Bigots, Bullies, and Enablers
Synopsis of the April Fool’s Mess: One of Locus’ April Fool’s Day columns this year announced that all Wiscon attendees would now be forced to wear burqas. “…starting with this year’s Wiscon, we’ve made burqas mandatory for all attendees. Allah Akbar!” There were also cracks about making sure burqas were available in sizes “to 5XL,” and working to “eliminate rampant lookism.”
Part of how this piece showed up on the site, as I understand it, is because of the separation between the Locus website and the magazine. The website editor apparently saw nothing wrong with the post, but as soon as the rest of the staff realized what had happened, they yanked the article site and apologized. They’re also taking steps to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t go up again.
Look, I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that there are people out there who think “Islam” and can’t get beyond burqas and “Allah Akbar!” Likewise, it’s no shock to see people actively reenforcing stereotypes of feminists as fat, ugly, shrill harpies with no sense of humor. None of this is remotely new or original.
I’ve been working on an autobiographical essay, and writing a section of that piece today helped me clarify what was pissing me off as much as the incident itself. We know there will always be nasty, small-minded bigots. But once Locus pulled the article, a mass of people–mostly white men, for reasons I’m sure are entirely coincidental–rushed in to defend the article, and to decry Locus for censoring free speech.
It’s a familiar pattern, but the dynamic didn’t click until I was writing about my own experiences being bullied as a teenager.
I was a skinny, overly bright, socially inept, fashion challenged kid with glasses and a speech defect. My teenage years were utter hell. Looking back at any of those incidents of name-calling, having my books knocked out of my hands, being shoved in the hallway, tripped on the steps outside the school, having my belongings destroyed, and so on, very few of them in isolation were such a big deal. Real physical injury was relatively rare. But when those small jabs continue day after day, they add up. They whittle away at your strength and your hope, and it never, ever lets up, never stops, until you’re sitting alone in the bathroom with a syringe full of your father’s insulin, searching for a single good reason not to jab the plunger down and hopefully put an end to it all.
The backlash against the Locus article isn’t about someone taking cheap shots at Muslims and women. It’s about yet another person taking those shots, lining up to bully those who are already a popular target for abuse. And it’s about everyone else who stands around, encouraging and enabling that bullying.
25 years ago, I was told I should just ignore the bullies.
I was told I shouldn’t let it get to me. (“Why are you choosing to be offended? You’re just looking for reasons to be upset.”)
I was told they didn’t mean anything by it. (“It wasn’t intended to be racist or sexist!”)
They were just joking around. (“You people have no sense of humor!”)
That’s just how they are, and you need to learn to live with it. (“You need to be more tolerant of the people who are intolerant of you, and who are hurting you.”)
Stop making such a big deal about it. (“I don’t understand why you’re upset! …Ergo, you have no legitimate reason to be upset.”)
People complained about the Locus piece because it was hurtful. This wasn’t an example of the court jester speaking truth to power. While the author claims he was trying to write satire, what he actually wrote was another in a long line of jabs toward people who are already disproportionately targeted for a broad range of abuse in this culture.
It was bullying.
That’s what people are defending. They’re attacking Locus for not giving this person a platform with which to bully those he doesn’t like, based on an incident that happened several years ago. They’re telling the targets of ongoing bigotry that the best solution is to just ignore it.
That doesn’t work for the target of bullying. It only works for the bystanders who don’t want to deal with it. It’s a cowardly, ineffective, and downright shitty “solution.”
Yeah, I got through my teenaged years, and I survived despite the lack of support from those around me. But you know what would have helped a lot more? You know what might have saved the life of a classmate who, as far as we’ve been able to determine, killed himself as a result of bullying? If the bystanders had spoken up and told the bullies to knock that shit off.
Thank you, Locus, for taking that step.
Murphy Jacobs
April 3, 2013 @ 7:43 pm
Yep. Just…yep.
tmso
April 3, 2013 @ 7:59 pm
Thank you.
Steven
April 3, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Exact & succinct, sir.
mgwa
April 3, 2013 @ 8:13 pm
Well said – thank you.
Jennie Ivins
April 3, 2013 @ 8:20 pm
Bravo! This is the perfect post. Thank you! 🙂
Lila
April 3, 2013 @ 8:26 pm
There’s a broader question here of, I guess you’d call it “standing’: who has the right to decide whether someone else should be upset/offended/whatever? Is there some kind of permit you have to have that authorizes you to have your own feelings?
On the Dysfunctional Families Day thread on Making Light there have been some posts recently about (adult) people’s families refusing to acknowledge their preferred name, whether it’s a legal name change, a nickname they don’t want to be called by, or whatever. FFS, people, WHOSE NAME IS IT??
janetl
April 3, 2013 @ 8:29 pm
Yes!
Debi
April 3, 2013 @ 8:48 pm
Well said. That was me MANY years ago, too. My entire 6th grade class, save for 2 other outcasts, bullied me. Back then the adults called it “teasing.” Only I was “teased” relentlessly every day, all day by my peers. I was told the same thing by my parents and other adults, “Ignore them.” Here I am MANY years later. I hate that I went through that, but it made me a better advocate for kids I worked with and helped to teach them how to really deal with bullies.
Megpie71
April 3, 2013 @ 9:44 pm
I’m another who survived long-term school bullying (in my case, the entire twelve years of my primary and secondary schooling – to the point where I wound up having a nervous breakdown when I reached university study and the expected bullying never eventuated), and I agree the biggest problem with it isn’t the big things. The big things can be pointed at, and other people will agree with you those are wrong.
What’s worse, what’s more damaging in the long term, are the little things which go on day after day after day after day after day. The ones which chip away at your sense of self, and which teach you exactly how helpless you are in the face of orchestrated hate. The ones which leave you doubting your own sanity (because, after all, nobody else thinks these things are all that terrible; they’re just a bit of harmless fun). The ones which add up to the death of a thousand cuts for the self. And of course, when there’s that one “little thing” said that finally causes you to react, the straw which finally snaps the camel’s back, you’re the one who over-reacted to this single “little thing” rather than the cumulative load of them.
So I’d be saying to the persons tempted by taking a cheap shot at an easy target: do you know how many shots your target has taken today? This week? This month? This year? Do you know how many shots your target is capable of taking before they fall apart? Do you know who else has been shooting at your target?
Can you truthfully and believably say your single shot won’t be the one to cause the target to collapse, or explode? And if so, why do you feel those of us who have acted as part of the “target” category in the past should be obliged to believe you?
April L'Orange
April 3, 2013 @ 9:48 pm
Funny the things you make me remember. My rule was always “you can attack me, but don’t attack my friends.” I wouldn’t let that slide. And yet, I only now realize that nobody ever stood up for me that way, or not in my hearing. Not once. O.o
Sally
April 3, 2013 @ 11:39 pm
There’s even a fancy sociological-edumacated word for this: microaggressions.
Jim C. Hines writes about Bigots, Bullies, and Enablers | Tobias Buckell Online
April 3, 2013 @ 11:48 pm
[…] Jim C. Hines » Bigots, Bullies, and Enablers.) bigotry, science fiction BiographyBorn in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a […]
Elizabeth Gardner
April 4, 2013 @ 1:47 am
When I read that they wanted burqas to be compulsory for all Wiscon attendees I though that was Everyone. Especially when they needed 5XL. Lots of male con goers could do with clean clothes that cover them up better.
So I am sexist, but I would like overly entitled white males to have to deal with this sort of discrimination first hand.
Gabby
April 4, 2013 @ 2:15 am
As someone who changed their name and it took about 6 years for my father to stop calling me by my birth name – and my extended family still refuses – yeah, this. Why does it offend my family that I didn’t want my name, even though most of them couldn’t even pronounce it properly? I haven’t a clue, but it sure does.
Martin
April 4, 2013 @ 2:49 am
A few years back, we had a school reunion after 20 years. The strange thing: i nearly felt sorry for those bullies of old. They seem to have found out, that in professional life it doesn’t count how good a football player you are (unless you are world class, but they were not by far) and their methods to achieve superiority were non-functional in the job. So at the reunion they made up the group of disgruntled middle-aged men sipping beer and complaining about their partners, the job and life in general. That view exorcised some ghosts of the past.
Patti L
April 4, 2013 @ 3:52 am
I also initially read it as “ALL” attendees, and thought “oh, yeah, make the men wear them too, then it’s fair.” And yes, I also thought of some of the hygiene challenged folks, although it might not help with those.
Didn’t Kurt Vonnegut write a short story about something like this? The more beautiful, the uglier the mask, and the smarter, the worse the electric shocks? The more graceful or athletic, the heavier the weights required to be worn?
I also had my share of bullying done to me.
Straws break camel’s backs. Single snowflakes trigger avalanches. Different camels/slopes have different load bearing capacities.
Some very good comments here, as well as the post itself.
There was a teen book a couple of decades ago, I think the title was “the war between the classes” where the kids were supposed to choose randomly from a bag for their status armbands, and wear/abide by the social status their whole waking time for… what, 2 weeks? A month? It was weighted to make females higher status, and it was rigged to hit a few of the BMOC types with low status, some of (for instance) the Japanese-Americans high.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to give kids who are either known to be bullied, or who are brave enough to volunteer something like tags to put on a bracelet or neck chain that ALL STUDENTS had to wear, every time someone said something disparaging or did something physically that was bullying to them. Then count up; how many did each victim start with, each day. How many did each other kid end up with each day.
Do that a couple hundred places, a couple of times a year, or each quarter year.
Have awards the picked on kids could give out to those who deflected bullies or actually intervened, or who gave encouragement/stood up for the victims.
Or, if that’s too… visible, too easy to circumvent because the bullies -or even adults! – will force the victims to “leave Joe Football Champion out of it”, just some kind of doo-dad where they can count up the slurs, shoves, damage to papers, wet willies, etc., etc.
Heck, put wires on a few kids.
There was a Dick Francis mystery a few decades ago where one newspaper had been publishing snide things about the main character for several months. Each had been passed by the legal department.
Then (for whatever reason) the editorial & legal staff sat down and read them en masse. They had the cold sweats, and promptly tried to buy him off.
Would that some of the “it’s one little comment, don’t let it get to you” criers could see that.
Heather
April 4, 2013 @ 5:18 am
@Patti L Reading Everyday Sexism is a bit like that. I actually unfollow it every so often, so as not to be reminded.
Sherri S Tepper wrote about men who expected women to cover up/not go out being adjusted by aliens so that they wouldn’t suffer “breeding madness”; they saw their wives as hideously ugly until they proved they had recovered. She also had insects lay eggs in men who had said that women should continue pregnancies started in rape.
Clearly, someone needs to send a few of the men defending the Locus article a burqa each and tell them that it’s compulsory *for them*.
H
Ralph Smith
April 4, 2013 @ 6:44 am
It does not surprise me, the number of people that speak up about being bullied, but yet, no one spoke about being the one, or part of the crowd, that bullied. Even those of us that were ‘bullied’ at some point in school, I don’t think there is one that can they NEVER did the same to another person. All of us, even at our weakest, whether in an ‘our crowd’ experience, or not, we have ALL been somewhat of a “bully.” Truth hurts, but so it is.
Lenora Rose
April 4, 2013 @ 7:56 am
All, Ralph? Before making such a sweeping assertion, be prepared to back it up. To all the people above who talked about being bullied, at least some and probably the majority of which can say with clear conscience that no they didn’t.
It IS true that there are people who were both bullies and bullied. Buty as soon as you sweepingly assert *all* you’re getting into “women say nasty things about men so they’re sexist too, and we’re victims too” territory.
I was a geek and an easy target, not least because I reacted well, but also loud and a drama queen, and I had a temper. Thanks to the last, I may well have said something nasty to someone that unwittingly added to their burdens; in which case you might be right about me. All I DO remember doing, with one exception, that I feel should be on my conscience is not speaking up.
The one and only time I remember participating, even briefly, in an action against someone? Was a teacher, actually my favourite teacher. I was one of the first to stop the day’s ‘joke’ (kudos to Bobby *** for being the actual first and also the one to say aloud that this was wrong – and it says a lot that I remember him, considering that I can’t remember most of my classmates’ names at that early date) and I was the first to go to her and offer comfort when our “tease” turned out to be one microaggression too many. And that was young enough that it taught me a whole lot about what not to do.
But my female best friend? Who even then was struggling with the onset of schizophrenia? She was a meekish person. I don’t think so. (My male best friend also wouldn’t have intentionally gone out of his way to pick on someone for being weak, but like myself, I can’t speak to what he inadvertently did.)
Even if she had tried, it probably would have been against someone who had actually tried to bully her, not against a smaller weaker person. And the people I can remember bullying her could have and would have brushed off anything she could do.
For the record I have seen a couple of former bullies admit to what they were; generally the ones who realised later that what they were doing was wrong. Others don’t, and therefore never “confess”. Some also never realised the impact of what they did because what they did alone was actually a very small percentage of the microaggressions, and therefore not so bad.
Some of what you’re seeing here is people who find it safe to speak up in this blog, because Jim has long established this as a space where people will not be mocked or hurt for having been mocked or hurt before. The same reason we have a lot of rape victims show up in those threads, but never someone who admits to rape.
Stephen A. Watkins
April 4, 2013 @ 9:24 am
Hear, Hear! That’s all I can say.
April L'Orange
April 4, 2013 @ 11:12 am
Yes he did. The story is “Harrison Bergeron.” It tends to show up in classic SF anthologies and it’s wonderful & horrifying.
I’m actually sure the gag was meant for all attendes, female or male. The trouble is that Wiscon is a feminist SF con. If they’d chosen any other con, I’d be twitching more about the Islamaphobia and less about the misogyny. But by aiming specifically at a feminist con, the subtext pretty much overpowers the intent. :/
April L'Orange
April 4, 2013 @ 11:31 am
As Lenora says, “all” is a dangerous word. I think it’s worth keeping in mind that to be part of a crowd that bullies, you first have to be part of a crowd. To speak words that hurt, you have to be willing to speak at all. And to physically harm or shame a person, you have to be physically able to act. Victims of these behaviors tend to learn early on that they are always alone and speaking only draws attention to you. And while the fat girl I was could still generate enough physical presence to have bullied that way, intentionally or not, my friend Jen, permanently in an electric wheelchair due to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, could never have thrown a rock, stabbed someone with a pencil, or tied cord through a locker’s mechanism to make someone late for class.
I do take your point, and it makes me stop and examine my experience. But my experience remains that there was no overlap between the bullied I knew & those bullying. Whether the bullies were in turn bullied by someone else, now that, I can’t speak to.
lkeke35
April 4, 2013 @ 12:34 pm
Debi, Megpie71: I found myself in the exact same circumstances. At twelve years, old standing in the bathroom of my house thinking about how I wanted my torment to be over. I didn’t have my breakdown until college. So this article struck me very hard.
I had read of “microaggressions” and understood it but it was not something I ever applied to my own life until this article linked to my memory of my first suicide attempt. (I’m okay now but still have no love or trust for people in general.)
As far as being a bully, I tried it once and it was so distasteful and I was so thoroughly ashamed of myself that the memory of it bothers me to this day. My feeling about what I did is so bad I still don’t understand how anyone can engage in it on a regular basis.
Brian
April 4, 2013 @ 1:43 pm
Exactly yes to both of you. Why certain people feel they have the right to say “This is not offensive, no one should ever be offended by this because I am not” I do not understand.
I’ve always wondered if it has to do with the “I am right because I’m good” mindset. I believe that I am a good person, I don’t find to be offensive. Therefore good people aren’t offended. Therefore people who are offended must not be good.
KatG
April 4, 2013 @ 3:02 pm
“25 years ago, I was told I should just ignore the bullies.”
All of those arguments for dealing with bullies, the anti-rights arguments and the ones being made by the huffers at Locus boil down to one thing: “You should shut up.” It might be that the argument is “It’s unnatural, so shut up.” “I’m a nice person, so shut up.” “Things are better then they used to be, so shut up.” But it’s always “shut up” because they seem to be very scared of the objections being made. And there’s always now the argument that you should shut up because if you speak, you are censoring the person you’re talking about. Disagreement is now censorship, which has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the term. The guy on Locus wasn’t censored, he was fired for writing a piece that Locus found editorially substandard for their needs. But the shut up argument requires the assertion that the bully is being victimized by voiced objections to his behavior. It’s the assertion that those in groups regularly bullied asnd their allies have somehow obtained super powers just by speaking up against another instance of it. People can disagree about how serious an incident of bullying, oppression, insults is, but you’re not going to get people to shut up making objections unless you have an army and a prison at your disposal — and not even then necessarily.
What distresses me most in this latest dust up is not the guy who wrote it but the editor of the site who still doesn’t get how bigoted and rabidly hate-mongering the piece was. The one going, “I thought it was funny, you should shut up.” The board at Readercon who decided, “Well it wasn’t so bad, you should shut up now.” And so forth and so on. The people who want to cover it up and bury it, with a nothing to see here. They live in little dream worlds, those people. Unfortunately, they too often run the laws. It’s really tiring, and enough of it does lose us people. But they still aren’t going to shut up.
Jane Wells
April 4, 2013 @ 4:13 pm
Hmmm… That could be cathartic to witness… But I still can’t seem to find in myself enough energy to make the effort.
I vividly remember the day the last straw made me stand up and yell at one of the bullies in English class.
Now, finally, I know I am beautiful, I am successful, I am all those things they said I wasn’t and none of the things they said I was. And – you know – I don’t want to share any of it with any of them.
Laura Resnick
April 4, 2013 @ 4:29 pm
I was fat growing up, and fat girls are subject to a lot of bullying. It was humiliating. For years. And I remember exactly when I finally learned that IGNORING bullying (which had NEVER =EVER= made the bullying stop, in 10 years of being bullied about my weight) was absolutely the wrong, most ineffectual way to handle it.
There was a fellow in my high school who, every time he saw me, would start shrieking loudly, with great hilarity, “Hello, FATSO! Whoa, are you FAT! How’s it going, TONS of FUN! It’s FATTY! How are you, FATTY?” On and on, until I was out of sight. I’d duck into bathrooms to escape him, slip into classrooms that weren’t my destination, leave the building, enter labs (the only time I EVER voluntarily entered a lab), quicken my pace, etc. All to try to Not Be Seen by this kid, who’d keep cheerfully bellowing, “Hey, FATS!” at me until I was out of sight.
One day, he did this in an otherwise empty hall at school with just one of his giggling buddies present. With no one else around, I ignored the giggling buddy and said to this guy, “Why do you do this? I don’t even KNOW you. What do you have against me?”
He reacted as if a piece of broccoli had spoken to him. Seriously. If the brick wall next to us had spoken to him, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. It had clearly never once occurred to him that I was another person in the world. Someone with a pulse. A sentient being. I was literally an OBJECT to this guy.
So he made a few of the usual comments, things I’d heard before, i.e., “I do it because you’re fat. If you don’t want to be teased, don’t be fat.” Etc.
But I didn’t give up. I didn’t weep or shout. I just pointing out that I didn’t know him, I’d never harmed or bothered him, I never pestered him or interacted with him, yet every single time he saw me, a total stranger who’d never once bothered him, he WENT OUT OF HIS WAY to bully, pester, abuse, and humiliate me. Why? What was his mostive in deliberately making life hell for a girl he didn’t know, who had never bothered him.
He left that encounter without apologizing, clearly still gobsmacked that I possessed the ability of speech–which had apparently never once occurred to him.
But he never bothered me again. EVER. The cheerful shouting to humiliate me ended that day. Never happened again.
Now, obviously, not all bullies stop there. (And, indeed, some escalate if confronted–even escalate to murder.) But what I learned from it is that, at some level, the bully sees his/her target as a non-person. I was stunned at how CLEARLY (based on his shock when I SPOKE to him) I was a non-person, an inanimate object to that bully. Much as he enjoyed tormenting me, it had obviously never occurred to him that I had any feelings at all.
Not all bullies are quite as dense and simple-minded as mine obviously was. There can levels of awareness and denial in various bullies (as opposed to the unadulterated stupidity and ignorance that characterized mine). But in each of them is an inherent supposition that the target of their bullying isn’t -quite- a person. Not REALLY. Not in the way that THEY are a person.
Chris Miller
April 4, 2013 @ 8:21 pm
“I find this joke funny. I don’t want to be seen as someone who laughs at victims, therefore they aren’t victims and this isn’t bullying and in fact they’re bullying me by trying to make me feel bad.”
Chris Miller
April 4, 2013 @ 8:25 pm
We don’t have reunions but I can just imagine turning up to mine. “Yeah, I work in humanitarian aid, I’m just taking a break to focus on my studies and then I’ll probably go back to [well-known and respected international charitable organisation].” The eight years after high school were terrible but the last two I’ve been doing so much better for myself.
Lis Riba
April 4, 2013 @ 9:04 pm
FWIW, I attended my ten-year high school reunion, and I think the experience probably saved me thousands of dollars in therapy.
First of all, because I had found acceptance in my current social circles, I realized that my former classmates held no power over me.
Their opinions of me didn’t matter, because I no longer needed their validation.
Secondly, once I could finally see these classmates WITHOUT the filter of power imbalance, I realized that I didn’t really like many of them.
I’m not saying I particularly DISliked anyone, just that I didn’t see I had enough in common with them to make it worth the effort.
Now, I had decided not to indulge in alcohol for the evening, because I wanted my wits about me in what I’d feared might be trecherous social waters.
Have you ever stayed sober and watched a crowd of drunks? Not terribly entertaining.
And thus my third revelation:
If that’s what their parties were like, then I no longer mind never having been invited to a single party through high school.
It was a real eye-opener.
Ravan Asteris
April 5, 2013 @ 7:26 am
“Ignore them”, “They’re just jealous”, “It’s not that bad”, “Is that all they said?”, “Kids will be kids”, “good girls don’t fight”, “Turn the other cheek”.
I’m 51 years old, and I still feel the rage and hurt when I hear this bullshit. They didn’t understand what it was like, they didn’t have to live it, they passed it of as “just” teasing.
I was bullied from kindergarten through high school, where I graduated early to escape. Not much real physical damage, (unless my ‘fall’ from the monkey bars was actually being pushed, I didn’t remember because I had a concussion), but it was literally *years* after high school before I could look at my face in a mirror and like what I saw and not think “ugly”. As in nearly a decade.
Yes, when some people start crying “You’re oppressing me” when they come from a place of privilege, I get pretty cynical. But combining religious bigotry with sexism and fat shaming gets me very pissed.
IMO, the best way to deal with bullies doesn’t exist. The second best is a swift right to the jaw.
Ravan Asteris
April 5, 2013 @ 7:28 am
Oh, yeah “You’re overreacting to a little teasing” was another way to make you suffer when you finally would snap. Suddenly, it was all your fault for being “too sensitive” or “touchy”.
Grrrrr.
Ravan Asteris
April 5, 2013 @ 7:30 am
The life of a bully target is constant microaggressions.
Hellianne
April 5, 2013 @ 11:25 am
I’m another person whom bullies targeted relentlessly, and yes, I’m so familiar with all the stories here.
I’d like to recommend the documentary “Bully” (2011, directed by Lee Hirsch), although please be aware that it contains a LOT of potentially triggering content, including violence, self harm, and suicide. I found it extremely moving and validating.
Lizosaurus Rex
April 5, 2013 @ 2:00 pm
Like so many here, I was bullied regularly, yet my experience seems slightly different in that most of my social exposure was religion based. Lots of private christian schools, home schooled, church functions were our largest social gatherings. And this is where the majority of the bullying happened. I heard phrases like “it’s just teasing”, “they tease you because they like you”, “you need to grow a thicker skin”, “turn the other cheek, Jesus did” from parents, deacons, pastors, and sunday school teachers.
Back when I was a christian, I remember the bible saying things about how we’re brothers & sisters in christ. And that we must have love for all mankind because god loved us all. It’s staggering to look back and realize that such destructive words were aimed at me from the place I should have been protected. Sure they’re humans, just like I am, but a house of faith is supposed to be a refuge from the “evils of the heathen world” where you’re protected by those who are your family in faith. It’s hardly novel, but I look back on my childhood with some measure of horror that my faith and the words of a supposedly loving god were used as a weapon to silence me and belittle the real pain that was happening.
Karen O'Donoghue
April 8, 2013 @ 10:45 am
*THAT*
Oh yes, that exactly. And I’ve never articulated it or heard it articulated that ways before.
Thank You
lkeke35
April 8, 2013 @ 1:49 pm
I think a lot of people use their Christian beliefs as an excuse to be cowardly about a lot of things, including confrontations.
Or rather they’re willing to have confrontations on issues that makes them feel good about themselves and are unwilling to confront other Christians about their behaviour when that behaviour is questionable. This isn’t true of a lot of Christians but enough of them to be observable.
I’m automatically suspicious of people who are always espousing brother and sisterhood and the whole we’re all just one big happy family message. I think that person is either delusional or using their religion as an excuse to stand by and do nothing while others are mistreated.
ginmar
April 8, 2013 @ 3:49 pm
“Ignore them” doesn’t work for anybody but people who don’t want to hear about the victim. It silences the victim and puts an extra burden on them. It doesn’t stop the hurt; it just makes them the problem. That’s the effect of all that ‘oh, just ignore him,’ advice does.
The observer is telling you that they don’t care what someone does to you, they just don’t want to hear about it. That’s indifference, and I think it’s worse than hatred. They just don’t care if you live or die.
The minute somebody offers you ‘just ignore it’ advice, they’re telling you what they think of you.
ginmar
April 8, 2013 @ 3:53 pm
Not even remotely true.
reader
April 8, 2013 @ 9:45 pm
I also wonder how many of the white male bullies in the geek scenes were bullied by athletes themselves and now believe
a) they were bullied by more athletic white boys, ergo they cannot possibly be bullies themselves
b) when they give the “just shut up and don’t feed the trolls” advice to victims of geek bullies, this has zero similarity to the “just shut up and don’t let the jocks know they got to you” advice adults gave them
Brad R. Torgersen
April 10, 2013 @ 4:20 pm
I’m going to play the devil’s advocate and state that just because a thing is “hurtful” does not mean it’s bullying, nor does it mean the item in question should be removed from the public square. Once upon a time Science Fiction (as a field) prized its reputation for being dangerous: to the status quo, to the establishment, to conventional thinking, etc. I am quite certain that if the Locus piece had mocked Libertycon, rich white businessmen, conservatives, Republicans, or Christians, nobody would have whined about it or had it removed. Because then the piece would have been lampooning familiar “approved” targets within the field.
But because the piece lampooned approved Victims (capital v) it is deemed “bullying” and offensive, and is removed.
What Locus should have done is this: provide equal space for a rejoinder on the part of the plaintiffs. Free expression for all, not silencing for some.
Why?
Because the perception of bullying (or bad taste, or offensiveness, or impropriety, what have you) is entirely an eye-of-the-beholder question. It is not a static or objective thing. Some of us found the spoof piece deliciously funny, because it told the truth — at WisCon’s expense, of course. Perhaps not a pleasant truth. Perhaps not a truth all were eager to read or hear. But it told the truth just the same. The best satire always does this: slaying the sacred cows.
Now of course Locus can do whatever it wants and is not obliged to pay attention to my opinions on anything, but for the so-called “news magazine of record” within the field to yank a humor piece — because a few people whined about how offensive it was — well, again, ours is no longer the “dangerous” genre.
I got my dose of bullying as a child and as a teen. Made me wish hot death on a few folks back in the day. Thankfully I (and they) grew up and moved on. And with maturity comes perspective. I am not a prisoner of my past. And I don’t expect the world around me to cater to my hurts and bruises.
So be careful about praising the silencing — and defending the silencers — for so-called “compassionate” reasons. You never know. It might be you (collective) getting silenced some day. Through no fault of your own.
This has been your devil’s advocate moment. Good day.
Jim C. Hines
April 10, 2013 @ 4:29 pm
Brad,
I suppose I should thank you for toning down the rhetoric here, as opposed to your other posts and comments about the “Correctors” running around silencing and threatening those who don’t bow to the Politically Correct Mafia.
Even so, you come here to characterize and dismiss these complaints as “whining.” You argue that bullying is in the eye of the beholder, and even though a large number of beholders agreed this was bullying and inappropriate in the extreme, you apparently privilege your own eye over theirs. You seem to imply that those who feel hurt and attacked need to just grow up and get over it.
And of course, there’s the fact that nobody has been silenced here…
Basically, you’ve looked at this situation wherein people are saying they’re being hurt and bullied. You are not a target of this, but you’ve decided to tell those who are why they’re wrong to complain. You’ve praised the one doing the attacking.
Do you see the irony of you leaving this comment on a blog post talking about those who *enable* bullying?
Laura Resnick
April 10, 2013 @ 8:39 pm
“Once upon a time Science Fiction (as a field) prized its reputation for being dangerous: to the status quo, to the establishment, to conventional thinking, etc.””
And as a woman raised around the field, I always found that self-congratulatory self-image of sf/f erroneous. I always saw sf/f as a white middle-class male genre whose members considered themselves daring and progressive because they dined in ethnic restaurants and encouraged pretty young women to take off their clothes at cons.
I didn’t like sf/f as a teenager or young woman because so few books in the genre portrayed credible female characters, let alone female protagonists. It took a LOT of women coming into the field to start changing that in recent years. (The written “Marketing Strategy” for my first fantasy novel, printed for the sales force to take out there with them, was: “The author is female in a traditionally male genre.” Indeed. And that was only 15 years ago.)
A LOT of women writers have entered the genre in the past 10-15 years and now play a very prominent role in the genre, so that we’re reaching critical mass or a tipping point of so many women in the genre that it’s leading to a change in longstanding social norms in sf/f–including the social norms in this formerly MUCH more homogenous genre (i.e. overwhelmingly male for decades, and still overwhelmingly white) of ridiculing, objectifying, or even (as we saw in various online debates last year and in years before that) groping and stalking women.
As for your “truth” about the WisCon incident, here’s mine: There was numerous ways for that author to handle that situation well; she chose not to employ any of them. I don’t sympathize with writers who behave unprofessionally, make messes they refuse to clean up, and/or become nightmare guests for their convention hosts.
Brad R. Torgersen
April 10, 2013 @ 9:32 pm
If Locus had simply provided space for a rejoinder, I’d not feel inclined to comment — since it would be two sides essentially making their remarks in the public arena. My core complaint is that Locus allowed itself to cater to the perceived “hurt” of the plaintiffs, and pulled the piece. When it’s quite obvious that a similar piece targetting the SMOFs of a convention like Libertycon, or having fun at the expense of Evangelicals and Evangelicalism, would not have raised an eyebrow. Oh, a complaint or two might have filtered in. But the outrage in this case was a very selective, deliberate sort of outrage. And it’s my “privileged” opinion that when you gift the ragers with the notion that they have power . . . well, most roads to hell are paved with good intentions. Locus is free to cater to whatever crowd it wants, just as WisCon is free to cater to whatever crowd it wants. I am free to think less of both Locus and WisCon for allowing the ragers to effect a silencing in the name of “tolerance.” If I find irony in anything, it’s in the actions of individuals and groups who seem to think that their full “safe” expression cannot be achieved without other people being made silent. Either by choice, or by force.
Brad R. Torgersen
April 10, 2013 @ 9:40 pm
One of the unexpected dividends of true diversification is the revelation (not always embraced by self-styled advocates of diversity) that no single ethnicity or gender is same-minded about certain subjects. This is why WisCon has become something of a self-parody because the so-called “Womens Conference” does not want all women — it only wants you if you are a certain kind of woman who has a certain set of opinions about certain subjects. The eviction of Moon was just one visible manifestation of WisCon’s false “inclusivity” as a convention. Which, again, would not have been noteworthy if WisCon had simply provided equal space and time for plaintiffs, as opposed to being “safe” and evicting Moon. Not everyone in the universe thought Moon said or wrote something terrible. But then again, WisCon obviously doesn’t represent every woman — just a selection of women from a certain political frame of reference.
ginmar
April 10, 2013 @ 9:46 pm
Oh, fuck a duck, cry me a river about how bullies can’t get away with it and OMG FREE SPEECH OPPRESSION. It’s funny how people who get so concerned about free speech are only concerned when bullies might be the object of that free speech—-or might be judged for it.
And…’ragers’…? Why not just ask if we’re on the rag?
ginmar
April 10, 2013 @ 9:57 pm
Love all those generalizations. Got any proof that doesn’t sound like Rush Limbaugh said it first? Moon was spectacularly Islamophobic, and people had a right to disinvite her. Somehow, all these arguments defend various bigotries while condemning the victims of said hatred as—-this is almost funny—-as bullies. Reminds me of the wife beater I once had to question. He claimed his wife ran into his fist.
You’re eagerly accepting that story, and condemning the victim for hurting tge attacker’s fist. Oh, and defending the white male power structure, too.
Strange how that works out, innit?
Brad R. Torgersen
April 10, 2013 @ 10:19 pm
Yup, you’ve clearly got me all figured out, ginmar. You are so much smarter than I am. Nobody ever speaks out against progressive samethink unless they listen to Rush Limbaugh. Yup. Yupper. I am positively helpless before your knife-edged powers of inductive perception.
Brad R. Torgersen
April 10, 2013 @ 10:24 pm
My personal policy is that if we have disadvantaged persons or groups who could benefit from a louder voice, then give everyone a megaphone and let them shout as loudly and with as much gusto as they want. WisCon’s policy (and Locus’s as well, apparently) is to take the megaphone away from some people, based purely on arbitrariness designed to appease vocal complainers who think that their ability to express themselves “safely” demands quiet on the part of anyone who might disagree. I am fully for the “loud” society. I am not so much for the “selectively silenced” society.
ginmar
April 10, 2013 @ 10:52 pm
So I guess that means you’re hoping people will ignore the classic sexism of your responses and overlook the fact that you have nothing to back up all your rage I
Laura Resnick
April 10, 2013 @ 11:35 pm
“The eviction of Moon was just one visible manifestation of WisCon’s false “inclusivity” as a convention. ”
I’d go with the eviction of Moon being a financial decision. It’s not nearly as fun to ridicule and get all self-righteous about as the ideological explanation, but since I chaired one con and wrote the budgets for three others, that’s how I see it.
As the boycott against Moon grew, it struck me as increasingly unlikely that the con was fiscally viable. Substantial under-attendance is ruinous for most cons.
If Moon couldn’t or wouldn’t either fix the problem or else voluntarily step down (and, indeed, none of that happened), thus repairing the damage to attendance, then it struck me that shedding her was probably the only fiscally viable choice open to the concom. They still lost attendance, but not nearly as much as they were on the road to losing if she remained GoH.
It wasn’t an ideal solution, but when your GoH becomes a major a fiscal liability due to driving away audience, you’ve got a huge problem to which there -are- no ideal solutions. I’d have disinvited a GoH in those circumstances, simply because all other solutions would have been worse. I sympathized with the WisCon concom, because I’ve run cons, and their GoH created the sort of situation that a con chair dreads being saddled with.
Laura Resnick
April 10, 2013 @ 11:54 pm
I’ll add, btw, that the year before the WisCon mess happened, I was keynote speaker at a con that was very nearly canceled because of low attendance, a problem that’s plagued a lot of cons in recent years, especially since the economy drove to hell in 2008. This was a largish, well-established con that had never had problems before, but registration was running too low that year for the con to be fiscally viable. They couldn’t afford to go forward and were about to cancel…
BUT two other cons that season in that region were canceled due to low registration. They couldn’t afford to proceed.
With those cons canceled, some people decided to shift their con time/money to this con, which at the very last ditch got enough registration to proceed. It was that near a thing… WITHOUT the problem of a large portion of regular attendees boycotting the convention due to a problematic GoH.
Most cons are operating on a delicate balance of numbers. Yes, con-goers and Moon were engaged in an “ideological” brouhaha. But unless the WisCon concom was sitting on a huge war chest, it’s improbable that they had the luxury of making an ideological rather than a financial decision when they uninvited Moon.
Brad R. Torgersen
April 11, 2013 @ 12:54 pm
I am not a habitual con-goer so you’re bringing up a good point I hadn’t thought of: the financial threat posed by a walk out. If enough WisCon members were threatening to withdraw or withhold participation, that certainly poses a financial crisis for the con itself. I’d still have liked for WisCon to keep Moon as GOH and merely provide a panel or other activity where critics could have spoken their beef, but sometimes practical considerations (no money!) come first. If this was the calculus, then I can’t blame the concom as much as I blame the plaintiffs themselves. Because the plaintiffs themselves would have screamed raw, bloody murder if ever one of them were to be evicted from a con for political reasons. Sauce for the goose, and all that.
Laura Resnick
April 11, 2013 @ 1:53 pm
” If this was the calculus, then I can’t blame the concom as much as I blame the plaintiffs themselves. ”
Blame them for what?
Why should anyone choose to spend their hard-won free time and hard-earned discretionary cash to attend a convention honoring/promoting a speaker whose publicly-stated political views they find deeply offensive? What do THEY get out of that? And if they wanted to attend, had planned to attend, or felt a stake in the con, just as Moon’s free-speech rights included the right to her public political essay, attendees free speech rights included the right to tell her, the con, and anyone else in virtual earshot that they were withdrawing attendance because of her.
No one’s free speech, including Moon’s, includes the right to be taken seriously, to be listened to with respect, or to be politely ignored or actively embraced when they’ve offended someone, to be given equal time in someone’s schedule who doesn’t consider their views interesting or worth giving time to.
Finally, Moon had choices for fixing this situation–and she chose not to exercise any of them. And I, for example, am free not to respect such unprofessional behavior in a writer with regard to her public appearances, just as I am free not to consider the April Fool’s “joke” in question witty, insightful, or speaking truth to power (or anyone else).
Hellianne
April 11, 2013 @ 2:37 pm
First off, I’m engaging in good faith here, although I’m not convinced you’ve extended the same to those who’ve tried to engage with you in this thread so far. But know that I have to deal with being the target of sexism every damn day, and I have no patience at all for men who won’t listen to what women say about their experiences. I simply don’t have the energy to try endlessly to convince anyone (including you) that I’m actually a full human being entitled to the same basic decency as anyone else– and that I am routinely denied that. So I’ll give you a bit of guidance, but after that, it’s up to you. I recommend that you begin by acknowledging that women know a hell of lot more than you do about how sexism works.
Your contrast between the pulled piece and a hypothetical “similar piece targetting [sic] the SMOFs of a convention like Libertycon [etc.]” is a false equivalence. This is not debatable. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s not a matter of perspective, there aren’t two equally valid “sides.” Here’s why.
When it comes to gender, women are oppressed and men have privilege. Any joke or satire that is at the expense of women serves to reinforce the power structure of women on the bottom, men on the top. It actively participates in the power structures that ensure that I am far more likely than a man to be sexually assaulted, that I’m more likely to be underpaid, that people tend to disbelieve my accounts of my own experiences simply because of my gender, that I am less likely to receive quality healthcare, that people will perceive me as an object rather than a person, etc. You mention “perceived ‘hurt’,” implying that it’s not real. All those things I mentioned there are real, they really do hurt, and they cause real harm. For those women hit the hardest, the results can be poverty, violence, and even death.
Every joke that trivializes that harm helps perpetuate it. It sends a message that we women hear loud and clear: “You’re lying about how misogyny affects you. And even if you aren’t, we can’t be bothered to change our behavior, no matter how damaging it is to you. Our fun is more important than your fun; it’s even more important than your lives.” It also sends a message to anyone who does cause harm to women: “Between you and me, it really is okay if you hit her/pay her less/rape her/don’t listen to her/etc. Women don’t really count, not like us men.”
Locus sensibly realized that they didn’t want to send that message to their readership.
If jokes in the other direction– ones that strike at men as a class– actually were equivalent to misogynistic jokes, then they would have the effect of reversing the power structure. But that is manifestly not what happens. No words can convince anyone that a man isn’t a unique individual with his own opinions, priorities, and wants, because our society already imbues the identity of “man” with a full human identity. Humanity is inherent in the label “man” in a way that it isn’t in “woman.”
A piece that strikes down the power hierarchy causes harm. It makes it that much easier for an employer to justify paying me less or for that guy at my (now former) gaming group to crack another “make me a sammich” comment. Striking at a privileged group is not equivalent.
The latter is satire, for it points out the failures of our supposedly egalitarian society. The former is bullying. It changes nothing. It’s kicking an entire class of people who are already down. And if you think that’s entertaining, you’re kind of a sick fuck.
(And just to be clear: I don’t think direct personal attacks are okay against anyone, regardless of privilege. That’s a separate thing from mocking a group. Likewise, attacking a person based on his or her inherent characteristics isn’t okay; mocking actions is a different thing.)
About your claims regarding “silencing.” No one is silencing that misogynistic piece. All that’s happened is that one journal said, “We don’t want this in our space.” Well, that “joke” would be more than welcome in almost any forum on the internet. The places where I can go and not be subjected to misogyny are rare. The places where I can say “Please stop making misogynistic jokes” without being threatened with rape and murder are few and far between. I am not exaggerating. In those conditions, it’s almost impossible to muster up the courage to speak out against misogyny. It effectively prevents me from speaking.
Women are routinely silenced. Men are not.
I’ve explained this power dynamic along the lines of gender. The same basic principles apply to other identities: race, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness, class, cis/trans status, citizenship, employment, body type, religion, and more. A person can have privilege in some areas and not others. I lack gender privilege, but I’m white. I won’t ever be the target of racism. So I seek out information about racism, I read what people of color write about their experiences and I believe them, I try to empathize as best I can, I try to act and speak with awareness that their experiences are in many ways fundamentally different from my own.
What I don’t do is complain when racists are asked to take their hate elsewhere. I don’t proclaim that tolerance demands including people who drive away people of color. (Because people who are racist can– and should– change their racism. People of color can’t change their race. Again, it’s a false equivalence.) If I did behave that way, I certainly hope people would clue me in to the fact that I was acting like a real jerk– and that I was contributing to the harm that racism inflicts on people of color.
And just to head you off at the pass: I also don’t demand that people of color take time out of their day to explain Racism 101 to me. Instead, I seek out that information on my own and take responsibility for educating myself. (In case it’s not clear what I’m hinting at: Please use the internet to seek out information on Feminism 101 and privilege. You could also use some education about Derailing for Dummies and the concept of intersectionality. Please do not ask me to explain these to you. The resources are out there. Use them.)
Laura Resnick
April 11, 2013 @ 3:38 pm
I think a lot of the “controversy” over the April Fool’s joke being taken down or (as has arisen here) Elizabeth Moon being disinvited at WisCon (which was evidently the inspiration for the April Fool’s joke) arises from a notion I don’t agree with, which is that the right of free speech includes the right to use other people’s megaphones for it whether they want you to or not.
You don’t have a right to be offered a platform by others for your speech. If they think your speech is bad for their platform–is bad for business, costs them money, offends or alienates their audience, damages their professional or public image, undermines their credibility, offends or alienates -them-, etc., etc… Well, it’s their platform. It’s not within their rights to forbid you to speak on other platforms, including any of your own (or on a corner in Hyde Park, etc.); but it’s well within their rights to say, “Please get off my platform, I don’t want you using it.”
My grandmother never allowed anyone to say the word “mustard” in her house. She -ate- mustard, but she hated the word. We had to call it “M.” Yes, this was ridiculous. No, I never understood it. No, she had no rational explanation for it. But you know what? Her house, her rules. She didn’t want me to say mustard in her house, so I didn’t say it there.
Lawrence Person (he was the author, wasn’t he?) is free to post his “joke” on his own site or any site that welcomes it. That doesn’t make him free to post it on a site that DOESN’T welcome it–and Locus decided it didn’t. That’s not censorship, that’s housekeeping. I gather it’s being described in some places as some sort of lily-livered PC Nazism, etc., etc.–but there’s always the possibility that it’s just, oh, good taste. Or mustard.
Laura Resnick
April 11, 2013 @ 4:06 pm
“If Locus had simply provided space for a rejoinder, I’d not feel inclined to comment — since it would be two sides essentially making their remarks in the public arena.””
And I agree with this. (Let’s pause and take it in, Brad. I’m… AGREEING with you.)
I don’t particularly have a beef with Locus taking it down, because I am (as mentioned below) very much a proponent of the “my house, my rules” school of thought, and you only get to use my own megaphone for your speech if I don’t think your speech is a pile of steaming shit.
That said, I very much believe that best solution to bad speech isn’t to silence it but to counter it with MORE speech, i.e. speech that challenges, disagrees, corrects, argues, whatever. I always think this is a better solution, and in that respect I am inclined to agree it would have been a better solution to the Locus incident. Then again, that assumes that Locus -wanted- it’s platform to be used for what might well have been a very long, nasty, ugly, name-calling discussion having almost nothing to do with Locus’ focus or business or intent–and maybe they didn’t, which I can understand.
Encouraging an exchange of counter speech might have been a better solution to the Moon/WisCon incident in theory, in a perfect world; in the real world, though, I have pragmatic doubts that they could have made that work fiscally, given the boycott underway–and bankrupting your con just isn’t a workable solution. NO ONE gets to speak if the con can’t go forward.
Adam Goss
April 11, 2013 @ 8:19 pm
Mr. Hines… I was that kid with the syringe once, too. Not exactly that scenario, a different one, but for the same damn reasons. And all the things you listed, that people tell to bullying victims, I heard almost all of them myself… God I am shaking as I write this, and I am 40 years old now. Thank you, Mr. Hines. You get it. Thank you so very much for saying it. I wish more people would.
Adam Goss
April 11, 2013 @ 8:26 pm
Laura, thank you for acknowledging that not all bullies stop when confronted. Some escalate, sometimes (all too often) to the point of violence. Too many people just do not get it; they don’t understand the problem, having no personal experience themselves, and they think a worsening of the situation can’t happen or won’t happen, until someone pays the price for that blindness and lack of motivation.
Jacques
April 16, 2013 @ 2:23 pm
Varsity Anagram, which produces the “On-a-roll-student” trademarked motivational items for students, has also launched “Pro-Tolerance” wristbands. Wearers are making a positive and visible declaration that they will neither promote nor participate in any form of discrimination, including bullying. The wristbands are available on our http://www.varsityvocab.com website.