A while back I made the comment that the major SFF awards seem to be discriminating against Hispanic/LatinX/Native American authors. In the past few years, it’s been easy to run down the list of nominees and see a good representation of African American, Asian and LGBTQ authors, with a sprinkling of Arabs, Pacific Islanders, etc. However, there’s been a consistent shortage of Hispanic/LatinX/Native American names in the nominations and in the Locus reviews and other reading lists that feed into the awards. This is in spite of the fact that Hispanics are the largest US minority, and combined with Native Americans, come in at about 1/3 of the population. Comments on the blog suggested that the issue was that the people who vote for the awards just don’t like the type of fiction those people write.
The lack of representation is no surprise. Despite the large numbers of Hispanics/Native Americans in the US population, they’re still highly marginalized and discriminated against in jobs, education, housing, immigration and lots of other areas. There’s really no shortage of accomplished writers within this group, so it makes you wonder what’s been going on in the publishing and awards systems to keep the Hispanic/LatinX/Native America authors so unrecognized. Now, we have a clear case of discrimination within the SFF community that suggests what might be going on.
Jon Del Arroz is Latino and, as such, falls clearly into the marginalized minority brown author-of-color category. Like many Hispanics, he apparently also falls on the moderate to conservative side of the political spectrum. His current publisher is Superversive Press, known for pulp type fiction, but also a publisher of fairly right leaning works.
Del Arroz posted a blog here about his experiences back in the spring. According to Del Arroz, he was initially promoted at local Bay area cons as a minority author, but found himself placed in panel discussions that were political and left-leaning, rather than about SFF or promoting books. Once his politics became known, says Del Arroz, then the discrimination started, based more on his ideas than his race.
In the late summer, Del Arroz was lumped with those “middle aged white dudes” after his nomination for the Dragon Awards. This was followed by a campaign in December 2017 to try to get the SFWA management to reject his application for membership. He’s also been banned from WorldCon.
So, are Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans being excluded from the SFF community mainly because of their political views? Clearly Del Arroz thinks politics is currently trumping his marginalized minority status as a Latino. How does a socially conscious community reconcile this kind of behavior?
Lela E. Buis 
Jan 15, 2018 @ 02:32:12
The backlash against JDA isn’t because he’s conservative, it’s because of how he conducts himself online, as documented at length here:
http://www.jimchines.com/2018/01/jon-del-arroz/
Bear in mind that Benjanun Sriduangkaew – a left-wing intersectionalist – behaved in a similar fashion and faced a comparable backlash.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 05:10:55
Came here to say that. Also, it seems strange that Lela E. Buis never seems to know the context around the issue she addresses.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:26:45
Sorry, it was that “keep the SFWA a safe space for marginalized authors” by refusing JDA that set me off. Another issue of context?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 11:34:02
The harassment outlined in the Jim Hines post linked above gives the context. I can see from other replies here that you don’t believe people from marginalized groups should be held accountable for any of their actions. I’m pretty liberal, though not to the point of being a leftist, but this is not a position I recognize as liberal, and I don’t understand your reasoning. Can you clarify?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 09:54:01
In fucking deed.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:01:37
Requires Hate (Benjanun Sriduangkaew) in a similar fashion? Not even close. RH issues multiple rape and death threats that should have been criminally actionable. RH never apologized beyond some halfhearted mumbles. That is moral equivalency of the worst stripe.
I grew up in a town that was 40% of Hispanic, some American citizens, some not. Most were socially conservative, corresponding to them being overwhelmingly Catholic, except in the area of civil rights and labor rights. Because of this conservative duality, I believe, Hispanics have tended to be viewed with suspicion and marginalized by both of the extremes. This continues the trend, this time by the left-leaning SFF literati.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:32:58
I don’t think Del Arroz is the example you want to pick, though. He left the impression that the only reason he wanted to join SFWA was so he could come to the SFWA lounge at WorldCon to harass people on a hidden camera. That’s what got him banned. Not his race and not his opinions.
I do see a number of people with Hispanic surnames getting their stories published in the magazines I review, so there’s certainly no ban on it. It would take some serious research to determine whether there’s a statistically significant bias in terms of awards.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 12:56:42
Debateable. As nasty as Sriduangkaew’s behaviour was, I’m not sure how many of her targets thought her threats involving acid and mutilation were credible. I had the same crap – threats of violence, encouragement of suicide – directed at me on a regular basis when I used to post at video game forums as a teenager, and when I read Laura Mixon’s report, my main impression was that Sriduangkaew was another garden variety forum bully of the kind I’d had to put up with as a teenager. Might be a generational thing.
As for legal action, well, I live in a country where libel laws are pretty tight. JDA’s behaviour includes, amongst other things, making false accusations relating to paedophilia; if he tried that over here, he might well be sued. So from my perspective, both RH and JDA are internet trolls doing things that, where I live, might get a person in legal trouble – and I wouldn’t place bets on who’d face the harsher penalty.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 05:33:48
I know Doris posted this already, but you can’t see it enough. Please read this post and follow all the links. If you aren’t merely a right-wing troll, you will see what a jerk Jon del Arroz truly is.
http://www.jimchines.com/2018/01/jon-del-arroz/
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 05:38:45
Please not, in the comments on Jim Hines’ post:
“Thanks for putting this out there, Jim. I was chair of BayCon last year, and thought this over until Jon surfaced again to force Worldcon to ban him. The most laughable claim of his when the turmoil began was that he was being discriminated against because he is Hispanic. By myself and Susie Rodriguez, who are both also Hispanic. This guy will say anything to get attention, and most importantly, to get his book sales up.”
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 10:29:10
Lela said: “So, are Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans being excluded from the SFF community mainly because of their political views? Clearly Del Arroz thinks politics is currently trumping his marginalized minority status as a Latino.”
Well, Jon del Arroz is clearly a White Hispanic, Lela, and therefore eligible for the Angry Conservative White Male treatment. I would agree that however many Hispanic and Native American authors there may be out there doing SF/F, -if- their politics are Conservative in any noticeable way, they are getting the same hard exclusion all other Conservative authors are. See Sarah Hoyt (Portuguese), Larry Correia (Portuguese) and Theodore Beale (Native American) for further elucidation.
And now, someone will helpfully explain to me that Portuguese are not Hispanic and that Vox Day is Satan, not a Native American. Thereby making my point. Thanks, considerate SJW.
Lela said: “How does a socially conscious community reconcile this kind of behavior?”
By moving the goal posts, obviously.
I read the article by Jim C. Hines that was posted by Kathodus and Doris V. Sutherland. I see nothing there that hasn’t been done to -me- by a variety of Left leaning SF/F blogs, authors etc. Two in particular have an extremely unwholesome habit of taking my comments and posting them out of context, even though I am banned from commenting there. They take my comments from places like Mad Genius Club, According to Hoyt and Monster Hunters International, splicing and dicing the comment, then coyly refuse to post my rebuttal. Generally I post the rebuttal at my blog, because why would I let idiots slander me on the internet?
Likewise I’ve been slandered with homosexual slurs, called Autistic (accurate!), called a Nazi (inaccurate!) and a huge number of other things. This is as common as dirt on Lefty sites.
They do it to a lot of people. Their odious behavior shows no signs of abating. But oddly, I do not see anyone taking them to task, kicking them out of the SFWA or suspending their WorldCon memberships. Because it’s okay to be mean to The Phantom, right? He’s one of Those People. Ew.
Conversely, I am -very- sure that should my SF work start selling out there, the SFWA would find a reason not to let me join. Or make a brand new reason from whole cloth.
WorldCon, if I started mentioning that certain authors/hangers-on were planning to harass me in person at the con over my political views, would comb through my 15 years of on-line history and find something they could point at with horror [gasp!] clutch their pearls tightly and cancel my membership.
Because they are NOT a “socially conscious” community. They are a community of avowed Leftists who use “diversity” and “social consciousness” for the propaganda value. Being Conservative is anathema. Conservatives will be subject to the full weight of rejection they can bring to bear.
That’s why Jon del Arroz is being a jerk to you SJWs on line. He’s making sales based on YOUR bad behavior. There’s a large constituency out here for that kind of thing, and del Arroz is addressing them. I myself hope to be denounced early and often when I publish. Being denounced by the SJWs is the best advertising an author can get these days.
In the near future I expect WorldCon to escalate their ill behavior with Puppy dox-lists of people who voted “wrong”, wholesale expulsions for incorrect politics, and all the other sorts of things one usually associates with Communists. All it will take is a couple more people like del Arroz calling them out, making them walk their Diversity! talk, and it will happen.
We can see you, you know.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 12:09:52
I’m pretty sure that Portuguese people are white, but what would I know? I live in Massachusetts.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 12:33:06
“I read the article by Jim C. Hines that was posted by Kathodus and Doris V. Sutherland. I see nothing there that hasn’t been done to -me- by a variety of Left leaning SF/F blogs, authors etc.”
Well, if anyone’s falsely accused you of supporting paedophilia (as JDA has to the current SFWA president) then I’d say that deserves condemnation. Point me to the culprit(s) and I might do a blog post on the topic.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 13:13:05
Doris V. Sutherland said: “Well, if anyone’s falsely accused you of supporting paedophilia (as JDA has to the current SFWA president) then I’d say that deserves condemnation.”
No one has accused me of that specific perversion lately. However I have been accused of hating gays and wanting them all tossed in concentration camps, which is probably worse. I don’t see anyone rushing to condemn that. I’m also a trans-hater according some, just so you know. Also a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist. Oh, and I also want to kill little furry animals and turn the Earth into a cinder. Denier, you know. Most unfortunate.
Point being, there’s plenty of monkeys flinging poo all over the place, all the time. I’m sure if somebody went combing through your blog they’d find something to clutch their pearls over too. I’ve seen people twist “Good morning” into a racist threat of violence.
If SFWA wants to exclude people from membership over voting for a particular presidential candidate, or because they were unpleasant to someone on Twitter once, they can do that. It’s their club. Free country, right?
But if they do, they should stop claiming to be a professional organization representing authors in the business world. Because that is not how professional organizations operate. If JDA was a doctor and we were talking about the AMA, he’d be suing their asses off, and winning.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:26:43
@phantom —
“However I have been accused of hating gays and wanting them all tossed in concentration camps, which is probably worse. I don’t see anyone rushing to condemn that. I’m also a trans-hater according some, just so you know. Also a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist. Oh, and I also want to kill little furry animals and turn the Earth into a cinder. Denier, you know. Most unfortunate.”
Unlike JDA’s accusations regarding, there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to those accusations. I’m not saying those accusations are correct — hyperbole and over-generalization are objectionable no matter which side resorts to them — but give evidence its due.
“or because they were unpleasant to someone on Twitter once”
But here’s the thing: the issues with JDA aren’t about “being unpleasant once”. They are about an ongoing pattern of abusive behavior, which has on multiple occasions included recruiting other monkeys to help him fling that poo at multiple different targets.
“If JDA was a doctor and we were talking about the AMA, he’d be suing their asses off, and winning.”
Baloney.
From the AMA Membership Terms and Conditions: “As part of a physician organization committed to strengthening the ethics of medicine, every member pledges to uphold the Principles of Medical Ethics as interpreted in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics, and to comply with the Bylaws of the American Medical Association and the Rules of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.”
Like the AMA, the SFWA has a Code of Conduct, which includes the following requirements (among others):
“CODE OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
As a professional, a science fiction/fantasy writer and member of SFWA should:
“Deal with members and the public with courtesy and honesty, and refrain from spamming fellow members in email, gratuitous insults (flaming), and ad hominem attacks.”
“Not make false statements, spread rumors or innuendo, or deliberately misrepresent fellow members in private or public with the intent of damaging their reputations, private lives, or careers.”
“Present self and field in the best possible light in public appearances.”
“Respect a fellow member’s time. No pressure should be made upon members to provide support to other writers unless it is their wish.”
JDA has already violated these tenets of the code multiple times, and he has not shown any interest in mending his ways. SFWA has every right — both moral and legal — to refuse him membership on these grounds.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 16:48:05
Con-fabulist said: “Unlike JDA’s accusations regarding, there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to those accusations.”
If you think that somewhere, some when, I have in truth seriously advocated that gays should be stuck onto cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps, or anything similar, then please feel free to provide page and paragraph.
Which you and I both know you can’t do. And since you can’t, you are making a baseless and disgusting smear.
-You- are exactly the type of person I’m talking about. The type who freely smears other people and faces no pushback from WorldCon or SFWA, or indeed any Left-leaning blog. You do it all the time.
Why are you even talking to me? Did you forget that Calvin ball is not being played here anymore?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 17:43:38
@phantom —
“If you think that somewhere, some when, I have in truth seriously advocated that gays should be stuck onto cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps, or anything similar, then please feel free to provide page and paragraph.”
Now, now, phantom. Read my previous message again, slowly and carefully. As I quite clearly and specifically stated: “I’m not saying those accusations are correct”. IOW, I have NOT made a claim that you “have in truth seriously advocated” anything in particular.
Please do try to keep up.
“The type who freely smears other people”
Please post any baseless “smear” I have made against anyone.
Be specific.
We’ll be waiting.
“Why are you even talking to me?”
As I’ve reminded you multiple times before, and as I’ll keep reminding you every time you ask — this is a public message board. I will continue to respond to whomever I like, whenever I like. Unlike JDA, I will not “troll the shit out of” you here or in email or Twitter or anywhere else, nor recruit buddies to do so — but I will indeed continue to post on public message boards at my own pleasure and whim.
If you wish to have private conversations with anyone, by all means feel free to contact them through private means.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 19:50:19
Sorry Contrarius. I’m not buying it. You said:
That is precisely the sort of baloney that JDA shovels out. Toss out a little innuendo. Say that you disavow the accuracy of the accusations. And then let the smear sit there.
If the Phantom has said something specifically racist/sexist/etc., then it shouldn’t be too much trouble to find a credible citation to back up your assertion. Otherwise, your tactics are just the the reverse side of a coin that features JDA on the obverse side.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 20:05:23
@Dann —
“That is precisely the sort of baloney that JDA shovels out.”
No, here’s just two examples of the sort of baloney that JDA actually shovels out:
“Trust me, male. You’re a laughing stock in the real publishing world. And that has nothing to do with your politics. It has everything to do with the fact that you’re a liar and a total creep. I love sperg SJW trolls on the blog.”
and
“A couple of weeks ago, I found out that I had been blackballed from speaking at my own home convention, a place I’ve loved and cherished for almost a decade. This was a wanton act of discrimination.[….]With a supposed emphasis on diversity, this act done to a Hispanic casts an even darker shadow.”
IOW, JDA makes specific personal attacks and false claims that are easily proved to be false.
“then it shouldn’t be too much trouble to find a credible citation to back up your assertion.”
Luckily for me, I made no such assertion.
Please stop putting words in my mouth.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:09:57
While I find his some of his “humor” and views reprehensible, the question is, are those things bannable offenses? Lots of people are jerks. I know, because I met some at Worldcon, and some of them are “leading lights” of the SFF community. That’s never been a bannable offense. I’m trying to find an instance of something Del Arroz has done that’s actually bannable, even among all those links.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:28:27
Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? Del Arroz hasn’t actually -done- anything at all, and his on-line activities are, at the very worst, a bit rude.
WorldCon and SFWA are banning him over politics. It is plain, obvious and I actually don’t have a problem with them doing that. If they want to kick out every Conservative from their membership, they can.
If they came out and said “We are banning JDA because he’s an annoying asshole on-line, and a Conservative, and we don’t like him,” then I’d say great, it’s your club, go for it. The lying, weaseling and abusive use of power is what irritates me. They not allowed, by their own rules, to do that. So they made up some pre-crime story and banned him anyway.
In the real world of Real Life, where there are things like laws and stuff, TALKING about maybe doing something that is not against the law someday is not an actionable offense. You have to actually -do- it, and it has to be actually illegal. Then the cops come, after you did it.
And please, let’s not have anybody try to pretend talking about maybe taking a video is the same as talking about making a terrorist attack or a murder, shall we? Because that would be idiotic.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:32:45
@phantom —
“Del Arroz hasn’t actually -done- anything at all”
Baloney. He is a proven serial harasser who not only harasses people himself, but who also recruits other people to amplify his harassment. He himself has announced campaigns to “troll the shit out of” various people he doesn’t like.
“WorldCon and SFWA are banning him over politics.”
Baloney. First, SFWA hasn’t actually banned JDA from anything yet. I do expect them to, but it hasn’t happened. Second, they are (or will) ban him for his ongoing pattern of behavior, not over politics. Yet again: if people got banned for being conservative, we wouldn’t see folks like Jerry Pournelle attending the cons.
“In the real world of Real Life, where there are things like laws and stuff, TALKING about maybe doing something that is not against the law someday is not an actionable offense.”
Of course it is — if you are a private membership organization, like the SFWA is. That’s something called “protecting your members from abuse”.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 09:55:01
Is Jon Del Arroz even Hispanic?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 10:22:08
Is Andrew’s mom going to be getting a phone call from the sheriff today? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:19:20
Isn’t it a basic tent of the social left that people can identify as whatever they want? Even in instances as absurd as the Scandinavian-descended Caucasian Rachel Dolezal rising high in the the NAACP by identifying as black, many on the left defended her. It’s hypocritical now for anyone to try to say JDA is not Hispanic, or that he can’t identify how he chooses.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 11:43:27
That’s one of those policies that just doesn’t work, does it? It sounds nice, but as soon as you get Vox Day claiming to be Native American and that lady claiming to be black it’s instantly clear that things can’t really work that way. Self-identification is a nice principle, but it can’t be the only principle.
However, in Del Arroz’s case, everything I’ve seen suggests that he really is Hispanic. I knew a blond-haired, blue-eyed Hispanic guy whose grandfather was from Spain, and I know he faced some discrimination based solely on his name, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Del Arroz got some too. But his problems with WorldCon and the SFWA are of his own making; they have nothing to do with his race or his politics.
And, to answer someone’s earlier question, no, Portuguese isn’t Hispanic. The word hispânico in Portuguese only includes Spanish speakers, for example. Most Portuguese-Americans don’t like being called Hispanic either. I’m surprise anyone thinks this is an issue.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 13:39:43
Greg Hullender said: “And, to answer someone’s earlier question, no, Portuguese isn’t Hispanic.”
“Hispanic” is one of those Diversity terms that gets bent around to mean whatever is most politically convenient at the time. Portuguese-speakers from South American countries such as Brazil or Uruguay are considered Hispanic by the US government. The only time “Hispanic” as a catch-all category is questioned is when somebody wants to deny “protected minority” status to an individual over some political issue.
That’s when you see stuff like George Zimmerman getting labeled “white Hispanic” and so forth. Also, hilariously, actual Spaniards are often not considered “Hispanic” for a variety of reasons. They get to be “Europeans” like Sarah Hoyt.
Its funny how the only time anybody breaks out the Race Rule-book is when the individual in question is Conservative. If JDA was a Lefty we would not be having this discussion. It would all be about race-hatred, and Hispanics never get an even break, etc.
When you start breaking things down by race, to see who gets more brownie points for being hard done by, this is the type of nonsense that ensues. I believe Vox Day has American Indians in his family tree somewhere. He’s 1/4 somethingorother, I remember hearing someplace. But I don’t care, because the notion of claiming special brownie points based on who married who a hundred years ago is ridiculous.
The Left is -supposed- to care though, because Indian is a protected group. Unless the Indian in question is a conservative. Then they hate him twice as hard.
You can see why we would mock that type of thing, yes?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:45:21
@phantom —
“Portuguese-speakers from South American countries such as Brazil or Uruguay are considered Hispanic by the US government.”
Yet again — no, they aren’t.
I’ve explained this to you before. But I know how much you like to ignore facts.
From Pew:
“If you turn to the U.S. government for answers, you quickly discover that it has two different approaches to this definitional question. Both are products of a 1976 act of Congress and the administrative regulations that flow from it.
One approach defines a Hispanic or Latino as a member of an ethnic group that traces its roots to 20 Spanish-speaking nations from Latin America and Spain itself (but not Portugal or Portuguese-speaking Brazil).
The other approach is much simpler. Who’s Hispanic? Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren’t.”
[….]
“Q. What about Brazilians, Portuguese, and Filipinos? Are they Hispanic?
A. They are in the eyes of the Census if they say they are, even though these countries do not fit the official OMB definition of “Hispanic” because they are not Spanish speaking. For the most part, people who trace their ancestry to these countries do not self-identify as Hispanic when they fill out their Census forms. Only about 4% of immigrants from Brazil do so, as do just 1% of immigrants from Portugal or the Philippines. ”
———-
“The only time “Hispanic” as a catch-all category is questioned is when somebody wants to deny “protected minority” status to an individual over some political issue.”
Baloney. In reality, very VERY few people of Portuguese-speaking descent identify as Hispanic. See above.
“I believe Vox Day has American Indians in his family tree somewhere. He’s 1/4 somethingorother, I remember hearing someplace.”
Can we start calling him Pocahontas, like Trump calls Elizabeth Warren?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:16:00
@Contrarius
Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:21:18
@Dann —
“If someone thought VD’s claim to Indian heritage to be specious, then such a reference would at least be equivalent to Mr. Trump’s use of the term. ”
That is what I had in mind, yes. 😉
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 16:41:23
I suppose that as long as one were to accept Mr. Trump’s usage towards Ms. Warren, then it would be appropriate to use the same technique towards VD. I’ve yet to find such a person, but….you do you….as the kids like to say.
I dislike most uses of sarcasm precisely because so many practitioners are unwilling to accept it when the tables are turned.
Regards,
Dann
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 17:55:56
@Dann —
“so many practitioners are unwilling to accept it when the tables are turned.”
So true!
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:47:59
@phantom —
Oh, btw — More than 99% of Uruguayans speak Spanish, not Portuguese. As it happens, my high school Spanish teacher was from Uruguay. 😉
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:04:50
We should call him Puke-a-hontas.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 16:57:04
Calvin said: “I’ve explained this to you before. But I know how much you like to ignore facts.”
Actually I love facts. I’m merely ignoring you, because I think you are lying. You lied about me, why wouldn’t you lie about this too?
At the risk of repeating myself, stop talking to me.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 17:50:06
@phantom —
“Actually I love facts. I’m merely ignoring you, because I think you are lying.”
Tsk, phantom. It’s really not very smart of you to accuse me of lying when my statements are so easily verified.
As I mentioned in my previous post, those quotations I posted were from the Pew Research Center, from a page titled “Who’s Hispanic?”. And if for some odd reason you believe that **Pew** is lying, you can verify the same facts at multiple other sites, including the Census Bureau itself and The Portuguese-American Journal, which states (again, quite clearly): “According to Michael C. Cook, responsible for the US Census Bureau public affairs and media relations, the US Census Bureau does not intend “to classify people of Portuguese origin as Hispanic,” in 2020.”
Google is your friend.
“You lied about me, why wouldn’t you lie about this too?”
Please quote any lie I have stated about you or anyone or anything else.
Be specific.
We’ll be waiting.
“At the risk of repeating myself, stop talking to me.”
At the risk of repeating myself, no.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 13:55:31
Yes, Jon Del Arroz is definitely Hispanic/Latino/Native American. Del Arroz means “of the rice” in Spanish. At the risk of sounding like I notice these things, he is not white. His face has a definite Latino cast. In this case, you can see the Native American ancestry. Trying to re-define him as a white European just isn’t going to work.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:04:15
I thought he was Spanish.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 22:37:20
That’s not Spain in his face. It’s Mexico.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 10:30:30
I generally avoid JDA associated stuff. It isn’t worth the headache.
Most of the events that he spotlights as “racism” are more accurately described as “people avoiding interaction with someone who is less than cordial”.
Regards,
Dann
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:17:24
@Lela —
“There’s really no shortage of accomplished writers within this group, so it makes you wonder what’s been going on in the publishing and awards systems to keep the Hispanic/LatinX/Native America authors so unrecognized.”
No need to wonder. As clearly stated in previous discussions, a large part of their perceived lack of recognition is that Hispanic authors are tending to write a lot of magical realism, which is not favored by the sff awards voters. Hispanic authors who write in more “mainstream” sff styles, like the Older siblings and Silvia Moreno-Garcia for just a couple of examples, are getting good attention from both the reading public and from awards organizations.
There’s an interesting (but self-reporting, so somewhat limited, and only covering 2018) list of active Hispanic authors in sff available here:
http://www.silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/latin2018/
“Now, we have a clear case of discrimination within the SFF community”
Baloney. The only “discrimination” going on with JDA is “discrimination” against a known serial harasser. And both Worldcon and SFWA have responsibilities to protect their members against harassment.
“Once his politics became known, says Del Arroz, then the discrimination started, based more on his ideas than his race.”
Don’t believe everything you read. Or do you automatically believe every murder suspect who declares himself to be innocent?
If you’d actually bother to read the Hines link, you’ll see that JDA was actually welcome to be on another BayCon panel the year after his supposed banishment. But instead of rationally accepting the reality that cons like to rotate their panel members, he decided to go flouncing off in a huff instead.
He’s got one of the biggest martyr complexes I’ve ever seen. Truly a work of art.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 15:31:07
Oh, I should also post the link to the 2017 list of active Hispanic writers:
http://www.silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/latin-americans-in-english-language-spec-lit-2017/
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:16:57
Are you pointing out that Del Arroz isn’t listed? I see he’s had a book published in 2017. Why do you suppose he was omitted from the list?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:35:01
@Lela —
“Are you pointing out that Del Arroz isn’t listed?”
Nope, I was pointing to a listing of active Hispanic authors in the sff field. It’s got info on works, type of work (length, sf/f/magical realism), publisher, and so on. Interesting stuff.
“Why do you suppose he was omitted from the list?”
He wasn’t “omitted”. As I stated in my previous post, the list requires self-reporting — the authors have to fill out the information themselves in order to get onto the list. If he’s not on the list (I hadn’t noticed), it’s because he didn’t go and fill out the info himself.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 21:14:51
Calvin: “Please quote any lie I have stated about you or anyone or anything else.”
Okay. Just this one time, Calvin.
Above, at Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:26:43, Calvin said: “Unlike JDA’s accusations regarding, there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to those accusations.”
That, Calvin, is a -lie-.
And now, Calvin, we are done.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:26:13
@phantom —
Above, at Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:26:43, Calvin said: “Unlike JDA’s accusations regarding, there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to those accusations.”
“That, Calvin, is a -lie-.”
The word “lie” does not mean what you seem to think it means.
In reality, “lie” means “an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive”. Merriam-Webster is your friend.
Here’s the relevant part of my statement: “there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to those accusations.”
Unlike a lie, this is a true statement. First, remember: I very clearly called these accusations hyperbole and over-generalization, NOT fact — but again, as I stated, there is at least some evidence (your own prior words) to connect you to them.
Let’s look back at the specific accusations you originally referenced. I’ve got them listed below, paired with a few relevant quotes extracted from just the last few months of comments on Lela’s blog. I’m not going to bother to check other sites on which you’ve posted, though I’m confident there would be additional evidence there.
1. hating gays
— You have frequently made various anti-gay statements, like: “My sour disposition strongly suspects Rey will acquire a girlfriend in the next installment, mostly because they didn’t check off that box yet. ”
— You appear to resent gay representation in popular entertainment: “I’ve been binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy for a few weeks…and due to the show being such a long run I’ve been able to notice a few things.[….] Then a gay romance between two women, which was presented in a far, far more positive light.[…..] Then some minor male-male romances, always presented as very positive, very brave and hugely tragic. There are gay weddings, gay relationships with kids, there’s a four-person relationship with kids, and so forth.[….]A trans episode. [….]They have a very, very unsubtle series of under-age gay patient episodes, senior’s gay episodes, lots of anti-military messaging. Gay divorce, with child custody.[….]The show is no longer a romance vehicle with some message, its 100% message fiction with torture, not romance, for flavoring. I spend quite a bit of each episode in the later seasons fast-forwarding.”
— You also appear to resent gay representation in popular lit. In reference to a story whose MCs had been in a lesbian relationship: “(Lela said:)’Who writes a 500 page letter detailing whole lives and mooning about the attributes of their lover?’ (You responded:) ‘Somebody who is desperate to hit all the proper tick-boxes on the SJW list and thereby get their first novel in print?'” — ignoring the fact that the author herself is lesbian and a person of color.
2. wanting them all tossed in concentration camps
— Gross hyperbole, over-generalization from #1.
3. trans-hater
— You clearly dislike supporting trans-positive stories and trans issues: “What disgusts me is that Greg Hullender really IS a ‘thoughtful progressive’ and he really does support Trans issues. I’ve been pounding on him for it since Sad Puppies 3, because he reviews stories through Progressive rose-coloured glasses.”
— You use “trans” as part of derogatory personal attacks: “He does not like the tortured use of non-standard pronouns as evidenced by two (2) reviews of minor works by Some Trans Weenie”
4. racist/bigot
— You’ve made various racist comments here and there, like: “You know who becomes invisible in minority counts? Sikhs and Hindus. Even the darkest South Indian gets counted as white. I think this may be because they don’t run around killing people and burning shit. Just a notion I had.”
5. misogynist
— You apparently don’t like female heros in popular entertainment:
—- “I think they can’t stand a male hero. They even made Kylo Ren a whiny bitch”
—- “Plucky band of misfits ignores orders and Wins Big! with some tragic Busted Former Hero Finally Makes Good, a bit of Boy Meets Girl and Noble Heroine Fights Oppressive Male Patriarchy.”
— And you pretty clearly dislike people who challenge “the patriarchy”:
—- “EVERYBODY knows that due process is an eeeeevile paternalistic plot of the Patriarchy!!!”
— You apparently resent feminists in general:
—- “they’re loudly and openly calling down fire on white males. For being WHITE, and MALE, and not one other damn thing.”
—- “But from what I’m seeing out there, most of these activists hold that as a basic truth. Masculinity is the one true evil of the world. ”
— You consistently blame the victims in discussions of sexual harassment. For just one example: “Now, I have a question. It is a question people like you don’t like to hear, Bonnie, but I’ll ask anyway. Why hasn’t some amazonian actress stabbed Harvey Weinstein in the !@#% with a dessert fork before now?”
7. want to kill little furry animals
—- You clearly support hunting, and “killing furry animals” is what hunting does: “Hunting is the most reviled pastime there is, in certain circles. Governments at the local, provincial and federal level have steadily regulated it out of existence in large parts of Canada.”
8. turn the Earth into a cinder
—- another gross hyperbole, based on the fact that — as you yourself appear to have admitted above — you are a climate change denier.
In sum: Nope, my statement was not a lie at all. Although, as I already stated, the accusations you referenced did tend towards hyperbole and over-generalization, you have indeed made statements that at least connect you to them.
Now, we’re still waiting for those quotes of lies I’ve supposedly told.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:32:25
Sorry Calvin, we are done. Thanks for playing. Stop talking to me.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:37:40
@phantom —
“Sorry Calvin, we are done.”
Of course we are. Yet again, you have no actual evidence to back up your claims.
No surprise there.
“Stop talking to me.”
Yet again: no.
Yet again: if you wish to hold private conversations that are restricted to specific participants, a public comment board is not a very effective place to do it.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 22:47:29
Getting back to the point of the blog post, the issue is that Del Arroz is a marginalized minority writer who should be a diversity asset to the SFWA and the SFF community. Instead, he’s become an angry marginalized minority writer that, from all reports, gets in constant flame wars with others in the community. What’s wrong with this picture?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 22:57:07
He dun went and ee-scaped off the Reservation, ma’am. Cain’t have none of theat.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:17:22
Ha.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:31:33
@phantom —
“He dun went and ee-scaped off the Reservation, ma’am. Cain’t have none of theat.”
Yet again — your innuendo would make at least a little more sense except for the facts that:
1. The people responsible for not asking him to Baycon this year are both Hispanic themselves;
and
2. Worldcon’s GOH is himself Hispanic.
So it’s quite obvious that neither Baycon nor Worldcon are bigoted against Hispanics.
Keep trying.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:29:21
@Lela —
“What’s wrong with this picture?”
Easy. What’s “wrong” with the picture is that JDA is a jerk. It has nothing to do with his ethnicity or politics.
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:53:53
If he were African American, would that make a difference? Aren’t African American authors encouraged to be angry and to call out what they consider racism?
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Jan 15, 2018 @ 23:55:55
@Lela —
“Aren’t African American authors encouraged to be angry and to call out what they consider racism?”
There’s a huge difference between “being angry and calling out racism” and organizing troll campaigns against people you don’t like.
Yet again: JDA is simply a jerk. He’s a proven serial harasser, not a martyr for his race or politics.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 00:08:06
Harassment goes both ways. Isn’t efforts to ban people from professional groups something of a troll campaign?
The thing is, Del Arroz is calling discrimination. As a liberal myself, I understand that I shouldn’t pretend to understand the experience of someone who is marginalized. A socially conscious community should be taking his complaints seriously and doing a lot of introspection to see how the community could be more welcoming to Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans. Instead, this has turned into a battle.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 02:35:07
Lela: “Del Arroz is a marginalized minority writer who should be a diversity asset to the SFWA and the SFF community. Instead, he’s become an angry marginalized minority writer that, from all reports, gets in constant flame wars with others in the community”
Again, I point to Benjanun Sriduangkaew, an Asian lesbian. Would you say her opponents were wrong to condemn her?
I’m transgender. If I woke up one morning and, for some reason, decided to make a complete dick out of myself the way JDA has done (with false accusations of paedophilia and the like) would people be wrong to condemn me? Should my behaviour be tolerated in the name of diversity?
I honestly think your heart’s in the right place here, but I see no reason why a diverse community should be barred from taking steps against obvious misbehaviour, even if it’s misbehaviour from someone who happens to belong to a minority group. Minorities can screw up like anyone else.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 01:22:22
@Lela —
“Harassment goes both ways.”
Sure. Now find us some folks announcing they’re going to “troll the shit out of” JDA, and recruit buddies to also troll him, and you might have an actual point.
“Isn’t efforts to ban people from professional groups something of a troll campaign?”
Absolutely not, when there is actual evidence behind the effort. It’s called protecting one’s membership from abuse.
“The thing is, Del Arroz is calling discrimination.”
He can “call” whatever he likes. The rest of the world is not responsible for validating his martyr complex.
“A socially conscious community should be taking his complaints seriously”
They did take it seriously — and provided exhaustive evidence that his complaints amount to a giant mountain of horse manure.
“and doing a lot of introspection to see how the community could be more welcoming to Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans.”
Yet again — there is absolutely no evidence that the sff community is NOT “welcoming to Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans.” Again, this year’s Worldcon GOH is Hispanic; and the two people JDA accused of anti-Hispanic discrimination at Baycon are **also** Hispanic.
His accusations are nonsense, pure and simple.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 13:33:06
>They did take it seriously — and provided exhaustive evidence that his complaints amount to a giant mountain of horse manure.
But this is not appropriate. The appropriate response to claims of discrimination is apology and a sincere attempt to do better.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 13:44:31
@Lela —
“But this is not appropriate. The appropriate response to claims of discrimination is apology and a sincere attempt to do better.”
The appropriate response to ACTUAL discrimination is apology and a sincere attempt to do better.
Claims of discrimination should always be taken seriously. That doesn’t mean that they should always be swallowed wholesale.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 13:53:41
But Rocket Stack Rank has just gone though this, and it was fairly clear that their efforts to defend against the claims were considered offensive. Trying to shout down the person who has claimed harm only compounds the discrimination.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:10:49
@Lela —
“But Rocket Stack Rank has just gone though this, and it was fairly clear that their efforts to defend against the claims were considered offensive. Trying to shout down the person who has claimed harm only compounds the discrimination.”
The cases are not at all comparable. I didn’t follow the RSR kerfuffle closely, but it was about people who felt the reviews at RSR were systematically penalizing stories for containing certain types of trans content. And they got further upset by what they saw as a defensive nonpology.
I haven’t read the RSR reviews in question — I realized a year or so ago that Greg and I have dissimilar literary tastes, so although I find the site’s aggregations quite useful, I rarely read the reviews he writes anymore — so it’s hard for me to judge whether the original complaints against him were justified or not. I did notice that there eventually appeared to be a long list of complaints, and people apparently got huffy when he sent back a long list of defenses responding to each complaint. Again — I didn’t read it, so I have no judgment on who was “right” or “wrong” on the issue.
I’ll repeat: Claims of discrimination should always be taken seriously. That doesn’t mean that they should always be swallowed wholesale.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:00:18
@Lela – My memory is that the “offensive” bit was that RSR attempted to defend themselves in the middle of their apology.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:06:25
Has there been any apology here at all?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:10:21
As far as I’ve seen, JDA hasn’t even admitted to wrongdoing, let alone apologized.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:11:49
He’s the person claiming discrimination. It’s not required that he apologize.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:14:13
As Contrarius points out above, “Claims of discrimination should always be taken seriously. That doesn’t mean that they should always be swallowed wholesale.” JDA’s claims of discrimination based on race have been shown to be specious. OTOH, the claims that JDA has harassed people are well-documented.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 14:15:49
Sorry, that last bit should read “the claims that JDA has harassed people are supported by the evidence.” (or somesuch – obviously, all the claims we’re talking about here are well-documented, being posted on the internets and all…)
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 15:13:33
Bear with me here. I thought I understood the process for dealing with claims of discrimination. Something needs to be done to alleviate the issue immediately–apologies, action, resignations. When the process is not properly followed, it results in riots and demonstrations, right?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 15:29:18
Remove “claims of” and you have a statement that can at least be defended.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 15:42:12
@Lela —
Now you’re just being snide. Any rational adult should be able to understand the difference between “unsubstantiated claims of discrimination” and “substantiated claims of discrimination”.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 16:17:45
So, you say you’re qualified to judge whether someone feels discriminated against? There are unsubstantiated charges of sexual harassment flying everywhere right now, so everyone is familiar with how the process works. You’re just blaming the victim, right?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 16:36:14
@Lela —
“So, you say you’re qualified to judge whether someone feels discriminated against?”
Straw man. Neither Kathodus nor I ever said any such thing.
The issue here is not what JDA believes or does not believe — the issue is what “a reasonable person” would believe, based on the available evidence.
“There are unsubstantiated charges of sexual harassment flying everywhere right now, so everyone is familiar with how the process works.”
A single claim that is truly unsubstantiated means little. But these guys are getting hit with 5, 10, or more claims at a time — which means a lot more — and many of them have solid evidence behind them. You’re trying to compare apples and orangese here.
“You’re just blaming the victim, right?”
Of course not. JDA is not the victim, he’s the perpetrator. He’s like a spousal abuser who after beating up on his spouse loudly proclaims, “You made me do it! You were mean to me first!”
Do you expect the beaten spouse to actually turn around and apologize? No, of course not. There is no excuse for spousal abuse, and there is no excuse for serial trolling, harassing, and stalking. In reality, you and JDA are the ones trying to blame the victim here.
And yet again, there is no — zero, zip, zilch — evidence that the actions taken against JDA by either Worldcon or Baycon (or the soon-to-be-expected action by SFWA) have anything at all to do with either JDA’s politics or his ethnicity. If you really expect us to take his claims seriously, then for heaven’s sake come up with at least some small shred of evidence to back them up.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 16:45:25
So you’re saying these other organizations are the ones qualified to judge whether or not Jon feels discriminated against?
Actually, as far as the sexual harassment charges are concerned, we’re not sure what a lot of them are, as we just hear somebody resigned or got fired for “misconduct.” More specific to the SFF community, when Sunil Patel lost his editor position last year, the charges seemed very vague and not well substantiated at all.
Everyone just wants to get out ahead of the poor press. However, somehow that hasn’t happened for Jon. Shouldn’t the SFF community be more responsive?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:22:28
@Lela —
“So you’re saying these other organizations are the ones qualified to judge whether or not Jon feels discriminated against?”
Wow, two straw men in two posts. Would you like to try for a threepeat?
As I already stated very clearly in my previous post, the issue here is not what JDA believes or does not believe. The issue is what **a reasonable person** would believe, based on the available evidence.
“Actually, as far as the sexual harassment charges are concerned, we’re not sure what a lot of them are, as we just hear somebody resigned or got fired for “misconduct.””
**We** are not sure, because in most cases it isn’t any of our business. It would be very silly, though, to assume that the people actually involved in the cases don’t know exactly what’s going on.
“Shouldn’t the SFF community be more responsive?”
The “SFF community” has been **extremely** responsive. It very quickly put together a mountain of evidence that proves what a load of bullshit JDA’s claims are.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 20:04:23
Only Jon knows how Jon feels. Given the only evidence he has offered that he’s been discriminated against is that he is Hispanic, and his campaign(s) of harassment and defamatory statements is public record, I have a very difficult time believing you are sincere. To say the least 😉
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 22:46:12
Kathodus said: “Only Jon knows how Jon feels.”
Well that’s not true at all, is it? Jon has been telling everybody on Twitter exactly how he feels. Currently it is his opinion that he needs to wear a Go-Pro on his head, to document the bad behavior of people at WorldCon who have been threatening him.
For which there is precedent, dug up by none other than Jon del Arroz:
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2017/10/comic-book-writers-hit-bottom-dig-harder.html
He’s been saying he is being discriminated against because he’s a Conservative Trump voter. He’s saying the events outlined in that post of mine are planned for him at WorldCon.
Currently the evidence is that he’s being actively discriminated against. Because when was the last time WorldCon de-membered an individual, before the convention? As in, for Pre-Crime. When did that ever happen before? Has anyone ever been rejected pre-event because they were stupid and annoying? I’m feeling pretty safe in betting that has -never- happened.
This tack Lela is on is very interesting. I like where this is going. Pray continue!
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 22:56:50
@Phantom
‘Kathodus said: “Only Jon knows how Jon feels.”
Well that’s not true at all, is it? Jon has been telling everybody on Twitter exactly how he feels.’
It’s exactly true. Jon has previously stated that nothing he says on Twitter should be considered honest or true:
Interestingly, his claims of discrimination, racially- or politically-motivated, fall nicely into his philosophy of Twittering. Somewhat tangentially, he seems to be having problems similar to his favorite President – his own words damn him.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:36:39
Kathodus said: “It’s exactly true. Jon has previously stated that nothing he says on Twitter should be considered honest or true”
Oh, I see. What you’re saying is that anything you post is evidence, and anything I post is unimportant and should be ignored.
Good to know.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:50:20
@Phantom – “Oh, I see. What you’re saying is that anything you post is evidence, and anything I post is unimportant and should be ignored.”
Absolutely not. I’m saying Jon’s tweets wherein he says that he only tweets for promotion and to get attention are evidence that he tweets only for promotion and to get attention. I didn’t address your comic book post because it has nothing to do with Baycon or Worldcon. If there’s some connection I’m missing, let me know. Other, please, than “people I don’t like are SJWs and I don’t like the WSFS or Marvel/DC and therefore they are SJWs and therefore in cahoots.”
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 00:14:15
@phantom —
“Currently the evidence is that he’s being actively discriminated against.”
WHAT evidence? We keep asking you folks for any evidence at all that the actions taken against JDA have anything to do with his political beliefs or ethnicity — and all we get is crickets.
“As in, for Pre-Crime.”
Yet again: JDA has a long history of harassment. He publicly stated that he intended to continue with similar behaviors at the con. There’s a very wise saying: when someone tells you what kind of person they are, believe them. Well, Worldcon chose to believe Jon — and they chose to protect their members against that sort of abuse.
“When did that ever happen before?”
When did a known serial harasser ever announce their plans to continue that behavior at a Worldcon before?
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 14:28:21
Kathodus said: “Absolutely not. I’m saying Jon’s tweets wherein he says that he only tweets for promotion and to get attention are evidence that he tweets only for promotion and to get attention.”
Oh! I see. So, when Jon says he tweets for promotion, and he says “I’m going to wear a camera” then that’s for promotion too? So you’re kicking a guy out of WorldCon for self-promotion.
Which is pretty discriminatory, unless you kick out every single other writer as well. They’re all self-promoting all over the place. How come Jon gets banned when Scalzi doesn’t? JS never shuts up about himself. (That’s why I don’t buy his stuff anymore. He’s annoying.)
Or is it more that we don’t believe anything Jon says… unless we can use it against him and get him kicked out. Then we believe him.
Which again, I’m sorry to say, seems kinda discriminatory.
But not unexpected.
Now, as to the Comic Con thing, you said: “I didn’t address your comic book post because it has nothing to do with Baycon or Worldcon. If there’s some connection I’m missing, let me know.”
See, this is what I’m saying, Kathodus. If you’d troubled yourself to read the thing, you’d see the connection. But what I post isn’t evidence, its just more Phantom Hatred so you can ignore it. I read your Jim C. Hines link, the least you can do is read mine.
Now, letting you know:
Short version, Jon del Arroz discovered a Facebook group of Marvel and DC comic artists and writers who were planning to accost and harass an anonymous YouTuber called Diversity & Comics. They doxed the guy for openers, and were talking about what they would do to him at the local comic con. Punching him in the face was a popular option, hounding him out of the venue was another. That’s not hearsay, that’s verified.
Jon del Arroz has screenshots (or at least says he does) of people saying they were going to do that to him at WorldCon, if he dared show his face at the SFWA. Specifically mau-mau him, and possibly punch him in the face. That’s the hijinx he’s referring to in The Tweet where he Breaks The RULES!!!! [boo, hiss!] -That- is why he’s kicked out of WorldCon.
There’s your connection.
Now, are we at the point where an on-line threat to attack a guy at a con gets the guy kicked out, not the cretin making the threat? Yes. We are. But only if he’s an annoying Conservative. They’ve never done this before to anybody else, except over politics.
Which is fine, really. Its their con, they can do what they want. So why all the sound and fury smearing JDA? Because they’re not following their own rules. They’re lying, and covering it up with more lying.
Does any of this have to do with race hatred against JDA because he’s a Mexican/American? Dunno. Probably not, but then who knows what’s going on here? They’re lying about why they kicked him out, they could easily be lying about the Mexican thing too.
Something to consider:
Ever go in a hipster coffee shop? Ever see a Mexican or a black dude in one? Nope. Super bone-white, all the way. Maybe some Asians/Indians (from India), because they count as White in the hipster mind.
Are hipsters racists? NO! They will swear up and down on a stack of bibles that they are Tolerant and Progressive!!! They will be mightily offended at the very notion.
But, objectively, hipster neighborhoods are the whitest places in the USA. Whiter than ComicCon or DragonCon, that’s for sure.
Something similar going on with WorldCon and SFWA? Mmmmaybe? Hard to say.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 14:59:48
@phantom —
“So, when Jon says he tweets for promotion, and he says “I’m going to wear a camera” then that’s for promotion too? So you’re kicking a guy out of WorldCon for self-promotion.”
Wow. Your mind works in amazingly non-rational ways.
Worldcon was quite clear about why they have kicked JDA out of Worldcon. Quoting their communications with him:
1. “We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. We take that seriously. Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon. ”
2. “On your personal blog you have made it clear that you are both expecting and planning on engendering a hostile environment which we do not allow.”
“How come Jon gets banned when Scalzi doesn’t?”
For one thing, because Scalzi doesn’t organize campaigns to “troll the shit out of” people he doesn’t like.
“Jon del Arroz has screenshots (or at least says he does)”
Dingdingding! There’s a vast difference between what JDA claims and what is actually true. He is a proven liar — I caught him in a doozy of a lie myself over on Camestros’s blog just yesterday.
“They’re lying about why they kicked him out”
Yet another in a multitude of claims with no evidence behind them.
No surprise there.
“Something similar going on with WorldCon and SFWA? Mmmmaybe? Hard to say.”
Actually, given that the Worldcon GOH this year is Hispanic, it’s quite easy to say. IOW — yet again your claim fails.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 14:38:17
Contrary Calvin said: …zzzzzwha?
Calvin, are you having trouble with reading comprehension? Game’s over. I’m done with you. Stop talking to me. Begone, wretch.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 15:03:01
@phantom —
“Stop talking to me.”
Nope.
I will continue to point out your various lies, evasions, misrepresentations, and/or irrational thought processes just as long as you continue to post them here or on other public boards if I happen to see them.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 18:06:07
Calvin said: “Waaaa!!!!
You know Calvin, when somebody tells you they don’t want to talk to you anymore, repeatedly, and you keep going anyway? There’s a name for that. It’s called harassment.
Kind of like what we are talking about with Jon del Arroz. Except this time everybody can see you doing it.
Stop talking to me.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 18:38:47
@phantom —
“It’s called harassment.
Kind of like what we are talking about with Jon del Arroz. Except this time everybody can see you doing it.”
Aaaaand yet again we see that a word does not actually mean what you seem to think it means.
Phantom — I have not followed you to anything even remotely resembling a private space for you (email, your twitter account, your blog). I have not announced any campaigns to “troll the shit out of” you. I have not called you names. I have not even singled you out for responses (I think I’ve responded to everyone who has posted in this thread).
Making calm, rational, civil posts on a public comment board is not in any way harassment.
Yet again — I will continue to respond at my own whim to any post I like that is made on a public comment board. Unlike JDA, I will not stalk your blog, your email, or your twitter account; nor will I organize campaigns to “troll the shit out of” you. Nor will I target you by responding to your posts while ignoring posts made by other commenters. I will simply continue to exercise my moral and legal right as a member of the public to comment on publicly made posts.
“Stop talking to me.”
No.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:12:32
Actually, there’s another example of discrimination that was fairly prominent. Del Arroz was fairly widely derided for his nomination for a Dragon Award last year, called an old white guy, etc. Mistaking someone’s race, in itself, is an example of racial bias, right? At least a massive micro-aggression? And besides that, nomination of a marginalized minority author for a major award should have been celebrated. Why was he treated this way?
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:35:24
I’m not sure how that ties in to Jon’s claims that not being invited to Baycon one year was racial discrimination, or that being banned from Worldcon is racial discrimination. Can you clarify?
Also, who was calling Jon an old white guy? Was this someone involved in Worldcon? Baycon?
As for the rest – apologies, but I only very half-assedly follow the Dragon Awards (which are only in their second year, BTW – not exactly “major” at this point). I’ve found some interesting works from the list of nominees, largely where Pups have not piddled in the pool, but the awards are very new, reliant on author self-promotion, and haven’t gained much renown or interest yet, so tend to be somewhat open to the aforementioned piddle. The second year was much better than the first (I assume participation grew significantly from year one), but I suspect it will take a few years for the awards to gain momentum. Adding to that, I am not generally a fan of Steampunk (the only Steampunk novel I recall enjoying was Alaistar Reynolds’ “Terminal World,” and I only picked that up because I love Reynolds’ SF). Considering those things, you can see why I wouldn’t know or care about Jon’s Dragon Award (though, good for him).
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:41:03
Kathodus said: “I’m not sure ho…nzzzzz…”
None of that has anything to do with the question being asked. It seems anything you post is important, and anything Lela posts isn’t and can thus be ignored.
Almost as if you were trying to avoid the issue…
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:46:35
@Phantom – “None of that has anything to do with the question being asked. It seems anything you post is important, and anything Lela posts isn’t and can thus be ignored.”
The post is about the supposed discrimination against Jon del Arroz that got him banned from Worldcon. The Dragon Awards has nothing to do with that. I’m not the one avoiding the issue.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:39:14
@Lela —
“Del Arroz was fairly widely derided for his nomination for a Dragon Award last year”
Being derided for acting like a jerk and a manipulative schmuck — yet again — is not discrimination, Lela.
“called an old white guy”
LOL.
Actually, it was John Scalzi — an old white guy — who said that. And he directed his comment at the entire group of pups, not specifically at JDA.
“Mistaking someone’s race, in itself, is an example of racial bias, right?”
Yeah, no. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people of Hispanic descent to consider themselves white. Heck, there’s a whole wikipedia page about “white Hispanics”. And again, the comment wasn’t directed at JDA, but at the group as a whole.
“nomination of a marginalized minority author for a major award should have been celebrated. Why was he treated this way?”
Because the whole Dragon nomination system was broken and scammed by the pups. There was no honest accomplishment there to celebrate.
We discussed that issue at some length right here on your blog, Lela. Surely you remember all that.
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Jan 16, 2018 @ 23:43:51
@Lela —
Interesting additional tidbit.
According to the Census Bureau: As of 2010, 50.5 million or 16.3% of Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino. Of those, 26.7 million, or 53%, also identified as white.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 00:21:08
Clearly Jon is not considering himself white. He’s claiming marginalized minority status based on his race.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 00:27:03
@Lela —
“Clearly Jon is not considering himself white. He’s claiming marginalized minority status based on his race.”
That’s not John Scalzi’s problem. When more than half of all US Hispanics consider themselves white, “white Hispanic” can’t believably be called an insult. And Scalzi doesn’t even know Arroz, and again wasn’t applying the label to him specifically.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 00:37:00
That’s an example of institutional racism, isn’t it? Insisting that someone of a different race isn’t really marginalized? Is it possible that Jon is wrong about the problem being his political views?
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 01:07:34
“That’s an example of institutional racism, isn’t it?”
You’re not making any sense, Lela. First, “Hispanic” isn’t a race — as the Census Bureau points out, it’s an ethnicity. Some “Hispanics” are black, some are white, some are Native. There is not a single specific race called “Hispanic”.
“Insisting that someone of a different race isn’t really marginalized?”
Ooo, and she hits the third straw man. Go for the gold, Lela!
Nobody here has said anything at all about a generic “someone of a different race” not being marginalized. What has been said is that JDA is not being discriminated against because of his race, ethnicity, or politics. Yet again, nobody has managed to provide any evidence at all that his race, ethnicity, or politics have anything to do with the actions that have been taken against him.
If you believe you actually have such evidence, please produce it. Nobody else has been able to.
“Is it possible that Jon is wrong about the problem being his political views?”
If you’d been paying any attention at all to this discussion, you’d already know that of COURSE Jon is wrong. The problem is not his political views, nor his race, nor his ethnicity. Yet again, the problem is that he’s a proven serial harasser who consistently acts like a jerk.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 09:14:51
Again, as a liberal, it’s not my place to question a marginalized person’s feelings about discrimination against them, but I expect these might come from the quality of Jon’s interactions with the persons at the BayCon, WorldCon, etc.
I’m sure Jon knows what discrimination is. He looks like one those pesky Mexican immigrants that are taking everyone’s jobs, and he probably deals with questions about being illegal every day. Plus, I think he’s right about the SFF community’s discrimination against Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans in publication and awards.
If we’re to take Cecily Kane’s recommendation last year for a quota seriously, then the Hispanic/LatinX/Native American ethnic group should make up about 1/3 of publications and awards. I don’t have any figures on publication handy right now, but there were zero representatives among the Hugo and Nebula fiction nominees last year. Instead, the minorities leaned heavily to Asians, African Americans and gender. This is clear evidence of discrimination.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 12:29:06
@Lela —
“Again, as a liberal, it’s not my place to question a marginalized person’s feelings about discrimination against them, but I expect these might come from the quality of Jon’s interactions with the persons at the BayCon, WorldCon, etc.”
Those interactions are freely available online. Again, if you had bothered to read the Jim C. Hines piece, you would already know that those interactions were entirely professional and had nothing at all to do with discrimination.
Yet again — nobody has been able to produce one shred of evidence supporting JDA’s claims. There’s a reason for that.
“I’m sure Jon knows what discrimination is. He looks like one those pesky Mexican immigrants that are taking everyone’s jobs”
And yet again — the people at Baycon whom JDA accuses of anti-Hispanic discrimination are themselves Hispanic.
“Plus, I think he’s right about the SFF community’s discrimination against Hispanics/LatinX/Native Americans in publication and awards.”
Again, your personal beliefs are irrelevant. What’s relevant is what the actual evidence says — and I’ve already shown you multiple examples of Hispanic writers being both published and recognized by award organizations. There is no evidence of discrimination, regardless of your protests to the contrary.
If we’re to take Cecily Kane’s recommendation last year for a quota seriously”
I don’t even know who Cecily Kane is.
“then the Hispanic/LatinX/Native American ethnic group should make up 1/3 of publications and awards.”
Baloney. Hispanics only make up 16% of the US population — so even if they were writing sff at a rate comparable to the rest of the population, their award/publication rate would never reach 30%.
“but there were zero representatives among the Hugo or Nebula fiction nominees last year.”
That’s not true at all. In fact, Malka Older was a finalist for the Campbell Award, just to name one.
And even if it were true — so what? There were also no Pacific Islanders nominated, no South Dakotans nominated… I could list bazillions of groups who were not represented. It’s just one year, Lela.
“This is clear evidence of discrimination.”
Baloney. Absence is not at all the same thing as discrimination.
Just a few examples of Hispanic recognition in sff:
Malka Older —
— Infomocracy named one of Kirkus’ “Best Fiction of 2016”
— Infomocracy One of The Washington Post’s “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016”
— Finalist for the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Daniel José Older —
— Shadowshaper Locus Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Book (2016)
— Shadowshaper Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Adult Literature (2016)
— Shadowshaper Lincoln Award Nominee (2018)
— Shadowshaper Kirkus Prize Nominee for Young Readers’ Literature (Finalist) (2015)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia —
— Signal to Noise Locus Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2016)
— Signal to Noise Sunburst Award Nominee for Novel (2016)
— Signal to Noise British Fantasy Award Nominee for Novel (2016)
— Signal to Noise Prix Aurora Award Nominee for Novel (2016)
— Signal to Noise Copper Cylinder Award (2016)
— Certain Dark Things Locus Award Nominee for Best Horror Novel (2017)
— Certain Dark Things Sunburst Award Nominee for Novel (2017)
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 14:52:16
@Phantom
“”Kathodus said: “Absolutely not. I’m saying Jon’s tweets wherein he says that he only tweets for promotion and to get attention are evidence that he tweets only for promotion and to get attention.”
Oh! I see. So, when Jon says he tweets for promotion, and he says “I’m going to wear a camera” then that’s for promotion too? So you’re kicking a guy out of WorldCon for self-promotion.””
No, Phantom. He was kicked out for his history of harassing people, culminating in threatening to record people (people he had spent months denigrating, mocking, harassing, and trolling) in a private consuite. If Jon promoted himself by making bomb threats on Twitter, he would also be in trouble for that, even though in your eyes he would apparently only be guilty of self-promotion.
“”Jon del Arroz has screenshots (or at least says he does) of people saying they were going to do that to him at WorldCon, if he dared show his face at the SFWA. Specifically mau-mau him, and possibly punch him in the face. That’s the hijinx he’s referring to in The Tweet where he Breaks The RULES!!!! [boo, hiss!] -That- is why he’s kicked out of WorldCon.””
I’m disinclined to believe any of Jon’s accusations sans proof. I have a hard time believing members of the SFWA would threaten to punch Jon in the face, but that would be very unprofessional of them if they did. He’ll need some proof, though.
“”Now, are we at the point where an on-line threat to attack a guy at a con gets the guy kicked out, not the cretin making the threat? “”
No, we aren’t.
“”Ever go in a hipster coffee shop? Ever see a Mexican or a black dude in one? Nope. Super bone-white, all the way. Maybe some Asians/Indians (from India), because they count as White in the hipster mind.””
Yes, I have gone into a hipster coffee shop, and uhh… yes, I have seen Mexicans and black dudes in them. Drinking coffee at them, working at them, sitting around being hipsters in them, etc.. That’s a very strange assumption, that there would be no black people or Mexicans in a hipster coffee shop.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 15:08:46
@Kathodus —
” That’s a very strange assumption, that there would be no black people or Mexicans in a hipster coffee shop.”
Keep in mind that phantom is Canadian, so his life experiences with blacks and/or Mexicans are likely to be quite limited relative to the US. Latin Americans represent only **1-2%** of the Canadian population, after all, and black Canadians are less than **4%** of their population.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 15:11:02
@Contrarius
“Keep in mind that phantom is Canadian, so his life experiences with blacks and/or Mexicans are likely to be quite limited relative to the US. Latin Americans represent only **1-2%** of the Canadian population, after all, and black Canadians are less than **4%** of their population.”
Okay, that makes more sense, then. I live in Oakland, California – much different demographics.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 15:14:54
@Kathodus —
“Okay, that makes more sense, then. I live in Oakland, California – much different demographics.”
It’s almost like we’re in a different country, or something.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 19:08:05
Kathodus said: “No, Phantom. He was kicked out for his history of harassing people, culminating in threatening to record people (people he had spent months denigrating, mocking, harassing, and trolling) in a private consuite.”
Kathodus also said: “I’m disinclined to believe any of Jon’s accusations sans proof.”
But the problem is, Kathodus, I don’t believe the WorldCon story. Given the weight of evidence that del Arroz has presented regarding the Marvel/DC comics thing, plus his concerns that he directed to WorldCon regarding potential harassment, their story is transparently self-serving. You putting the burden of proof on the -victim- here is very out of character for your side of the political fence.
Frankly the whole thing is fantastically childish, on both sides. If there was a credible threat del Arroz wouldn’t go. If there was a credible threat and they banned him anyway, he’d sue them. He’s probably dying for a chance to drag them into court.
Question I have, what makes a guy that mad he decides to make it his life’s work to screw with an organization as much as he can? Three guys now, Larry Correia, Vox Day and Jon del Arroz. I’m thinking exclusion by reason of politics is a good candidate, considering that’s what all three of them are saying is the problem.
Kathodus said: “That’s a very strange assumption, that there would be no black people or Mexicans in a hipster coffee shop.”
Observation, not assumption. New York state, Boston, Silicon Valley, I saw few to zero POCs in hipster joints. (I shouldn’t have to make it clearer but I will anyway, I’m not saying hipsters are keeping out all the minorities, or are overtly racist. I’m saying minorities aren’t there.) Particularly Boston around MIT/ Harvard. Most of the city, black people everywhere. Hipster area, zero black people. Maybe they all came back after I left. I’m just saying what I saw, that’s all. In Arizona, black people are generally scarce and Mexicans etc. strongly avoid white areas. They just don’t go there. They can, nobody stops them, but they don’t. Probably think white people are weird. I agree, we are.
But it is true about Canada. There are plenty of visible minorities in Toronto and Vancouver, not so many in Montreal. Zero minorities away from the major cities. The local Hooterville high school has one (1) black student. She’s very nice. None of the locals have burned a cross on her mom’s front lawn recently. That I know of.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 23:16:55
“”Kathodus said: “No, Phantom. He was kicked out for his history of harassing people, culminating in threatening to record people (people he had spent months denigrating, mocking, harassing, and trolling) in a private consuite.”
Kathodus also said: “I’m disinclined to believe any of Jon’s accusations sans proof.”
But the problem is, Kathodus, I don’t believe the WorldCon story. Given the weight of evidence that del Arroz has presented regarding the Marvel/DC comics thing, plus his concerns that he directed to WorldCon regarding potential harassment, their story is transparently self-serving. You putting the burden of proof on the -victim- here is very out of character for your side of the political fence.””
To extend you a massive benefit of the doubt, I think one issue here is that you are confusing Comic-Con with WorldCon. They are entirely different entities and fandoms.
As far as the “burden of proof” bit goes – Lela is the straw liberal here, not me. I don’t believe everything everyone says, regardless their racial or ethnic status.
“He’s probably dying for a chance to drag them into court.”
LoL.
“Question I have, what makes a guy that mad he decides to make it his life’s work to screw with an organization as much as he can?
A belief that doing so will amplify his status with a specific niche audience and give him more sales. This is pretty well established by now.
“”Kathodus said: “That’s a very strange assumption, that there would be no black people or Mexicans in a hipster coffee shop.”
Observation, not assumption. New York state, Boston, Silicon Valley, I saw few to zero POCs in hipster joints.””
I’m gonna go with my lying eyes and my 20+ years living around “hipster” coffee shops and neighborhoods in a major US city, as well as my travels before and during that time throughout the US, and suggest that maybe your experiences were limited. Honestly, everything I’ve ever seen you post about race suggests your experiences have been very limited.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 06:37:21
Kathodus said: “Honestly, everything I’ve ever seen you post about race suggests your experiences have been very limited.”
I’m a Canadian, dude. I left the USA in ~2002. I visit, I don’t live there anymore.
But when you walk down a street in Boston and see zero black people, meanwhile two streets over there are plenty, it makes an impression on a visit.
Same with Phoenix. Guadalupe is solid Mexican. You literally cross a bridge to Ahwatukee over the I-10, and there are zero Mexicans. None. I lived there for three years. The only Mexicans in Ahwatukee are landscapers and plumbers, painters etc. and they leave at night. Maybe that has changed, somewhere, but I didn’t see any Mexicans when I was there last week.
Are there Mexicans making money in Phoenix? Going by their cars, yes. Plenty of super fancy cars in Scottsdale at the car show owned by Mexican guys.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 12:23:14
@Phantom – I get what you’re saying, and agree, there’s a lot of segregation in the US, particularly in gentrified neighborhoods. I was missing the forest for the trees.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:01:26
Kathodus said: “@Phantom – I get what you’re saying, and agree, there’s a lot of segregation in the US, particularly in gentrified neighborhoods.”
Okay good. So, hipster neighborhoods, no black people. Ahwatukee, no Mexicans. Same thing.
Do the hipsters actively yell at the black people and make them run away? No. Do they talk shit about black people and giggle when one walks by? No. They’re all suuuuper nice, man. Being nice is their thing. They welcome everybody.
Do black people go in that neighborhood? No way. They avoid it.
SFWA is a Lefty neighborhood. No conservatives come there. Why? Same reason black people avoid the hipster neighborhood, and Mexicans do not drive across the I-10 bridge. SFWA -says- they accept everybody, but they don’t really want Those People (conservatives) shopping at their 7-11, and Those People really do get that.
I should add that Canada does not really have segregated neighborhoods except in certain spots in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Despite the massive influx of immigrants since the 1970s, and despite the majority of them staying in those three cities, oblivious white people still go everywhere even though the newcomers try to group together. I’m regularly the only white person in the mall, but I don’t care and nobody acts funny because I’m there. When there’s one (1) black person in the mall, nobody cares about that either.
In the USA when I’m the only white person in the mall, I’ve been approached by concerned locals asking me if I’m lost. They’re worried something bad might happen to me. Then I get worried. Getting gas in Detroit was a laugh one time. “Y’all from Canada? You cain’t be here. Go down the highway three mo’ stops.”
So weird.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:12:02
@Phantom – This is also a phenomenon of many rural and small-town areas in the US. It’s due to actual enforcement of racist policies, ie Sundown Towns and the like. But to say there are no people of X ethnicity, nationality, race, etc., in a given neighborhood, at least in the Bay Area, is generally inaccurate. Yes, you’re more likely to get harassed as a white person in deep East Oakland or as a black person in… I dunno, Pleasanton, let’s say, but it’s hard to find monochromatic neighborhoods (though I’m not sure about gated communities, as they’re gated).
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:25:34
@phantom —
“So, hipster neighborhoods, no black people. Ahwatukee, no Mexicans. Same thing.”
Vast oversimplification and overgeneralization, but we all acknowledge that segregation still exists in the US. Which, of course, has nothing to do with accusations of supposed anti-Hispanic discrimination by Worldcon, Baycon, and/or SFWA.
“SFWA is a Lefty neighborhood. No conservatives come there.”
Of course, you have absolutely no evidence to back up this assertion.
Do you have an SFWA membership list? Do you know the political affiliations of each and every SFWA member? I’ll bet you don’t. Please feel free to prove me wrong.
And again — this has nothing whatsoever to do with supposed anti-conservative discrimination by Worldcon, Baycon, or SFWA.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:12:24
@phantom —
“But the problem is, Kathodus, I don’t believe the WorldCon story.”
Fortunately, nobody much cares what you personally believe. Regardless of your belief, all the available evidence backs up Worldcon rather than JDA.
“Given the weight of evidence that del Arroz has presented regarding the Marvel/DC comics thing”
WHAT evidence?? Where?? You yourself have admitted that JDA has not produced those screenshots he claims to have. And Worldcon has asked him, IIRC multiple times, to send them evidence indicating which persons have threatened him — without any result.
It appears that JDA has produced lots of claims with absolutely NO evidence. If you know of any, I’m sure lots of folks would benefit from seeing it.
“He’s probably dying for a chance to drag them into court.”
Personally, I’d love to see him try this. I already told him a couple of days ago that I’m buying popcorn and hoping that he posts his bodycam footage of those lawyers laughing their asses off at him.
“Question I have, what makes a guy that mad he decides to make it his life’s work to screw with an organization as much as he can?”
One word: publicity. He’s jumped on the public-outrage bandwagon, and he’s milking it for all it’s worth.
“I’m thinking exclusion by reason of politics is a good candidate”
And yet again — if politics got people excluded from Worldcon, we wouldn’t see people like Jerry Pournelle there.
“considering that’s what all three of them are saying is the problem.”
Of course they do. They wouldn’t exactly go around saying “we got banned because we’re jerks”, after all.
“Observation, not assumption.”
Phantom, we all know that there is still segregation in America. So what? That has nothing whatsoever to do with claims of anti-Hispanic discrimination by either Worldcon or Baycon.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:30:40
>“Question I have, what makes a guy that mad he decides to make it his life’s work to screw with an organization as much as he can?”
>One word: publicity. He’s jumped on the public-outrage bandwagon, and he’s milking it for all it’s worth.
This public outrage thing is the heart of the issue. Liberals have established the structure for this and commonly use it as a tool to enforce policy. However, in the last few years the SFWA/SFF community has divided along the same political lines as the rest of the country and now the conservative side has picked up use of the same tools. Jon is playing the political game here because it gets him readers that like his views and dislike persecution.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:51:46
@Lela: “Jon is playing the political game here because it gets him readers that like his views.”
This is the heart of the issue. Jon is playing a game. As you imply, his claims of discrimination are insincere.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 14:26:51
@Lela —
“This public outrage thing is the heart of the issue.”
Absolutely. To JDA, the actual facts are irrelevant — only the opportunities for self-promotion matter.
“Liberals have established the structure for this and commonly use it as a tool to enforce policy.”
True. But it’s very important to keep in mind the difference between actual outrage and faux outrage — and between legitimate causes for outrage on the one hand and self-serving martyr complexes on the other.
“Jon is playing the political game here because it gets him readers that like his views and dislike persecution.”
Right. The problem is that those readers don’t take the time or invest the brain cells to tell the difference between real persecution and that pesky martyr complex.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 14:54:04
Kathodus said: “But to say there are no people of X ethnicity, nationality, race, etc., in a given neighborhood, at least in the Bay Area, is generally inaccurate.”
Let us not nitpick. I’m sure there’s a Mexican family somewhere in Ahwatukee, and you know I know that. As I said above, there is one, singular, black kid at the local Hooterville highschool. It is still a monochromatic school, right? The races present are blond, brunette, redhead and a black kid. In the main, the principle is a familiar one.
As to the fabled rural towns where the sheriff patrols at night and blah blah blah… they don’t do that in Boston, or Phoenix. I’m talking about the freely agreed to segregation thing, where Everybody Knows that -this- is Hipsterville and -this- is Little Italy and -this- is China Town etc. Black people don’t go north of Apple Street because that’s where the annoying white kids with the stupid glasses and the skinny pants live, not because they’ll get shot by Sheriff Sixgun and Deputy Dawg.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 15:11:36
@Phantom: “Let us not nitpick. I’m sure there’s a Mexican family somewhere in Ahwatukee, and you know I know that.”
I was only referring to the Bay Area, with which I am familiar. I’m not at all familiar with Phoenix or its suburbs.
@Phantom: “As to the fabled rural towns where the sheriff patrols at night and blah blah blah…”
A lot of that “agreed-upon” segregation comes from historical red-lining. As for the “fabled” sundown towns… did you mean “well-documented?” I highly recommend checking out this thoroughly-documented book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005V2DQJE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
My own hometown was explicitly a sundown town as recently as the 60s (and there were no ethnicities other than white, hispanic, and one Laosian family up at least until the mid-90s). It’s no fable.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 15:00:57
Calvin The Harasser said: a bunch more aggressive meaningless crap.
Seriously Calvin, I’m not talking to you.
“What the Calvin has said is unimportant, and we do not hear its words.”
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 22:57:00
>Right. The problem is that those readers don’t take the time or invest the brain cells to tell the difference between real persecution and that pesky martyr complex.
Contrarius, this works the same on the other side. Someone posts trigger words, and off goes the mob after Jon Del Arroz, or whoever the target is this week. Nobody thinks about what they’re doing.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 02:15:42
@Lela —
“Contrarius, this works the same on the other side.”
Oh, it absolutely can. See, for instance, some of the responses to the Aziz Ansari allegations. But then also see the more rational responses coming out about him over time — reason is eventually winning out.
And, again, hysterical knee-jerking is not at all what sff fandom did with JDA. The evidence of him being a jerk and a serial harasser is overwhelming; the evidence of him actually being discriminated against for his politics or ethnicity is nonexistent.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 02:27:23
@phantom —
“Seriously Calvin, I’m not talking to you.”
So what?
The point, phantom, is not to be “talked to” by you. The point is to post facts and logic to rebut your many false and unsupported claims, so that other people who read the board will have the truth available to them.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 17:59:53
Another blog is going to post here tonight, so let me go ahead and say what I think is going on with Jon Del Arroz. I suspect Doris has posted the key to the problem above where she says the community has a right to take steps against certain behaviors. This means the community requires conformity for its membership.
Jon published his first full length novel last year and set out to promote it. He found (as he says in his blog) that he was placed on panels to discuss liberal concerns, where his strong conservative views became immediately apparent. People in the community moved to correct these views, and Del Arroz responded negatively. The ill will escalated from there.
Forced into an adversarial position, Jon is now playing identity politics, i.e. proclaiming that he is a victim. Liberals in the community can’t win in this game, because he is a legitimate, marginalized minority that can’t be redefined as white and un-marginalized. The rules of identity politics (see above) make it pretty much a fool-proof strategy. Discrimination against this ethnic group is real, and all the efforts to exclude Jon or bring him into line become blaming the victim and persecution because of who he is.
If anyone hasn’t noticed, this strategy was pioneered by Vox Day.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 13:31:24
@Lela —
“Forced into an adversarial position, Jon is now playing identity politics, i.e. proclaiming that he is a victim.”
I agree that JDA is obviously playing identity politics — he’s milking that martyr complex for all it’s worth. He wasn’t forced into anything, though. The Baycon incident was especially laughable, for instance — they specifically told him that they’d love to have him back the next year, but he STILL decided to flounce off in a haze of self-pity and outrage.
“Liberals in the community can’t win in this game, because he is a legitimate, marginalized minority that can’t be redefined as white and un-marginalized. ”
I disagree here. You are assuming that it’s impossible to condemn anyone for egregiously unacceptable behavior just because they happen to belong to one or more minority groups. With that theory, we’d have to let lots of criminals off the hook just because of their minority status.
“Discrimination against this ethnic group is real”
Sure — but that doesn’t mean that all people who happen to belong to one or more minority groups deserve get-out-of-trouble-free cards, or that they have actually been discriminated against in specific situations.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 18:30:37
>“Liberals in the community can’t win in this game, because he is a legitimate, marginalized minority that can’t be redefined as white and un-marginalized. ”
>I disagree here. You are assuming that it’s impossible to condemn anyone for egregiously unacceptable behavior just because they happen to belong to one or more minority groups.
This will be really tough. The rules for identity politics are tried and true, and I went through the scenario in the discussion above. Because of the way Jon has positioned himself, any cross word you say to the man now becomes more discrimination and persecution in certain quarters.
This kind of politics has been going on for some time with other minorities, but we’re not used to hearing it from Hispanics, who are normally fairly modest and low key.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 19:44:59
@Lela
“This will be really tough. The rules for identity politics are tried and true, and I went through the scenario in the discussion above. Because of the way Jon has positioned himself, any cross word you say to the man now becomes more discrimination and persecution in certain quarters.
This kind of politics has been going on for some time with other minorities, but we’re not used to hearing it from Hispanics, who are normally fairly modest and low key.”
Except nobody who cares about calling out discrimination believes him. I suspect the idea to claim ethnic discrimination was a spontaneous bit of whimsy, as he didn’t do any kind of setup. More of a 2-dimensional game of tic-tac-toe than 4D chess.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 02:04:23
@Lela —
“Because of the way Jon has positioned himself, any cross word you say to the man now becomes more discrimination and persecution in certain quarters.”
I think it would be more accurate to say “will be reacted to as though it were discrimination and persecution”. IMHO we should be careful to recognize the differences between performance, perception, and reality here. Some people will act as though they feel discriminated against even though they really don’t; some people will perceive discrimination where there actually isn’t any; and some people will perceive discrimination that is actually verified by available evidence. Those are three distinct groups, even when they look the same from the outside.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 23:20:12
>Except nobody who cares about calling out discrimination believes him. I suspect the idea to claim ethnic discrimination was a spontaneous bit of whimsy, as he didn’t do any kind of setup. More of a 2-dimensional game of tic-tac-toe than 4D chess.
Kathodus: Ah, but you’re not his intended audience. Conservatives believe in discrimination, too. He’s one of their own. His membership in a marginalized group is an important part of the plan because it demonstrates the hypocrisy of the mob.
Really and truly I haven’t had Jon’s experiences, and I’m thinking he really does feel he’s been rejected as a member of the community because of who he is. These interactions are likely his revenge, as well as a promotion opportunity–as has been mentioned. The folks at WorldCon do sort of look like idiots over this.
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 23:36:27
“Kathodus: Ah, but you’re not his intended audience. Conservatives believe in discrimination, too. He’s one of their own.”
Well, yes. The red pill movement is nothing new.
Really and truly I haven’t had Jon’s experiences, and I’m thinking he really does feel he’s been rejected as a member of the community because of who he is. These interactions are likely his revenge, as well as a promotion opportunity–as has been mentioned. The folks at WorldCon do sort of look like idiots over this.”
Yes, he’s been rejected for being a troll and a jerk. I have no idea how you get WorldCon looking like idiots from that. “Oh no! WorldCon doesn’t like jerks!!! Who’s next? Douchebags?” There but for the grace of God…
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 02:19:59
@Lela —
“The folks at WorldCon do sort of look like idiots over this.”
Only to JDA’s fellow travelers — and Worldcon would look like idiots to them no matter what it chose to do. Reality doesn’t matter to Jon’s buddies; only the latest self-congratulatory fantasy they’ve managed to think up is relevant to them.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 13:24:40
Kathodus said: “Yes, he’s been rejected for being a troll and a jerk. I have no idea how you get WorldCon looking like idiots from that. “Oh no! WorldCon doesn’t like jerks!!! Who’s next? Douchebags?””
Well, no. He has -not- been ejected for being a troll and a jerk. That is very specifically -not- what they said. He’s been ejected for saying on social media that he might wear (or will wear, or should wear) a “bodycam” to prevent “hijinks”.
Like I said waaaaay up a hundred comments ago, I would have been fine with that. But they can’t do that, because then they’d be open to demands to ban half the members. People being jerks on-line is pandemic, right? Calvin would be banned for what’s she’s done in this thread alone. They can’t make that the standard. Sad Puppies would eat them like bread sticks.
So they made this pre-crime shit up, which no reasonable organization would ever propose, and ran with it. And that is why they look like idiots.
But here’s a larger question. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that JDA is a huge jerk. A douchebag. The question is, when did that happen? When did JDA change from a valued panel member at Baycon, went every year for ten years, to Jerk Guy?
Didn’t it happen when he was not invited back to Baycon? Yes it did.
Was he a jerk before then? There is no record of jerk behavior, no accusations of impropriety, no complaints of people getting told off in panels, nada.
What changed?
People at Baycon found out that JDA was a Sad Puppy and a Trump supporter. That is what changed. Evidence is, his behavior did -not- change. He didn’t have a stroke and do a Phineas Gage transformation, he didn’t take Dr. Jekyll’s secret formula. He outed himself as a Conservative.
You can’t do that in California, apparently. The difference between valued Hispanic author and JERK!!! is which chad you punched in the voting booth.
So, he did what I would do under the same circumstances. Changed his target and fired all batteries on the new enemy. Went after them hammer and tongs.
Think of it, Kathodus. You are part of something for years, you are friends with the organizers, they love you and your books, you’re on panels all over the place, and then suddenly… you’re that jerk they booted out. Because of an election.
Holy shit, right?
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 13:38:58
@Phantom
“Think of it, Kathodus. You are part of something for years, you are friends with the organizers, they love you and your books, you’re on panels all over the place, and then suddenly… you’re that jerk they booted out. Because of an election.”
Except they didn’t boot him because of an election. They didn’t boot him at all. They simply didn’t ask him back for one year. When he wrote to ask them why, they told him they were rotating panelists, and that he would be invited the next year. At that point, he started making a huge fuss about it and claiming he was blackballed for his politics. When he very clearly wasn’t.
That was the beginning of JDA’s descent into assholery, from what I can tell. It was the first I’d heard of him, and it took me about 15 minutes of reading his posts and seeing Baycon’s earlier email to him telling him he’d be invited the next year to realize he’s simply another post-Puppy troll promoting to the mini-horde of angry alt-righters who purchase books specifically to support other alt-righters.
All of his arguments about persecution come from that one seed – his being “booted” from Baycon. His entire trollish history, from what I can tell, is based on his outrage that he wasn’t invited for one year at Baycon. Everything that’s come after that has grown from that seed. This is why I need proof to believe that anyone has threatened him or treated him poorly. It’s why I suspect he wanted to record conversations at the SFWA consuite in order to dishonestly edit them to make people look bad (a la James O’Keefe, another well-known early alt-right troll). It’s why I believe nothing he says without solid evidence that it’s true. Nothing to do with politics.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 15:50:08
@phantom —
“Well, no. He has -not- been ejected for being a troll and a jerk. That is very specifically -not- what they said. He’s been ejected for saying on social media that he might wear (or will wear, or should wear) a “bodycam” to prevent “hijinks”.”
No.
Yet again, here’s what Worldcon actually said — and I quote:
1. “We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. We take that seriously. Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon. ”
2. “On your personal blog you have made it clear that you are both expecting and planning on engendering a hostile environment which we do not allow.”
Which, yes, pretty much translates as “because you’re a troll and a jerk”.
“Didn’t it happen when he was not invited back to Baycon? Yes it did.”
And yet again — JDA was not the only panel member who failed to be invited back for one year, but he was the only one who chose to pitch a hissy fit about it. And yet again, Baycon specifically told him that they were looking forward to having him back again the year after that. He was NOT banned, for politics or any other reason..
Seriously, phantom, try for at least a little reality in your rants.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 13:50:41
I dunno. The scenario seems to have been that Baycon rotates through panelists and Jon got upset because he’d apparently never been rotated off before, jumping to the conclusion that it’s because he revealed he voted for Trump. It’s easy to see this one as just a misunderstanding. It’s even possible that he never got rotated off before because they wanted more Hispanic panelists, but once they learned he was a conservative, they decided to treat him like everyone else. I’m not in a position to know for sure.
Whatever it was, it seems to have riled him up. Eventually he made some posts about wanting to join SFWA so he could wear a hidden camera into their Convention Suite to record “hijinx.” I took that to mean he wanted to catch famous authors saying embarrassing things that he could post online to entertain his fans. I can see how that would get people upset, since famous authors would simply avoid the Con Suite, and that would destroy most of its appeal for newer authors. Perhaps he meant something else, but I’m far from the only person who drew this conclusion.
Apparently folks from WorldCon talked to him on the phone about it and explained that their code of conduct bans that kind of hidden camera outside of public areas. He refused to agree to follow that rule, so they kicked him out because of his stated intent to violate their code of conduct. That seems reasonable and rational to me. Restaurants do it all the time: “No shirt, no shoes, no service.”
I haven’t seen any evidence that Jon’s race or politics factored into these decisions at all. Sure, anyone can claim discrimination and get a little attention for a few days, but absent any evidence, such complaints are quickly forgotten about, unless a dozen people chime in to say “yeah, that happened to me too!” At the moment, Jon seems to be out there all by himself.
Am I confused about something or missing a detail somewhere? This really doesn’t seem that difficult to me.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 14:00:00
My last message was a reply to Phantom, not Kathodus. Our posts seem to have crossed somehow.
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 22:00:25
Kathodus said: “Except they didn’t boot him because of an election. They didn’t boot him at all. They simply didn’t ask him back for one year. When he wrote to ask them why, they told him they were rotating panelists, and that he would be invited the next year. At that point, he started making a huge fuss about it and claiming he was blackballed for his politics. When he very clearly wasn’t.”
I see you are going to insist on putting the very worst interpretation on JDA’s actions. “What do you mean, you went back to Weinstein’s hotel? Are you kidding me? Everybody knows not to do that! This rape is totally your fault.”
Here’s the thing, Kathodus. You said it yourself. After many years of always being there, he wasn’t invited back. Suddenly they were “rotating panelists” where previously there was none of that. Suddenly happy camper and team player JDA is making a fuss. -Why?-
Did he suddenly go bonkers, Kathodus? Does that seem like a reasonable explanation? Mr. Cool Guy turns into a combative troll overnight? Smoked a bad batch of reefer, maybe?
Or is it more likely that he got word from a friend that “rotating panelists” was code for “f*ck off Trump supporting Sad Puppy a-hole” and he was never getting back on as a panelist?
That’s all I’m saying. I do not believe the “rotating panelists” story. That’s the one you tell to the mild mannered nerd to get him to leave quietly. People have told me similar stories over the years. Sometimes it isn’t worth the trouble to call them on it, but sometimes it is. JDA made the call to fight, that tells me they pissed him off mightily.
Same with WorldCon. I find it much more believable that some guy heard JDA wanted to be there, and made a phone call. “Hey Frank, this JDA guy, I don’t like him.” “Sure thing Bill, I don’t like him either. We’ll take care of it.”
That’s how clubs actually work, in my experience.
You seem determined to pretend that everything is always super duper fair and nobody ever drops a dime on anybody. That’s great, as long as everything is flowing in your direction. But let the thing start going the other way, and your buddy gets disinvited from something, then its “Oh no, that’s -different- man!”
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Jan 19, 2018 @ 23:13:25
@Phantom – Baycon literally told him he was invited back the next year. I can’t think of a worse way to tell someone to f*ck off.
The Weinstein analogy is beneath you, and you know it.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 08:21:46
@phantom —
“I see you are going to insist on putting the very worst interpretation on JDA’s actions.”
The hypocrisy here is astounding, given that you continually insist on putting the very worst interpretation on the actions of Baycon, Worldcon, and the SFWA.
But unlike you, we have actual evidence behind our interpretations.
“After many years of always being there, he wasn’t invited back. Suddenly they were “rotating panelists” where previously there was none of that.”
Wrong again. Your argument depends on the assumption that JDA was the only panelist who was “rotated out” — not invited back for the year. Unluckily for you, this is a false assumption.
In reality, other panelists were also not invited back for the year. In fact, we’ve heard directly from a couple of them on various sites over the course of the wide-ranging discussions. And guess what? Those other non-invited panelists didn’t feel discriminated against. They didn’t pitch fits. They realized that **it is very common for cons to rotate panelists**, and they remained calm and rational throughout.
“Or is it more likely that he got word from a friend that “rotating panelists” was code for “f*ck off Trump supporting Sad Puppy a-hole” and he was never getting back on as a panelist?”
LOL.
Yet again, your entire argument depends on the false assumption that JDA was the only panelist not invited back for the year. And yet again — Baycon very clearly and specifically told JDA that they were looking forward to having him back the next year.
“I do not believe the “rotating panelists” story.”
As I’ve mentioned multiple times before, you have a long history of ignoring facts even after mountains of evidence have been shown to you. No surprise there.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 08:48:42
One important issue here is Jon’s feelings about whether he’s been discriminated against. At the very least, it looks like the people at BayCon and WorldCon have failed to reassure him that he’s not.
An interesting way to check his behavior would be to consider him African American. Would a black author have been treated this way for complaining?
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 09:16:35
@Lela —
“One important issue here is Jon’s feelings about whether he’s been discriminated against. At the very least, it looks like the people at BayCon and WorldCon have failed to reassure him that he’s not.”
They’ve told him he isn’t, and in Baycon’s case they made it very clear that he was welcome back the next year. What more do you expect from them?
“Would a black author have been treated this way for complaining?”
I have yet to see a black author acting like such a jerk, so we have no true comparison available to us.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 11:08:23
Kathodus said: “@Phantom – Baycon literally told him he was invited back the next year. I can’t think of a worse way to tell someone to f*ck off.”
Before or after he started raising hell? Believable or pro-forma for-witnesses-only?
“The Weinstein analogy is beneath you, and you know it.”
It penetrated your shell, didn’t it? That principle IS what we are talking about here, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to hit the mule with the 2×4 to get his attention. This in my estimation is one of those times.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 11:18:07
@phantom —
“Before or after he started raising hell? Believable or pro-forma for-witnesses-only?”
Before, and in the same private letter that they sent to him telling him they were not inviting him for that particular year. Their letter would never have been made public if not for Jon’s hissy fit.
Here is the exact text of the letter that Jon received:
———-
“Dear Jon,
Thank you for your interest in BayCon 2017. We have made some changes to the programming which are discussed in detail here: http://baycon.org/bcwp/programming-2/
At this time we are not issuing you an invitation for this year’s convention. You are definitely on our guest list for 2018 and we hope very much to see you there.
Sincerely,
BayCon Programming”
———-
Yet again, your claims and assumptions fail.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 13:17:45
@Phantom
“It penetrated your shell, didn’t it? That principle IS what we are talking about here, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to hit the mule with the 2×4 to get his attention. This in my estimation is one of those times.”
If that’s your intention, you should have compared it to the Holocaust. It makes just as more sense but has a bigger impact. Or, to keep it in the US, maybe compare it to slavery? C’mon, when you completely abandon logic to try to make an emotional impact, why set any limits? Maybe compare it to the Vogon destruction of the Earth.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 13:30:04
Actually I think I’ve heard Jon Del Arroz’s work described as “compares favorably to Vogon poetry.” 🙂
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 00:29:20
Katyhodus said: “C’mon, when you completely abandon logic to try to make an emotional impact, why set any limits?”
Because keeping the barb the right size makes it really -sting- when it gets under your skin. Makes it noticeable. Looks like I picked the perfect thing to shake your tree and make you think a little.
Yeah, that thing that pissed you off? That’s what pissed JDA off, and Sarah Hoyt, and Larry Correia, and me. Shit heads using their positions of power to make people do things they don’t want to do.
Who do we believe, every -other- time? The guy with the power, or the guy saying he’s being discriminated against? Hands up, don’t shoot. #MeToo. #BLM. Etc. Yep. We believe the victim. Even when the “victim” is trying to beat a White Hispanic to death by slamming his head on the sidewalk, and the evil white guy shoots him. We believe the victim.
Unless… its a Conservative victim. Because they’re just JERKS, right? Obviously we kick them out. Just look at ’em! What a bunch of douchebags!
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 02:08:53
@Phantom “Yeah, that thing that pissed you off? That’s what pissed JDA off, and Sarah Hoyt, and Larry Correia, and me.”
When you talk about the thing that pissed me off, do you mean my reaction to your use of an extremely poorly-fitting analogy combined with hyperbole? That’s the only element I can find in my comment to which you are responding that seems even slightly pissed off.
“Who do we believe, every -other- time? The guy with the power, or the guy saying he’s being discriminated against?”
I look at the evidence and draw conclusions that follow it. Our conclusions may not always agree, though. For instance, you seem to be referring to George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin in your comment. I assume you looked at the publicly-available evidence and came to the conclusion that Zimmerman’s act of homicide was justified. I have looked at the publicly-available evidence and have come to the conclusion that Zimmerman’s act of homicide, while likely not 1st degree murder, was completely unjustified and avoidable. I suspect we both arrived at the conclusion we were more inclined toward (I suspect that has unfortunately led you to a completely bogus conclusion in this case). I’m not interested in re-re-re-(to the power of infinity)-arguing that case, though, just trying to point out that, aside from Lela, there are no straw liberals here. I don’t simply believe the words of anyone who claims to be a victim, regardless of their status.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:51:56
@phantom —
“Who do we believe, every -other- time?”
Rational human beings, of course, should believe the party who has the evidence to back them up.
And in this case, the evidence is quite thoroughly against Jon.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:46:12
Kathodus said: “I have looked at the publicly-available evidence and have come to the conclusion that Zimmerman’s act of homicide, while likely not 1st degree murder, was completely unjustified and avoidable.”
Sure you have. But unlike me, you don’t have twin degrees in mayhem and rehab from the School of Hard Knocks. I’ve seen that thing in Real Life, both the fighting part and the what happens afterwards at the hospital part. Your armchair analysis is missing some salient data, lets just say.
“I suspect we both arrived at the conclusion we were more inclined toward (I suspect that has unfortunately led you to a completely bogus conclusion in this case).”
Yes, exactly. Because you don’t believe the official story, and you don’t believe my opinion, formed by my training, life experience and clinical practice, could possibly be better than yours, and there’s nothing I or anyone can say which is going to move you. Which is fine. That’s your opinion, and your problem.
Difference between us is you belong to a faction that is trying to change society so that I don’t get to have an opinion. Sad Puppies don’t get to complain. JDA doesn’t get to object. Trump voters don’t get to vote for That Guy because Eeeew! It isn’t enough that a guy quietly doesn’t like Trump, either. He has to publicly come out and EXCORIATE Trump, or he’s on the Bad Side.
As Lela said above, JDA is at base doing -exactly- what WorldCon collectively did to the Sad Puppies. He’s taken the weapon and turned it around, now he’s hurling everything that has a chance sticking regardless of provenance.
Lela says that both sides should tone it down, and I agree that would be nice. But sadly, this is a case where what goes around comes around, and the voluntary toning down needs to start on the Left side. I’m not going to hold my breath for that.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:11:29
@phantom —
“Difference between us is you belong to a faction that is trying to change society so that I don’t get to have an opinion. Sad Puppies don’t get to complain. JDA doesn’t get to object.”
ROFLMAO.
The pups and JDA have been quite successfully complaining, loudly and longly and publicly.
What they don’t get to do is **succeed in harassing and trolling without consequences**.
Remember, phantom — “free speech” does not mean CONSEQUENCE-free speech.
“JDA is at base doing -exactly- what WorldCon collectively did to the Sad Puppies.”
Bullshit.
There’s those pesky little facts again, phantom. We can all see how hard you’re working at ignoring them.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:12:20
@Phantom “you don’t have twin degrees in mayhem and rehab from the School of Hard Knocks. I’ve seen that thing in Real Life, both the fighting part and the what happens afterwards at the hospital part. Your armchair analysis is missing some salient data, lets just say.”
Armchair analysis is, at the end of the day, armchair analysis. As I said earlier, I have no interest in re-arguing the Trayvon Martinn case.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:22:31
Oh yeah, this:
Phantom “Difference between us is you belong to a faction that is trying to change society so that I don’t get to have an opinion.”
Where do you get that? Because I didn’t side with the Sad/Rabid Puppies in that kerfuffle? That doesn’t mean I sided with people who believe in eg no-platforming (and I don’t). Was everyone in the WSFS who voted No Award for Black Genesis in 1987 an SJW? Or even anti-scientology? Most likely, the bulk of No Award voters in ’87 were anti-slate, just as the bulk of No Award voters during the Puppy slate campaigns were anti-slate, whether their own politics were conservative or liberal.
I posted on this thread because Lela was smearing as racist people who don’t want to deal with JDA’s trollery and harassment, and that’s ridiculous. Now she’s admitted her point in another comment – that this was basically a thought exercise to show how “both sides” need to tone down their rhetoric. Which everyone knew was the point from the beginning, but for some reason wouldn’t admit.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 19:45:38
Lela said: “Forced into an adversarial position, Jon is now playing identity politics, i.e. proclaiming that he is a victim. Liberals in the community can’t win in this game, because he is a legitimate, marginalized minority that can’t be redefined as white and un-marginalized.”
Except, as we see illustrated here above, Conservative trumps Hispanic, please pardon the dreadful pun. That’s what my “off the reservation” crack is about. No matter the membership in a minority, be it ever-so-marginalized, Conservative is a scarlet letter.
I’m having mine embroidered in cherry-coloured twist. ~:D
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 20:15:25
Apropos: https://madgeniusclub.com/2018/01/16/who-are-you-and-what-did-you-ban-me-from/#more-22000
Another “hold my beer” SJW moment, Kevin Sorbo banned from New Jersey comic con… because Sorbo is friends with Sean Hannity. For real.
Sorbo said: “New Jersey what? Never heard of it.”
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 20:45:51
Hm. A form of name-dropping?
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 21:24:26
Har! Good one. ~:D
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Jan 18, 2018 @ 12:58:34
In a possibly once-in-a-lifetime situation, I mostly agree with a Mad Genius Club post about political issues. The only thing they got wrong that I can see is that Sorbo wasn’t banned or disinvited from the con, he merely wasn’t invited. Publicly not invited, for some reason. I’m feeling a bit left out, as I haven’t received an invite, yet haven’t been publicly not invited, either. Have I no feelings?
In a double once-in-a-lifetime situation, I think Lela’s theory (name-dropping) sounds likely.
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Jan 17, 2018 @ 23:14:26
Thanks to all for the discussion! It’s always good to hear opinions on difficult subjects.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 19:24:02
And just announced by the SFWA —
———–
Statement from the SFWA Membership Credentials Committee
Recently, a science fiction writer made a very public announcement of his application to join SFWA. SFWA Bylaws section VI.1.c.i gives discretion to the membership credentials committee “regardless of qualifications.” Based on the behavior of and online statements by this writer over the preceding year or so, which the credentials committee believes is inconsistent with the obligations that SFWA members have to one another, the committee has determined that it has good and sufficient cause to deny this membership.
We did not take this step lightly, and we are sensitive to suggestions that this action is due to the writer’s political opinions: it is not. SFWA does not, and will not, impose a political test or political standard for membership. We strive to be welcoming to all SFF writers of good will, whatever their personal beliefs or opinions. However, the membership credentials committee, comprised by the sitting Board of Directors, believes that admitting this writer would not be in keeping with our obligations to our membership.
http://www.sfwa.org/2018/01/statement-sfwa-membership-credentials-committee/
———–
I already posted further up the page several elements from the SFWA Code of Conduct that JDA has broken, so I won’t repeat them — but you can find them in my message dated Jan 15, 2018 @ 14:26:43 if you’re interested in reviewing them.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 21:14:18
Contrarius: “Statement from the SFWA Membership Credentials Committee”
Check and mate. JDA is officially in the 4D intersectional chess championships of the universe. Who will ultimately gain the coveted Aristotle Award – JDA or VD? The known universe awaits the outcome with (troll)-baited breath.
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Jan 20, 2018 @ 22:19:25
I really, REALLY want to see video footage of Jon taking his complaints to an ACLU lawyer, as he has pretended he’s going to do. I would PAY to see that footage.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 00:12:34
Its funny, Kathodus. I look at the gleeful delight on display by the Usual Suspects at this SFWA announcement, there’s a lot of cheering going on. The internet equivalent of the Hugo awards show at Sasquan.
I think that if I was Jon del Arroz, I would find the assertion that this wasn’t political to be absolutely hilarious. Of course its political. We can all see that.
What I find satisfying is that JDA is going to make money out of this announcement. You and Calvin are putting money in the guy’s pocket. Bwaha!
As a writer, I like this. Used to be, you joined the SFWA and you toed the party line, or you didn’t get published. Now here’s a guy making a successful indy career, and using his trolling of the SFWA as a sales tool. One less bunch of stuck-up a-holes for me to worry about, as I go about getting my work published. One less rock in my path.
Writing is hard enough without I should have to worry about the political opinions of some knob I’ve never heard of.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 02:33:35
Phantom – Sure, JDA and his friends are just as gleeful as ever. You, I, he, all of us – know that this was his goal. It’s a win-win – he gets to gloat about his “persecution” and grab a few extra bucks from whingey red-pilled alphas who think he’s some kind of martyr, and the SFWA gets to avoid inside dealings with his melodrama and snowflakery.
I don’t care about the politics of the authors I read, and I have no personal and/or inside knowledge about the SFWA. I assume you do, to be making those claims, but I can neither agree nor disagree with you on a subject of which I’m entirely ignorant, just as I’m sure you wouldn’t be making claims without personal experience to back them up.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:49:23
@phantom —
“Its funny, Kathodus. I look at the gleeful delight on display by the Usual Suspects at this SFWA announcement, there’s a lot of cheering going on.”
Of course there is. Everyone likes to see jerks get a little commeupance.
“What I find satisfying is that JDA is going to make money out of this announcement. You and Calvin are putting money in the guy’s pocket. Bwaha!”
Hey — if you get your jollies by seeing jerks and trolls making money, you go right ahead and do that. That’s pretty much immaterial to the SFWA, Worldcon, and Baycon. You see, denying money to JDA has nothing to do with their goals, even though JDA and others have accused them of trying to prevent him from making a living. Their goals are only to **protect their own members from harassment**.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 06:59:30
The reason people are getting heated about this is that it’s an example of conservatives turning liberal tools into weapons for themselves.
Jon’s recent actions are fairly common in identity politics–that it, calling people out for racism and sexism with very little evidence just to advertise that racism and sexism are bad. I’ve complained about the shotgun approach here before, where people do it without any consideration of the resulting damage. N.K. Jemison trying to paint the SFWA as a racist organization is one example. Jon trying to paint Rambo as supporting pedophilia is just another example of the same. Both sides need to tone it down.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:00:33
@Lela —
“The reason people are getting heated about this is that it’s an example of conservatives turning liberal tools into weapons for themselves.”
I think people are mostly getting heated because they dislike being attacked and trolled, especially being attacked and trolled with self-serving lies.
“N.K. Jemison trying to paint the SFWA as a racist organization is one example.”
I don’t know about that incident. Care to elaborate?
“Both sides need to tone it down.”
I’ve said many times that the real “problem” in our politics is not conservatism OR liberalism, but extremism from either side. But in this case, JDA’s politics are far overshadowed by his malice and dishonesty.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:28:53
Contrarius, here’s an excerpt of Jemisin on the SFWA:
“Imagine if ten percent of this country’s population was busy making active efforts to take away not mere privileges, not even dignity, but your most basic rights. Imagine if ten percent of the people you interacted with, on a daily basis, did not regard you as human.
Just ten percent. But such a ten percent.
And beyond that ten percent are the silent majority — the great unmeasured mass of enablers. These are the folks who don’t object to the treatment of women as human beings, and who may even have the odd black or gay friend that they genuinely like. However, when the ten percent starts up in their frothing rage, these are the people who say nothing in response.”
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:33:44
@Lela —
“Contrarius, here’s an excerpt of Jemisin on the SFWA:”
That quote doesn’t say at all what you claimed, Lela. Where anywhere in there does Jemisin accuse the SFWA of being racist?
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:09:26
Are you looking for her to use the word? More about the SFWA from Jemisin:
“In a semi-secret unofficial SFWA forum there was intense debate — involving former SFWA presidents and officers, and people who weren’t members at all — about why it was desperately important that SFWA retain its harassers and assaulters, no matter how many members they drove off, because their ability to say whatever they wanted was more important than everyone’s ability to function in genre workspaces, and SFWA’s ability to exist as a professional association.
Let me be clear: all of these were racist and sexist attacks, not just one on the SFWA Twitter feed.”
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:22:58
I don’t see what’s wrong with these Jemisin quotes. I’m not entirely sure of the context, but it sounds like she’s discussing inside-baseball stuff about VD’s toxic influence in the SFWA and why to her and other people who are VD’s and his allies’ targets, they aren’t harmless trolls. Due to various accidents of birth, I don’t have nearly as much to worry about from VD, from the GG movement, JDA, and from other trolls and harassers. I don’t find hearing from their targets a burden – I think it’s important to know their perspective, whether I agree with their conclusions or not.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:41:11
@Lela —
Right. She’s saying that some SFWA **members** made racist and sexist comments, and she’s taking the SFWA admins to task for not throwing those members out. She is NOT calling the SFWA racist — not by any stretch of the imagination.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 02:24:54
“Now here’s a guy making a successful indy career, and using his trolling of the SFWA as a sales tool.”
So he’s making money by, amongst other things, falsely accusing someone of supporting paedophilia. Hardly a shining example of the American dream.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 02:35:52
A sadly typical example of an alt-right faux martyr, though.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:02:27
Second try:
Doris V. Sutherland said: “So he’s making money by, amongst other things, falsely accusing someone of supporting paedophilia.”
Uh huh. As opposed to the people making money by accusing falsely accusing Sad Puppies generally of being racist/bigot/homophobe/Nazis. Calvin accused me in this very thread, and has been non-stop harassing me ever since. Where were you, Doris?
Sucks when the target fights back with the same weapon, right?
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:28:01
Contrarius cited the comments you’ve made that could be seen as objectionable, while acknowledging that other accusations against you are no more than “hyperbole and over-generalization”; unless I’m missing something, you declined to defend yourself. If this is harassment, it pales in comparison to JDA’s attacks on the SFWA president, which included an entire blog post (signal-boosted by at least two other prominent Puppy blogs, IIRC) and a Twitter hashtag campaign. There’s a big difference between a few unfair statements being thrown around in the heat of an argument, and a calculated, extended campaign to smear someone.
Who has made money by making false accusations (equivalent to accusations of paedophilia) towards the Sad Puppies? I doubt Contrarius has benefited financially from her posts in this thread.
And should I take your post as an admission that JDA is behaving as badly as the hated SJWs? Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that your characterisation of SJW culture in SF/F is entirely accurate, then I’m still not seeing how JDA is the good guy. He looks more like Napoleon, itching to become the next Farmer Jones.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:54:15
It is a fair point that we cannot object to the alt-right’s use of name calling and then turn around and engage in name calling ourselves. Likewise, we can’t object to alt-right people who keep harassing people who’ve asked to be left alone and then go do the same thing ourselves.
What we’re lacking on the liberal side is strong leadership that can put together a logically consistent creed. People like Vox Day, Jon Del Arroz, and Phantom are simply poking fun at our logical inconsistencies. Instead of getting mad about it (and that’s very easy to do), we need to work out a way of expressing our beliefs that’s bulletproof. The first step is to acknowledge that we don’t have that.
It’s important for us to get a handle on this because it’s at the root of the reason why a lot of otherwise-decent people voted for Donald Trump. Look at the awful history of the Title IX kangaroo courts for a really strong example.
We’re still right. We’re just not expressing ourselves as well as we need to.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:04:24
@phantom —
“As opposed to the people making money by accusing falsely accusing Sad Puppies generally of being racist/bigot/homophobe/Nazis.”
Evidence, phantom. The difference is this annoying little thing called evidence.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:16:00
Calvin said: “Evidence, phantom. The difference is this annoying little thing called evidence.”
We have all seen that nothing is evidence to you. That’s why I’m ignoring you. The point of Calvin Ball is that Calvin wins. I’m not playing. Push off.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:19:36
@phantom —
“The point of Calvin Ball is that Calvin wins. ”
EVIDENCE wins, phantom. And you don’t have any.
“I’m not playing.”
Of course you aren’t. Because you don’t have any evidence.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:17:07
Greg, I’m not sure that “bulletproof” is what is needed at this point. A little more consideration of how to present the issues would be helpful. Attacking people is seldom useful, as it only leaves damaged reputations and hard feelings. The better way advocated by most activists is to ask questions and try to find mutual solutions.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 11:58:47
Doris V. Sutherland said: “Who has made money by making false accusations (equivalent to accusations of paedophilia) towards the Sad Puppies?”
The Guardian newspaper. USA Today. Vile 666. TOR.com. Io-9. Shall I continue?
Calculated, extended effort to smear. Is being called a Nazi supporter equivalent to being called a pedo supporter? Six million victims vs. 1 victim, although the disgust factor is higher on pedo.
Calvin seems to be an amateur, not-for-profit harasser. Persistent, if not competent. But who knows, maybe Calvin has an SJW book coming out and needs some Trump-bashing cred.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:25:33
Got any specific quotes from those outlets calling the Sad Puppies Nazis? I searched the Guardian site for the terms “Sad Puppies Nazi” and found nothing relevant. Ditto USA Today. Entertainment Weekly did unfairly call the Puppies “a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards”… but then retracted that statement. I don’t believe that JDA has ever retracted any of his statements.
I can think of one arguable equivalence you could bring up, though. You know Kukuruyo, the Gamergate cartoonist who was a Rabid Puppy nominee for Best Fan Artist in 2016? You might remember that a certain left-wing blogger labelled him a “child pornographer”, because he’d drawn a pornographic picure of a teenage comic character.
That, I think, could be cited as being at least halfway comparable to the paedophilia accusations being thrown around by the Rabids. But you can’t blame me, as I spoke out in defence of Kukuruyo at the tine. (And one Rabid Puppy responded by accusing me of “defending Hugo Awards pedophilia”. For defending a Rabid Puppy nominee. Yes, really.)
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 12:56:32
Doris V. Sutherland said: “Got any specific quotes from those outlets calling the Sad Puppies Nazis?”
You know what I’m talking about, and you even know who. The name Damian Walter springs forcibly to mind, there are plenty more.
I’m not going to support this as if it were a dissertation, Doris. Pretty near any article with Sad Puppies in it, some schmuck will be saying “racist” in there somewhere.
But since you are going to start playing Calvin Ball too, you win. I got nothin’. Have a nice day.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:30:14
@phantom —
“Pretty near any article with Sad Puppies in it, some schmuck will be saying “racist” in there somewhere.”
When a puppy leader feels free to call people things like “an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine” and claims that “genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens” and that “we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not”, yup, sure enough, people are going to conclude that the puppy group just miiiiiiiiight hold a few racists within it.
Funny how that happens.
“I got nothin’.”
Hey, at least you admitted it for once.
That’s something that really irks me about folks like Jon, and you as well. You guys act as though facts mean absolutely nothing — as though you can completely ignore reality and just concoct your own “alternative facts” out of pure malice and imagination — and then you’re surprised when other people fail to swallow whole the claptrap you’ve built out of thin air.
Well, sorry, phantom, it just doesn’t work that way. Facts do matter. Reality matters. And no matter how hard folks like you and Jon try to foist lies on us, we’re going to keep fighting back. Yup, with those nasty old facts and evidence.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:07:41
Phantom, more to the point, Greg Hullender was smeared as a racist in the recent review kerfluffle. Other than a couple of possible microaggressions, I’ve seen no evidence that Greg is a racist. It’s just one of those tried and true slurs used to incite mob action against someone.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:12:51
As I understand the pedophilia issue, it’s about Moira Greyland’s recent book detailing her sexual abuse at the hands of Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley. According to Greyland, members of the SFWA knew about the abuse, but did nothing to help her. Instead, the SF community dismissed the allegations as attempts at character assassination. From there, I’m not sure what’s going on. I think a group of people are calling for an apology from the current management that hasn’t been forthcoming. Therefore, they’re accused of complicity.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:35:35
Lela – I think you mean the WSFS, not the SFWA, re the Greyland book.
Breen was banned from Worldcon for his pedophilia, years before that: http://fancyclopedia.org/breendoggle
The Breendoggle wiki is disgusting but good reading for more information:
http://breendoggle.wikia.com/wiki/Breendoggle_Wiki
From what I’ve read (and I was pretty much too young to even be one of Breen’s victims, so I definitely wasn’t there), local fen knew Breen was a creep and hoped his marriage to MZB would somehow rehabilitate him. When Greyland told Deirdre Saoirse Moen about her abuse at Breen’s and MZB’s hands and Moen went public with it, I was around, though only via reading up on SFF news in the internet – not in meatspace. I remember reactions to Moen’s articles as horror at MZB’s monstrosity. Even then, I’m sure some people defended MZB – there are always people who, for whatever selfish reason, are willing to defend monsters – but that was not the general reaction.
The issue a lot of people have with Greyland’s writings on the subject is her conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia. I suspect that is also why VD and his ilk are such strong supporters (or exploiters, in VD’s case).
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:26:03
Doris, without doing a lot of research, here’s Irene Gallo at Tor:
“There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy…”
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:46:35
@Lela – that was Irene Gallo, not Kameron Hurley.
“There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy…”
She said there are two groups, extreme right-wing to neo-nazi, and that respectively they are the Sad Puppies (extreme right-wing) and the Rabid Puppies (neo-nazi). I don’t see how that’s a smear. You could maybe argue that “extreme” right-wing is hyperbole, that the Sad Puppies are merely right-wing, but some of the leaders (Hoyt, for instance) are pretty out there. You could object to calling VD’s movement neo-nazi if you consider Nazi to be a term only used to describe members of a National Socialist party, but neo-nazi as a colloquialism is often used to describe various far-right authoritarian and neo-fascist groups.
That said, I did see plenty of less prominent people throwing out false accusations of nazi-dom toward SPs. The only prominent figure I can recall in all that who repeatedly threw out ridiculous accusations was Hoyt, though, with her Commies! Commies! Everywhere I look, it’s Commies!” shtick.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:53:09
Something else to bear in mind about that Irene Gallo comment is that Tor distanced itself from her opinions and she issued an apology/clarification. Again, I don’t recall apologies or retractions following any JDA’s statements.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:12:27
Oops. I put in Gallo’s name. Want to see a quote about Greg Hullender?
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:29:45
Lela said: “Phantom, more to the point, Greg Hullender was smeared as a racist in the recent review kerfluffle.”
True. Greg was called a Sad Puppy, a racist, a bigot, a transphobe, hilariously he was called anti-gay, and a whole bunch more stuff. And we all remember that. Even Calvin.
But since history re-starts every morning at 12AM, none of those things “really” happened. So you will have to provide links and cut/paste text, and then Calvin will say “That doesn’t say what you said it did!” and claim victory.
Personally, I am unwilling to play that stupid game. No links, benches. Deal with it.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:42:58
@Phantom – This will undoubtedly shock you, but I didn’t agree at all with the way Greg Hullender was treated. I’ve seen him get into online arguments with regulars at File770, where he’s also a regular, and that can get heated. I’ve disagreed with him in the past for various reasons. I don’t think he is by any means faultless. But I saw people who had no idea who he was assuming the very worst and piling on. It was a very typical post-post-eternal September internet moment, where outrage is the only thing that matters (and that’s not a right or left thing, that’s a people-who-love-to-be-outraged thing).
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 16:44:59
Doris V. Sutherland said: “Again, I don’t recall apologies or retractions following any JDA’s statements.”
He isn’t using the bully pulpit of a powerful organization to name-call and push people around. Said non-existent org doesn’t have face to save in the community due to the inexcusable behavior of their employee.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 17:05:08
Kathodus said: “@Phantom – This will undoubtedly shock you, but I didn’t agree at all with the way Greg Hullender was treated.”
Unfortunately, I remember you being among the apology-dissection crew, parsing Greg’s statements for authenticity and tone. Because history does not re-start at 12AM, and neither does my memory.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 17:17:13
Phantom “Unfortunately, I remember you being among the apology-dissection crew, parsing Greg’s statements for authenticity and tone. Because history does not re-start at 12AM, and neither does my memory.”
Every frickin’ time, Phantom, with the goal post shifting. To back the conversation up and remind you of what you said a few minutes ago… You said: “Greg was called a Sad Puppy, a racist, a bigot, a transphobe, hilariously he was called anti-gay, and a whole bunch more stuff.”
I was responding to that statement. I said “I didn’t agree at all with the way Greg Hullender was treated. I’ve seen him get into online arguments with regulars at File770, where he’s also a regular, and that can get heated. I’ve disagreed with him in the past for various reasons. I don’t think he is by any means faultless. But I saw people who had no idea who he was assuming the very worst and piling on.”
I saw people saying ignorant things similar to the ones you brought up. I also saw some people make what I thought were valid criticisms. I saw the apology, which was flawed. People talked about that, as did I. I did not once engage in the name-calling you specified, and just then, I was responding to your quote, about the name-calling.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 19:06:34
As far as RSR‘s apology goes, Eric and I made the decision that we’d rather write an honest apology based on what we genuinely believed we did wrong as opposed to a dishonest one that might win the “apology game” but which said things we didn’t actually believe. Also, when people accuse you of racism, you really do have to deny it; you can’t play games with that.
It was not lost on us that the actual impetus behind the attack on us was a jealous rival reviewer who couldn’t stand it when Locus invited us onto the panel for the recommended reading list plus a group of thin-skinned writers who were eager to punish us for giving them bad reviews. If you read through their twitter feeds, you’ll see they’d been looking for something to use against us for over a year.
It was my fault that I gave them something they could use. Worse, Eric didn’t know I’d been using RSR as a platform to argue about which pronouns nonbinary people ought to use. (Oops.) I really did do something wrong here–even if it wasn’t quite what our enemies made it out to be–and that really sapped most of our energy for fighting with them over it.
On the bright side, volume to the site is up, so maybe it’s really true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your URL correctly. 🙂
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 20:46:44
@Greg
“It was not lost on us that the actual impetus behind the attack on us was a jealous rival reviewer who couldn’t stand it when Locus invited us onto the panel for the recommended reading list plus a group of thin-skinned writers who were eager to punish us for giving them bad reviews. If you read through their twitter feeds, you’ll see they’d been looking for something to use against us for over a year.”
Oh wow. I assumed it was an internet pile on a la the current trend in YA novel policing. That’s much worse.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 22:16:01
Kathodus said: “I saw the apology, which was flawed.”
A guy is attacked and kicked off some fan thing because… well no reason really. He is OWED an apology, and an abject one, by the entire Fan community, but particularly by Locus and its board. That was utter bullshit, what was done there.
But what are you doing? You’re parsing his apology, which he should not have given, and pronouncing it flawed. Its a pattern.
So, your condemnation of JDA rings somewhat hollow, at this point. And you are only one of a larger group that includes the people who run WorldCon, SFWA, and a few more things. Not content to let people make up their own minds, your faction dictates opinions. Anyone refusing to actively shout those dictates back gets the Greg Hullender/JDA treatment. Names change, behavior is identical.
Apropos, Some Puppy authors decided to start their own little group to replace the SFWA. First thing after they announce it, Floppy Cameltron trashes them on his blog. In the old, pre-Sasquan days, they’d have probably blown it off. Not this time. This time some enterprising lad traced Floppy’s IP address. Now he’s busted on MDG.
I don’t generally support unmasking people like that, but given Floppy’s devotion to Shut-Upery I’m calling it poetic justice. What goes around, comes around.
This is not the kind of environment I’d prefer. I’d like a nice, polite, supportive SF/F fandom to hang out in. One where people that don’t like my work restrain themselves to critiques of the actual work, and don’t branch out into slander or other harmful activities.
But at this point, Kathodus, that is no longer up to me. Its up to you. Your side is going to be the one handing out the olive branches, my side is becoming… irritated.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 23:00:03
Phantom “A guy is attacked and kicked off some fan thing because… well no reason really. He is OWED an apology, and an abject one, by the entire Fan community, but particularly by Locus and its board. That was utter bullshit, what was done there.”
*yawn*
You can read up on what the problems were. Like I said, I didn’t agree with all of the assessments, or the over-the-top reactions, but that doesn’t completely negate the criticism.
As for the “unmasking” … you should choose better friends. Freer and Torgersen are incredibly dumb people. You deserve better.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 22:51:57
Greg Hullender said: “It was not lost on us that the actual impetus behind the attack on us was a jealous rival reviewer who couldn’t stand it when Locus invited us onto the panel for the recommended reading list plus a group of thin-skinned writers who were eager to punish us for giving them bad reviews.”
Man, that is far more disgusting than what I thought. And Locus rolled with it? I’d say you dodged a bullet there. Talk about shark infested waters.
Quick, somebody tell me how pure and unbiased the Locus list is! Completely politics free, right? FFS!
“It was my fault that I gave them something they could use.”
It was -your- fault? No. Seriously, no.
“Also, when people accuse you of racism, you really do have to deny it; you can’t play games with that.”
I think it’s becoming more and more clear that an accusation of racism is a badge of honor, Greg. I get called a racist/bigot/homophobe pretty much every time I venture an opinion on anything. Star Wars. Captain America. The Hugos. Doesn’t matter, somebody is screaming RAAAAACIST before I’m done typing.
These people are depraved. Appeasing them makes them -more- depraved. That’s been the point here for 180 comments now. If an honest review of a fricking SF short story is some kind of outrageous political act that can get your name dragged through the mud, there is only one path left.
Run up the Jolly Roger.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 23:26:00
@Kathodus Well, the good news is that I think I’ve figured out how to read stories that use non-binary “they” without it popping me out of the story. And I got an old friend of mine from my activist days whose still involved in local Seattle trans politics to do sensitivity readings for me. (She’s a big SF fan and was happy to help, and unlike almost everyone else in this process, she started from the assumption that I meant well, even if the results came out wrong.)
I believe that handles what Eric and I believe are the two actual problems. I’m still waiting to see if I can handle non-binary “they” at novella length, but I’ve managed two short stories now with no issues. The trick was to practice using it out loud in conversation. Just reading and writing it wasn’t enough for some reason.
This will not satisfy our enemies, of course, but it should give them much less traction in the future.
@Phantom I don’t think Locus had much choice. Too many reviewers on the panel believed everything in the Open Letter and would have withdrawn if I hadn’t done so.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 23:46:04
Greg Hullender said: “@Phantom I don’t think Locus had much choice. Too many reviewers on the panel believed everything in the Open Letter and would have withdrawn if I hadn’t done so.”
Like I said, you dodged a bullet there. Seriously, who are these mental giants who believed that letter? I read it. It was appalling rubbish. And I say that as someone who disagrees with nearly everything you say.
So now Locus has a problem. Their panel is composed of either IDIOTS who got taken in by that trash, or -liars- who said they believed it when it was self-evidently untrue. This is not a good look for an organization that really has nothing to offer outside a reputation for fairness and unbiased review.
Which brings rushing back all those posts Lela did questioning the official SF awards process, and also the complaints of the Sad Puppies.
But aside from all that, have these people no personal honor anymore? How foul! How disgraceful!
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 23:46:51
@Phantom To understand why we felt we had something to apologize for, you need to recognize that we have some values that are different from yours. If we do something that violates our own values, then we feel obliged to admit it, apologize for it, and correct it. I think that’s the ethical thing to do, no matter what your values are.
In this case, that was extremely painful to do because it made it hard for us to contest the rest the of Open Letter. Nevertheless, we still feel that we did the right thing.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 23:58:22
@Phantom “Which brings rushing back all those posts Lela did questioning the official SF awards process, and also the complaints of the Sad Puppies”
I’m not sure I see the connection, though. I thought the SP complaint was that worthy works were discarded based on the politics of the authors. But I was attacked by people who have essentially the same politics I do. In fact the big irony here is that a bunch of LGBT folks (and would-be allies) forced a gay voice off of an influential panel.
It was kind of weird hearing them call me a Sad Puppy, though, wasn’t it? 🙂
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 00:07:00
Greg, Doris posted the key above to why you were attacked. Without checking back through the posts, I’ll paraphrase: She said any community has the right to correct the behavior of its members–or at least to try, I need to add. When attacked about the pronouns, you and Eric apologized and made an effort to conform to the community standards. However, Jon has decided against this. Instead, he has taken an adversarial stance.
Good on you about the values. Everybody needs to meet their own standards first.
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 00:25:42
>I don’t see what’s wrong with these Jemisin quotes. I’m not entirely sure of the context, but it sounds like she’s discussing inside-baseball stuff about VD’s toxic influence in the SFWA and why to her and other people who are VD’s and his allies’ targets, they aren’t harmless trolls.
Kathodus, I didn’t say anything was wrong with the quotes, only that Jemisin had called the SFWA racist. Context: The first quote was addressing the SFWA officers election where 10% of the membership voted for Vox Day. Based on this, Jemisin made the comment you see, and then pretty much called the rest of the members enablers of people who want to strip away your human dignity, etc. I believe this was the trigger for Day’s “ignorant savage” remark.
This was about two years before Jemisin received her first Hugo from the organization. Maybe Jon thinks the same thing will work for him.
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 11:35:17
@phantom —
Here’s another totally non-racist comment from a totally non-racist pup follower made just yesterday on VD’s blog:
“NASA bumped 1st niggasstronaut to live on space station. Neighborhood prices went back up.”
Now, tell us again about how non-racist all the pups are??
“He isn’t using the bully pulpit of a powerful organization to name-call and push people around.”
No, he’s just recruiting all his buddies to “troll the shit out of” people he doesn’t like, and lying about things like supposedly being banned from Baycon.
“So, your condemnation of JDA rings somewhat hollow, at this point.”
Yeah, no.
The overreaction to Greg, no matter how baseless it was or wasn’t, has nothing to do with condemnation of JDA. Yet again: JDA constantly harasses people he doesn’t like, following them around boards, twitter, and private email, and recruits his friends to “troll the shit out of” his targets. JDA lies repeatedly about things like supposedly getting banned from Baycon. JDA threatens to record attendees of a private SFWA function.
Greg, at most, appears to have failed to exhibit sensitivity to one or two touchy issues affecting LGBTs.
In other words, you’re trying to compare peanuts to watermelons.
“Some Puppy authors decided to start their own little group to replace the SFWA. First thing after they announce it, Floppy Cameltron trashes them on his blog.”
Yeah, no. There you go ignoring facts again.
What Cam **actually** did was to point out that there is no such thing as apolitical fiction, and to host a discussion about the politics inherent in literature.
Why would you perceive that as “trashing”?
“This time some enterprising lad traced Floppy’s IP address. Now he’s busted on MDG.”
I can’t wait to see how hard these guys avoid the subject once they finally realize they have their supposed ID wrong.
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 11:46:36
@Lela —
“Kathodus, I didn’t say anything was wrong with the quotes, only that Jemisin had called the SFWA racist.”
Except, of course, that she didn’t actually do that.
She criticized SFWA membership for protecting members who had made racist comments. She did NOT call SFWA in general racist.
“I believe this was the trigger for Day’s “ignorant savage” remark.”
He was responding to her entire GOH speech, which can be found here:
http://nkjemisin. com/2013/06/continuum-goh-speech/ (remove the space I’ve inserted — I don’t remember right now whether your board permits URLs)
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 12:57:29
Greg Hullender: “I’m not sure I see the connection, though.”
If the Locus panel is so stupid, or so venal, that they went along with an obvious and lame smear job… and they did, Greg, they really did… what chance is there that they will give an unbiased, nonpolitical review of a story?
There’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell, is there?
They’ve proven beyond any shadow of doubt that they value SJW politics even over their own personal integrity. They will watch a man of good character be cast down, and they will do -nothing-.
That’s what the Sad Puppies said. We said the process was political and unfair.
Truthfully, we had no idea. This is a lot more corrupt than what I envisioned.
Greg Hullender said: “It was kind of weird hearing them call me a Sad Puppy, though, wasn’t it?”
Ironic. Hipsters swooned, I’m sure.
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 13:12:34
Calvin said: a bunch of verbiage I didn’t read.
Calvin, I am vastly uninterested in your opinion of what I said to Kathodus. Please be assured that I have not read a single word of it beyond @Phantom.
Your continued harassment is unwelcome. Kindly cram your worthless opinion where the sun never shines and waddle off.
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Jan 22, 2018 @ 13:46:15
@phantom —
“Please be assured that I have not read a single word of it beyond @Phantom.”
Again — so what?
“Kindly cram your worthless opinion where the sun never shines and waddle off.”
Sorry, phantom, but when you enter the metaphorical “public square” — like commenting on a public message board — you have no reasonable expectation of controlling who does or does not respond to your posts. As I keep advising you: if you want to hold a private discussion with someone, then by all means find a private venue to do it in.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:33:20
Kathodus, now, now. I’m not smearing anybody as racist. I’ve pointed out some issues and asked a question to generate discussion.
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Jan 21, 2018 @ 13:37:45
You weren’t entirely up-front about the question, though. You started with the conclusion that JDA is being discriminated against because of his race, rather than stating clearly that you were critiquing what you perceive as the Left’s tendency to jump the gun on outrage. Your satire was a bit too subtle, given it played exactly into JDA’s talking points.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 10:57:00
Calvin said: Well, in truth I’m not sure, but no doubt it was spurious, inflammatory and/or insulting. And boring.
Dear Calvin, have you decided that Requires Hate style harassment is just fine, and that’s your plan for the future? Maybe you should consider Floppy Cameltron’s current situation, and little Benajun’s as well. What goes around does come around, eventually.
The nice thing about people like Lela (who lets us play on her -private- forum, which she owns and controls, make no mistake,) is that everyone can see you harassing me and generally being a jackass.
So stop talking to me. I’m not going to reply to your crap, I’m just going to tell you to step off.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 12:01:38
@phantom —
“which she owns and controls”
Ahhh, you finally made a true statement.
Yup. **Lela** controls this board. Not you.
It’s incredibly amusing that you seem to think JDA — who organizes campaigns with his buddies to “troll the shit out of” (his own words) people he doesn’t like — has done nothing wrong, but at the same time you’re so amazingly delicate that you shrink like a melting snowflake at the prospect of one person rebutting your constant stream of false claims and fantasies on one measly public comment board.
As the poster calling herself “Jo” on File 770 put it while she was defending JDA: grow up.
Again: when you enter the metaphorical “public square” — like commenting on a public message board — you have no reasonable expectation of controlling who does or does not respond to your posts. As I keep advising you: if you want to hold a private discussion with someone, then by all means find a private venue to do it in.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 12:07:26
I’ve been trying to point out that there’s too much conflict within the SFF community right now. Accusations back and forth never solve anything, or even win arguments. Could we stick to reasonable discussion of the issues we need solve?
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 12:21:42
@Lela —
“Could we stick to reasonable discussion of the issues we need solve?”
That would be nice!
Amidst all the outrage-peddling on this thread, there’s at least one important take-home message that we should all be able to support: don’t condemn people without evidence, and conversely don’t ignore evidence when you have it.
Both sides — like most human beings everywhere — can have a tendency to jump on an outrage bandwagon without putting enough thought into what they’re doing or what actual evidence does or does not lie behind the accusations. We need to work to overcome that tendency as best we can.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 13:43:06
I’d settle for basic manners. Usually when someone says “stop talking to me” that’s sufficient clue that they don’t want to talk to you.
Your treehouse, your rules, Lela. Whatever you want to do is fine.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 13:50:58
@phantom —
“Usually when someone says “stop talking to me” that’s sufficient clue that they don’t want to talk to you.”
Phantom, nobody is forcing you to talk to me. Ignore me all you like. Heck, block me — there’s even instructions for doing that in one of the recent File 770 threads — so you’ll never have to see my messages again.
I won’t mind.
Again — the point here is not to be “talked to” by you. The point is to make sure that the actual facts are available to other people who read the board. There are estimates floating around that 90% of people who visit public sites like this never post any comments. THAT is my target audience, the silent 90% — not you.
And yet again — when you enter the metaphorical “public square”, like commenting on a public message board, you have no reasonable expectation of controlling who does or does not respond to your posts. As I keep advising you: if you want to hold a private discussion with someone, then by all means find a private venue to do it in. And if you want your various claims to go unchallenged, then stick to posting on your own blog.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 14:05:29
Basic manners includes eg. not comparing Contrarius’ refusal to stop correcting your exaggerations, truth-twisting, and outright lies to Requires Hate’s vicious attacks and rallying of her followers to stalk and harass people online. Basically, not misrepresenting people’s words and actions in order to “win” points in the culture war in your head.
It’s obvious that Contrarius sees what you are doing and has the energy to refute your inaccurate statements. Like she says, “The point is to make sure that the actual facts are available to other people who read the board. There are estimates floating around that 90% of people who visit public sites like this never post any comments. THAT is my target audience, the silent 90% — not you.”
It’s the same reason people go around refuting long-debunked Intelligent Design “theories,” Holocaust deniers, climate change “skeptics,” etc..
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 19:39:33
Hi Kathodus.
I love how in the spirit of open and honest discussion, you complain about me comparing harasser Calvin to harasser RH. Then you put ID theorists and global warming skeptics in the same sentence with Holocaust deniers.
That was special. ~:D
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 18:23:20
Lela said: “Could we stick to reasonable discussion of the issues we need solve?”
In answer to your question, apparently not.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 21:58:29
I think we’ve pretty much exhausted this topic, so I’m going to close the comments. Thank you again to all who participated!
P.S. Saw on the news that Ursula LeGuin has passed. Very sad. I’ll have to write something about her.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 23:34:49
Lela, thanks for opening the comments so I could have one more swing at the pinata.
This is an excellent video of Jordan Peterson, AKA SJW Satan, that I found over at John C. Wright’s blog. This is the youtube link.
Many will be aware that Dr. Peterson did an interview on British TV with Ms. Cathy Newman, during which she spent most of the time trying to put words in his mouth. The video of it went viral, and millions have seen it. Cathy Newman was very much on the losing side in the exchange.
This video I’ve posted here is, in part, an after-action report examining the Newman interview, and Peterson does not treat the event as a victory. Rather, he is very concerned by the interview and the aftermath, because they reveal a very large gaping chasm that’s been ripped open in Western society. He also wasn’t pleased with his own half of the interview, and says he missed an opportunity to engage Cathy Newman in a true, constructive discussion, rather than an adversarial contest with a “winner” and a “loser.”
Definitely worth a look, I took the “chasm” message to heart. Meaning I’ll be even less receptive to individuals whose only aim is to confuse, confound and vex others.
I also learned some fun things about the Hero archetype, which I will begin including more in my writing. Can’t have too many heroes.
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Jan 23, 2018 @ 23:46:06
Thanks for posting, Phantom. There’s likely material here for another blog. The video is too long for me to watch tonight, but I looked up a couple of articles. One of them says this interview they’re discussing was a collision of classical liberalism with identity politics. Hm. Interesting.
P.S. Am watching the original Channel 4 interview. Ha. Is Peterson on the autism spectrum?
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Jan 24, 2018 @ 10:29:52
Lela said: “Is Peterson on the autism spectrum?”
He might be, since you mention. I have no direct knowledge, but he’s got a real gift for looking at things as if he was an alien from outer space. That’s something high-functioning Aspies commonly do, it makes us both very annoying and very insightful at times. Idiots at other times, of course. ~:D
He’s clearly 3 sigmas off the mean on the intelligence scale, and he’s got fantastic control of his temper. And as he said in the video I posted, he’s spent thousands of hours talking to every type of person there is, trying to dig down to their glitch that they came to see him about. So he’s seen that act of hers before.
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Jan 24, 2018 @ 13:36:12
Not only has he got really good control of his temper, he’s got really great control of what he’s saying and a really dead on memory for what he’s said. That’s why I’m thinking there might be a bit of savant talent in there.
He interacted fairly well during the interview, but afterward, it turns out he was recording and analyzing her performance all the time he was keeping such tight control of his own arguments. I’m looking up a few more of his videos.
BTW, someone else I think is on the autism spectrum is Neil Young the rock music star. He’s a little different on stage, but it’s even more visible during interviews.
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Jan 26, 2018 @ 19:06:43
Update, Jon Del Arroz speaks about his SFWA adventure!
http://delarroz.com/?p=2088
All I can say is, that’s a hell of a tale of woe.
Next question, how long before the Silicon Valley culture turns Amazon into a new gatekeeper for the culture war? It wouldn’t take much to jigger the Amazon ranking system, would it?
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Aug 26, 2018 @ 14:42:08
First, I would like to clarify that the reason JDA was banned from Worldcon 76 was because he publicly announced on his blog that he intended to violate its code of conduct by wearing a body camera. He wasn’t the only person banned and anyone else violating the code of conduct would have been as well.
Second, I would also like to point out that Worldcon’s Artist Guest of Honor was John Picaccio, who is of Mexican descent. He also went out of his way to put together the #Mexicanx Initiative to encourage more members of similar heritages to attend, with the support of the convention committee.
In addition to these facts, JDA also tried to assemble a protest outside of the convention center during Worldcon 76, but was elsewhere when it happened.
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Aug 26, 2018 @ 16:12:09
Thanks for the comment. I’m aware of Jon’s provocations. I actually didn’t know who he was until all that started, so he’s using the strategy pretty well to get name recognition. However, I don’t think that means he doesn’t feel discriminated against. That’s subjective, and based on his experiences at cons.
BTW, why do you suppose Picaccio felt there was a need for an initiative? I figured it was to try to counter 1) the negative message Jon was sending and 2) to make a visible statement about the number of Hispanic/LatinX writers and fans within the SFF community. As I said, these writers are very talented but seem to be completely invisible to the award nominators.
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Sep 17, 2023 @ 13:43:02
George Clayton Johnson was a Native American.
There are quite a few novelists who are Hispanic, and many works that are now in English from novels in other languages and cultures.
If you wish to use one dystopian novelist as an example of widespread discrimination, think again.
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