Racist, woman-hating fantasy author Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is upset that people are calling him racist. I mean, it’s not like he called all black people “savages,” he objects; he merely called one black woman — speculative fiction author NK Jemisin — a “half-savage” in a portion of a blog post that, he complains, has been taken out of context. Indeed, he sniffs,
the fact that the same ungrammatical excerpt chopped out of the middle of a sentence keeps being trotted out again and again should alert the dialectical mind to the probability that there simply isn’t very much, if any, there there.
Ah, context! A lot of shitheads who say terrible things complain, when others point out these terrible things, that their words have been taken out of context. So I thought I’d do Vox a little favor here and provide the context to his infamous quote so we can all see how much there is there.
You may notice that the context here does not actually make Vox look any less racist.
I’ve taken the liberty of bolding the especially egregious bits, though to be honest there isn’t much here that isn’t egregious:
Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her 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.
She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The 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.
Jemisin’s disregard for the truth is no different than the average Chicago gangbanger’s disregard for the traditional Western code of civilized conduct. She could, if she wished, claim that privileged white males are responsible for the decline of Detroit, for the declining sales of science fiction, even for the economic and cultural decline of the United States, but that would not make it true. It would not even make it credible. Anyone who is paying sufficient attention will understand who is genuinely responsible for these problems.
Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males. If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance. These things take time.
Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into irrelevance.
In case you want a bit more context, elsewhere in the same post he 1) mocked a man for taking his wife’s name, 2) suggested that one of his female critics was totally not as hot as his wife, the mysterious “Spacebunny,” and 3) reminded anyone who had forgotten that he had “three Billboard-charting club hits,” a fact that evidently makes him irresistible to women.
You see, Vox was briefly a member of a largely forgotten techno group called Psykosonik more than two decades ago. Well, “largely forgotten” by everyone but Vox, that is.
CONTEXT!
Vox is an endless rabbit hole of awful, goading you deeper by claiming “I never said that, this is what I actually said.” Well, he’s right. What he actually said is far worse, and people make the mistake of thinking the things that he constructs “logical” arguments for (with what he believes are scientifically proven premises) are things he actually believes.
Who could ever make such a horrible mistake, I hear you say! Well, let’s take an example, shall we?
In that paragraph, there’s a link that contains is supposed evidence that he doesn’t think it’s ok to throw acid in women’s faces for any reason. That link goes to a post of his where he takes on a set of questions that PZ Myers asked another person about how various awful practices (like depriving girls of education, stoning, or acid-throwing) could possibly benefit women. They were rhetorical questions, obviously, nobody could possibly think those practices actually benefit women.
Enter Theodore Beale:
Aaand the money quote. Hey Vox! How does throwing acid in their faces when they demand independence from men benefit women?
Now, in all fairness, after fervently defending the scientific merit of his… answers… Vox does in fact hint at the idea that maybe this whole thing was just a hypothetical exercise, and that he doesn’t actually believe the things he says. Well, he does believe all of the justifications for his answers, and does believe that independent women is in fact correlated with “a whole host of social ills,” but he totes doesn’t think the acid throwing is a good thing. Just, you know, that it’s good for women.
This is how he works, folks. Formulate a “logical” argument where he believes all the premises, and will defend each one to the death, but then later deny that he believes the conclusions.
So… ancient Egypt never existed?
I’m not sure how much attention we should pay to The Shitgolem Vox Day, but I DO think that, much like how Fred “Slacktivist” Clark notes that Tony Perkins should properly be addressed as The Liar Tony Perkins, we should take care to properly address The Shitgolem Vox Day by his true title.
Darn, ninja’d 🙁
And just to make a three-fer, he also seems to have a problem with trans-racial adoption. He refers to the the daughter of a correspondent, who was adopted from China, as an “imaginary daughter” who was a “magic little Chinese girl” and “that Chinese girl who lives in your house.” http://www.donotlink.com/ekf0
What a lovely man. I’m sure this year’s Hugo voters are looking forward to ranking him on their ballots (and I pity the person who, in an alternate universe, has the job of handing him a trophy).
Vox Day has never been photographed or filmed while using a black baby to make soup so, by the entry in the latest edition of the Big Conservative Definitionary, no, he is not a racist.
Has everyone here heard of the debacle over this year’s Hugo Awards? I was wondering when there would be a post about it, and this seems as good time to bring it up.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/the-culture-wars-come-to-sci-fi/390012/?utm_source=SFTwitter
So basically Vox Day was successful in getting a group called the “Sad Puppies” to hijack this year’s Hugo Awards, the most prestigious awards in fantasy and science fiction. It’s not illegal–the Hugos are based on popular vote–but the result is a ballot almost entirely of authors supported or published by Vox Day, many of whom are obscure in the speculative fiction community. Their motivations were apparently to combat perceived SJW elitism in fantasy and sci-fi. Or even more basically: Gamergate, SFF edition.
Regarding the “not equally homo sapiens sapiens” crap, let me disgust you further – if you haven’t been noticing how a bunch of racists have been rewriting “European” Neanderthals as noble hominids who were “genocided” by waves of migration of “African” hominids, and that those modern day humans with fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genotypes are therefore superior to humans who don’t have any Neanderthal DNA in their genotypes?
Well that’s been a thing for the last few years since the revelation that Neanderthal DNA has persisted in some modern humans. There’s absolutely no science in their romantic revisionism, but that’s not stopping them. I have a friend who predicted as soon as the Neanderthal DNA news broke that the racists would take this direction – I wish she hadn’t been so perspicacious.
@ Sarah –
I wonder what Pox defines as “pop culture”. – is there anything that we think of as “culture” that wasn’t “popular” culture at the time? Shakespeare, for example? What wasn’t popular in the history of human life fades into obscurity.
The fool thinks we need more “context”, as if we’re not already reading through the framework of institutional Racism, centuries of cultural white-washing and oppression, and familiarity with the words of common or garden variety Racists. There is no fucking nuance here.
But bloody hell, this man is the most ignorant shit-head I’ve ever had the misfortune to read about. I hope one day he reads a goddamned essay that’s critical of Western Imperialism and has his brain exploded by it.
I think the genetics comment is definitely a reference to the finding that Europeans have some Neanderthal in them. Which, I’m sure, he is somehow able to see as proof of genetic superiority. Because he has less-“advanced” proto human DNA mixed in with his homo sapiens.
Can you imagine, God forbid, what the racists mouth-breathers would have done with a finding of the opposite — that dark-skinned African populations had Neanderthal genes and whites didn’t? I actually, literally shudder when I think about it.
Apparently Vox does not know that the ancient Greeks actually ripped off a lot of their art and architecture from Africa and the Middle East. So maybe declaring them the only civilized ancient culture is not the best idea. Don’t get your history from Ancient Aliens!
I’m also curious as to how he arrived at the conclusion that societies that oppress women are wealthier and more stable. All the research I’ve seen indicates the opposite.
Well, I suppose all that shit means that we don’t have Neanderthal tossed around as a synonym for primitive-uneducable-savage losers. So I laugh.
But as for Day and his “context”. I now know why he’s such a shocking writer. He has no primary school level skills in reading comprehension.
“European” Neanderthals as noble hominids who were “genocided” by waves of migration of “African” hominids, and that those modern day humans with fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genotypes are therefore superior to humans who don’t have any Neanderthal DNA in their genotypes? ”
Huh. I’ve heard the (effective) genocide theory before, but not with the romanticism angle before. At worst it was kind of manifest destiny-ish. But, I can totally see how that change would take place.
He actually brought up that point himself on a recent blog post, although it was to argue the opposite: that societies in which male and female participation in the labor force is nearly equal, have much less wealth and correlates the disparity between high male employment and low female employment in wealthier nations, with their wealth. (Notice the blatant way he moves the goalposts. One has to wonder if he’s even paying attention to any of the things he’s posting on his own blog.) He seems to think the correlation demonstrates that there is a fallacy in pushing for equal pay for equal work, between the sexes, but he didn’t look very carefully at the link he provided; several of the wealthiest nations, including Norway and Switzerland, are famed for having a very narrow wage gap for male and female workers. http://www.donotlink.com/ekf0
Wat. This guy is dumb. It’s like he thinks technology is transmitted from one culture to another through evolution, and this evolution happened in 1000 years in the case of his German/English ancestors? At least that’s what I got…
Oops. I posted the wrong link in that last comment. The correct one is here: http://www.donotlink.com/ekfx
Mea culpa.
Also, I was thinking of Sweden and Finland, not Switzerland. Switzerland is actually behind the United States in the wage gap between male and female workers.
Fnoicby — I know, right!? Has it occurred to him that maybe his German/English ancestors were just a lot dumber than Jemisin’s ancestors? Probably because of all that Neanderthal miscegenation polluting the pure holy stream of human DNA.
Disclaimer: My own ancestors were mostly German and English. And I can learn things real good, just like other people.
Wow, that is some blatant, blatant racism. Are these guys under the impression that “TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT” is some kind of auto-win card you can play to avoid criticism, even if the context it was taken out of contains the EXACT SAME SENTIMENTS as the singular quote?
Let’s unpack some of this stupid.
Hate to break it to you, Vox, but I guarantee that none of your vaunted and civilized greco-roman ancestors knew how to build a jet engine either. In fact, the vast majority of people in the modern world don’t know how to build a jet engine.
It’s highly unlikely that a society composed entirely of identical copies of one individual person would be able to thrive. There’s a reason why different people specialize in different things, because there’s a lot of stuff in this world and no one has the time to become an expert at all of it. A society full of Vox Days wouldn’t last long at all, unless they has some way to magically transmute rabid, frothing hatred and willful ignorance into food and shelter.
Also, you kind of need people with both sets of genitals in order to have a next generation.
@Jarnsaxa, +1
@M. I agree with you there. Seems Pox likes to string together big, “smart-souding” words to disguise his asshattery and utter ignorance for *real* science and facts. And isn’t it pretty common for racist douchebros (and misogynists) to start with a conclusion they basically made up, then try to logic their way to it, instead of hypothesis, research, experiment, evidence then conclusion?
When I read some of the stuff he said, all I could hear was: “I’m super smart, but _______ is a doodie-head. I don’t like doodie-heads. Why? Just cuz!”
Or we could just use Scalzi’s reference to him as the RSHD, coined in part because of Day’s somewhat obsessive stalking of Scalzi while the latter was president of the SFWA, which lead Scalzi to not want to mention him by name if possible.
(RSHD: Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit.)
He even used that to set up a charity drive, donating to charities he knew Day would hate whenever Day mentioned his name.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/02/02/solving-my-racist-sexist-homophobic-dipshit-problem/
Uh, didn’t the Greco-Roman empire composed of a whole lot of Northern Africa? And many Emperors were, in fact, African as in, like, Ethiopian and shit? And that the Greco-Roman empire composed of many different races and ethnicities and shit?
What 1950s white-washed history book is he clinging to as it slowly crumbles in his hands?
Why, that contemptible jackass. I have had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Jemison and hearing her speak. She is highly intelligent, beautiful, and a fine writer who is a rising sci-fi star, whereas Mr. “Day” is on his way out, and this is his nasty jealousy talking. That he sinks this low and can still retain a publisher is beyond me.
“Oh no! I’m not racist! CONTEXT!”
It’s so sad that these guys will do anything to not be called “racist” or “sexist” or any such thing because they KNOW it’s bad, but not the one thing that will legitimately make it stop.