# Other people do not share your experiences, your background, your personal #interactions with RH/WF/BS, your political perspective on social justice # issues and so forth. I
Firstly, I'll spell out my political perspective on social justice. I financially support Refuge and AllOut.org. I believe in a world where all people, regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, etc, are treated as equals and entitled to the same basic rights. These days I don't feel that I'm seeing that commitment honored in the SF&F community, nor in the larger framework of social justice politics either.
The fact that other people don't share the background or worldview of the victims is true in every situation, and isn't relevant. Abuse is abuse, and people should treat it as such regardless of what their political perspective is. If your political perspective supports abuse, then your perspective is evil. If you say to me "I'm not sure this abuse happened, because I can't find evidence", then that's different, but you seem to be saying "I see this happening, and from my political perspective, this isn't abuse", well, in that case, you're political perspective needs to change.
# Just because someone shares her stated interest in social justice # (whether heartfelt or not) does not mean they have to approve of or # justify the abuse.
Of course not, that would be generalizing from individual examples to a large group of people. Even if it were true that the majority of people with such a stated interest had justified and supported RH, it would still be untrue that they *all* had, and it would be untrue that the one set of beliefs *necessarily* implied the other. That's not what I've been saying.
However, it's undeniably the case that many people in SF&F *DID* support and justify RH's abuse, and did so on the basis of arguments like "It's not racism, because there's no such thing as racism towards white people" which were constantly used in her defence, and if you dig around on forums where this topic is being discussed, you'll see they still are (though, of course, most of the evidence has been deleted. I mean, it's amazing, all those blog-posts, all of them, are ALL GONE. I don't entirely blame people for that, when you realize you've made a mistake it's natural to cover it up, but there's a surprising number of dead links out there, isn't there?)
This 'it's not racism' argument is not one that most people would make or even be familiar with, and they certainly wouldn't make it of someone who repeatedly insulted people on the basis of their race, and even attacked PoC for "sounding white" and who wrote a piece like "Courtship in the country of machine gods" that is a thinly-disguised fantasy of genocide against white people. Admittedly, the latter would not have been known to many people at the time (all though plenty apparently did know) because we didn't know RH was BS, but it is obvious now, and it is time to call racism racism.
Something, some psychological spell, led the SF&F community to support, or at least tolerate Requires Hate, without being sufficiently forceful in it's condemnation of her. The community has been much more forceful (although still surprisingly weak) against Vox Day, who I don't think has called for anyone's murder. It's been massively forceful against Johnathon Ross, hounding him out of worldcon for a joke *he hadn't even made yet*, and being left with egg on it's face in front of the whole world (I don't particularly like Ross, but SF&F was attacking the wrong target there).
The community needs to take ownership of the fact it hounded someone for a joke they'd not even made, and who had apologized for his previous errors, while being almost silent in critique of someone who ran a campaign of hatred and abuse for decades. People do make mistakes, and need to be called on them, but a decades-long reign of abuse and hatefulness is not a mistake, it's a long term strategy. When you see people saying "I'm still too afraid of her to sign my name" you're seeing some glimpse of what it was that the community allowed, and that there's very many people out there who aren't speaking up, because they think she's going to come back under another pseudonym, and take revenge against anyone who spoke against her, and that the community will allow it once more.
There is something deeply rotten in the state of SF&F, and a certain political worldview was used to enable and support RH. People in the SF&F community need to show a greater commitment to protecting everyone from abuse, without asking what their privilege level is, because if you protect everyone from abuse then, guess what, you protect everyone from abuse. When you condemn a troll for attacking one person, and say you're going to do so whenever they attack anyone, then you dissuade them from attacking others, especially if said troll is hoping to launch a writing career within the community. If you deal with a troll when it's attacking the strong, it may never go on to attack the weak, but when you allow them to attack one person, they and their copy-cats will soon be attacking everyone.
The failure to condemn this behavior at the start helped no-one, least of all Ms Hate (I'm not going to use her 'real' name because I think there's some value to keeping her real identity seperate going forwards, so that one day she can put the past behind her). She was encouraged and supported down a very nasty path, ending in an inevitable car-wreck for her, and she would have been better served by a community that, from the start, tried to push her in a more positive direction than it did.
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branchandroot
Re: Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-23 09:38 am (UTC)#interactions with RH/WF/BS, your political perspective on social justice
# issues and so forth. I
Firstly, I'll spell out my political perspective on social justice. I financially support Refuge and AllOut.org. I believe in a world where all people, regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, etc, are treated as equals and entitled to the same basic rights. These days I don't feel that I'm seeing that commitment honored in the SF&F community, nor in the larger framework of social justice politics either.
The fact that other people don't share the background or worldview of the victims is true in every situation, and isn't relevant. Abuse is abuse, and people should treat it as such regardless of what their political perspective is. If your political perspective supports abuse, then your perspective is evil. If you say to me "I'm not sure this abuse happened, because I can't find evidence", then that's different, but you seem to be saying "I see this happening, and from my political perspective, this isn't abuse", well, in that case, you're political perspective needs to change.
# Just because someone shares her stated interest in social justice
# (whether heartfelt or not) does not mean they have to approve of or
# justify the abuse.
Of course not, that would be generalizing from individual examples to a large group of people. Even if it were true that the majority of people with such a stated interest had justified and supported RH, it would still be untrue that they *all* had, and it would be untrue that the one set of beliefs *necessarily* implied the other. That's not what I've been saying.
However, it's undeniably the case that many people in SF&F *DID* support and justify RH's abuse, and did so on the basis of arguments like "It's not racism, because there's no such thing as racism towards white people" which were constantly used in her defence, and if you dig around on forums where this topic is being discussed, you'll see they still are (though, of course, most of the evidence has been deleted. I mean, it's amazing, all those blog-posts, all of them, are ALL GONE. I don't entirely blame people for that, when you realize you've made a mistake it's natural to cover it up, but there's a surprising number of dead links out there, isn't there?)
This 'it's not racism' argument is not one that most people would make or even be familiar with, and they certainly wouldn't make it of someone who repeatedly insulted people on the basis of their race, and even attacked PoC for "sounding white" and who wrote a piece like "Courtship in the country of machine gods" that is a thinly-disguised fantasy of genocide against white people. Admittedly, the latter would not have been known to many people at the time (all though plenty apparently did know) because we didn't know RH was BS, but it is obvious now, and it is time to call racism racism.
Something, some psychological spell, led the SF&F community to support, or at least tolerate Requires Hate, without being sufficiently forceful in it's condemnation of her. The community has been much more forceful (although still surprisingly weak) against Vox Day, who I don't think has called for anyone's murder. It's been massively forceful against Johnathon Ross, hounding him out of worldcon for a joke *he hadn't even made yet*, and being left with egg on it's face in front of the whole world (I don't particularly like Ross, but SF&F was attacking the wrong target there).
The community needs to take ownership of the fact it hounded someone for a joke they'd not even made, and who had apologized for his previous errors, while being almost silent in critique of someone who ran a campaign of hatred and abuse for decades. People do make mistakes, and need to be called on them, but a decades-long reign of abuse and hatefulness is not a mistake, it's a long term strategy. When you see people saying "I'm still too afraid of her to sign my name" you're seeing some glimpse of what it was that the community allowed, and that there's very many people out there who aren't speaking up, because they think she's going to come back under another pseudonym, and take revenge against anyone who spoke against her, and that the community will allow it once more.
There is something deeply rotten in the state of SF&F, and a certain political worldview was used to enable and support RH. People in the SF&F community need to show a greater commitment to protecting everyone from abuse, without asking what their privilege level is, because if you protect everyone from abuse then, guess what, you protect everyone from abuse. When you condemn a troll for attacking one person, and say you're going to do so whenever they attack anyone, then you dissuade them from attacking others, especially if said troll is hoping to launch a writing career within the community. If you deal with a troll when it's attacking the strong, it may never go on to attack the weak, but when you allow them to attack one person, they and their copy-cats will soon be attacking everyone.
The failure to condemn this behavior at the start helped no-one, least of all Ms Hate (I'm not going to use her 'real' name because I think there's some value to keeping her real identity seperate going forwards, so that one day she can put the past behind her). She was encouraged and supported down a very nasty path, ending in an inevitable car-wreck for her, and she would have been better served by a community that, from the start, tried to push her in a more positive direction than it did.
Colum