Serious Discussions FTW

[laceblade]

I need to catch up on BSG. I still feel like I've broken up with the show, because I've never gotten over how good it was in the beginning and how much it later sucked, but I will still watch the rest of it, by God.

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It seems like every year, I get one of the Worst Colds Ever, and that's why I haven't posted for the last three days.

It's like a truck hit me. Monday night, it was so bad that I stopped eating dinner because I could taste anything and it was almost impossible to breathe.

This morning, I finally woke up breathing through my nose again, and I was all OMGYES. It is not entirely gone - sometimes when I yawn, my hearing improves a lot, and I still need about 5-35 tissues per hour. BUT. We are much better than Sunday/Monday, I tell you what. I have been a shut-in after work, all week long. I can't say I haven't enjoyed it. Now, I look about in askance, wondering how my apartment got to be so messy, and how much of it I can tidy up tonight after finishing this post.

I know that I have lots of comments to reply to, so don't feel bad if I didn't reply to yours. I didn't reply to anybody's! Everyone is neglected! Yay!

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I am hesitant to write the rest of this post, because of what happened the last time I wrote about a sensitive topic, but you know what? I'm not going to be quiet about these issues just because I'm afraid of people arguing about it in the comments of my LJ. Just don't be assholes to each other, or I will make fun of you.

ALSO, please don't skim over the post just because it's easier to do that.

The way you think about topics like feminism and anti-racism and queer people and ableism and fatphobia and everything else matters. The way narratives are delivered matters because narratives shape our lives. What you read and watch, and how people are represented in those different media, MATTERS. You internalize it, whether you read it or not. It's pretty clear to me who on my FL reads books/shows written primarily by middle-aged/old white guys, and who does not.
Maybe you pride yourself on not reading many books, but advertisements and TV shows and personal interactions and Facebook messages tell stories. So do you, every day, when you open your mouth or type on your keyboard. Because everybody's telling stories, it means we're in constant conversation with one another, that we affect the narratives of other people's lives, and that yes, Billy, you'd damn well better think about the way you say it, when you say it, and to whom you are speaking.

To be perfectly clear, YOU MUST READ THIS POST BEFORE LEAVING A COMMENT TO MY POST. If you don't, I will know, and I will delete your comment.


What a nice preface paragraph! Because the posts to which I am about to link are in conversation with each other.

matociquala on "writing the other"

deepad's I Didn't Dream of Dragons.

One of the most frustrating arguments I’ve encountered is—If you hate it so much, stop bitching and write your own.

This naive position stems from the utopian capitalist belief that all markets are equal, and individuals are free to be what they can driven only by their inner divine spark.

I like this as a response to hopelarson's recent post, even though it wasn't intended a response to her.


Avalon's Willow's An Open Letter to Elizabeth Bear

matociquala (Elizabeth Bear)'s direct response to the open letter.

truepenny (Sarah Monette)'s response to the same open letter.

Linked in the comments in one of these posts somewhere (directed to me by were_duck) is this post originally written a while ago.

In other words, I don’t want you to bite your tongue to avoid saying stupid, racist shit. I want you to stop believing the stupid, racist shit that you said. When I say, “You just said some stupid, racist shit,” I am not trying to silence you.

I think I personally identified the most with were_duck's post, because I hear a lot of myself in it. She ends her post by asking if anybody has YA recommendations for books by/about POC (or SF suggestions), for the purposes of being able to recommend books to people who shop at the bookstore she and I both work at (aside from Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Nisi Shawl, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, and Nalo Hopkinson who are already well-represented at our bookstore). I did send her to a post on the topic made by oyceter a while ago, but anyone else with opinions can leave them here, or in were_duck's journal.

yeloson's Remyth Project, which is obviously on-going.

ETA: shewhohashope's Cultural Appropriation: Once More With Feeling

deepad's White People, it's not all about you, but for this post it is


I find this entire discussion intriguing most of all because 1) it started with a bunch of white guys talking about cultural appropriation, but then the feminists ignored them and began our own conversation instead. 2) Instead of being a defensive asshole, Elizabeth Bear has maturely and thoughtfully responded to comments made to her, unlike, say, Tamora Pierce or Seal Press those dudes who did the Eclipse One cover and still didn't get it.




Remember what I said about reading this post before leaving a comment. I WILL KNOW IF YOU DON'T, AND I WILL DELETE YOUR BS.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

May I link here for the collection of links?

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Yes! All of my public posts are link-able! Too bad I had to talk about my cold at the beginning of the post, bwahaha.

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

The way you think about topics like feminism and anti-racism and queer people and ableism and fatphobia and everything else matters. The way narratives are delivered matters because narratives shape our lives. What you read and watch, and how people are represented in those different media, MATTERS. You internalize it, whether you read it or not. It's pretty clear to me who on my FL reads books/shows written primarily by middle-aged/old white guys, and who does not.

YES. Word.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I love the initial post by coffeeandink! I just wrote a website about the use of narrative in environmental history, which got me thinking a lot about Narrative-with-a-capitol-N in ways I hadn't before - the idea that we all participate in meta-narratives, whether we know it/like it/intend to or not, which means we have to OWN that when confronted.

I read the letter to Baer, whom I haven't yet read, and was appalled at the same pattern of superficial, entitled, victim-like response in the comments there that we often see in some of our discussions. I think it's really telling that when confronted with discussions about how people discuss, some peoples' first reaction is to assume that they're being stifled from saying something that they're entitled to. I.e this comment to the Bear post:

"So, all storytellers should shut up because they can never tell everyone's story for them, correctly and exactly as that person would tell it, if they could? And we shouldn't even try, because we'll only Get It Wrong?"

That is exactly the wrong kind of attitude. Less critical engagement with topics of race, gender, class, and other equality issues, is not the goal here.

I really liked Monette's response about how AW's reading and Bear's intention didn't match up, and how it was neither of their faults - hence critical dialog is especially appropriate here. Bear thought more critically about her own work, as did some of her readers who weren't distracted by knee-jerk defensiveness of either their beloved author or their own ugly confrontation with privilege.

That, to me, is the crux of the problem, and one which I tried to address in comments to the most recent fiasco. If you can't get people to engage critically with material that is societally relevant and think beyond their own ego, then that really precludes any kind of meaningful discussion.

Thank you so much for posting all of these! This was definitely worth being late for school. I've been trying to think of a way to address this in my own journal (I haven't written a good thought piece in a while), so thanks also for catalyzing that.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a whole....session of posts people have made called "Required Reading," which they constantly use to people who get defensive in conversations about race, class, gender, sex, and etc. I'd like to make one for myself!

So far my favorite is the one by shewhohashope: here (http://shewhohashope.livejournal.com/58555.html). My favorite is the 'how not to be insane when accused of racism."

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Those are great. A "Required Reading" post is awesome! But I wonder how useful it actually is - I can't imagine just dropping a bunch of literature on someone in the middle of a discussion, you know?

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Haha, I can totally imagine dropping the literatue on them, I just don't think they would actually read them. It's something that we have discussed before-- you can't teach an unwilling student (you can lead a horse to water...), but someone else casually reading the thread might see the links, and read them, and learn (there's a wider audience reading along). Or the unwilling student might come back later-- the horse now knows were the water *is*, they might drink later.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I've seen people do it in debates! Or even like in this post! At the end of it, I made sure to link to a post made two years ago, threatening to delete people's posts unless they read it. Sure, it turns some people away from the conversation entirely, but posts like these are what lead me to begin addressing my own white privilege in the first place, in the first Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure some people will do it, but I think that others will just ignore posts like this and then continue to make ill-informed, defensive comments later. In the meantime, I'm really hoping that once in a great while one of those people starts thinking about things with a little more nuance.

[skadi.livejournal.com]

Awesome collection of links!

I went to a women's college, and while it really prepared me intellectually, I was kinda lulled into this false sense of security. I thought everyone thought before they spoke! I thought everyone thought discussions about race and gender and sexuality, etc were important for community!

Jumping into the real world has been a real shock. It's frustrating because I'm in med school, and people are supposed to be smart here, you know? But I never realized how comfortable people are in ignorance. And I really can't understand that.

[jume.livejournal.com]

Metafilter has grabbed ahold of this topic, and I thought you might like to see their take on it http://www.metafilter.com/78433/Science-Fiction-LiveJournal-and-Magical-Negros

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

"Upset for 'some' reason" ?! What a minimalist description! People suck.