
So basically, OSC is an OK writer, a homophobe, and a terrible graduation speaker and he can go suck eggs at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
It surprised me to learn that the author of Orson Scott Card’s work was such a horrible person – it seems so out of place for the author of The Porcelain Salamander and Speaker For The Dead to be so bigoted and judgemental.
@36
Not that this compares with Card’s other faults, but from what you say, he apparently doesn’t know much at all about Einstein.
“Cancel culture” is just accountability. Some people don’t like being held accountable for their shirty actions and words, and it shows.
If you’re interested in YA fantasy that isn’t by Rowling, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series actually get more progressive over time. The original series had a major character come out as gay midway through, and his latest (Norse mythos) series, Magnus Chase, centers around a romance between the hero and an intersex character who cycles between male and female. There’s also a Muslim Valkyrie. Interesting stuff.
@39
“Cancel Culture” can also be a bunch of privleged white Karens forming a harrassment campaign over bullshit. Like the one against Contrapoints which spilled over to hatefull harrassment to anyone even remotely related to her like Philosophy tube and Lindsey Ellis for no real logocal reason.
@41 — Contra was HELD ACCOUNTABLE for supporting transmed views and enbyphobia.
I’m old enough to remember when there really was a cancel culture, when academics had to take loyalty oaths in order to teach math or biology, let alone history or philosophy, when studios blacklisted hire actors who had been bankable movie stars or writers who had created great movie scripts because they signed some petitions or went to some cocktail parties associated with left-wing organizations, when adolescents who ground out the mildest satire on a mimeograph machine would be expelled. In those days, it took actual guts — I was going to use another body part, but I’ve learned a few things over the years — to say things actually unpopular. Now people who say things actually popular among the powers that be get yelled at now and then and sometimes face consequences when they embarrass their bosses. They should grow a pair. Oops, I guess what I learned doesn’t always stick.
Rats. Some of my favorite authors when I was a kid were bigots, misogynists, and loons. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Doc Smith. I’ve taken to reading alternative SciFi instead. Oh, and never did like Card outside of Ender’s Game.
Ray Ceeya @ # 2: … LGBTQ positive fantasy /sci-fi recommendations …
Just about anything by Melissa Scott.
Much of LM Bujold’s work features LGBTQ characters on in passing, but her Ethan of Athos centers on one, from an all-gay planet. (Nicola Griffth’s Ammonite takes place on an all-lesbian planet.)
The Otherwise Awards (formerly the Tiptree Awards) feature the best in gender-exploring science fiction/fantasy each year.
Yep, cancel culture has been around for years, but it just got a name overhaul recently. Nothing new at all. But surprise at an exec doing this? No, not at all as we’ve seen it many times. Some have just been lucky in not being caught.
octopod@16, sorry, bad punctuation! I blame the cat, she wouldn’t let me get more tea.
“Am I not allowed to throw away my copies of her books? Is consumption of JK Rowling media now mandatory? Am I now not allowed to say, “fuck you, lady”? Whose free speech is being compromised?”
This feels like a straw man argument. No one (in their right mind) should be arguing you can’t do that stuff. I commented in an earlier thread on this topic that it’s okay for people who read the books to still like them. It’s like, people who lived before a cataclysm (or a dire revelation) can still feel some good memories about the old times. I didn’t mention this in my post, but I didn’t really think about the after times. In that case, artor@1 has the best statement…
@42: She used a voiceover from Buck Angel for about 6 or 7 seconds on one video. At no point were his views mentioned, let alone endorsed. And the result was that one of the most visible trans people, and one of the most effective communicators of their ideas, someone who has single handedly done more to improve the general understanding and acceptance of trans issues by cis people than anyone else I can think of, was effectively silenced for months. Not just silenced, viciously harassed. All over an action that, AT MOST, deserved maybe a politely critical email in response. With progressives like that, who needs conservatives? Fuck, that whole thing made me so angry. So much harm, so much damage, such terrible optics, for literally zero benefit to anyone ever. ‘Held accountable’ my ass.
@2 There’s also Arthur C. Clark, almost all of whose characters are Bi. This is particularly noted in “Imperial Earth”. Although, fair warning, his style is rather stilted and dry.
@49 — That’s not what happened. She was FAIRLY CRITICIZED for it, and she doubled down on the transmed and enbyphobia. Stop defending bigotry.
@49 I had no idea that capering for your amusement counted as effective communication. In any case, I’d like to know what counts as “politely critical” in your view.
If Card doesn’t quite do it for you anymore and you’re looking for some replacement material, I’ve been impressed with some of the articles at Tor for the last year or so. HERE> I am in no way affiliated with Tor. They’re not just running articles that discuss the various classes of Starfleet ships vs Star Wars for example. Some of the articles are thought provoking.
I’ve been following THIS religiously (pun intended) every month, one of my favorite periodicals there.
Erp@#31:
True enough. I threw Bujold’s hat in the ring because her way of addressing LGBTQ issues seems to me (I still have kich to learn) as though she is presenting a rational idea. Cordelia, the Betan, is so accepting and matter of fact that it seems that’s how a future civilization would have to work. “Oh, a quaddie!” Is an expression of delight not discomfort. And Cordelia’s acceptance of Aral’s sexuality is nothing but encompassing, rational, and loving. There are many examples in her books where people from the 21st might react with fear (and she puts that all on blinkered Count Piotr) but her main characters mostly manage to reach for honor and love.
As much as I enjoy Bujold, Dahlgren is more mind blowing. It was important to me in high school because it was my first encounter with a completely normalized gay sex scene, done so gracefully I just thought “oh that is cool.” And Delany’s writing is something else.
I grew up in EE Smith, HP Lovecraft, ERB, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, and Tolkien. So Alfred Bester and Delany and Bujold and Le Guin pulled me out of the power-dive. Although, I did read a book by John Ringo, just to see what the fuss was about.
JustaTech @35: I wouldn’t go to Mercedes Lackey looking for good LGBT representation. Firstly because her novels tend to be really formulaic, and second of all because she seems to write only two types of LGBT characters: angst-ridden gay men who die tragically to inspire their hetero friends, and depraved psychopathic bisexuals who get off on torturing people and committing acts of incest and necrophilia.
“Loosing control” means that the real you comes out, not somebody completely different.
@56 microraptor
That is a fairly unfair assessment of Mercedes Lackey’s characters. I would agree her novels are fairly formulaic but she has many more than 2 types of LGBT characters. Her main angst-ridden gay man as you put it (Vanyel) is the protagonist of an entire series and then reappears in other books. He also dies rather heroically saving his entire kingdom and not as an inspiration to another character. There are multiples major lesbian characters in the series which you seem to feel free to leave out and their are also numerous bisexual characters (including a main character) who are in no way depraved and are actually heroes. There is a depraved bisexual character (just one although he appears over time in the series under different names) but there are far more positive portrayals than negative ones.
I can’t recall seeing a single major female character in any of Lackey’s works, not just her Valdemar stuff, who was gay or bisexual and not evil. There were other gay men besides Vanyel, including several protagonists, and their survival rate was equally poor, whereas her hetero protagonists tended to get happy endings.
miccroraptor @59 to name the first gay man that comes to mind, Firesong has a happy ending and is an important character in two series.
@microraptor
Sherri, Karen, and Ylsa in the Queen’s Own series are all lesbian, all important characters, and all sympathetic and heroic.
Scott Card was a good writer back in the 1980s and the movie of Ender’s Game that came out several years ago was quite good. If you’re not feeling like supporting him because of his horrible politics that’s fine, but see the movie for free sometime so you won’t be giving him a dime. As for getting rid of his books, whatever. There aren’t a lot of novels I’d re-read anyway, but look at it this way – if you give away J.K. Rowling’s works that’s less money for her. Not that she or Card will ever be hurting for money, so the practical effect of binning their books is limited to oneself.
I should’ve mentioned @ # 45 that the Otherwise Awards site also features an article on black speculative fiction imagining racial justice.
In the first “Something Positive” panel above, a book labelled “McKenzie” has made it into the go-away box.
The name does not ring any sff bells in my head; a quick search for “McKenzie author” came up with Catherine, Carson, Robin, Compton, Sally, Elizabeth, and CB, plus at least two series featuring McKenzie protagonists (well, one’s a MacKenzie).
Anybody have any idea which McK is getting the heave-ho here?
@microraptor Firesong is in seven books! She clearly loves him as a character and his “punishment” is a reflection of his vanity and pride, not because he’s gay. He gets a happy ending!
The Joust series: only one stated gay character, doesn’t die, doesn’t suffer any tragedy, is a respected figure.
The Hunter series, yes, the POV character is hetero, but there are plenty of secondary characters who are gay.
The Elemental Masters series: Here I will say there is an absence of any LGBTQ characters, but it’s also set in Edwardian England, so, you know, a lot of repression going on there.
The Bard series, there’s at least one triad there that’s a healthy, supportive relationship.
The 500 Kingdoms – can’t think of any, but that’s also a series written for a romance publisher, so that might direct the storytelling.
Does Tarma count as an ace character, or does it not count because she asked to have her sexuality removed, rather than just being that way?
When Cosby was outed as a rapist, there was no compartmentalizing. I readily destroyed all the media I had of him (movies, comedy records). I was furious because for a while I had believed and defended his “mr. clean” reputation which had always been a lie.
Some people I know still compartmentalize, people who still read JK TERFling, fans of David Bowie and “Rocky Horror”, etc. It’s not worth losing friends in an argument about it, but anyone who still follows certain people know where I stand. I haven’t tried to convince them to quit watching, reading and listening, but it’s clear that some people (not because of me) don’t enjoy things the same way anymore. Others won’t consume it publicly now.
@Pierce R. Butler:
It’s not “McKenzie”, it’s “McKanzie”, with an “a”. If you’d followed the link I posted @#24, you would have seen that “Morgan Adam McKanzie” is the Orson Scott Card stand-in I referred to.
So the appearance of the name in this current comic is a call-back to that original storyline.
Owlmirror @ # 66 – Aha! Thanks twice today!
@#66, Owlmirror:
I may be remembering wrong, but when those strips originally ran I seem to recall they came just after a comic book creator revealed themselves to be awful in some way, and the timing suggested that “Morgan Adam McKanzie” was based on that, instead. But there have been so many authors who are like that it’s probably just a pastiche of all of them.
I’m rather late to this thread, but most of my reading tends to fall somewhere under the umbrella of Sci-Fi/Fantasy (a lot of urban fantasy in there…), and I’ve got more authors that I like than I can reasonably keep up with, so I don’t want to waste any time reading stuff by one with toxic attitudes and/or bigotry…
Granted, I’m a cis/het guy, so there’s a lot I’m likely still missing picking up on…
I really love N.K. Jemisin’s stuff. All of it. The Broken Earth trilogy was epic and definitely earned that unprecedented triple Hugo. Her other stuff is great too.
As others have mentioned, I really like Seanan McGuire’s stuff. Her October Daye series is my favorite, but I’ll read pretty much anything she writes.
A lot of YA stuff, and some horror, Cherie Priest is another author I really like.
Catherynne M. Valente is another author I really love. Space Opera seems to be one of her more popular titles, and while I enjoyed it, I think Palimpsest and possibly Radiance are my personal favorites of hers.
John Scalzi, Charles Stross, and Chuck Wendig are some other authors I generally rather enjoy.
I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch…
@The Vicar:
The comic’s author acknowledged, a few days after the end of the storyline, that he had OSC specifically in mind:
Odd that nobody’s mentioned Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness so far. She got some zings for not taking her ideas to their full conclusions, but that novel still stands as a landmark in gender-centered science fiction.
And of course, we should never forget Samuel Delany‘s work beyond Dhalgren, such as the Nevèrÿon series (which I never could quite get), Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (simply awesome hardcore-sf love story), the raw-erotic Rome-Hawley trilogy, the new 800-page Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, and lots more.