Editor of Tangent kicked out of Worldcon for complaining about political correctness · 8:50pm Aug 24th, 2016
This past Friday, there was a panel at Worldcon called "The State of Short Fiction". Its description said,
More than just the magazines, short fiction is in a golden age, found in the magazine, online, in anthologies, and chapbooks. The field's editors come together to talk about what they are seeing, and debate whether there is a short fiction renaissance.
Dave Truesdale, the editor of Tangent Online, was the moderator. He began the panel with a rude 5-minute speech/rant saying that he thought short science fiction was not in a golden age, because it was suffering from overly-sensitive people who complained constantly of sexism, racism, & homophobia, made writers timid, and bullied anyone who spoke out against them. One of those 5 minutes was Dave quoting David Hartwell, describing science fiction fandom as an unusually tolerant and accepting place, presented as evidence against the accusations of systematic sexism & racism. He concluded by saying,
And I don't understand where we've come to this point where people, a certain segment, who seem to make it... their social agenda's more important than the literary aspect. They bully, they terrify, they intimidate, they cost people their jobs, just because these people do not agree with exactly what they believe in.
Naturally, Dave was expelled from Worldcon. MidAmeriCon released a statement on Twitter saying,
Dave Truesdale's membership was revoked because he violated MidAmeriCon II's Code of Conduct. Specifically, he caused 'significance interference with event operations and caused excessive discomfort to others'.
Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld, turned his chair away in protest as Dave spoke. Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov's, attacked him as soon as he stopped speaking, saying "Dave, you've done the same thing for years. You've bullied people when you didn't like a story." As proof, she said that he once reacted very strongly to a story she published 11 years ago. (She couldn't remember the author or the title, but it was something about a talking squirrel.)
Dave's account of what happened is here. Here's an mp3 recording of the panel.
Jim Hines gave a description of the first half-hour of the recording here:
http://www.jimchines.com/2016/08/worldcon-expels-truesdale/
You can interpret that either as that Truesdale was abusing the panel to harp on his private obsession, or that Truesdale was trying to express his opinion about the biggest problem in science fiction today, but kept getting shut down.
Dave is being widely criticized for having recorded the panel, and Jonathan Strahan asked him to take the recording down because he was recorded without his consent. OTOH, if the recording did not exist, people would be likely to misinterpret the many blogs & tweets saying that Dave hijacked the panel. Listening to the recording shows that Dave did little talking after the first 6 minutes. I clicked through the audio after Dave's 5 minutes, starting it at 42 different points. Dave was speaking at 3 of those 42 points. Sheila Williams did about half of the talking.
By the 13 minute mark, 3 panelists and the audience had made it clear that they didn't want to talk about that subject, and at that point, Dave probably should have sucked it up, taken off his activist cap, put on his moderator cap, and talked about what the people wanted to talk about. I think a panelist or a speaker should feel free to confront controversial subjects, but a moderator does not have that prerogative, at least if we take the word literally.
The panelists, however, were the ones talking--Dave didn't harangue them; he asked them to talk on the subject of political correctness in fiction, and they expressed reluctance, then talked about it. Especially Sheila Williams.
Dave has a history of harping on this issue, often in myopic and bone-headed ways. If you Google "Dave Truesdale", you'll find more blogs by members of SFWA complaining about him for being sexist and racist than things written by Dave Truesdale. For example:
Long thing about a SFWA cover that I didn't read
Rant by same person about Truesdale that ends with a history of sexism in SF
I find it hard to believe that Dave being kicked out of Worldcon has nothing to do with the Sad & Rabid Puppies. I find it hard to believe that, had a moderator opened the same panel by saying that short science fiction today was suffering a lack of diversity because too many of the writers were white males, and kept returning to that point throughout the panel, that that moderator would have been kicked out of the convention.
The next day, the Hugos were awarded. Again, just as in the recent Nebula awards, by an incredible coincidence, despite the field's white male demographics, all of the major awards (novel, novella, novelette, short story) went to women.
I swear theses SJWs are the modern versions of the moralizing, fainting couch, pearl clutching ladies from the Victorian era. Banging on and on about "moral" behavior, and fighting so hard censoring/silencing all those vulgarians.
Personally I find them to be racists/sexists of the highest order, with all of their "soft bigotry of low expectations".
Not to mention their fetishization of victimhood, using it as a form of status and currency, and their oppression pyramid (where some are more oppressed then others, therefore more worth then others).
But now I am ranting. The Hugo awards is a farce nowadays. SJWs ruin everything they touch, "for the greater good".
well I know what I'm posting on Facebook tomorrow.
If he had not made his point at the beginning of the panel, there is no way he would have been able to make his point later in the program. Still, on a point scoring basis, I have to give 75 points to Dave and 25 points to WC, because if people stood up in all of the panels and told us what they really thought, the world would come to an end. Things like that really need to be stopped before they spread. (/snark)
"... (She couldn't remember the author or the title, but it was something about intelligent squirrels.)..." Hm. Baal Bunny's story, perhaps? I seem to remember a squirrel-mage somewhere in there.
"...By an incredible coincidence, despite the field's white male demographics, all of the major awards (novel, novella, novelette, short story) went to women, only one of whom was white...." Amazing how that happens. Million to one chance. It's like the ballots are... slanted, perhaps?
(By the way, thanks for posting the links. I've been looking for those. And since the state where Worldcon was held is a one-party permission state for recording conversations, all the "I don't consent!" screeching from certain parties is moot, no matter how much they screech.)
[Insert "coverage of the non-PC side of this crap is why I read the epic troll Vox Day's blog" here]
Yeah, this was all about Puppy-kicking. Truesdale wasn't even venting his own spleen, but was mostly quoting from a letter written by the recently-deceased and well-respected editor David Hartwell. His formal offense was "caus[ing] excessive discomfort to others". Fucking hell.
As for the Hugos themselves, they went out of their way to downvote anything that had Puppy drool on it, voting No Award ahead of almost anything nominated by any Puppy supporter.
One of the categories where I've actually read (almost) all of the nominations was voted as follows:
Best Short Story:
Cat Pictures Please - 1548 (1993 after runoffs)
No Award - 467 (615 after runoffs)
Space Raptor Butt Invasion - 392 (eliminated)
Asymmetrical Warfare - 185 (eliminated)
Seven Kill Tiger - 95 (eliminated)
If You Were an Award, My Love - 19 (eliminated)
Cat Pictures Please was an OK story, but (more importantly to the voters) it wasn't covered in Puppy drool, and it was written by a woman with the correct opinions.
I haven't read SRBI, which is a porny crackfic, but because it contained gay sex (and was apparently legitimately funny), it got a fair number of votes.
Asymmetrical Warfare is another story I hadn't read prior to the Hugos. Not great, but not bad.
Seven Kill Tiger was published in Jerry Pournelle's There Will Be War Volume X, the latest volume of a classic MilSF anthology recently resurrected by Vox Day's publishing house. Yes, it has Vox Day cooties. It was written by a Chinese author, but contained wrongthink: it was about the Chinese using bioweapons to ethnically cleanse Africa some time around next Tuesday. IMO, it was the best story in the category.
If You Were an Award, My Love was a pro-Puppy trollfic, mocking the execrable and yet Hugo-nominated and Nebula-winning If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.
According to the Hugo voters, only Cat Pictures was worthy of an award, and if it couldn't win, nobody could.
Best Related Work was full of documentary evidence of the wrongdoings of SF Fandom darlings, exposing rape, pedophilia, and other unpleasantness. It was, of course, No Awarded by a huge margin.
You can find similar patterns all through the vote tallies. If the Puppies liked it, it got buried under No Award. The end result was a bunch of mediocre stuff being awarded Hugos just to keep them away from the Puppies.
In addition, the Hugo committee has decided to approve the voting reforms for next time, in an attempt to keep the Puppies out.
Oddly enough, this is exactly what the Rabid Puppies led by Vox Day actually wanted. Here's the nominating and voting numbers for the last few years:
Year: votes (nominations)
2012: 1922 (1101)
2013: 1848 (1343)
2014: 3587 (1923)
2015: 5950 (2112)
2016: 3130 (4032)
Vox Day had plenty of minions ready and willing to buy tickets so that they could vote this year. I signed up for his mailing list just to follow this crap, and I have an email from him telling his minions NOT to buy memberships this year if they didn't already have one, because he didn't need more votes to carry out his plan.
The objective was simple: give them enough rope, and watch them hang themselves. Scare the shit out of the Keepers of the Hugo, fill the slate with stuff they wouldn't vote for, and then watch them award Politically-Correct mediocrity and attempt to rig the system from that point on themselves.
It worked. Nobody with any sense is crowing about a Great Victory Over The Puppies this year. It was a scorched earth campaign, and they know it. Combined with the open-to-the-public Dragon Awards being given out next month by modern SF&F fans, the Hugos are more or less irrelevant, other than as a political football.
This is why the Left keeps fracturing: its standard of tolerance for intellectual dissent is...nil.
And there will always be dissent. Once you kick out all the right-wingers you find that now you can't abide the moderates, and once you kick out all the moderates you find you can't tolerate the democratic socialists, then the Trotskyites...
(Of course the Right finds itself in its current mess because it saw what the Left had and wanted it, just because THE OTHER KIDS GET TO DO IT SO WHY CAN'T I? Trump is what happens when you jump off the bridge because the other kid does it too.)
4169521
I agree that "Seven Tiger Kill" was the best story in the group. It topped my ballot, with "Cat Pictures Please" coming a close second and "No Award" coming a much closer third.
Honestly, the real lesson of the Hugos to me was this: short story writers suck. Neither "Seven Tiger Kill" nor "Cat Pictures Please" was better than marginal-finalist level in our own Original Fiction Writeoffs---and these are things that have been professionally edited and published, not thrown together by a pony fanfiction author over the course of three days.
It's extremely difficult for me to get up in arms about the state of Hugo voting right now, for the simple reason that I'm no longer sure any of these people deserve any recognition. Give a rocket to Horizon or Cold in Gardez, then I'll start caring again.
4169560
Yup. There's a reason I was using the terms "crackfic" and "trollfic" in my descriptions, and it wasn't because I'm talking to people on a ponyfic site who are used to those terms. Rather, that's exactly the level of quality we're looking at: middling at best for a ponyfic site. And yet, a sub-par story from a list of mediocre stories won "best short story written in the entirety of professional SF this year". BULLSHIT.
4169568
I was all prepared to vote for SRBI, to be honest, but it was the most Fimficcy of the lot. Not because it was a crack shipfic---because it committed the cardinal (and all too common in fanfic writing) sin of being boring.
Seriously, it's a short story! Chuck Tingle is a national treasure, but he needs to learn how to put together 5000 words (or even a good first two pages) without boring his reader to tears.
I appreciate the due diligence you put forth for this post. I've been dealing with the intersectional hate cult for years, but I've met enough alt-right chuckle heads, the odious Vox Day included given the topic, that I ended up taking it at word that the panelist had been disruptive and unpleasant. Especially since I've given up the Hugo controversy as dead now that Vox Day had become ascendant.
I feel slightly embarrassed to have fallen for the most basic of their tricks, but I thank you for taking the time to report this honestly.
Bless. Jim Hines' blogposts make a big deal out of "being recorded without consent" as well. They're in public with no expectation of privacy, Missouri's a one-part-consent state, and the posted con policies explicitly state that being recorded is opt-out.
Be careful posting things like this, or they'll revoke your Worldcon membership.
As odious as Rabid Puppies may be, there are complete lunatics on both sides of most social issues of controversy. It's neigh-impossible to discuss anything involving the Hugos or Gamergate or Black Lives Matters or transgender issues or (etc. etc.) without being automatically painted as a member of the other side of the argument in the worst possible terms.
Moderation takes rational thought, the suppression of outrage, and a willingness to entertain the idea that you still have something to learn from other people, even when those people seem evil and wrong. Regrettably, most people just aren't into that kind of shit.
More on topic, I do want to point out that this story hasn't gone quietly into the night on the anti-Puppy side either. I'm friends with Moshe Feder on Facebook, one of the Tor editors that a lot of the Puppy fans love to hate, and as soon as he heard about this happening at WorldCon, he was posting about how pulling Truesdale's badge was a shitty and stupid response to the situation (my words, not his).
As a (new, still relatively uninvolved) member of the SFF community, I really think we need to get our act together and start calling out the bad behavior on both sides. At the moment, I feel like we're just in a yearly "Shitty reactionaries ruin the run-up to Worldcon" / "Shitty radicals ruin Worldcon itself" cycle.
4169574
I always figured people just purchased Chuck's novels because they support increasingly crazy story titles. I never assumed his stories actually contained more words inside.
4169633
Disappointingly, they do contain more words inside. If it was just the titles and the Amazon.com summaries, Dr. Tingle would be the next Victor Hugo. I think I'm just going to have to regard him as a performance artist rather than a writer in the future. (So maybe he's the next Yukio Mishima.)
4169510
Not mine:
Mine are published in the Sword & Sorceress anthology series, not in Asimov's. I haven't managed to sell a story to Asimov's since Gardner Dozois retired as editor, but then I haven't sent them more than three stories in the past 15 years, maybe...
Oddly enough, though, I have been published by Dave Truesdale. I wrote reviews for Tangent back when it was a print magazine. I've still got a stack of them on the floor of my closet. I haven't thought about him in 15 years, either.
Y'know? I think I may be out of the loop.
Mike
Kicking him out is extremely counter productive no matter your personal opinion, and shows a lack of maturity and forethought. That being said, I really want to read that story about squirrels.
From all your incredibly helpful blogs on the issue, the puppies seem to think that there's a concerted systemic bias against them, and not just that there tastes are old or out of touch or simply uncommon nowadays. This event seems to confirm that.
4169560
It's very inspiring to me. Gives me hope for my own work.
(Breathes deeply; exhales slowly)
Truesdale feels like a tempest in a teapot to me. You yourself characterize his actions as "rude", and he wasn't just attending the panel but representing the convention.
I see a lot of people here ignoring the first part of that to make a point about the second. He recorded the panel. He brought pearls to distribute. It seems from the outside like this was a planned disruption, and Worldcon has every right to say that they do not want to be represented by people who make plans to hijack panels for their own agenda.
"But they're singling out conserv—" — no. Worldcon kicked out Mary Robinette Kowal for bad panel behavior, too. What she did also caused "significant interference with event operations" (alcohol violating the event contract) and "excessive discomfort to others" (just check the post comments for the story of the alcoholic attendee), but her story isn't being used as a political football, so the outrage machines get turned on selectively.
I'm not 100% comfortable with the decision either — if only because Kowal's story makes clear that there does exist a middle ground between no action and full badge revocation, and based only on the known information (in the absence of an official Worldcon post-mortem which may not be available due to privacy concerns), there's a legitimate argument to be made for overreaction — but given the situation he himself set up, I'm pretty sure that there was no way for Worldcon to ignore this.
None of those awards went to women last year, when the No Award anti-puppy campaign was at its apex. I guess the SJWs must have all abandoned the awards and let the minorities take back over. </sarcasm>
How many of the Hugo finalists have you read? Can you name a specific winner you personally don't think was deserving? The Fifth Season was the best SF novel I've read in years (I know you read my review of the finalists), and I'm making a point of picking up the sequel. Considering that Vox Day doubled down in his Hugo wrap-up post by calling NK Jemisin a "half-savage" to explicitly dismiss her book based on the race of the author, I'm really not inclined to assign "vote based only on merit" motives to the core Rabid Puppy crowd.
I'm more inclined to agree that the short story category was absolute crap (cf. 4169560, 4169568) — but considering that three of the five slots were either Castalia House products slated on by a Castalia House campaign and/or obvious trollfics, and that Cat Pictures' sole legitimate competition (Asymmetrical Warfare) was leagues worse, my choice was either to settle on it or set the category on fire with a first-run No Award.
The Rabid Puppies' alternative to Naomi Kritzer was shitty trollfics. The Sad Puppies had Kritzer (and Asymmetrical Warfare!) on their list. In short, if you think Cat Pictures didn't belong on the ballot, you disagree with the Puppies at least as much as you disagree with mainline Hugo voters.
4169521
Truesdale wasn't quoting a Hartwell letter, he was quoting Andy Duncan writing about his final conversation with Hartwell, and Duncan has written at length about how Truesdale's interpretation differs from his own.
And
feels awfully disingenuous, because Puppy picks actually won
fivesix out of 17 categories (The Martian, The Sandman: Overture, Andy Weir, Abigail Larson, File 770, eta: and Folding Beijing), despite puppies only being 10%-15% of voters. And in the Big Four categories Bad Horse cites, the only stories which scored under No Award were:Flashpoint: Titan (published by Vox Day's Castalia House)
What Price Humanity? (Castalia House)
Seven Kill Tiger (Castalia House)
If You Were An Award, My Love (Castalia House)
Space Raptor Butt Invasion (an acknowledged trollfic)
Asymmetrical Warfare (which was indeed a non-Castalia-House Puppy pick, but which nobody here is arguing was any better than "not great, but not bad").
Eight Puppy picks in those same categories placed above No Award. One won.
In the categories in which Vox nominated something besides his own material and/or obvious crap, it objectively got considered.
4169754 4169661 That's because squirrels are cool. The world needs more squirrels.
Signed,
Dogs.
4169568 Yeah! I have potential!
(Up to 10kV if I scuff my feet in socks)
4169831
She violated a clear, stated term of their agreement with the hotel--no serving alcohol at events--and she was suspended for one day, not for the rest of the convention. Her story isn't being used as political football because it isn't political. It was financial. To quote from the page you linked to, "Since the contract that they signed allowed for no corkage at all (something I didn’t know at the time) my actions put them in the potential position of having to pay several thousand dollars to the venue for breach of contract. Fortunately, it was easy to avoid by asking me to leave for the day, which was in no way a hardship for me."
None of those awards went to women only because 2 of the categories were no-awarded to spite the puppies. Of the 2 remaining, 1 went to a white male.
"You're complaining that the books we study in this literature class are all by white men? How many of them have you read? Can you name a specific book you personally don't think is deserving?"
Do you think that's a valid response?
And, for that matter, have you listened to the audio of the panel, as I have?
Basically my takeaway from all this is to never go to Worldcon ever and never join the SFWA. Got too much drama in my life already.
4169882
Might as well. It seems like everyone involved in those organizations on both sides is doing their level best to make them irrelevant.
4169912
The Hugos are apparently dead-set on becoming the new Philip K. Dick Award.
4169831
4169881
Oooh, Awesome Writer Fight!
<goes to get the popcorn>
FETCH ME MY FAINTING COUCH!
Thanks for reminding me why I stick with fanfiction.
How is it that people applaud someone who's trying to support actual sexism, racism, and homophobia? If that's what the story is ABOUT that's one thing and should be entirely acceptable. If the story or the writer is pushing their pro-sexist/racist/homophobic personal views through their writing, or throwing it around at cons and the like, why do we treat them like heroes just because they said what they were thinking?
People have become so blind hating on 'PC culture' that they wind up supporting people they otherwise would, intellectually, disagree with. Hopefully. It's fine to hate SJWs, I don't really consider them people anyway. But remember that the majority of the causes they claim to champion are ACTUAL causes with real people suffering under those problems, and worse yet because the SJWs have taken up the banner no one takes those people and their problems seriously anymore. But don't hate SJWs so blindly that we forget that many of these things they claim to be against are fundamentally bad for people on a personal health level, and bad for society as a whole.
If the man was talking about protecting the ability to write stories that contain these things through flawed characters and the like, then more power to him. If he was supporting these actual issues himself and trying to push an agenda to have racism and such be more tolerated and accepted, then let him figuratively hang. When we've left behind the extremist viewpoints on both wings of these issues we'll have finally advanced as a society. But not until then.
4169881
> And, for that matter, have you listened to the audio of the panel, as I have?
No, I hadn't, because I read both your characterization and Hines' characterization of it, and when people arguing different sides agree on something (namely, his rudeness) that's a pretty powerful truth indicator.
I also object to your characterization of "As I have" if all you did was statistically sample it to see how often he was speaking. But, whatever. Your question is fair; at the time of my post I had not listened to the panel. Not only did I take an hour to sit through the whole thing, I also transcribed Truesdale's words from the first three minutes, so we don't have to sit around here debating something whose context is invisible to other readers. Frankly, I feel like I wasted an hour of my life, but as long as we're chasing the sunk costs of responding to this in the first place we might as well do it right.
So, yeah. Rude? Yes. Deraily? Yes. In a panel about the current state of SF his opening statement was literally that there are readers who the genre should exclude. He goes on to give an example of people who complain about sexism, racism, or homophobia, and says the solution is for them to shut up. While there are a range of possible interpretations there, I think we can bracket his intentions somewhere between "complaining about extremists in a tone-deaf fashion" and "asserting science fiction is not for liberals".
After about ten minutes of discussion of this (and an ugly exchange between a shouting audience member and another panelist) there are several panelist complaints that this is off topic. Dave is not speaking up much but every time he speaks it is an attempt to return to his original point. He complains about not having gotten to finish and at one point explicitly invokes the liberal/conservative political divide.
The first time I really felt like they were talking about the current state of science fiction — rather than the political derail — was about 35 minutes in, when they were discussing the blurring of the lines between fantasy and science fiction in modern markets. If I'd been at Worldcon I'd honestly have left about ten minutes in, especially when the guy in the audience got involved. It was half an hour of pointless drama and large chunks of it weren't even talking about modern SF (bouncing back and forth between historical discussion, and the way editors react to political complaints from both sides).
At 39:11 Truesdale speaks up to ask whether a pro-life story could get published today; still trying to hammer the single politics note. At 41:00 he asks Neil what sorts of stories he's getting today as a general question, which seems like an improvement. He speaks approvingly of works in translation at about 42:00 and I perked up, thinking they were actually going to have a civil conversation about something substantial ... and then Dave announces it's about two minutes from the end, and takes some questions I can't hear. So while you're right that DT spoke up very little over the course of the panel, the vast majority of his contributions were to specifically hammer on his explicitly political topic.
Crosstalk at ~52:00, after it's over: "It wasn't my intention to make it about a social agenda thing." Wow. Just ... wow.
If I was running Worldcon, and I had been in the room for that panel, and those were the only complaints I received (still not settled), would I have revoked his badge? Probably not; it was a trainwreck and I'd make damn sure he didn't moderate for me again, but a badge pull is a strong statement. If I had been given a summary of his statement similar to the one five paragraphs up, and had to piece together what happened from eyewitness reports without the luxury of time? Yeah, probably.
Either way, I've got a sort of vague, generalized empathy of the "The Whole Thing Sucks" variety but I just can't work up any outrage for his treatment given everything I know.
4169881
Well, I was trying to argue on your terms, because your argument as I understand it is that awards should be distributed based on merit rather than quotas. Am I mischaracterizing you? I'd prefer not to.
And you're right, I'm being an awfully poor leftist, since — as you rightfully point out — my argument explicitly ignores the possibility of structural prejudice. The last thread this came up in, I asked whether you were arguing that structural prejudice doesn't exist, or that it exists but is currently being mistargeted. I never got a response.
It's an important distinction because it basically boils down to whether you accept the core thesis of the social-justice left or not. This is a very different discussion if you do.
(You are, however, wholly correct on one point I'm happy to concede: a merit-based argument should be open to claims of other works of greater merit rather than myopically focusing on the quality of the winner.)
4170524
DISCLAIMER: I haven't listened to the recording, I've only read your abbreviated transcript. I'm probably not going to bother listening to the recording at any point, because I doubt that it's really worth the time to do so.
That said, I do have two things I want to say based on the abbreviated transcript.
1) I think the badge-pull was completely out of line. He was invited to moderate a panel. He went to the panel, and he spoke his mind about what he thought was important to the panel topic. A lot of people disagreed with him, and the panel didn't go well. That is not a badge-pulling offense, that's standard convention operation. More to the point, the fact that his badge got pulled (and apparently with essentially no communication between him and con staff, unlike Mary Robinette Kowal's badge pull at the same con) really serves to reinforce the point he was making.
2) Frankly, I think he's got a point. And I say this as a progressive, a liberal, et cetera.
I've seen people refer to his comments as veiled hate speech, and you know what? Those people seriously need to take a chill pill. I don't care if I don't have the lived experience of prejudice that many other people do; calling out the culture of microaggression fixation is an entirely valid thing to do.
Here's the problem: a big subgroup of modern progressivism is blissfully reenacting "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". Is there racism/sexism/etc in the world? Sure. In fact, I'll go a step farther. Is the world pretty much chock full of racism/sexism/etc? Sure! But (a) confirmation bias says that if you go looking for it everywhere, that doesn't necessarily mean everything you think is racist/sexist/etc actually is; and (b) there's a huge difference between trying to fix the problem and just being a pain in the ass about it. And let's be serious for a moment, we all know that a lot of the people concerned with this stuff are literally just there to make a fuss, win Progressive Points, and get internet famous. Heck, it's so bad that whole swathes of the internet and fan culture are caricatured with that brush. Tumblr? The Stephen Universe fandom?
People suck at dealing with racism/sexism/etc. I think this is sort of an inarguable fact, frankly. Take a look at some of the racial critiques of the musical Hamilton, if you want an idea of how stupid a lot of this stuff has gotten. I think anyone with any sense should recognize that Hamilton is close to the ideal cultural product in terms of race: it actively ignores the historical races of the people it portrays and lets any old person play them (with the exception of King George, and I could rant about that if I wanted). This is essentially the MLK ideal in action: not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And I've read articles in serious publications about how Hamilton is racist because sure it includes minority actors, but it doesn't do enough to discuss the actual contributions of historical minorities.
Obsession with getting special recognition for one's special group is never and can never lead toward a post-racial, post-gendered, post-whatever society. This is why I roll my eyes at most claims of cultural appropriation (especially when the members of the cultures being appropriated from have no problem with what's going on---see the fiasco over using kimono in western fashion for an instructive and depressing example). It's also why I generally agree with Dave Truesdale's point, even if I think he could have done a better job giving it in a less inflammatory manner. The fact that the Rabid Puppies are horrible doesn't mean that everyone who hates them gets a pass on their own behavior. Both the RPs and a sizable chunk of WorldCon attendees seem to be very actively engaged in the type of circle-jerk anger magnification that fans of CGP Grey may have seen discussed before.
Let me end my rant here discussing one of the reasons why I think Dave's point about the sorry state of SFF short-fiction is so spot-on. Let's look at this year's Hugo ballot for short stories. My choice for the best of the lot was "Seven Tiger Kill", which 4169521 appears to agree with (and which, if memory serves, you refused to read purely because it was a puppy pick). STK is about horribly racist characters committing genocide. It's far from a great story---but the racism angle is not the problem. Because---important distinction---it's the characters that are racist in this story, not necessarily the author.
Is the author racist? Maybe, I don't know. But half his characters very clearly don't share the racist sentiments of the other half. This story is a work of fiction, and it's a work of fiction talking about the really horrible things that can happen when you let ideas of racial superiority and inferiority fester. I could argue I'd have liked a stronger anti-genocide stance out of the story, but it pretty clearly isn't taking a pro-genocide stance.
But this story---which was one of only three stories on the ballot that even deserved consideration; and one of those three was hopelessly derivative; and the other was, frankly, just aimless and not very good---never could have gotten serious consideration in the present SFF climate. It got published by a guy people hate, and nominated by a group people hate, and it talked about race and very bad things. "Seven Tiger Kill" was always going to be a lightning rod for controversy. And you know what? I like when my science fiction is controversial. I like when it asks me to look into uncomfortable places. It's the same logic by which I think it makes sense for people to desire a wider range of perspectives among SFF writers.
There is an important difference between a work being offensive and a work offending some readers. Figuring out the difference can be hard, but I think it's patently obvious that SFF right now is struggling with an overabundance of people who either cannot or will not make that distinction.
4170506
No, actually, my take is that this is exactly the point, except you've got it backwards. I don't support racism and sexism, but I support the right of racists and sexists to speak their minds. This is elementary Voltaire (or more technically Beatrice Evelyn Hall, writing about Voltaire).
Kicking someone out of a convention for speaking their mind in a panel they're moderating has an unquestionable chilling effect. And, frankly, this is not your ideal hate speech test case. This is a guy saying something a lot of people in the SFF community obviously agree with, about the very chilling effect he then experienced.
Seriously, if we're debating whether it's appropriate to censor people for saying X-ist things, I feel like we're making a tacit admission that progressive values can't win in an actual contest of ideas. I seriously hope nobody actually thinks that, because it seems f***ing stupid to me. And, frankly, if most people are going to side with racists over anti-racists when both sides get to argue their case, the anti-racists seriously need to deal with the fact that they've found a way to lose one of the most winnable fights you can pick.
4170524
If you need an illustration of why the following from your transcript is not a derail and is dead on:
I've been going back and forth for several years over whether I can actually do something with race in my original fiction setting, and especially in a short story. Not because I'm concerned that a reasonable audience of actual black readers would be offended by my plans, but because I've seen what happened to Will Shetterly, what
Jane Yolen(fact checking myself, it was Patricia Wrede in this one) had to deal with when she wanted to do an AU fantasy history, what happened to Elizabeth Moon over WisCon, and the bullshit JK Rowling is getting thrown at her as she tries to expand the Harry Potter setting. Chances are no one will ever see my story, but on the off chance the story does get attention, it seems like a coin flip to me whether that would be something to celebrate or an internet mobbing.That's a chilling effect, and it is happening. And it's not chasing away the racists, it's chasing away the people with complex ideas, or the people whith simple ideas that they now know they need to worry about more than the idea is worth. If I wanted to write something racist, I could hide behind Vox Day. If I wanted to write something anti-racist... judging by this year's winners, I could win a Hugo. But the people who just want to write a story that falls somewhere in between, either ideologically or through engaging with race with a lack of ideology ... well, there's no safety net if they get it "wrong."
Now, it happens that as a bisexual woman I don't need the same consideration when it comes to gender or orientation, but I'm sure there are authors who feel the same way about those subjects. And political issues-- I don't even publicly tell people my political views in open forums where I could defend them, I certainly wouldn't write a story about them.
If everyone present didn't understand that this was what Truesdale was talking about, and how it relates to the state of short fiction (which is traditionally full of new authors, and where engaging with complex ideas can be fraught due to lack of space for exploration, and where the risk/reward is much worse than with a novel) then either they've turned off their brains long ago, or they needed to give someone a chance to explain.
4169560 4169521 4169831 If the puppy slates hadn't been cluttering things up, an Ursula Vernon story would have been up for voting, and her short stories are stunningly good.
Whatever else might be going on, the puppy slates have kept at least a few deserving people from having a chance at the award, and that makes me sad.
4171283
Completely agreed. The thing that's annoyed me the most through all this is the ability one subsection of the fandom has shown to control the nominations and effectively lock out other stories. I haven't actually heard whether last year's proposed rule changes got voted into law, but based on what I'd heard about them (proportional nominating, e.g.) they sounded like they'd probably go a long way toward alleviating my own problem with the current scenario.
I'm perfectly happy for anyone (or no one) to get the awards, but I don't think a single subsection of the SFF fandom should be able to control the nominations. I don't care if that's a puppy group or some other group. I think it does a disservice to everyone if the nominating process doesn't get a broad-spectrum look at what lots of different people think is good in any one year.
4170506 Dave Truesdale edits Tangent, an online magazine that reviews science fiction. You can check that link & see what you think. He likes old-timey SF, which was written mainly by men, so he probably gets criticized for reviewing too many books by men.
In the panel, he mentioned people being criticized for having covers with too many men on them. He also mentioned an editor who tried to produce an anthology with stories by an equal number of men and women, but most of the women who'd agreed missed the deadline, so he published it with few stories by women. He was then harshly criticized for publishing an anthology with too few stories by women. (That editor was actually one of the other panelists IIRC.)
He has never made racist or sexist comments AFAIK, but he has consistently denied the existence of racism and sexism within SF, which strikes many people as being a racist and sexist belief. I don't know whether he means there is no sexism or racism in SF (which would be a ridiculous statement), or that it is equal-opportunity sexism and racism.
4171343 4171283
According to those who attended the business meetings at WorldCon, some portion of the nominating/voting reforms were passed, but I'm not sure if a formal announcement of the changes has been made.
As for next year, Sad Puppies 5 is confirmed, but they're doing things differently. This year, they had an open list of "Hugo-eligible stuff we think is pretty neat" (so no dedicated slate voting; they dropped that after accidentally helping Vox Day sweep things last year), while the Rabid Puppies had a voting slate designed to muck things up. Next year, the Sads are having a non-Hugo-tailored open list of neat stuff released in the past year, so people can vote at the Hugos, vote at the Dragons, just read it, send it to their friends, whatever. Most of the Sad Puppy alumni are planning on ignoring the Hugos next year, as a demonstrably lost cause. As for the Rabids, no word yet.
One interesting comment from one of the Sad leaders (I've misplaced the link, sorry) was to the effect of "for the last few years, the Keepers of the Hugo have been united against the Puppies. Eventually, the Rabids will get bored, and they'll have those new rules to attack their enemies with. but no target. How long until factions re-form and they turn them on themselves?"
4170535
I don't know whether I've ever taken a position on that. I was merely pointing out the sexism of saying counts matter when there are more men, but not when there are more women.
I like the idea of merit, but have little faith in anybody's ability to discern it. (Except my own, of course.
) I'm not all that far from the relativist positions I make so much fun of--as I've said many times, Twilight must truly be great literature in some sense, given the number of people who love it. So I will make up a position now:
It's on my list of things to do. I was disinclined to answer since you seemed to be searching my comments for evidence of wrongthink using most-unfavorable-interpretation-possible, rather than trying to understand what I was saying.
Structural prejudice exists. I don't know what "mistargeted" means here.
Thank you!
4170524
When you say someone's statement was "literally X", it means that they said X. I don't think Truesdale said there are readers who the genre should exclude. If you disagree, you might cite a quote and explain how it implies that.
The word "extremist" implies "small minority". I would guess that Truesdale would not agree that the MAD people are a small minority of the publishing industry. And he didn't say anything about liberals. Truesdale might be a liberal. "Liberal" doesn't equal "people who are habitually on the lookout for wrongthink re. racism and genderism". Please don't debase the term like that. Nor did he say science fiction isn't for these people, or that they should shut up. I think he meant that he wants those people to calm down and pause (clutch their pearls--maybe it's a reference to the meditative use of the rosary) before jumping to the offensive.
As I said in my post, Truesdale should have let it drop. But kicking him out of the convention seems to me like the convention communicating its official political position more than it seems like appropriate corrective action, particularly given the political tension about the Hugos.
It could be that the decision-makers responded to the level of anguish expressed by the other people at the panel, which, judging from their blogs, was very high. So it might be misleading to blame the convention.
After some more digging:
* E Pluribus Hugo (aka penalizing multiple nominees from each voter) was approved, and will be in effect for 2017.
* Nominees no longer need a minimum of 5% support to make the final ballot. This becomes important when you read the proposed changes below.
We've already discussed how EPH can be gamed, so two more changes passed the first round of voting, but will need to be approved again next year before coming into effect in 2018:
* Three Stage Voting, adding a veto round between nomination and voting. The top 15 nominees in each category are listed, and each WorldCon member can yes/no vote on them. If an item gets 60% "no" votes AND the "no" votes were cast by at least 600 people or 20% of the membership, it gets the boot. Yes, this means that a dedicated minority who bothered to vote could kick the competition off the final ballot, so 600 was explicitly chosen because the voting data indicates fewer than 500 dedicated Rabid Puppies. No veto for Vox Day, but the Old Guard can veto any Puppy picks. If nobody bothers to no-vote those sub-5% picks that nobody had read, they become finalists.
* EPH+, with the exponential penalizing of multiple nominees from each voter. This makes nominating full slates pointless, but actually increases the power of the traditional "log rolling" (aka "you nominate A in my category, and I'll nominate B in yours") of a small number of Obviously Deserving Works. A few works receiving a small number of full-power votes, combined with the elimination of the 5% cutoff, will see some really strange stuff making the list of finalists.
Additionally, one new proposed rule was not voted on. I'm not sure if that means it's shit-canned, or just pushed out to next year:
* The WorldCon committee may unilaterally add two nominees to the final ballot, even if nobody at all had previously nominated those items.
Yeah.
4171720 4170691 4170977
A lot of good points being raised that deserve responses. I apologize that I'm not up to doing so tonight. I'm taking an evening off for self-care reasons, and hopefully can take a deep breath and try this again tomorrow.
But thank you all for bringing up interesting and reasonable points respectfully. Apologies at my grumpiness yesterday. I am reading, and listening, and considering.
And I feel significantly better about my time spent transcribing, because I'm getting some really great food for thought in return.
Interestingly, the anti-Puppy current incarnation of Hugo Gernsback's "Amazing Stories" magazine came out against EPH, because they'll just break things worse:
TL;DR: it just turns the Hugos into the American presidential elections. "Hey, quit voting for
third partieswhatever story you like! If you don't vote forClintonthe Keepers of the Hugo's pick,Trumpthe Puppies will win!"Unfortunately, Amazing does support the veto round being added to the voting system, claiming "it is the only solution put forth so far that remains open, transparent and allows the fans to retain their individuality when voting." That load of newspeak is code for "lets us keep out the wrongfans, cuz they're having wrongfun."
4172774
EPH+ won't get voted in unless EPH gets gamed horribly next year, though. As for the veto round, that I think IS a good idea - consider it requires a Supermajority (Which is really hard to attain) to pull it off. If you can get 60% of your voting membership to reject something, then it shouldn't be there in the first place; the point there is them going 'There is no way this will win - 60% of us are saying 'No' at this phase'. Why would you want that on the final ballot when it's already clear that it will be voted below No Award?
The Veto phase means that the situation above - where people were worried about 'Story A auto-wins because its the only one not 'tainted' does not occur.
As to the whole affair sparking this - I don't know. On one hand, yes, I can see the chilling effect argument. On the other, I can also see the 'This doesn't represent the image we want to send' argument.
In the end though I don't think it's a case of 'This stops free speech'; I can liken it to if we had a 'State of Fanfiction in the Fandom' panel at Bronycon and someone hijacked it to go on about why clopfics should be given more respect and open enjoyment at conventions. You are free to run a pro-clop convention if you want (And you can argue Trotcon at least already does this), but Bronycon is proooobably going to take a not-so-kind eye to that given the daytime events are focused on being family friendly.
Is it chilling free speech when we veto questions from guests to the VAs about, say, Cupcakes? Because those have happened at cons a ton and have been shot down in all but one instance, vecause it was an 11 year old girl asking the question. I witnessed this personally. It was awkward. It was also HILARIOUS. But I felt bad for poor Andrea Libman forced to endure a small child asking her if she'd voice Pinkie Pie in a show adaptation of Cupcakes.
That child was very very determined to get a yes or no answer and refused to be deflected.
Anyhow, I guess my point is : Perhaps the convention could have had a better reaction. I don't think any of us know or are privy to the particulars of what internal deliberations went on, so we may all be not hearing something that's being kept quiet for privacy reasons. Still, my end of day thought is : It's a private org. If they want to say 'This isn't us, goodbye', part of free speech is that they are free to do so; they are choosing who they wish to associate with.
4173104
I think the veto is also to prevent "'Space Raptor Butt Invasion' Invasion" from winning a Hugo. I can't fault them for trying to protect the dignity of the award. I wouldn't blame them for kicking the Rabid Puppies out on the same basis that governments are allowed to legislate against treason: A person who has proclaimed allegiance to an organization whose stated purpose is to disrupt the convention may be excluded from the convention.
But they don't want to distinguish between the Rabids and the Sads--acknowledging the existence of three points of view, only one of which is illegitimate, would break down their frame of discourse, which is that there is one Right True Path whose virtue is obvious to everyone, so people can be either Socially Conscious or Selfish--so that won't happen.
Worldcon isn't a private org. The Worldcon committee and venue is voted on each year by everyone in fandom who buys a supporting membership. It claims to represent all SF&F fandom. Calling it a private org that can do whatever it likes is like calling Congress a private organization that can do whatever it likes.
But even if it were--Worldcon is run by fans, and we are fandom. We care about what it does, and if we don't say "No, I don't want things done that way" when we think it's going wrong, we'll lose it. And in that case calling it a private org that can do whatever it likes is like joining a fraternity and then not saying anything when it hazes pledges, because "it" can do whatever it likes. I've been to at least 2 Worldcons; why should I throw my hands up and say it's not my problem?
4173104
I don't think this is a "free speech" issue so much as an "illusion of free speech" issue. The Hugos have always been "the SF fandom's award" right up until the point that people noticed only one set of opinions were being welcomed, and tried to do something about it. Suddenly it becomes "the long-time WorldCon attendees' award" and everyone with a different opinion can GTFO and start their own award. Then, when DragonCon announced the Dragon Awards, it was "but we're the SF fandom's award, get off my lawn!" again. Go figure.
If WorldCon wants the Hugos to be a specially-curated award given only to the most socially-deserving authors, fine. That's their business, and nobody has to give them any money if they don't want to. But if they want to go that route, then they can fuck off with this "we're the one true voice of SF" bullshit and call it like it is. You don't get to have it both ways. Keep your trophy in your clubhouse, and stop yelling at everyone else about how awesome you are, and how much everyone else sucks, because:
4173104
Just wanted to point out, BronyCon has stated rules about family friendliness and clop. If WorldCon had stated rules about discussing political issues, that would be a different matter. And it would be dumb because being able to discuss the demographic make-up of the fandom, potential reasons for it, and political implications of works or directions of works has been a major discussion surrounding SF fandom for decades.
This is more like if running my Romance panel I had decided to kick it off with a long discussion of why RariJack sucks: Polarizing? Absolutely. Bad panel management? Probably. A good reason to not give me a panel again or let me sit on other panels? Sure.
A reason to revoke my badge? No. It was on topic and relevant, allowed under the terms of the con in content, and only caused distress to others because they were hoping for something else, and/or they disagree and it made them angry.
The fact that WorldCon revoked his badge says more about how they feel about the flavor of opinions expressed than that opinions were expressed or the subject matter they were expressed about.
opinions expressed than about how they feel about a bad panel.(Edited for being poorly stated.)4173193
On the 'PoV' aspect, ear-to-ground level I seem to hear more people being fine with the Sads now. Next year would be the year to be able to tell how much truth there is to that.
For the other half - absolutely on 'Speak out if one feels it is wrong'; that's textbook free speech after all. As for private vs public, the distinction there was 'government vs not-government'; it's the same logic by which businesses can say, be pro-con on issues like marriage equality.
4173206
There's a lot of implicit assumptions in your statement I'd argue aren't automatically true: 'Only one set of opinions were being welcomed', 'Tried to do something about it', and 'GTFO and start their own award'. We've had the discussion on those points previously so I'm gonna suggest we note neither of us is going to sway the other person there, but the narrative I've seen is remarkably different from Puppies et al's version of it.
4173567
Yep, we'll have to disagree on "your opinions aren't welcome, fuck off and get your own award." I'll not belabour the point; I'll just drop this here for the record and move on. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, writer, editor for Tor, five time Hugo nominee, and driving force behind the current voting reforms:
4173557
I looked up their Code of Conduct which is here. From where I see it, this specific incident has several violations they are reacting to:
1. The Behavior policy:
We won't know how many people complained about the panel for issues related to this; still, I can easily see people doing so, when one has statements like
coming out here. Now, I agree with bits of his statement - I do think many people on all sides need to learn how to tolerate dissent more readily. But, at the same time, I can very easily see how people feel attacked, validly, by his statements. His statements aren't the 'I think we've gone too far in silencing dissenting voices' type; they're far more inflammatory and accusatory. If his goal is to convince people on the other side, based on the recorded speech, he went about it in the entirely wrong way. Given he had pearls and his own recording, his intent being one to antagonize seems far more likely, which I would count as a valid violation of their behavior policy.
2. Worldcon's Recording policy:
Numerous people state in the panel they don't consent to being recorded in said recording. He continues to record. So there's a flat-out violation of the CoC there. That Missouri is a one-party consent state is irrelevant; the recording isn't illegal, but it is against con policy which is the question at hand here.
3. Their Ultimate Rule:
It definitely caused significant interference with that panel, and depending on incident responses, excessive discomfort may well have factored in there; I wasn't there. I wasn't part of the incident response team handling it. Yes, it is possible that people were too heavy handed - but, at least working what cons I do, something like badge-pulling is never, ever a decision made lightly at any con with staff that are at-all professional. That, after all, is the nuclear option (Apart from calling police, but then it's a matter of legal issues rather than con policies). Especially here, where I am sure they could figure out what would happen fallout-wise.
Anyhow, to sum up : Based on their stated policies, he did willfully and wantonly break them.
4173684
Further down your second quote, just past the bit you quoted:
So she herself is right there saying the opposite of what you are claiming to say, in the very post you are using as evidence against her.