So our old friend Vox Day – the proudly bigoted science fiction/fantasy writer and self-professed expert on all things “Alpha” – is in the news again. This time, it’s not for declaring most date rape imaginary or writing a racist diatribe against a fellow author. Nope! It’s because another of his literary efforts, a novelette entitled Opera Vita Aeterna, just got nominated for a Hugo award.
In other news, apparently it’s not that hard to get nominated for a Hugo if you have a coterie of hard-core fans who are perhaps still pissed that you got kicked out of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and you suggest on your blog beforehand that it would be cool if they voted to nominate you.
Anyway, there’s already plenty of discussion of the news amongst the science-fiction set, most of them understandably displeased that a racist, misogynistic, homophobic asshole got a nomination. Here’s a bit more about the racist attack on black fantasy writer NK Jemisin (and misuse of the SFWA Twitter account) that got him tossed from the organization. If you’ve never seen what he wrote about Jemisin, I’ll just quote some of the more memorable passages again here, because, wow. I’ve bolded the best — that is, worst — bits:
It is not that I, and others, do not view [Jemisin] as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not… The laws [Stand Your Ground Laws] are not there to let whites “just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence”, those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.
If sales of his novels ever dry up, Vox could definitely get a job as a speechwriter for the KKK.
On Bibliodaze, Ceilidhann is blunt:
There’s only one way to deal with people like Day, who see themselves as above basic human decency, and that is to cut them out of the community like a tumour. Shun them, ignore them, no-platform the hell out of them. Our conventions, our fanzines, our anthologies, our community is not open to people whose racist arguments could have come straight from the mouths of slave-owners.
John Scalzi takes a more conciliatory stance, writing that
the Hugo rules don’t say that a racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit can’t be nominated for a Hugo — nor should they, because in that particular category at least, it’s about the work, not the person.
But he also goes on to note (hint hint, nudge nudge) that the ballot for the actual award includes a “No Award” option in each category, and that if enough people choose it,
it is possible to rank a nominated work below “No Award” if, after reading the work in question and giving it fair and serious consideration, you decide that it doesn’t deserve to be on the ballot and, say, that its presence on the ballot is basically a stunt by a bunch of nominators who were more interested in trolling the awards than anything else. Just a thing for you to keep in mind when voting time rolls around.
GeekFeminism makes the same observation, going on to note that in 1987, “No Award came in ahead of L. Ron Hubbard’s Black Genesis.”
If anyone is still trying to make up their mind about Mr. Day/Beale, here are some quotes from him taken from my previous posts about him here. I’ve bolded some of the most, er, contrarian bits. Click the titles for my original posts, which provide more context and links to the posts in which he said these things.
Women working is worse than rape:
The fact that women may wish to work and are very capable of working no more implies that they should always be encouraged to do so anymore than the fact that men may wish to rape and are very capable of raping means that they should always be encouraged to do so. The ironic, but logically inescapable fact is that encouraging men to rape would be considerably less damaging to a society than encouraging women to enter the workforce en masse. Widespread rape makes a society uncivilized. Widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable. History demonstrates that incivility can be survived and surmounted. Unsustainability, on the other hand, cannot.
[I]n light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban’s attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.
Acid attacks on women may be worth it if they discourage female independence:
[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability.
We should emulate Iran by throwing women out of much of higher education:
[T]he Iranian action [restricting many fields of education to men only] presents a potentially effective means of solving the hypergamy problem presently beginning to affect college-educated women in the West. Only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are. History and present marital trends indicate that most of the remaining two-thirds will not marry rather than marry down. So, by refusing to permit women to pursue higher education, Iran is ensuring that the genes of two-thirds of its most genetically gifted women will survive in its gene pool.
For the rest of my posts on Vox Day — including the one in which he explains that his orc and troll fighting game won’t have any women in it, because that wouldn’t be historically accurate — see here.
EDIT: Added links to first paragraph, reworked third paragraph and added links, removed a link that was problematic.
I just don’t know how he can live with himself. Not saying he should be killed. That’s just nasty.
I know people with awful parents who turned out great, and complete assholes with wonderful parents. No point in speculating how they got the way they are.
Yeah, I too wonder how he puts on clothes in the morning and exactly how he lives with himself and doesn’t become a… floundering mess of despair and misery.
On the other hand, I have just discovered that my local library has a book by Vox Day.
…
…..
……
teeeemmmppttttiiiiiing.
If I’d known it was so simple to nominate folks for the Hugo, I’d have nominated Seanan McGuire for her October Daye series.
There was a tumblr post going around awhile back to the effect of
Book: She had coffee-colored skin
Audience: She’s white
Book: Her skin was dark
Audience: She’s white
Book: Her skin was black
Audience: She’s white
Book: Her skin was black because she was black
Audience: She’s white.
It’s like Katniss from Hunger Games. I think the book mentioned she was darker skinned. Movie? White. Not saying that Caucasians can’t have darker skin. Some Italians for example.
Also in the Hunger Games, Rue is explicitly described as have dark skin and brown hair (typical of the people of District 11), but there was a lots of very racist backlash when Amandla Stenberg was cast in the role for the movie.
I really really dislike where we’re going with this “blame the mother” business. We know nothing about her at all. We have no evidence she even survived little Theo’s birth, let alone had any input – good or bad – into his existence other than genetic.
In fact I could well imagine him being born by a process akin to what happens to John Hurt’s character in Alien, chewing his furious way from the poor woman’s viscera, after she’d been face-f*cked by daddy Beale… deario, my imagination is a bit overripe at the moment – insomnia will do that to me.
That is an imaginary scenario. Sorry Emma, but so is the one where she’s a nasty evangelical woman like the ones on the blogs you’ve been reading who traumatised her son and formed his delightful world view.
Except mine is kind of funny and gross (I think: YMMV).
We DO know, though, that his Wiki page has no mention of her, which makes it rather more plausible that he dislikes her/has repudiated her/feels shamed by her/wants no content.
And on that alone she seems she might could be more my kind of person than he and his Dad are, and we know quite enough about those two charmers.
It’s an ancient misogynistic trope that every man’s wrongdoing/crime/inadequacy is the fault of his mother (one, I’m afraid to say, that my country’s biggest police force is playing at the moment with regard to Muslim women – [s cos as we all know, they’re the ones with the real power, and no angry young teen ever does something his mother has told him not to do s/], http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/23/sons-war-syria-metropolitan-police).
So lets lay off spreading it, can we?
Vox Day is an adult and his words and actions are on him.
It’s interesting to speculate how he came to be, but not at the expense of inventing scenarios that blame the one person in his background we really know nothing at all about.
“wants no content” – dah!
wants no *contact*
My favorite example of whitewash in SF is “Starship Troopers”, with Casper Van Dien playing a character named (in the book) Juan Rico, whose family speaks Tagalog at home.
I don’t know if that’s a good example, because the movie has a deliberate justification in white washing the characters: creating a perfectly shallow American hero to contrast with the war propaganda and the horrible violence, and I think the movie has an anti-war theme. It doesn’t follow the spirit of the book at all, it’s almost more like a subversion of it.
Starship Troopers was so different from the book that I don’t even consider them to be the same story
RE: emilygoddess
IIRC there’s evidence that European homo sapiens populations interbred with neanderthals while African homo sapiens did not, which would mean that white people are, in fact, less homo sapiens than black people.
Oh god, have you SEEN the New Agey bullshit about Neanderthals that’s spread lately? It’s enough to make your eyes roll out of your head. (Neanderthals were apparently rebels, and artists, and ROMANTIC and oh god someone save me.)
RE: cassandrakitty
The SFF reactionaries do love a woman who has for some reason decided that a furry bikini would be the perfect thing to wear while climbing a mountain during a snowstorm
And people wonder why I read more YA sci-fi than for adults these days. Do you have any idea how much fast-talking and cover-hiding I had to do when I was nine? SO MANY NAKED PEOPLE.
RE: Shaenon
You’re reminding me how badly I need to read Samuel DeLaney–dude made a comic book even! (Which I also haven’t read but BADLY NEED TO.)
RE: Jo
I do know other geeky communities and one problem they have is an unshakeable belief that they are marginalised outsiders, regardless of how mainstream they actually have become.
I call this ailment Geek’s Lament, and wish to god it would die already. This isn’t high school anymore guys, grow the fuck up.
RE: Lids
I loved humor fantasy for years – Piers Anthony, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Asprin.
FUCKING PIERS ANTHONY. AAAAAAAAH *goes off into rant about pedophilia and rape and sex with horses*
How the hell did we even start TALKING about this dude’s mother? What the fuck?
That’s because Paul Verhoeven set out to satirize the hell out of Heinlein’s original work. It really isn’t the same story. All white American Heroes fighting monstrous bugs, with judicious use of man-portable nuclear weapons?
… Heh.
Although I must admit I love Starship Troopers (the movie) it’s just so silly. But that’s the point. And the sequels are terrible but also… somewhat enjoyable.
Today is a good day to die!
Would you like to buy more?
Gum-flapper: Also, Google tells me that it was probably not Vox who got his stuff on the ballot, but Larry Correia, who I have heard of as a pretty successful author:
They both campaigned. It’s possible none of Teddy’s followers have the scratch to obtain a supporting membership just to spite SFWA, and “stick to the assholes” who banned him for being a shitbird, but it’s more likely that the combained campaigning is the reason. It’s also not implausible that even absent the Sad Puppy Pleas of Correia his supporters might have gotten him on the ballot (it’s the top five out of the total nominees; with the requirement that any finalist must have gotten at least 5 percent of total nominations [which is how some categories have lots of ballots, but less than five nominees).
Jo: What you say about the divide in SF makes sense and I’m sure is accurate, but I also suspect there is more to it than that. Other factors are needed to explain the disparity noted by Rich Johnston between the big community reaction to the proposal of Jonathan Ross as host and the muted reaction to Day’s nomination for an award.
The reaction isn’t muted on the SF end of things; it’s muted on the media end of things. Also (for some of this played out in my living room) there isn’t a handy target for a large (i.e. in the millions) fanbase (that of Jonathan Ross) to attack.
The fundamental difference is that Ross’ selection was an active choice, on the part of the concom. It was an active choice on the part of the committee. In that regard, given that there was reason to think it might be controversial (and it was, with a broad spectrum of those who were likely to be nominated; as well as a larger slice of fandom in general, being a bit croggeled at the choice).
Rich Johnston, in the piece he wrote about at the time the flap went down makes the case for the, “easy target” I mentioned. He dedicates a large part of his column to castigating Seannan McGuire for her role. Failing, completely, to note that she didn’t make her first comment until after the hue and cry had caused Ross to withdraw.
Interesting, isn’t it, that a woman got blamed (and not just by Rich) for setting a howling mob onto Ross, when the first comments were made by men (e.g. Charlie Stross).
It may be that Ross isn’t a misogynist, and that he’s got no problem with women who aren’t svelte; but the impression of the community (from his actions as a comic: certainly from the occasion I saw him on QI I took him to be somewhat of an offensive jerk who was willing to mock women, and fat people) was based on his public persona. They had every reason to expect his public persona to be what he used in a public venue; be he ever so fannish (and from that QI appearance it was never in doubt he was a member of the fannish clan; those who said he wasn’t were gatekeeping in a petty way).
So that’s the first one.
The second is that there isn’t anything which can be done about Teddy Beale’s fans getting him nominated. Being a dipshit and asshole aren’t grounds for not giving someone a Hugo. That is (as with the Oscars) something a limited (if open to more than many think, and one which mere money can gain a vote) group. It’s possible for ballots to be stuffed.
That might explain why the outsider Day is getting an easier ride than the mainstream Ross. But, as I said, I don’t know this community well and I could be wrong.
Beale isn’t an outsider to the SF community. He’s been a member for quite some time (I think my first online interaction with him was close to ten years ago).
Beale has a decided reason to want to stuff the ballot box; because he’s not an outsider; but has been cast out. The SF world knows this, and knows why (it has to do with SFWA kicking him, for being more than just a run of the mill dipshit and asshole).
Since this isn’t something which can be dealt with by hue and cry; it takes people knowing they can “no award” the category; and that the time is not past when things can be done, is why it’s getting less hullaballoo; and more in the way of launching a campaign to shun him in the balloting.
The race thing in books is actually really obnoxious to me, since a fair number of my characters are various races, and I find it really irritating to constantly be like, “Joe’s BLACK! Did you know he was BLACK? It’s true, he is BLACKBLACKBLACK,” but apparently some readers just will not get it otherwise.
It’s like, guys. Other humans exist. Grow up.
emilygoddess: It doesn’t help that these are the guys who created WorldCon and the Hugos. Much ink has been spilled about WorldCon’s declining participation rate and it’s anybody’s guess whether the perception of the Old Guard dudes as racist, sexist and also shitty writers is a cause or a result of younger fans’ disinterest in the old-school con scene.
Having been to a moderate number of WorldCons (82, 84, 96, 02, 06, 12, and the upcoming 13), I don’t think that’s really the issue: I think, for a host of reasons, attending cons has become less important to fandom. I also think the sense of “decline” is in part because fandom has gotten so much larger. In the 80s, when I was going to 6-13 cons a year (most within 50 miles of my home) I saw a lot more people I knew, even when I was a fair bit away. Because 1: the community was smaller, and 2: if one didn’t APA-hack, or attend cons, one didn’t have much chance to interact with fen.
It’s also been a long standing discussion at the Business Meetings of the WorldCon that things related to the Hugos could use some tweaking. It’s also true that inertia (and the Bylaws are hard to change, on purpose), plays a part.
It’s also true that a lot of the proposed solutions have been less than well thought out, and even those who agree some change should take place can’t support the changes proposed (anyone who is an attending member of the convention can show up to the meeting and propose new business. If it passes that meeting it is voted a second time, at the next year’s convention).
The thing is the Hugos are very much like the Academy Awards (who thinks Gigi is really, a “Best Picture” sort of film? Either 1958 was a year with truly awful films, or it’s not purely about “quality” (other films that year included Auntie Mame, Damn Yankees, and South Pacific were all released that year; if you had to give it to a musical, but it also beat out Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Murder by Contract, and The Long Hot Summer): They reflect the popular sentiment of the moment.
Take Bujold. Lois is a great person. She writes good books. She’s won at least as many Hugos as Heinlein did. Is she a “better” writer? I don’t think so. If I were pressed I’d say they were in the same class; and even category. They are both writing “scifi” which taps into the zeitgeist of the times. I think the earlier writing of hers is a bit weaker than the earlier writing of Heinlein, but I think her choice to work in a single set of characters is harder. I also think it shows a better way of grappling with what are (as he did) a single set of issues. Because Heinlein, for all the invention in his settings, dealth with pretty much the same questions in all his stories; and when he left his wheelhouse (e.g. Farnham’s Freehold, I will Fear No Evil”, he tended to fail; in the first case so miserably it managed to cast at lesat some pall over all his other work). Lois doesn’t have the advantage of new sets to dress similar questions; so she has to stretch a bit more. Compare this to David Drake, who had to abandon the genre he took over (Gordon Dickson’s Mercenary Mil-fic) because inside it all he was able to to was hash out his issues with Viet-Nam (and kudos where they are due; he does a brilliant job of both hiding himself, and dragging his personal demons into the light. Most others who try it either don’t have the demons, or can’t look at them as honestly. The folks in the Slammer’s Universe may not always do things which are “right”, or which we can approve of, but we understand why they do them; and how they came to the horrific state of mind where doing those things is a rational response to events. To Digress, I think they may be the best way to see into the mind of a combat soldier I’ve read).
Whew… I had a point there, I hope I can find it again.
The Hugos are, like the Academy awards, a reflection of one interested group. They have, by quirk of history, gained a cachet which they may not deserve (because the SF Community was smaller in the past, and a Hugo was a convenient short hand for the mainstream press to tout a book which was outside the “normal” range). They also reflect the changing tastes.
And the flaps about them, as with any institution, will have the “get offa mah lawn!” types (the Mike Resnick, et al), who look back to the days when they were young turks, and think they still have the right of it, and that the pulse of the industry ought never have moved.
I hope I wasn’t too ‘splainy.
Hey kids, can you all help a sister out? The misters are all in a tizzy over Chris Mackney. Does anyone know his story? I know he was denied access to his kids and killed himself but I’m reluctant to lose muh shit over this story yet seeing as a) he killed himself and b) I don’t know why he was denied access to his kids. Like the self- immolating a-hole, he may have been denied access with very good reason and killing himself may have been comparable
to throwing his toys out of the pram. Just wondering what the particular reason for denial of access to his children was and if this is a legit example of inequality and misogyny hurting men or just MRAsshole BS. Thanks!
marinerachel (and her curious big sister)
If I’d known it was so simple to nominate folks for the Hugo, I’d have nominated Seanan McGuire for her October Daye series.
Seanan’s on the ballot for Parasite. She and Correia will probably both lose out to the Wheel of Time series because it’s a huge all-trampling nerd nostalgia machine.
Just an aside, the artwork at the beginning reminds me of this: http://video.adultswim.com/assy-mcgee/
“Seanan’s on the ballot for Parasite. She and Correia will probably both lose out to the Wheel of Time series because it’s a huge all-trampling nerd nostalgia machine.”
Yay, glad she was nominated for something. Yes, I imagine you’re right on Wheel of Time.
Marinerachel, I’m not familiar w/his specific story, but generally speaking, custody battles don’t just go the mom’s way because female (no matter what the MRAs claim). I think the stat is 70% of men who fight for custody get some form (not necessarily full custody). This unfortunately even includes men who are/were abusive
Pointless rant about fictional characters ahoy!
1) The insistence of (typically) men to blame mothers for all assholes and monsters is fucking annoying. Regarding a recent development in Game of Thrones, [umm… spoiler alert?] many people (mainly guys) express sympathy for Joffrey Baratheon, one of the most heinous villains in the show, while blaming his mother for everything he’s become. I’m like, hello, if we’re going to start blaming others for the acts of this terrible person, what about his father (yes, yes, I know)? Robert Baratheon was a distant father, a horrible husband, and a lousy king. It is stated in no uncertain terms in the books that many of the evil acts Joffrey performs is due to him craving his father’s approval. Yet Robert seems to get a free pass because he and ol’ Ned were pals. The tendency of society to defend any remotely sympathetic man while demonizing any woman, no matter her personality, can be seen everywhere. Cersei was even made more sympathetic for the show (she is worse in the books IMO), yet while she is clearly a bad person, people are way less likely to cut her any slack than, say, Tywin (who “just wants what’s best for his family!”). Hmm… I wonder why?
2) I’ve never understood the problem some people have with changing the race of a white character to non-white in adaptations. Unless the premise of the character arc is entirely based on racial identity, what’s the problem? It’s not like our media isn’t already chock-full of white people, or in any danger of not remaining so. Sometimes, another kind of portrayal would fix many problems with the original premise. For instance, I really hope they’ll end up with an Asian American playing Iron Fist in the movie adaptation. The original mighty whitey trope of a white man going to a foreign land to learn the mystic arts better than the people there is incredibly racist. With an Asian American actor we could at least avoid the problematic race angle, while still keeping everything else about the character intact (his upper class background, his cluelessness about the world, etc.).
In Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings movie, Aragorn looks Native American, which I always though was a brilliant choice. Granted, there are problems with presenting the “wise in the ways of the woods” character as a stereotypical Native American, but then again, Aragorn is not just a ranger, he’s a frickin’ king. He’s also one of the main characters, not just a sidekick or supporting character..
I once read somewhere (cannot for the life of me recall where) that Tolkien imagined the Dúnedain (Aragorn’s people) to have Middle Eastern features. Tolkien’s works may have their share of problems, but Aragorn being white in the Peter Jackson movies is not one of them, as much as I like Viggo Mortensen’s portrayal of the character.