Gonads versus Nomads
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day – Otto’s Law: Thou shalt not cite Internet Laws, for they have as much logical force as laughing at an immigrant’s clothing.
I lost this fight before I even started it – I assumed as much going in. I spent most of yesterday following responses across the web, and I’ve been quite entertained by the Bakker-slamming going on. I’m pretentious. I’m this, that, and the other thing, my actual argument nowhere to be seen (well, that’s not quite true: someone raised the Criteria Question to make fun of it for being incomprehensible). The issue is who I am, and more importantly, what kind of group I belong to: white, male, university wanker, thin-skinned author, etc. For most of those condemning me agreement simply is intelligence, and disagreement simply is idiocy. Elodie’s troll posts, for instance, struck a handful as a decisive blow, something that somehow proves how much an idiot or fool I am. (As much as the old practical reasoning instructor in me wants to scream, the kid who grew up arguing against the extreme right wing views of his tanked father around the dinner table understands full well). The way their judgments make my point for me is almost absolutely invisible to them. In fact, at one point, less than 1% of the people checking “Requires Only Haidt” even bothered clicking on the link to Haidt’s interview. Something Haidt would likely have predicted.
But the fact is, there’s another side to this problem, the side represented by all those who think I’m wasting my time. I live my life on the border of two very different worlds, one where I’m ‘questionable’ because of my gutter humour, another where I’m either ‘out there’ or ‘pretentious’ because of my vocabulary. What Haidt calls ‘lifestyle enclaves’ is very relevant to what seems to be happening to contemporary NA society- to what Murray’s data tracks in Coming Apart. I could spend all my time writing and talking for people who already agree that, yes, Sexism is a devilishly difficult and complex thing, and so on. I could exchange all the slaps on the back of the head for pats on the back… Anyone can. All you have to do is say the right things to the right people. Be groupish.
The problem is, I really do buy my own bullshit. And now that confirming data is being published, from both the left and the right, I’m downright, well, elated and excited. As strange as it might seem, I literally feel renewed by all this, knowing that the guesses upon which I raised my career are probably true. Giving into groupishness is inevitable. We’re hardwired to gather about certain attitudinal fires, warm our hands over the recitation of certain words expressed in certain ways. Intellectuals make fun of evangelicals. Evangelicals make fun of intellectuals. Conservatives make fun of liberals. Liberals make fun of conservatives. Everybody is right, completely convinced their group has won the Magical Confirmation and Affirmation Lottery. But a few of us genuinely strive to be nomads, not in the boutique sense of philosophers like Deleuze, but in the sense of not really belonging to any institutionalized group, because they strive to belong to humanity at large, a humanity trapped in a game theory nightmare.
I’m romanticizing, I know. But that’s because I’m actively recruiting. I’m trying to convince as many damn people as possible to be mindful of the ways their own psychology fucks them up. This isn’t some foofy New Age claim: we are not what we intuitively think we are as a matter of scientific fact. And given that ‘Believe!’ is far and away the most pervasive slogan in our culture (after ‘Buy!’), it follows that our culture is delusional – and that you, dear reader, live in a dreamworld the degree to which you buy into it. You can start here if you don’t ‘believe’ me. But the data is becoming mountainous, and it keeps piling up. Politicians and corporations are making use of it because it works. You should too.
(And just to be clear, this applies just as much, if not moreso, to the liberal intellectual types reading this. In some ways, you’re the worst of the bunch, simply because you think you’ve already found your way past all the delusions, when in fact, you’ve simply found a way to fortify them. In a very real sense, all your ‘critical training’ is the product of the Middle Ages. Until you know what your brain is doing, you do not know what you are doing.)
I lost this battle before it began, if you tally up the brains, pro and con. Sure. And it definitely would have been better if I had picked someone who hadn’t ‘reviewed’ me, the way I did with Vox (who only reviewed me afterward), simply because it would have closed down one obvious motivational liability. But the Dude was just such a golden example, and I’m as vengeful as the next guy.
But that’s what it takes, isn’t it? Losing battle after battle, changing a few minds every time. 1% here, 1% there. The research isn’t going away. Neither are the institutions eager to manage our perceptions. The only question is whether we’ll come to collective grips with it in time.
I spent about a half an hour last night, laying in bed and pondering sexism and what I was attempting in my books, worrying all the different angles. What makes a book sexist? The perception of a certain percentage of a certain victim group? The intent or attitude of the author? The actual social consequences of the book? It can’t be the former, because it means that works like the Bible, for instance, only became sexist once they were perceived to be so. Calling a thing something does not make it so. It can’t be the second because the author’s intent, unfortunately, does not abide like magic pixie dust in text. No. It has to be the third, the actual social consequences of the book. For me, that remains an open question, and a worrying one.
Then I fell asleep disgusted because the Leafs had lost to the Jets. What a pisser that was.
In other words, pile-on people. Condemning, lampooning, labelling: these things come so easy because they’re so natural. Indulge away, if it makes you feel superior and connected. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re any less of an idiot than those you target.
We’re all idiots around here.
Three Pound Brain 
Bakker, a quote I like to go by rings pretty solid with all the commotion over your apparent… well, sexism and everything else, paraphrased its;
“Arguing with dumb people is like playing chess with a pigeon: No matter how good I am at chess the fucking pigeon will still knock the pieces over, shit on the board and strut around like its victorious.”
It seems a little dismissive, but damn does it make sense.
I love it – but I don’t agree with it. Peristence and tactics make a big difference.
I’m going to try to be challenging in the way you’d probably want, and to engage with your argument:
I am 100% in agreement with your psychological contentions. I concur that the human mind is a rationalization engine, that our architecture is built for evolutionary payoff rather than optimized cognition, that free will is at worst an illusion and at best a meaningless term, that our every thought and attitude is shaped by invisible, uncorrectable heuristics which filter the information that reaches our conscious mind, guiding us without ever entering awareness into echoing ingroups. Empirical data supports all this.
I think that you, Peter Watts, and Cat Valente represent some of the only writers in the world, genre or otherwise, engaging with this critical topic.
Furthermore, I acknowledge that you have designed your setting and your narrative to challenge our liberal understanding of feminism and gender on every level; that you’ve intentionally written eroticized rape in order to contrast revulsion and arousal, to attempt to implicate the reader in the neural connection between sex and violence. I understand that this is your intent and I acknowledge that it makes me, a white straight male insulated by privilege, deeply uncomfortable. (Consider what it must be like for those who live with threats of sexual violence every day — surely their concerns can’t be written off as fear or short-sightedness.)
But I also think you should acknowledge that your work supports a misogynist reading, that you tend to write with a male hand and a male eye. That your female characters tend to exist as objects of lust, fear, or cuckold-anxiety for the male characters, that rape of women is often depicted and eroticized whereas rape of men is usually simply narrated or left as an afterthought. That even if you intended all the women in the setting to be prostitutes or rape victims — with the exception of a few historical figures — you have at least opened yourself to criticism by setting up characters who could have escaped the patriarchal power structure (the Swayali, for instance) you still tend to sexualize and otherize them. That there’s something invisibly and pervasively male about the way you tend to write female characters — I wish I could describe it better!
Your own arguments are a powerful call for self-examination, for throwing yourself as far as you can bear into the enemy camp and attacking yourself. Why not try to launch a punishing attack on your own work, and acknowledge the possible readings that arise? This would, at worst, create some common ground for dialogue, and it would serve as an exercise of the very techniques required to fight against our heuristic biases.
Again: a fan of your work, and grateful for all the challenging dialogue you’ve opened yourself to.
But I have acknowledged as much, what seems innumerable times now. I keep talking about how I need to make a ‘Statement Page’ or something, because I find myself getting frustrated having to type out my position over and over again, only to see all memory vanish. Kalbear, for instance, has extracted this confession from me countless times!
Some times I think the reason people are never satisfied with my concessions because what they really want is for their reading to be THE reading, rather than one among many possibilities. They want an admission of out-and-out GUILT rather than culpability.
From my naive, outside-the-business fan perspective, I think a statement page would be a great idea – maybe not specifically an ‘Am I A Sexist?’ tab on the blog because, by all the psychology I know, the result will be more people primed to think you’re a sexist, but at least an essay wherein you acknowledge in good faith these criticisms and discuss things you could’ve done differently or may do in the future.
I doubt acrackedmoon will show you mercy as a result, but it’d be a noble gesture. If, that is, you think it’s worth your time – I know I’d love to see it as a fan of your work, but I’m not privy to the economic or PR calculus.
The Dude will abide – of that I’m sure!
Your point about being careful the way I frame the page is well taken, and appreciated.
Until you do it, Scott, I’ll still ask for it. IT is quite possibly the single most important thing you could do for your internet persona and your career going forward. I’d go so far as to say you should add it as an addendum in your book.
“Some times I think the reason people are never satisfied with my concessions because what they really want is for their reading to be THE reading, rather than one among many possibilities. They want an admission of out-and-out GUILT rather than culpability.”
SOME times? Come on. More than half the histrionics are about power, RSB. The fact that you engage in and of itself perpetuates this titanic Clash of the Conceptions.
I am currently reading Jan Westerhoff’s translation of Nagarjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī (“The Dispeller of Disputes”), a work consisting of 70 verses and autocommentary in prose that is a companion piece to Nagarjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (“The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way”). The first twenty verses of Vigrahavyāvartanī contain objections/arguments raised by other Indian (Buddhist and non-Buddhist) philosphers against the theory of univeral emptiness as described in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the remaining 50 verses consist of Nagarjuna’s response to those objections/arguments.
Reading the Vigrahavyāvartanī got me thinking that instead of a statements page (which I am not entirely sure is needed), how about a page that contains the most common objections/criticism (or possbile objections/criticism) raised against your work and your response?
Sounds like a damn good idea. It would take some work isolating the representative criticisms, though.
It would take very little work; ask people to give you the criticisms directly. There’s no bias, no chance of misinterpreting or miswording theirs.
As a male, I have found writing female characters with a level of verisimilitude to be difficult. I told some friends once how a female novelist “got” me not once, not twice, but three times in the same novel by describing different characters in most ways except she left out gender. When I saw the next paragraph contain the word “she” or “her”, it hit me like a brick. I had assumed male due to the character’s status, simply because I am a male, or because we live in a patriarchal society.
But is that “guilt”? Can’t/shouldn’t writers have the freedom to make mistakes (if indeed they are mistakes) as part of the growth process? I have to agree that social context makes a difference in how things are received. I just wish people like this loves-to-hate woman would spend her energy going after, for example, the very real culture of rape within the military rather than someone’s fictional representation.
But it’s always easier to go after the little guy and break your arm patting yourself on the back for pretending to make some kind of difference and drown one’s own cowardice in self-congratulatory faux victory. That’s Washington’s / Fifth Avenue’s real trick: making us think we’re all heroes when we’re really just such douchebags.
Righteous anger: it’s what’s for dinner.
Wait, I am one of the 1%? Success!
If not “magical belief lottery”, then what lottery is worth winning? Only one spin around the track – I’d rather be well-laid, fat, and happy… than right.
I anticipate a response that discusses how self-interest will have apocalyptic consequences. If we all (meaning everyone) realize that we’re burning the play house down around ourselves, will we join hands and put out the fire? Our will we leave the hairshirts to others, and go on with our lives?
Maybe the real fantasy is thinking that even awareness of the problem will result in change. Most people I know become paralyzed by ennui rather than fortified by it. So I guess the question is: what does being right get you? I recall you making a joke about the ranks of pizza delivery-men being swollen with philosophers. Sounds like a bit sucker’s con, honestly…
The key isn’t to overwhelm culture with fact and reason – that will never happen – but to riddle it with enough that when things really do start getting weird we will have the werewithal to pull together rather than fall apart. The age of socio-ideological solidarity is dead: some kind of alternative is needed, don’t you think?
For me, quietism is not an option.
“What makes a book sexist? The perception of a certain percentage of a certain victim group?… It can’t be the former, because it means that works like the Bible, for instance, only became sexist once they were perceived to be so. Calling a thing something does not make it so”
It’s interesting that you think this. I think that’s probably the only reliable metric on normative value judgments one can have.
But I also think that you’re conflating two ideas. The notion of ‘what makes a book sexist’ wasn’t your original question; your original question was how to differentiate between spurious and reasonable allegations of sexism. In which case, that question isn’t the right one; it’s ‘what indicates a book is sexist?’ And a fairly good indicator is percentages of victim groups of that specific area (in this case women and misogyny) declaring as such.
So guilt by accusation is you answer?
‘is you answer’? Wow, Scott. I must have gotten you really upset if you’re butchering English.
If you want to take the view that you’re the victim, Scott, sure. You call it guilt by accusation. I would call it guilt by reasonable doubt. It’s the standard in most law cases that if enough people see something as something that’s reasonable proof. It’s not evidence in the same way that a smoking gun would be, but it’s certainly a good indicator.
I realize you’ll pull out your standard ‘if you repeat something three times people will believe it to be true’ trope (which isn’t actually the case, but whatever) or that these sorts of things are governed by clades of people sharing the same views and thus if one thinks it, they all should think it without critically thinking about it. At the same time, how many women have said this about your works? How many critics? Instead of dismissing these arguments as invalid for sociological reasons, you could also see them as having actual kernels of truth based on personal experience and background. A number of people have read the books and weighed in; I realize you’re going to call up the selection bias bit, and that’s fair – but at the same time, they’re still going to read it that way.
In that I suppose I’ll frame it in a way that you might understand better: the people who are capable of judging whether something is sexist are also the ones who are going to have a selection bias towards seeing whether or not something is sexist. The people who are not as capable at determining sexism or misogyny are very much more likely not to have any selection bias towards it (or will have a confirmation bias against it).
” It’s the standard in most law cases that if enough people see something as something that’s reasonable proof”
What courts are you talking about here? I can’t think of a court system in history that works like this.
“What courts are you talking about here? I can’t think of a court system in history that works like this.”
The US court system. If you get 100 witnesses to testify that a person raped another person, that is easily beyond a reasonable doubt. Hard evidence is almost always better, but multiple witness and expert witness testimony is certainly enough to convict in criminal cases.
I guess my problem then is with your analogy then. You are implying a high value of volume of testimony over the quality. In your example, if the 100 eye the witnesses couldn’t come up with a coherent testimony then reasonable doubt could be established. Where as if you just have one eye witness that can that can easily identify the defendant and tell a believable story it is much more likely to get a conviction.
Courts judge a the validity of arguments not the volume of testimony.
Which is why I started with the notion that women are going to be experts at judging something like sexism. It’s not just random witnesses.
Doubt my post will be in the right place – replying to Kal ‘the badger’ bear.
The US court system. If you get 100 witnesses to testify that a person raped another person, that is easily beyond a reasonable doubt. Hard evidence is almost always better, but multiple witness and expert witness testimony is certainly enough to convict in criminal cases.
So you do have a disproval method – ie, the capacity for witnesses who don’t detect sexism to lend their weight?
My question(s) to badger on his criteria for determination of any sexism is this:
1) How can you argue that the sample we see is ‘representative’ view of all women? It’s always the strident voices that get heard. If this is the approach taken, should we not conduct a proper survey to determine this view holds true in a random, representative and statistically significant set of samples?
2) What criteria would the women be using to judge whether it is sexist? Views of other women? Number of whores in the story?
All these are tough to do. I’m just pointing out the fallibility of be overly judgmental.
And again, that the fact that acrackedmoon’s posts displays no sense of doubt, without the necessary incontrovertible scientific proof. Even in science and math, you use confidence intervals. Hers are clearly set at 100%. Something that no scientific theory can every claim!
“Wow, Scott. I must have gotten you really upset if you’re butchering English.”
It was a simple typo, man. I wouldn’t get too upset by it.
Not only did I click the link, I shared it on Facebook. That makes me the best.
Seriously though… engaging with people who seriously criticize perceived misogyny in your work is fine. Engaging with people who argue this without even reading the whole book is falling into a dangerous trap.
Have you considered the possibility that you were particularly vulnerable to this kind of provocation because someone in your department in Vanderbilt once accused you of sexism?
Badger Avatar wrote:
“And a fairly good indicator is percentages of victim groups of that specific area (in this case women and misogyny) declaring as such.”
What makes it a good indicator? We’ve talked about the “moral pile on” effect on this blog. If one woman with an agenda, personal vendetta, or poor literary analysis reads the text as misogynistic it can cause a chain reaction of condemnation. I feel like the burden of proof is on you to show that there’s good reason to believe that simply because the condemnation from the victimized group crosses an arbitrary percentage threshold then I’ve been an idiot for not reading The Second Apocalypse as the woman-hating screed that it obviously is.
I’ll condemn myself at this point, and take this whole thing one step further.
Maybe I don’t care even if it is.
The merits of the novels are numerous, and I feel the work transcends any misogyny real or imagine.
I have the complete works of HP Lovecraft on my shelf, and I think a lot of it is terrific literature even if Howard was a racist little shit.
I hear you on the accusation equals X-ism front. It’s a horrible argument, and I’m very curious to see how Kal opts to defend it.
I also know what you mean on the ‘court of public opinion’ front. But we take our chances. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found this far less frustrating and far more interesting than I assumed going in.
I think I’m starting to get it.
You view accusations of sexism as something that must be proven, like a philosophical syllogism or a mathematical theorem.
I see them as an opinion based on societal and personal mores and normative values. As such, the frame of reference that I personally have is not complete (no one’s is) and if I am to try to get any compromise or understanding of others I must rely on other’s views (who may have a stronger basis) to get a more complete understanding. I also feel that no matter what, I will not have nearly as complete an understanding of sexism or racism as a woman or a minority in the US would; I cannot due to who I am. At best I can sympathize and attempt to understand and see certain points. But it is not up to me to decide what a woman will feel is sexist; as a man I cannot do this.
As to the notion of moral pile on, you could be right – if that’s what happened. It wasn’t. acrackedmoon was at the end of this discussion, not at the beginning. She’s been one of the loudest detractors but by no means is the first. Furthermore, I suspect that had you simply ignored her very little of this piling on would have happened; instead, you acted essentially in all the stereotypical ways that she decries, making it even more of a spectacle and bringing in more people to scoff at you.
Not at all: I view accusations as part and parcel of the game of giving and asking reasons, like any other public claim. I think it’s the height of paternalism to declare that carve our NO REASON REQUIRED ZONES for minorities, and I’m sure the vast bulk of minority scholars would agree. You think they think otherwise?
” I think it’s the height of paternalism to declare that carve our NO REASON REQUIRED ZONES for minorities”
I don’t understand ‘declare that carve’ statement.
I never said that it should be without reason. I don’t believe that it’s necessary or even correct to interrogate their specific reason and I think that’s a very good example of privilege in action.
I also think that too often we get hung up in things like critical literary analysis when we’re talking about something like racism. Do you have a comfortable shirt? If I asked you what made it comfortable could you tell me how it felt, or why it felt soft or warm? If I told you that the fabric it was made from had no possible way of being soft or warm, how would you respond? Some of these things are value judgments based on personal mores and are much harder to explain for many people; dismissing them because they can’t explain it to your satisfaction is yet another privilege.
I would also state that you as a white guy are not equipped to understand a lot of reasoning they might have, and your lack of understanding does not mean you are right.
“What makes it a good indicator?” The same thing that makes any opinion-based value a good indicator – multiple expert opinions stating the same thing using examples. And they may not all be right, mind you, but there’s a good chance they are.
“I feel like the burden of proof is on you to show that there’s good reason to believe that simply because the condemnation from the victimized group crosses an arbitrary percentage threshold then I’ve been an idiot for not reading The Second Apocalypse as the woman-hating screed that it obviously is.”
There’s a two-part thing here, and I’ll answer them separately. The first is whether or not it’s reasonable to believe that if a number of people see something as sexist/racist/whatever that it is likely that it is, and the second is whether or not Bakker’s work is a woman-hating screed.
Whether or not it’s reasonable to conclude that if a large number of women see something as sexist or misogynistic that it is such: I assume that most women are area experts in sexism and misogyny, having lived with it and been first-person experiencers of it. If you disagree with that that’s fine, but that’s my basis. Thus, if a number of women come to a conclusion that something is sexist, there’s a good chance that it’s sexist. I didn’t say that it must be sexist or that it IS sexist – just that the likelihood of it being sexist or misogynistic or simply doing more harm than good is stronger.
Let’s put a question on you, Jorge – do you think that this is better or worse if instead of talking about sexism and misogyny we were talking about racism and hate speech? Do you think that if a number of black people decided that something was racist that it was likely that it was racist?
“Maybe I don’t care even if it is.
The merits of the novels are numerous, and I feel the work transcends any misogyny real or imagine.
I have the complete works of HP Lovecraft on my shelf, and I think a lot of it is terrific literature even if Howard was a racist little shit.”
And that’s fine! One can dislike the author and still like the book (I still like Ender’s Game as an example). One can even dislike parts of a book or themes of a book and still enjoy the rest. The difference is that with HP Lovecraft you can absolutely recognize that he was a little racist shit, and hopefully you could understand people not wanting to read his works because they couldn’t tolerate the inherent, explicit racism. Another example is John Ringo, who writes some of the most horribly bad machismo-laden fic with stupid stereotypes ever. They’re still enjoyable books, but even the author admits that his stuff is pretty shitty for that. If you refused to read anything that was misogynistic chances are you’d not read any fantasy at all.
“Do you think that if a number of black people decided that something was racist that it was likely that it was racist?”
No.
I would have to read it and decide for myself. Sometimes “crowd power” is good at finding the truth, and other times it seeks scapegoats and easy targets.
And why do you think you’re better suited to determining whether something is racist than a number of black people?
“And why do you think you’re better suited to determining whether something is racist than a number of black people?”
Because “black” people, like “all” people, can be gullable and prone to quick judgments based on emotional responses from past traumas and/or negative experiences?
“Whether or not it’s reasonable to conclude that if a large number of women see something as sexist or misogynistic that it is such: I assume that most women are area experts in sexism and misogyny, having lived with it and been first-person experiencers of it. If you disagree with that that’s fine, but that’s my basis. Thus, if a number of women come to a conclusion that something is sexist, there’s a good chance that it’s sexist. I didn’t say that it must be sexist or that it IS sexist – just that the likelihood of it being sexist or misogynistic or simply doing more harm than good is stronger.”
I definitely think insert_oppressed_group_here can have a clearer sense of the x-ism that affects them, but it could be beside the point here. If I have a blog and I post about a work saying “I conclude X about this topic,” then my readers will analyze it with a preconceived notion, regardless of whether I am a female accusing a work of being misogynistic (and thus am an area expert, if I am taking your point as valid) or a 10-year-old blasting Pepsi in favor of Mountain Dew (which would fall outside of the area expert issue). The number of people who see things the way I, the blogger, do, even among my dedicated reader base, will likely change if I instead post “Hi everyone, discuss Pepsi vs. Mountain Dew.”
So yes, I do think there is a bias when it comes to the support that acrackedmoon’s viewpoint received because of the way the issue was presented. Whether or not she is valid in her call of what is misogynistic is a separate issue; it is the fervent support of her readers, who are not utilizing their area expertise but rather are agreeing with the presented opinion without a moments pause, that I question.
If we could replay this scenario all over again, except acrackedmoon decided to simply say “What is everyone’s opinion of R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series?,” would the misogynist conclusion still be the dominant viewpoint among her readers? If not, what does that say about the labeling of anything as misogynistic/racist/delicious or any other opinion one could have about something?
“Because “black” people, like “all” people, can be gullable and prone to quick judgments based on emotional responses from past traumas and/or negative experiences?”
The obvious conclusion is that you are not and they are. That’s the implication in that sentence – that you are better able to judge because your mind is unclouded by those emotional responses.
Except the problem here is that things like racism are entirely predicated on emotional responses. As I said, the same people that are likely to be able to determine what is racist are also the ones that have a selection bias for it. They’re also the ones that are going to be more hurt by it for that reason too.
Again, you’ve lived with racism for 0 of your years, I’m guessing. Or sexism, for that matter. Minorities in the US have most likely lived with it for their entire lives. Yet your experience is in your mind carries the same weight? Think about that from a perspective of, well, any other thing learned. If you have never done gymnastics would you think yourself the equal of someone who has done it all their life? If you had never studied physics would you consider yourself the equal of a physics PHD?
“So yes, I do think there is a bias when it comes to the support that acrackedmoon’s viewpoint received because of the way the issue was presented.”
At this point I think we’re not talking about just acrackedmoon; it’s not like she’s the first person to think Bakker was misogynistic, just the latest.
“At this point I think we’re not talking about just acrackedmoon; it’s not like she’s the first person to think Bakker was misogynistic, just the latest.”
True enough.
And why do you think you’re better suited to determining whether something is racist than a number of black people?
Did one or more black people tell you to to treat them as the ones who determine it? Or even ask for this from you?
Or did you decide you knew what’s best for them?
Alteast acknowledge your paternalism, Kal. Even if you really believe you know what’s best.
“Did one or more black people tell you to to treat them as the ones who determine it? Or even ask for this from you?
”
Yes. They also stated that I cannot understand racism in the way that they can. I accept that.
Thus my whole position is that I do not know what is best. I can say what I think and show my concern, but I am not going to declare that something’s racist or something’s sexist.
As I’ve said a ton of times now, I don’t think Bakker’s sexist. I can however see very easily how others can and respect that quite a bit.
I do not see how respecting that other people have more information about things than I do is paternalism.
Godwin’s Law, as a prohibition on evoking Nazism, is pretty good and surely the sort of thing that supports what you’re aiming for – taking the heat out of these arguments. Once someone says, “You’re a bit like someone who ran Auschwitz”, there’s no conversation.
I’ve seen it cited around a dozen times the past two days, and in almost every case it was used to facilitate judgement, not condition it. So, the fact that we all live with the same psychological mechanisms that made the holocaust possible should be a sobering fact, and instead it simply cues laughter. I find that troubling.
In my classes I would always bring in some current story of atrocity, let my students talk about ‘those crazy bastards’ for a time, and then take a hard turn. Not ‘those’ crazy bastards. US crazy bastards.
It cues laughter because as Brent says below, it’s a tiringly overused comparison. And it reeks of trying to bully your opponent, which means the arguer is desperate to win for the sake of winning. “You think like the Nazis” is the embodiement of the moral self-righteousness you’re targetting. There’s no excuse for it if the objective is civil discourse.
But that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying WE ALL think like the Nazis. They’re simply an extreme version of a capacity we all share.
Quite some difference, no?
Then you’re using the commonly understood idiom wrong, Scott, and miscommunicating.
The commonly understood idiom that other people tacked onto his responses?
He used a comparison to Nazis, Frank. That has a certain connotation and semantics on the internet as much as lol does. If Scott uses it wrong he’s just using it wrong. He got called on it. No big.
“Everybody but everybody is given to thinking like Nazis” gets interpreted as “Scott’s calling only those who disagrees with him Nazis” is his fault? Doesn’t that mean I can make insane troll logic misreadings of anything and throw a tantrum and it’ll always be the author’s fault?
I’m amazed at your blatant anti-semitism.No he’s using it correctly he is just pointing to the horror at the heart of it and not the joke that it has become.
Heh, is that aphorism of the day some kind of jab? First off, I cited Godwins law in the other post because, after you wrote “The Godwin I do not see”, I incorrectly assumed that meant you didn’t know what a one was. Secondly, the original poster was merely pointing out that using a Godwin was unlikely to be the best way to get your point across. I, personally, find it tiring when I see any comparison to Nazis/Hilter in any forums, blog posts, articles, etc. Too many people do it too often. Thirdly, naming this aphorism “Otto’s law”? Really? Heh, I think I’m going to go back to lurking.
It wasn’t just you, Brent. Several others after in the comments (as if they were bringing it up for the first time), and then all over the web as well. It almost started to seem, well, lawlike. No offense intended.
I personally think there are better things you could be doing with your time and blog, but whatever floats yer boat, I guess. This argument has been ground down and down across the last few years that every point summoned by the opposition feels tired and regurgitated. To have a troll read six pages and then siphon Kalbear’s argument as outstanding proof was a novelty, I suppose, but all in all trolls have endless appitites, particularly if you keep feeding them.
I’d prefer the promised reviews of Franzen’s work (and other book reviews, if you aren’y going to tease us with TUC updates or more atrocity tales) but that’s just me.
I, too, would love more book reviews.
Well now you’ve lit a fire under my ass. I’m still amazed that IJ review gets the traffic it does.
“Well now you’ve lit a fire under my ass. I’m still amazed that IJ review gets the traffic it does.”
I think the review of Infinite Jest was one of the better book reviews I have come across.
If you wrote reviews for NY Times Book Review or NY Review of Books, I might still subscribe to those publications.
Ah patience, my friend. In due course. I need to resuccitate my reading group first!
I think he’s got it down, Ian. Bakker’s schtick here really, really matters, especially in light of opinions like yours – though you are hardly the only one out there. The black box is being ripped open and covering your eyes won’t make it go away. And this while articles like the Atlantic link in the blog post or http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2011/05/designer-psychologies-moving-beyond.html become more prevalent, even acceptable, worldwide everyday.
Also, another link at the edge of the rabbit hole:
Thanks for these Mike!
I’m not covering my eyes, I’m bored. These circular arguments have worn tracks a mile-deep between here and Westeros and the various blogs in question. Both Kalbear and Bakker are trying to convince the other that there is a specific flaw or misinterpretation in each other’s argument/POV, but any number of conditions make it unlikely for them to reach even a stalemate. It’s more than obvious that each has extremely personal stakes in this argument, and must be ‘right’, even if the very idea of that ‘right’ is called into question (all of this is IMO, of course)
As for the conversation itself, it is more than worthy. But the particular source of the subject, not so much. I personally find acrackedmoon and her blog to be occationally amusing and spot-on but just as often ridiculously overblown and troublingly ahistorical / willfully ignorant in her content, and thus do not consider her a viable source of sustained criticism, her abrasive championing of the transformative paradigm notwithstanding.
Actually I think both Scott and I have reached a detente of sorts; I think we both understand the other fairly well. At this point I mostly argue with Scott’s neckbearded fans.
I think its funny that you can spend several days debating the nature of racism and sexism and then say something that is essentially a racial slur on the same forum.
you think ‘neckbeard’ is a racial slur? What race would neckbeards be under, do you think?
And do you think neckbeards are a persecuted, victimized culture?
Huh.
Racial slur is defined as : a derogatory or disrespectful nickname for a racial group, used without restraint.
Neckbeard is certainly derogatory and you did just use it without restraint so I think it qualifies.
That post was kind of a trap and this post is more or less a joke, but it works as a good way to show some holes in your logic above.
Earlier you posted
” I assume that most women are area experts in sexism and misogyny, having lived with it and been first-person experiencers of it”
and
‘what indicates a book is sexist?’ And a fairly good indicator is percentages of victim groups of that specific area (in this case women and misogyny) declaring as such.
and
“I would also state that you as a white guy are not equipped to understand a lot of reasoning they might have, and your lack of understanding does not mean you are right.”
So now if I declare myself as a neckbeard I am expert on determining racism against neckbeards and call you a racist, then because a high percentage of the neckbeards are condemning you your post is now racist and you have no recourse because not being a neckbeard yourself you are not equipped to understand what reasoning I might have of condemning you and thus whatever reasoning you provide is moot.
Congratulations you are now racists!
Yes, because declaring yourself a geek is exactly the same thing as declaring yourself a woman.
Congrats, hattrick – you have won the stupidest post of this thread. You have successfully compared being a sci-fi/fantasy fan with institutionalized racism and sexism.
Well the post was meant as a joke as much as an example of how using your logic it is very easy to placed in an indefensible position.
On a side note do you really think its ok to call people ‘Neckbeards’? Its a pretty nasty thing to say, even if it doesn’t qualify as racism it’s certainly derogatory.
“On a side note do you really think its ok to call people ‘Neckbeards’? Its a pretty nasty thing to say, even if it doesn’t qualify as racism it’s certainly derogatory.”
Of course it’s derogatory. That’s the point, though the term itself isn’t particularly offensive. It’s the connotations. And yes, I do think that a bunch of self-absorbed, entitled white men who don’t want their toys to be taken away have the right to be mocked when they complain that their stories that are one step up from tortureporn are Really Really Good. Or that no one can talk anything badly about Tolkien.
It’s ok to use derogatory slurs as long as the people you are using them against are inferior to you. I cede the high ground to you on that one.
That’s good. Because so far you’ve equated hundreds of years of beating, torture and killing with being a fan of Terry Goodkind.
Would you rather I just called them fuckheads or asshats?
Ah, Goodkind. For a moment I thought you meant Bakker’s books were one step up from torture porn and wondered why the hell you would spend so much time here.
The Haidt link, to me, was a framing of the discussion in a manner that sidetracks what I see as the central issue of engaging already extant camps. RoH isn’t the cause or catalyst but instead the reaction.
I think the same of the Criteria Question, as it ignores the reality Gourmet and I brought up – that this puts the onus on the person trying to explain something that bothered them and ignores their very existence as the group having to deal RL effects of bad depiction.
I’d still like your critical eye turned to the elements of fandom that end up as living proof of the issues highlighted, but not created, by RoH. I think people would take it as a good faith gesture that all this isn’t motivated by self-interest.
I’m not even sure what to make of all this. Right now it seems this whole series of posts is directed at those who disagree with you and how they are Nazis. There seems no room for nuance, and the special dig at liberals seemed particularly problematic.
Brushes are getting too broad yo.
But to me the most important thing is engendering a dialogue across the chasm of TPB and dissenting feminists – unless the feminist message you intended is now something you’ve abandoned. This ongoing battle with a subset of them seems pointless.
The onus is always on the person making the claims, and for good reason. People make groundless accusations all the time, even when they happen to belong to a victim group. Lives are ruined.
I can’t help but see this reply as a case in point: You say “a series of posts directed at those who disagree with you and how they are Nazis.” This is entirely false. I never called anyone a Nazi: what I said is that we ALL share the psychology that made the holocaust possible, and this is something we need to reckon. My series of posts were directed at the Dude specifically, and at the problem of moral condemnation more generally. Go back if you don’t believe me, Sci. Try to dredge up interpretative evidence. Then ask yourself how you could accuse me of ‘lacking nuance’ when your memory automatically and quite unconsciously bled what I had actually said into this caricature.
These are the very mechanisms I’m talking about, and why it’s so important that those engaging in the moral condemnation game recognize the pitfalls and complexities involved. Are you suggesting they shouldn’t? That we should reserve, NO REASON REQUIRED ZONES for members of victim groups? Once again, Sci, this smacks of paternalism to me – and heavy-handed at that.
We only exempt children and the mentally ill from reasons.
I’ve been told that ‘Yo’ is a racist term, by the way. Are you African American?
“People make groundless accusations all the time, even when they happen to belong to a victim group. Lives are ruined.”
Ah, the false accusation of rape argument.
Did you miss the part where I emphasized groups over and over? Consensus? Multiple opinions? Yes, it’s possible that all of those people are wrong. Is that more or less likely?
If they just believe whatever the other person says (which is what you do – you say a victim just knows), then it’s a xerox effect. If multiple people simply parrot what the first said, that doesn’t make what is said more likely to be true.
Except in…the unreason zone! *twilight zone music…*
“Did you miss the part where I emphasized groups over and over? Consensus? Multiple opinions? Yes, it’s possible that all of those people are wrong. Is that more or less likely?”
I would love for everyday discourse to follow the rigors of blind psychological studies, but it ain’t going to happen. I truly don’t think consensus is worth anything if one’s preference is made clear in the presentation of the issue, especially to in-groups and peers (as I expanded on a bit above).
How is ‘yo’ racist?
There’s a nice etymological essay on the origins of ‘yo’ on urban dictionary. Something about Italians in South Philly and the word, “guaglione,” in Italian. Also popularized by Rocky Balboa with, “Yo, Adrian,” and subsequently Alf with, “Yo Willie!”
Yo is as benign as dude, bro, or cool.
PS. Go Jets Go.
Apparently it became customary for white officers in certain police forces to refer to black men as ‘yo’s.’
Ah. I meant “your opponent” in the generic sense. I know your argument is a social psychology one. I’m just objecting to Otto’s Law and defending the usefulness of Godwin’s Law for keeping debates within reasonable terms.
But having said that, I will add… for the record… the worst thing I’ve ever seen you write was back when we were debating literature and you said something to the effect that people who look down at fantasy fiction are, I can’t remember your phrasing, but on a continuum with people who organized the Holocaust. I think you were playing on the phrase “ghetto”. I didn’t respond to it at the time but since this whole topic has come up again, I will just register that I thought that was crass. It didn’t help our conversation, put it that way. Just a note.
The tag at the bottom of this post suggested that there might be a new atrocity tale.
Depends on your definition of Atrocity Tale. 😉
Finally, an explanation for why the Outside is so fucked up!
Also, my wife first linked me The overjustification link on youarenotsosmart as a neat article linking neuroscience stuff with my job hunts. It’s a great read.
First off – is there a guide to tags (bold, link, etc) for wordpress?
~”The onus is always on the person making the claims, and for good reason. People make groundless accusations all the time, even when they happen to belong to a victim group. Lives are ruined.”~
We’re looking at this from two different perspectives, likely for very good reasons. I see the issue with regards to the difficulty of articulating why something might bother someone who feels their group has been depicted negatively, you see it as the danger that claim == true just because the person making the claim is of such a group.
~”This is entirely false. I never called anyone a Nazi:”~
Why I said *seems* – see, I have learned something about claim making! 🙂
But I think a big problem is we’ve yet to see an example of groupthink in the blog posts that refers to a group other than those disagreeing with you, so how are we supposed to take:
~”The Nazis felt every bit as pious as you. More.”~ ?
(BTW, I really think you should use The Troll instead of The Dude if you’re going to hold to this trap sheet.)
As for lacking nuance, I’m going to stand by that. We’re onto three posts now and there hasn’t been any serious examination in your posts of the groupthink that creates societal privilege, the hostility of SFF fans to varied groups disconcerted with their depiction, or even just the groupthink that supports sexism which seems to be the elephant we’re ignoring because we’re too busy staring at mice.
Instead, the frame of this dialogue on groupthink is as narrow as it was in the first post. It just doesn’t seem any dissent has given you any reason for self-reflection. It’s all just fodder for social experiments.
The first issue, which I don’t think we’ve come close to addressing, is how to have a dialogue about contentious claims. The divides already exist, and it seems a good number of people that the books were supposed to be talking to are across the chasm.
As for using “yo” being racist, I’m curious as to the reasoning. As I am not African-American, I want to make sure I’m not insulting another race. I will definitely take the argument into consideration, though I can’t promise I will immediately refrain from using the term.
WordPress is just straight html. Bold is the b tag, italics the i tag, links are the a href= style.
Thanks!
Looking at the
deleuzedeluge of of shit flinging in the recent comments, I’m reminded of your conclusion from your Nietzsche speech.“But you will need to do far more than present and publish arguments that things are not equal when it comes to the soul, you will have to make these arguments stick. Given the apparent impossibility of commanding consensus in intentional discursive domains, I think its safe to assume that your discourses are about to become endangered species, even if–and here’s the thing–you are as right as you
like to think you are.”
It’s all well and good when the other side has to face the music because they’re the ones getting drowned out, but those psych publications haven’t swayed the majoritry yet. Or at least haven’t reached enough vocal supporters to spur them into matching the rabidness of the other side. You’re the one fighting the uphill battle, and as far as volume goes, your opponents are very good at shouting you down even if you’re right. I think the last three posts proves that quite handidly.
So is the answer to just shout louder, or does this demand a change in tactics? Does asking the criteria question and repeatedly going back to it actually change minds, or does it entrench the two camps of agreers and disagreers deeper? If we’re talking about efficacy here, how many people actually changed their minds in the last three comment threads? It’s pretty self flattering to fire off a paragraph or twelve and believe we’re fighting the good fight. I know I’ve done it plenty of times. But what if instead of actually forcing the people to question their assumptions, all we’re doing is convincing the trolls and character assassins just how badly we can get our butts kicked?
Good post. I have to admit that this recent spate in the conversation has made me question my assumptions, but given the trollish behavior exhibited by Eloida et al, it doesn’t seem like that shoe is made to fit.
This is the real problem I see. RSB cites mounting psychological evidence pointing towards a near future societal crisis / tipping point. His stated hope is that we (collectively) somehow come too our senses before it’s too late. But then RSB inexplicably ignores his psychology, including (ironically) his own pet BBT, in crafting the vehicle for delivering his message.
He shouts from the rooftops. But only homeless crazy people do that everyone knows.
He employs shock jock techniques. It’s calculated to cause discomfirt, but also naturally causes repulsion.
None of this is surprising in the least. All of this RSB should already know from the mounting psychological evidence. It’s never just the substance of the message, but also the tone and manner of delivery that determine its reception from the audience.
If RSB is merely trying to score points or prove something to himself or those who already think as he does, well confraternity I guess, but he’s now still part of the “problem” as he himself defines it.
If RSB really (truly) aims to convince, to help avoid his predicted crisis, to find a solution in practice, then his method is clearly not the shortest path.
Actually as far as readership sample sizes go a few dozen people (if that) commenting here or shouting online is pretty insignificant. Critics running on unleaded hate tend also to be the loudest, which again skewers our perceptions. Maybe the books are doing their set goals better, maybe not. Point is, without getting way more audience feedback we don’t really know. Saying Scott is clearly failing because of how you feel about this recent little spat is jumping the gun as much as claiming it’s exactly the kind of method we should use to change hearts and minds.
So many comments, so little time to reply.
How am I ignoring my own psychology? At every turn I acknowledge that I’m talking about myself as well. What more do I have to do to make this point clear?
And how am I ignoring BBT (which I actually don’t entirely believe, btw – something I’ve also acknowledged innumerable times!)?
Shock jock techniques? Such as name-calling, ridicule, vitriol? Huh? I offer arguments, ask questions, reference complexities, problems. What could be wrong with this. Otherwise, I treat this blog AS A BLOG, which is to say, not as a journal publication where you’re supposed to spin an illusory veneer of disinterest. In other words, I shouldn’t acknowledge my inevitable biases openly?
What would you have me do different?
Badger Guy posted:
“Yes, it’s possible that all of those people are wrong. Is that more or less likely?”
We don’t actually know the proportion of female readers that find the work objectionable*, and even if we did, ‘likelihood’ is not a good reason to condemn someone and their work.
*Pointless Anecdote: My GF liked it alright, even though she found Serwe to be boring and annoying.
“We don’t actually know the proportion of female readers that find the work objectionable*, and even if we did, ‘likelihood’ is not a good reason to condemn someone and their work”
I don’t see why not. A large number of people find something to be offensive. Will you always view the thing they find offensive first before passing judgment? Do you determine based on people’s quotes if something they did was wrong, or do you watch their press statements too? Do you really need to eat poo in order to determine that poo isn’t good? Of course not; we sample. We reach viewpoints based on consensus. Sometimes we’re many orders of magnitude away from the original source, and that’s okay. This ties in well to the magical belief lottery; which is more likely, that your view is more correct or hundreds of others is more correct?
Which is more likely – that 1 white guy knows best what sexism is, or that hundreds of women know?
More importantly, regardless of whether those hundreds of women are 100% right – that it is absolutely misogynistic or bad or whatever – shouldn’t the fact that a work written with a feminist undertone causes such consternation with a lot of feminists be something concerning? Maybe, possibly cause some self-examination? I guess to me that seems to be the thing Bakker’s fans gloss over – the notion that there is nothing wrong or nothing offensive with what Bakker has written. They’re not offended, therefore anyone who is is wrong.
It’s funny – folks use words like ‘condemn’ when someone says that they’re a misogynist. Do you think that being labeled a misogynist is some kind of scarlet letter or some kind of branding that you can never escape? Do you think that it’s something irreversible with respect to a published work? Never mind whether they are right or not, does it matter all that much? I mean, you’re saying that it’s horrible to condemn Bakker for being a misogynist. It carries no legal weight and it is unlikely to carry a lot of economic weight unless publishers or critics also view him as such (and they’re not likely to be influenced by folks like Requires Only That you Hate’s acrackedmoon). This gets back into that ludicrous notion that you can’t criticize because that could affect someone’s livelihood negatively. Are Bakker’s friends going to shun him now because some Thai lesbian woman called him a misogynist? What do you think are the actual stakes?
It’s not horrible, but it certainly is contemptable, when a person condemns another as misogynist based on reading 6 pages of said work and then surveying the internet for cherry-picked quotes.
“shouldn’t the fact that a work written with a feminist undertone causes such consternation with a lot of feminists be something concerning?”
I’m sorry, are ‘feminists’ a single group? I was under the impression that there are many, many splintering factions.
As for me, though I’ve disagreed with your argument numerous times, the fact that you’ve stated it in and of itself has made me *reconsider* Bakker’s work in a different light (and re-evaluate my own writings) — and I think that this sort of discourse, internalization, and recalibration of beliefs is what RSB was ultimately aiming for. Naturally, he has to metaphorically get kicked in the balls repeatedly for that really to work, but I’d say, if nothing else, TSA has generated a powerful dicussion.
(even if, as I stated above, I’m bored to death of it 🙂
When you reply to me, please try and stick to one or two points. It’s hard enough to keep a coherent discussion going in this limited format as it is, without having wade through a huge post to figure out arguments.
Badger wrote:
“A large number of people find something to be offensive. Will you always view the thing they find offensive first before passing judgment?”
I try to. If I pass judgment without evaluating the evidence myself, well, tehre’s a word for that: prejudice.
Badger wrote:
“Do you determine based on people’s quotes if something they did was wrong, or do you watch their press statements too?”
I try and get the facts straight before judging someone morally reprehensible.
Badger wrote:
“This ties in well to the magical belief lottery; which is more likely, that your view is more correct or hundreds of others is more correct? ”
You have a marvelous way of twisting semantics.
The Magic Belief Lottery has nothing to do with numbers. If it did, then Bakker would be advocating us all to become theists, and do and believe as the majority does. The Magic Belief Lottery has to do with CONVICTION. I may not believe Bakker is a sexist, but I am willing to consider the alternative, something his detractors do not seem to do. This is why Bakker has bitten several bullets: because he is willing to CONCEDE that some of his scenes may have been offensive, and written in such a way.
Badger wrote:
“Which is more likely – that 1 white guy knows best what sexism is, or that hundreds of women know?”
It depends who the man and the women are. If the hundreds of women come from the Bible belt, and the one guy is a professor of Women’s Studies at a east coast university… kind of changes the equation, n’est-ce pas?
Badger wrote:
“Maybe, possibly cause some self-examination?”
Of course! I have talked about the books with my GF and today I had a conversation about racism and sexism. Like I stated above: I am wiling to consider the viewpoint, without immediately taking it as gospel.
Badger wrote:
“This gets back into that ludicrous notion that you can’t criticize because that could affect someone’s livelihood negatively.”
Criticism is fine, but as noted below by Ian, it is contemptible for someone to make essentially slanderous statements without even fully reading the book. When my GF said “Serwe is annoying”, I said to her “Well, Bakker mentioned in one of his blog posts a long time ago that she’s actually pretty important.” That said, I ended up largely agreeing with my GF that Serwe’s POV chapters were not the most compelling moments in the narrative.
“I try to. If I pass judgment without evaluating the evidence myself, well, tehre’s a word for that: prejudice.” – Sure. So what? Everyone’s prejudiced. Everyone makes stereotypical remarks. Again, what’s the big deal? It’s one person! Same thing with “I try and get the facts straight before judging someone morally reprehensible.” Everyone tries to. Everyone fails. We all think we know other people better than we do, and we all think other people don’t know us better than they do. At least that’s what we think right now.
Also, acrackedmoon isn’t representative of all readers or all feminists. When I say ‘lots of feminists’ I mean that – that they didn’t all just read 6 pages and give up. ROH is the latest of years of discussion – but it’s not the ultimate end of it, nor is it the beginning.
“The Magic Belief Lottery has nothing to do with numbers. If it did, then Bakker would be advocating us all to become theists, and do and believe as the majority does. ”
It has something to do with numbers. More accurately, it has something to do with the fact that chances are you’re wrong regardless of what you think, and that you should listen to other people’s opinions. Again, I’m not saying it as far as a numbers game – I’m saying it as far as the notion that women are largely experts when it comes to things that are sexist and misogynistic, therefore if you have a lot of women telling you that your work is misogynistic chances are there is a fair point there. Just as much as if you have hundreds of climatologists telling you that global warming is true. Yes, in both cases they could be wrong. It’s just not as likely.
“It’s not horrible, but it certainly is contemptable, when a person condemns another as misogynist based on reading 6 pages of said work and then surveying the internet for cherry-picked quotes.”
I say it’s incredibly irresponsible.
I say that when someone can read 6 pages of a book and determine it’s misogynist then that doesn’t speak well for the book.
Think how much worse it speaks for the book when you can tell it’s mysogynist just by looking at the cover.
“I say that when someone can read 6 pages of a book and determine it’s misogynist then that doesn’t speak well for the book.”
Ugh. After ALL this discussion, to still read this sort of response is… well… it’s depressing.
Jordan, you seem to assume that it’s _possible_ to “determine” that a book is misogynistic based on reading six pages of it. What do you think it takes to “determine” that something is true, that (e.g.) an interpretive claim is reasonable?
Especially when, at the end of the day, we’re not talking about a single book, nor even a trilogy, nor even _two_ trilogies, but — what? — an eight- or nine-book series? What does six pages “determine” about such an ambitious, large-scale work?
If I were to judge War and Peace by its first six pages, I’d have to conclude that it’s a great big tome about stuck-up rich people chatting at a party. If other sorts of aesthetic or synoptic judgments — say, of overall quality, or simply ‘what the book is about,’ etc. — cannot reasonably be made on the basis of six pages of text, then why think that six pages of text licenses judgments that are fraught with even _greater_ interpretive complexity, such as the judgment that the text (let alone its author!) is misogynistic?
Jordan, if they have determined its misogynist, how come everyone hasn’t detected that? I can see Kathleen on the about page praising the book, with no mention of misogyny .
At the very least, your treating it like fact – like the number of pages in the book can be determined, you think it being misogynist can be, yet other people don’t detect that. Everyone would say the same page count, but not everyone would say misogyny. How can that be if they are both just properties a book can have?
At the very least, don’t you think your fucking up in treating this the same way as a page count? As if it’s a fact of the book?
How is it irresponsible? What responsibility does acrackedmoon have? Heck, she wasn’t dishonest; she specifically stated she read the first six pages and no more. She cited her sources (incorrectly as it turns out, confusing TJE with TWP, but that’s not that big a deal) and she didn’t deny it.
Again, this goes to the condemn evaluation; so what? You say that she as a reader has a responsibility to what – not pass judgment based on only 6 pages? To not communicate that to friends of hers? She gave her opinion based on the facts she was willing to tolerate and communicated what the basis of her opinion was. I don’t think any reader owes anyone more than that.
It’s irresponsible if you treat a claim as sexism as a very serious thing, which you don’t. You treat a claim of sexism and a claim, for example, of too many umlauts as roughly equal.
One side treats the sexism claim as very serious (and so it is irresponsible to claim it after six pages like shouting fire in a theatre is irresponsible), while the other side here does not find it to be serious/any more serious than a claim of too many umlauts.
I consider it more serious than too many umlauts, Callan. I just don’t see what’s a big deal about someone calling someone else a douchebag, asshat, or whatever. Or sexist – which I think is more damaging to society as a whole.
Heck, I think being called a libertarian is pretty bad too.
Again, neither is akin to yelling fire; if I yell ‘you’re a sexist’ does everyone in a theater run away from the sexist? If I do it at the place you work does it cause you to lose your job? Is it akin to admitting to someone that you use drugs or fuck prostitutes? Clearly none of these things are true. Therefore it can’t be that serious.
I just don’t see what’s a big deal about someone calling someone else a douchebag, asshat, or whatever.
Well, it seems an act of hate to call someone that. If they mean nothing, why bother?
Granted I’ve listened to people who have replaced all punctuation in their spoken sentences with the word ‘fuck’. In the end though it’s like their trying to fend off that what they are saying is dismally banal (like most of the things I say during the day are banal as well). It seems a kind of tourettes syndrome.
Anyway, I’m not sure it’s the issue here except your associating a call of douchebaggery as similar in level with a call of sexism.
Again, neither is akin to yelling fire; if I yell ‘you’re a sexist’ does everyone in a theater run away from the sexist? If I do it at the place you work does it cause you to lose your job? Is it akin to admitting to someone that you use drugs or fuck prostitutes? Clearly none of these things are true. Therefore it can’t be that serious.
In Cordelia Fine’s a mind of it’s own, she describes tests run where people hand out bonuses and the tests test whether their handing out is influenced by various things.
I’m pretty sure a test where someone chooses how much bonus money is handed out, all in regards to the same person and ostensibly their work. But one group of bonus hand overs is primed with a claim or two of him being sexist. The other group is not.
Now maybe your right, and both groups would on average hand out the same amount of bonus for the same work by the same person.
Or maybe you’re wrong. It is testable.
‘A mind of it’s own’ might even already have an example in it – I must read it again soon.
I’m going to just drop the hammer here. I’m not going to even attempt to make a cogent argument or intellectual comment. What I’m saying comes from my heart and because shit like this really pisses me off.
Fuck them. Fuck ’em.
Yeah. This whole politics and racism shit. Old. Older than old. Apparently Shakespeare was a racist. Know what? Fuck it.
Write your books. Fuck them.
We can all wax intellectual about how you or your books are or aren’t racist. Fuck it. There’s no point. Just a bunch of butthurt people with axes to grind. Fuck ’em.
In a way, you should feel honored that you’re getting this much attention. There’s no such thing as bad press. I mean, hell, you could be Stephanie Meyer.
But still. Fuck ’em. Plenty of great authors were racists and mysogynists and the butthurt axegrinders can’t take away their literary achievements. In the end of the day, people will still read Shakespeare, John Updike, Philip Roth, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, and James Joyce. So who gives a damn what the butthurt axegrinders have to say?
My father always said that the easiest way to build the tallest building in town was to knock all the taller ones down. He also said that people who want to be important and be leaders but lack the actual talents and skills needed will resort to several tried-and-true tactics and it appears that a lot of people seek notoriety by developing grievances and claiming victim status (for themselves or someone else).
The thing is, those people get marginalized because history hates phonies. Everyone’s heard of Alexander the Great. Nobody’s heard of Pyrrhus of Epirus (even though he gave his name to the term “pyrrhic victory”).
So, fuck ’em. Write your books. Don’t write them for me or anyone else. Write for yourself. You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but whatever. Fuck ’em. Do what you do.
Oh, right. I see. People who object to racial discrimination are just “butthurt” and should remember their place. Literary greatness (according to who?) over-rides social concerns. So authors should write for themselves, “for the page”, and not worry about social impact. Do you know that this is the exact opposite of everything RSB has been saying on this blog?
Exactly. Maybe if there were such a thing as ‘writing for yourself’!
This can be irritating, ego-bruising, time-wasting – all the things you say, Dave – but in the end, if you really do want to be part of the solution, these are the things that matter most. Authors sitting back, wearing clothes made by other people, eating food picked and processed by other people, warmed by a furnace made by other hands… There are few things quite so lame or parasitic as being an author, if you ask me. You have to MAKE yourself accountable.
“Plenty of great authors were racists and mysogynists and the butthurt axegrinders can’t take away their literary achievement.”
This seems like ripe fodder for a post about privileged groupthink.
“We’re hardwired to gather about certain attitudinal fires, warm our hands over the recitation of certain words expressed in certain ways. ”
Yes. I actively chose my group and I’m content to be part of society. Being a nomad is lonesome and yields utterly no dividends, social, mental, psychological or otherwise. I have to participate in society because I’m a social animal. Sitting above it all, trying to point out how this or that is that or this and whining that everyone in the cave is seeing only shadows, not what casts the shadows is no good. Being Right doesn’t mean anything if I’m the only one that knows (hence why we all act out the xkcd archetype ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ on this very blog post and everywhere else) and if I’m the only one who knows, then Being Right is probably meaningless, because a currency that no one in the world accepts is no good as money. In some ways, That’s why I decided to choose to come back to religion. To choose to believe again, because it yields important rewards and dividends in terms of mental and social health for my sake, and for the sake of my loved ones. I have no problems with this, there is no hypocrisy in it. Just realism, I can’t live as a nomad, it’s too fucking lonesome and unrewarding.
A couple asides:
1) After reading requires only haidt last night, before I fell asleep I was pondering AFFC and ADWD and how long they took for an effort that was more expansive and redolent than the previous three focused and meaty books in relation to the second apocalypse. I was thinking about your well known thought that GRRM got bored with his original characters and was seduced by what was new and exciting to him as an author. I think that has some truth to it, but I don’t think it gets everything, I think it is maybe half true, and half projection on your part, because you changed some things and refocused on your original cast after coming to that conclusion after reading AFFC. But what’s the other half of what changed? I think it was the internet. The first three books were written and came out in an era when online presences on the internet were sparse and relatively rare. Right around 2000 communities and fora started to thrive. I found westeros in 2001, a few months after I read the first three ice and fire books. One of the things going on at the time was just how much So Spake Martin was going on. He was being peppered incessently with questions about the heraldry of captain bumfuck from swampland and the lineage of king shitheel, how big were the tits of whores in islandland as compared to continentland, and who was the second cousin of the third grandnephew of Captain falcon and what was his auntie’s brother in-law’s hair color etc etc etc. Martin wasn’t posting on the forums, but he was regularly answering email questions and generally engaging with his fandom. But I think that’s a clue as to where things went from meaty writing to redolent writing. Martin had always invoked a sort of epic-cataloging in some specific areas (such as tournies) that called for a Virgo esque invocation of meaningless heraldry detail. But then his writing took a turn for the indulgent, and it was everywhere. It’s as if he were trying to head off questions before they got to him. The worst offending chapter is the ten page explanation to Sansa of the lineage of Harry the Heir, when his fucking name tells you everything that ten page explanation tells you—he’s the Heir now. The problem is Fandom WANTS that ten page explanation even though indulging that explanation is horrible in execution. In a sense, Martin’s writing became more proactively defensive. And in doing that, his writing got more expansive. The story grew, not just because of the telling, but because the fans wanted it to grow. I know you’ve abandoned the three seas forum, and are aware of this problem and don’t really post details about the books anymore. But more to the point is the lesson that the demands of fandom can completely reorder the books yet to be written in the authors minds. And the more time and effort you engage in mobius strip arguments with the same two-three people, the further away the book you’ve wanted to write gets and the more you start writing your next book for two-three people instead of for your entire audience. ADWD was good, but there seemed to be an enormous amount of extraneous detail that was written primarily for Elio&Westeros more than for the needs of the story.
I have to laugh at how silly the whole preceding argument is, I accuse you of projection and then promptly project my own experience (discovering internet fora that center around book series I like). And as a cherry on top, I try to passively aggressively maneuver say “shut up and write” by reframing your own arguments in a somewhat flattering new context that is also vaguely scolding in tone. Sorry about that, everything in the preceding paragraph was meant to be sincere, even if it is pathetically simple to deconstruct its motives.
2) Isn’t it INCREDIBLE that cutting edge neuroscience and the semantic apocalypse is nothing more than a restatement (with modern terminology) of Plato’s Cave. How is it that one of the original western philosophers hit upon something so incredibly core to “us” that it is still being revealed and proven (despite centuries of science revealing and proving it). I am ever more in awe of the simplicity and elegance and power of this parable/metaphor.
3) Freud is largely discredited in the field he founded—mostly because it made everyone uncomfortable to claim that virtually everything of the psyche had a sexual impulse component (reproductive strategy) as a core contributor. So he’s been discredited because it’s uncomfortable. Yet it seems more and more that a lot of cutting edge science is proving Freud more and more right and performs Freudian analysis with a new vocabulary of neuroscience (because using Freudian vocabulary short circuits the brain into unfortunate biases). Is Freud almost akin to Plato in terms of being someone who will be proven ever more correct the closer we get to the semantic apocalypse?
(sometimes I think the entire second apocalypse is an epic retelling of Plato’s Cave)
You should be critical of the ‘nomad.’ It’s just my way of flattering a bunch of asshole contrarians into thinking they’re wayfaring ideological barbarians… But, like many cartoons, it seems to capture a little something.
The ‘Audience Engagement Effect’ you mention is something that concerns me quite abit, and it is an interesting theory. I really do have an advantage in having the story laid out beforehand for such a long bloody time, though – and maybe that’s why I’ve come to the opposite conclusion (which I argue more thoroughly here). Before the internet you had to go hunting for quorums; now they come to scalp you!
I hear you on Plato’s Cave as well. In the consciousness paper I working up I actually begin with a quote from Book 11 of the Republic, then discuss the Cave in some detail. Metzinger has whole sections devoted to it in Being No One. As for the Cave and SA, the question really is, who’s staring at the shadows? or for that matter, tending the bonfire.
About the Freud I tend to disagree (as most Nietzsche readers would, I think). I just see him cluttering Nietzsche’s ‘it’ with a bunch of simplistic categories and hydraulic metaphors. He was ahead of his time in many, many other respects, but the basic theory I find impressive to the degree I find it derivative.
Freud was also discredited because his scientific methods were sloppy and he fabricated data. That he ended up being somewhat more right than other folks doesn’t make his scientific basis or his experiments strong, nor does it justify that silly anal/oral/genital stage of growth crap that he did.
Can’t seem to directly reply to RSB’s response to me, so sorry this is out of place. RSB, when I say “your own psychology” I do not mean your introspective examination of yourself and your (correctly) lumping yourself in with everyone else re: biases, etc. I mean you are ignoring what the mounting psychological evidence you cite would tell you about how to convince. How to win friends and influence people so to speak.
If your goal is to attempt to prevent the semantapocalypse, then turn psychology into your own weapon. Use it as the neuromarketers use it, but for GOOD. Be paternalistic, and convince the world using techniques most likely to CONVINCE.
I see. Sorry about the misread. I’ve struggled with this in much the same way I’ve struggled with the commercial aspect of all this as well. I’m supposed to be doing this to sell books, when really I’m only alienating potential readers.
But this problem extends to the content of the books as well. So many people seem convinced I could be a bestseller “if only…”
In each case, all I can say is that I’m trying. Disciple was an attempt. Neuropath was an attempt. I’m locked in with the fantasies because I think it would be a betrayal to those who’ve made it possible for me to get this far to suddenly rennovate my style or content – and also because I have this peculiar faith in the strength of the whole, that when it’s done, it’s monumentality or something retarded like that will it leverage some kind of breakout.
I discuss this with my wife quite a bit. Being poor gets old on its own. Add children to the mix…
My agent was bitching about the blog just last week. All I can say is that if you look at the old philosophy stuff on the blog here you can get a sense of the way my brain ‘naturally works.’ Hyper-reflexive. Hyper-critical. Hyper-abstract. Even moreso with Light, Time, as Gravity, which I wrote for ‘myself,’ as the saying goes. Talk about alienating.
For me, it really does feel as though I’m being relaxed, witty, accessible, likable and all that. For me, it really feels like I’m reaching out. To push further would feel paternalistic, as you say. And for whatever reason, that feeling simply shuts me down. Makes me feel like I am the pretentious fraud so many make me out to be, believe it or not!
So the decision I came to last year when I was really rethinking this blog was to continue to do my best while remaining genuine, to be relentless, as open as my paleolithic brain would allow, and to hope that the novelty of my voice and the relevance of the content will eventually shine through. And you know what? the blog has grown, from a couple hundred hits a day a year ago to several hundred (to a couple thousand a day these past couple days!), and though the sales have remained locked on the edge of publishing oblivion (almost ten years running, now), I can any only hope that Fate will grant me a Hollywood ending.
Three posts in and you stop being able to make direct replies. Most people here just line up the rest as best they can, even if it means replying to yourself.
As for trying to convince, it’s easy to assume an argument isn’t convincing to most people just because we weren’t personally convinced. Judging from past responses, I think the fact that all kinds of people are debating gender issues raised by a fantasy series shows Scott’s attempt to co-opt that line of communication is already working to a degree. Often the quality of that conversation hasn’t been great, and more people end up shouting past each other than honestly considering opposing points of view. So perhaps some aspects of how Scott conveys his message in his books or carries the conversation online can be tweaked. Or perhaps considering the resources available to him this imperfect method is the best he can do. It’s pretty clear that you don’t find him convincing enough in this case, but what kind of strategic paternalism could he adopt that would make him more convincing to you? And would that work better for everybody else who’s not you?
Here’s a hypothetical situation for you. Neurofocus research shows it would be easier to reach out to more people who hold sexist views against women by first decoupling paternalistic tendencies against their self fulfillment tendencies, rather than directly presenting the view that women should be treated as equals. In other words, the research shows by emphasizing women as childlike in emotional and intellectual ability and therefore children to be nurtured rather than abused, the books will convince more people to tread women better in the short term, prime them more effectively to take on views of equality in the long term, and just plain sell better. It’s also certain to alienate those who already hold a more liberal view, but they’re unlikely to be swayed anyway. Would you give the research paper a fare chance, or would you challenge the results every way you can instead? Would you want Scott to write these books you know you’ll hate?
A consequentialist approach to social engineering brooks no sentiment. Are you willing to have yourself and others walk that road?
“I think the fact that all kinds of people are debating gender issues raised by a fantasy series ”
Full stop.
There aren’t people debating gender issues for the most part. That happens very infrequently (it happened for a while at the end of Bakker and Women 4 once we got past so much of the other stuff, and Bakker stopped responding which kind of killed the topic). What most people are bringing up is whether or not the author or the book is misogynistic. Which is a gender issue, but is a very puerile one; you could argue that every romance novel also brings up ‘gender issues’ in that case.
This has been one of the big things I keep getting back to, and what unJon also commented and stated very well – that the things Bakker is wanting to discuss are important and meaningful but he keeps messing up the presentation and occluding the dialog with all this overt misogynistic text. It’s much like a shock jock having an interesting point about Plato while talking about what a fucking gay queer Plato was all the time, then wondering why no one’s talking about Plato’s cave analogy and everyone’s talking about Plato being gay.
Another analogy: I’d really like Bakker to get back to ‘its’ the economy, stupid’ and back off from the abortion rights topics.
“Full stop.”
Full stop.
People debating gender issues badly is still people debating gender issues. Just because you think a debate is puerile doesn’t mean it’s not happening. You going on about Scott prompting conversations the wrong way was exactly my point. What are you even arguing against?
I’m arguing against the notion that just because people are accusing Scott of misogyny and talking about it that this is a useful, good or commendable thing. If that’s the goal, why not just make it easy and go for full out Warriors of Gor?
I don’t think Scott’s goal was to get people talking about how much a misogynist he is.
Because Gor cleaves readers into for and against with little middle ground, whereas Scott’s books have at least gotten some people in the “loved it” camp to question their own reactions to how women are depicted. Perhaps not many, and perhaps not thoroughly enough, but people have come out and said it has happened to them. I was already corrected on this point. There’s your useful right there.
Put it another way, what is it about the depiction of women in the Second Apocalypse that makes it not full on Gor in your mind?
And when was the last time you got into knuckle bearing fisticuffs against Scott over economic issues?
“Put it another way, what is it about the depiction of women in the Second Apocalypse that makes it not full on Gor in your mind?”
Not a whole lot, honestly. My wife finished WLW last night and she pointed out a flaw in my reading – that not only does Mimara forgive her rapist as he’s raping her but falls in love with him as well, because she sees all he is and can’t help but love him after knowing everything there is about him. In that respect and a few others Bakker’s significantly worse than Gor. At least I knew a few women who thought Gor was hot as hell.
“And when was the last time you got into knuckle bearing fisticuffs against Scott over economic issues?”
There’s only been a couple times when the meat of the stuff discussed got actually addressed – once after Larry’s interview and again after the Bakker and Women threads had basically answered most everything and started talking about women and modernity.
So did that gross you out or did it make you think “yeah that’s pretty cool I guess”?
If the series is as bad as Gor, why are you talking about this so much more than Gor? What’s the point of throwing page after page of the same old recriminations at a hopeless misogynist who just doesn’t get it?
It squicked me out quite a bit, Frank.
I talk about the series because I enjoy the series and talking about the series (and some of these issues). There is this notion that just because you find some parts of some thing bad that everything must be horrible about it and the author must be a horrible person. Or if you like something that everything about it must be awesome. Why?
I thought it was also interesting that I missed something else. I’m sure that this was one of those things Scott put in that he knew would be problematic but did so anyway, knowing that I would read it ‘wrong’ or whatever. Isn’t that still interesting, though?
“semantapocalypse” has a nice ring to it.
I agree with unJon, engaging people with a bit more psychological savvy would be much more fruitful towards convincing them, or at least creating understanding for your viewpoint. Which sometimes is all you can hope for.
The problem is that it costs (even more) effort to modify your own behaviour, no matter how small the change, and it exhausts you.
And I don’t think you can’t be genuine at the same time. Right now a general criticism of your responses is that they are too pedantic (that’s how I interpret what people have said, not sure if it’s the best description). You feel you answer the question, and often you do, but there is often also a “but”. Which can sound like an excuse. Biting the bullet but at the same time diminishing its importance and deflecting or returning it.
For example, you often state at the beginning that you know you commit the same mistakes (as everyone) sometimes, you include yourself among the deceived, etc. However, some of your posts are devoid of understanding, or may seem devoid of respect for certain opinions. I say “seem”, I’m not implying it’s the case.
My opinion would be that after your “disclaimer” of including yourself among the deceived the internal reigns on your soul and consequent spitfire responses loosen up a little.
But I could be wrong of course. Just 2 cents.
It’s hard to explain how trapped I feel by this issue. You literally have no idea how much time I’ve spent debating this IRL. I sometimes think I should start doing the odd podcast, just so people can actually hear the ‘listen-to-this-idiot’ tone I put behind this stuff, one that I’ve long since realized does not come across in my writing. I try to avoid specialized vocabulary, academic name-dropping, and the like.
But here I am, 10 years after the first flame wars I had with John Harrison and Gabe Chouinard and Matt Stover – back when I really was an insufferable pedant! and I’m still coming across as an insufferable pendant.
I just turned 45 last week, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you just gotta bear with some limitations of your character.
[…] Oh R Scott Bakker will you just shut up. […]
This one arrived on its own. Apparently I’ve offended the nomads now. Misonomadism. Could you imagine if the pastoralists got a hold of this? We’d have a shitstorm then, wouldn’t we?
And so it goes. I wonder what Ricky Gervais would make of this. It’s got me wondering about how they all rely so heavily on names (like the Dude’s ‘shiteater’) and swearing. I wonder if anyone’s actually tested the impact swearing has on coalitional solidarity. The same way some gangs will haze new members by getting them to commit certain crimes. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Once you actually attack someone in a social setting, then you’re pretty much BOUND to the attacking group and their post hoc rationales. And swearing is pretty damn cheap!
It would be productive/healthy/charitable to acknowledge/engage the following:
1. “I find this really, really offensive to people who are engaging with sexism…The flying fuck. Requires Hate spends a lot of time calling out sexist, racist, homophobic and other offensive shit in SFF books, some of which have been widely lauded. How is that not useful?”
2. “So everyone who agrees with her is just patting each other on the back and taking the easy route? Fuck. Off.”
3. “And yeah, Bakker, the fact that you’re a dude is relevant, because half of what you say makes it sound like you want feminist discussions you’re comfortable with, and no others, when feminist discussions are not primarily for you. You do not get to define a good feminist discussion. Women do. If a woman was saying Requires Hate is harmful to feminism, it would be a different argument. Stop trying to be the cleverest feminist. Shut up and listen.”
These seem to me like important points that need to be addressed, though not necessarily agreed with.
How do you mean points? The last two are instructions, not points. They already assume they are just right and so they can command what another person does. There is no request for discussion.
The first treats crackedmoon as if she has a gieger counter capacity in regards to sexism. Yet you find women posting on the about page with accolades and no mention of sexism. Are those women failures at detecting sexism? How come all women don’t detect it consistantly (like a number of identical geiger counters consistantly detect raditation)?
You can’t already see the failures of understanding that are inherant to the question?
Fine, but she’s already made a follow up and she does look stupid.
She really seem to not being able to understand that “nomadic” is a word that can be used WITHOUT referring directly to the PEOPLE.
You can’t base a discussion on attacks that are completely idiotic.
If one uses an adjective he’s now APPROPRIATING A CULTURE? Are these the kinds of arguments being used to accuse someone?
She commented about her objection to the use of nomad on her blog.
1) Because you’re only convincing yourselves and alienating everyone else. 2) Because if you all agree with each other and no one is asking questions and you’re shouting over any outside voices then you are just patting each other on the back. 3) Actually all I want is a feminist position that doesn’t discredit feminism, let alone create a mass organized opposition (just google ‘feminist shaming tactics’ – some troubling stuff, and lots of it) and feed into an entire demographic tuning out feminists as name-calling outcasts.
Those are my answers. I may be wrong on all three, but the fact is, I may also be right – and that alone warrants consideration. Wouldn’t you want to be certain that you weren’t actually hurting the cause that’s so dear to your heart?
And you think this will lead to a constructive dialogue? Thing is, I’ve already addressed them: to me this just shows that she was reading to condemn – period – exactly the way humans are prone to do, regardless of gender.
But your point does highlight what should be the central question: Just how do you establish a constructive dialogue with people locked in a coalitional mindset – this one in particular, where identity and victimization seem to play the same all-justifying role as fundamentalist scripture? Like Haidt says, it was likely designed by evolution to help us organize and kill one another. It could literally be built to resist any kind of appeal.
Am I wrong in thinking this is even more a problem than the one I faced with Vox?
I offer this cheap analysis. This because somewhere else someone claimed you have a “bias”, and so commit mistakes, because you’re born male and white.
This seems to me really a matter of position, with one being so eschew and abnormal that by calling the other in an equal confrontation, drags it in wholesome. Where’s the middle ground when you are pulled all the way to the other side? These arguments are NOT symmetric, but are entirely based on the premise that they are.
I don’t know who the person behind ROTYH is, because on the internet I never care who someone is. It seems stupid regardless. But if she paints herself as a victim of prejudice or even violence, then you know where the “hate” comes from. It is legitimate. The social context it comes from (and her blaming it) is also legitimate.
Now, imho, a person who carries with her that kind of wound is not a person that is unbiased. No one should bear those kinds of wounds, but they also carry their weight and consequences. A woman who was raped on a road, and that passes again through that road two years later is likely to be SCARED. Legitimately scared. She’d look around herself and see men and feel in danger by their mere presence. Are these men guilty?
What I’m describing is unjust, but true. You bring suspicion with you if you carry those kinds of wounds. But this present state is not one that belongs to a balanced view. It’s the consequence of a violence and crime. It’s a toll.
But do you really feel like you can blame a woman who’s been raped and so from now on is likely to see men around herself like a menace?
What happens if a victim of prejudice or violence picks up a book by a white, male guy and, by this simple implication, reads it on the premise of suspect? Is she going to offer a balanced view or her personal experience will tinge her perception of it?
The real problem, deep down, is how you can break this chain of violence and prejudice. Because, really, you can’t blame a victim for being “hateful”. She earned that right. You can’t talk to her as long you don’t share her same experience. That’s, I think, what she’s really saying.
What do you think?
This is an important point; one of the reasons that ROH resonates, I think, is that it is a person with similar experiences sharing her point of view. Both are important; who a critic is and their personal voice is as important as what they say when determining whether it is relevant or not to you personally.
// This appeared way up again. WordPress needs an update :s
ABALIENO wrote:
“The real problem, deep down, is how you can break this chain of violence and prejudice. Because, really, you can’t blame a victim for being “hateful”. She earned that right. You can’t talk to her as long you don’t share her same experience. That’s, I think, what she’s really saying.
What do you think?”
Although I understand your point (“You can’t understand me and know my motivations and opinions if you have not experienced the exact same thing as I have”), I do not fully agree that it means you cannot talk to a person until such requisite is met.
I assume you don’t mean it literal, but more in the sense of discussing with her regarding misogyny [for example]. Thereby rendering her the expert on that subject, for being a woman and possibly with the experience of being violated, and Scott [or any man] the ‘ignorant’.
I’ll grant you that without certain experience you cannot talk about something as if you understand it or ‘know’ it, because you don’t. You can’t talk about what it is like to lose a fortune while gambling if it has never happened to you.
However, that does not mean that Scott [or, again, any man] cannot discuss someone’s interpretation of a work. As you said, it’s the psychological baggage/experience that makes someone judge the work in the way they do it. It is a skewed opinion, if you will. The measuring stick is not a ‘regular’ one, insofar as possible.
I’m not saying that makes the opinion or critique irrelevant, but it gives a certain responsibility to the person judging to be aware of their bias. I cannot ignore the fact that she is free not to read the book, or at least put it into perspective.
If I were raped by my soccer coach when I was small that means I will be biased to think that all soccer coaches, or men of a certain age, whichever sticks with me, are abusers and dangerous. And, like you said, I’d be justified in feeling that way. But the keyword for me is ‘feeling’. It’s subjective and not objective. I don’t think it’s ok to present your feelings and opinions as facts, based only on that, feelings.
Note, I am no in way belittling or ignoring that people who experience horrible things such as abuse have a justified deep-rooted fear of certain people. But if that fear rules your every interaction with anything resembling something related to the traumatic experience, even if only on paper, is not healthy.
/end too long rant without clear point.
I’m saying that a victim of violence will carry a bias.
If Scott continues to analyze his own work to search if there are traces of misogyny then he won’t find them. Because they simply aren’t there. He didn’t wrote that, and he won’t find them. He himself is part of a system that can’t possibly see that.
But if Scott put himself in someone else’s shoes then he could be able to figure out what is in his books that can be seen in certain ways by certain people. He could start to understand what is that some reader misperceive. He could judge this an unfair misconception, but it becomes a fact.
At that point he can continue as he was doing, or he can take measures so that what he does is more clear or explicit. Or whatever he wants to do.
The possible error he could make, and that I think some readers see and accuse, is the patronizing tone. Writing these sort of blog posts that certain people can consider as “judgmental”.
That’s why I brought up the bias of a victim of violence, because one has no right to be judgmental toward them. You just can’t. It’s both easy and pointless.
But from the beginning Bakker has based his replies on the assumption of a symmetric debate. Without considering that bias, and without truly understanding who he’s talking to. He’s not pulling punches.
So, the same as ROTYH tones can be detrimental to her cause, Bakker’s tone and approach can also be detrimental to his own defense of his stuff.
I agree with you entirely on the visibility and invisibility of bias in myself and others. It’s your prescriptive claims that worry me.
Paternalism is the problem: at what point does ‘being careful’ blur into ‘making allowances’? Like I say, you have to assume rational/cognitive symmetry, otherwise you run into the kinds of problems you find with the treatment of aboriginal populations, just for instance. So, consider the kinds of discourses you find on those reactionary anti-feminist websites I referenced, where the response to the kind of discourse we’re dealing with here is to simply shame back – to follow their instinctive impulse. This, I would argue is an entirely symmetrical response – both cognitive and affective – one which is incredibly problematic simply because it entirely ignores the informing social context (which is not symmetrical). This is why so many are so inclined to jump on my use of ‘Dude’ – they see it as a gesture to this kind of full symmetry. But as soon as you go the other way, practice both affective and cognitive asymmetry, so you don’t shame back, and you rationally manage rather than rationally engage, you are practicing full-blown paternalism, no matter how good your ‘intentions.’ You’re treating them like children.
In other words, Abe, I really have no choice but to rationally engage, and remain as open and as civil as my stone-age brain allows me. I invite you to take your tactic and try it on any one of their blogs, however.
In the meantime, we have the whole troll dimension to consider, which presupposes asymmetric, predatory communicative tactics from the get go, and the presumption that wedding this to some kind of victim discourse somehow validates it.
I invite you to take your tactic and try it on any one of their blogs, however.
Again I’m saying this is not fair. It’s not a symmetric debate and not based on a notion of “equity”.
This can’t be a context about who’s more proud. That’s why I believe that the only way possible to stop the circle of (verbal) violence and reaction is merely one: you can decide to not participate and feed it. Even if you are wrongly accused and unfairly blamed. You can feel you can legitimately defend yourself and punch back, but you can also decide to stop.
You aren’t and shouldn’t be making allowances because you aren’t saying “Yes, my work is misogynist.” But neither you can go continuing justifying a book through blog posts. Those reactions exist and you can’t “fix” them by over explaining. It’s obvious that you aren’t going to convince those who are on those positions. Your arguments may be solid, but they are ineffective. The subtlety of your arguments is lost or even seen as its opposite.
What you CAN do is take the criticism as “true”. Not as a fair, unbiased judgement of your work, but as a biased, concrete one. Fair or unfair, well motivated or not. You simply know that these reactions exist about your work and you can decide what to do now that you know this.
I guess I don’t see this as paternalism. The respect I portray isn’t a form of hypocrisy.
I must have misunderstood. I took you to be saying I needed to manage my tone better, not shy away from the debate altogether. The charge of paternalism can still be made, ignoring these kinds of things. But I think the case would be far harder to make.
By way of historical clarification, I had been actively searching for a left wing version of Vox when the Dude first posted her review last year, so it came as an opportunity. I wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. This particular time, I only spoke out because two other bloggers had recommended her site – and I wanted everyone to be clear on what they were recommending, and the toxicity of moral outrage, given what we know about its psychology.
I would have posted about her had I come across her site some other way, same as with Vox. I know few will likely believe this, but whatever. I’ll be sure not to make that particular mistake again. But I can guarantee you I’ll be at it again, simply because I don’t think the old rules apply, given the way the internet allows us to endlessly indulge our weakness for confirmation and moral superiority.
“This particular time, I only spoke out because two other bloggers had recommended her site – and I wanted everyone to be clear on what they were recommending, and the toxicity of moral outrage, given what we know about its psychology.”
This doesn’t strike you as paternalistic – the idea that others needed to be warned not by contacting them individually but a blog post as PSA?
Really, if we’re going to talk about groupthink and engaging myriad partitions of society we should be looking at broader aspects of at least SFF authors and fandom. We should, IMO, separate your contention over Moon’s review from the questions of whether her site has validity as a review blog and its place among feminist subsets of the ‘Net.
(Finally, as your Jimminy Cricket I have to admit I cringed when you mentioned thinking about sexism for a “half hour” and then falling asleep angry over hockey. I can see how that’d piss someone such as Alex MacFarlane off. Bad move yo. (Still waiting to hear why yo is racist BTW))
How so? Taking them seriously is paternalistic now?
Explained yo already.
Probably.
Hmmmm…I think this is us looking at things from markedly different perspectives.
I just don’t think you fully see the place RoH plays in this larger discussion. Is it the ultimate source of wisdom? No, no more than Lewis Black, Bill Maher, or John Stewart are.
Is it a dangerous place? Well, neither I, Kalbear, nor Larry, nor a lot of feminists/queer-persons/etc see it that way. So when someone continually tries to drive the point home that it is, it feels a little ridiculous and perhaps, to some, insulting.
I think this is why the feminist response we’ve so far encountered has been along the lines of Shut Up and Listen rather than continually try to set up social experiments and talk at, or even down to, people with article links. This is what seems paternalistic.
All that said, reconsidering the Haidt post has made me consider what the next step is in these discussions, largely as a training exercise for the greater political macrocosm.
As soon as arguing with people becomes paternalistic we are well and truly lost. The fact is Sci, you haven’t provided any counterarguments against the substance of my claims. You’ve spent most of your time making second-order arguments telling me my tactics are ineffective, counterproductive, immoral… and now, paternalistic. In other words, trying to find ways to tell me to ‘Shut up and listen,’ as you put it.
Since you’re suggesting that I don’t see the larger role of ROH, I’m assuming that you have googled ‘feminist shaming tactics’ and checked out the sites I mentioned. If you haven’t done this, then all you’re saying is that I disagree, because, in point of fact, you’re the one who has no sense of the larger role.
I realize you and Larry and Kalbear think it’s positive, this is why I posted on the topic in the first place: to let people know the larger picture. Why is my picture larger? It includes the reactionary backlash. It considers the science – what research on this particular facet of human interaction shows.
Why is my picture smaller? You seem to take my lack of agreement as an unwillingness to ‘listen,’ as you put it. My picture is smaller because the positivity of ROH strikes you as obvious, and somehow I just can’t find my way to see that, probably because I’m grinding this or that axe, or clinging to some kind of subconscious agenda – pick your poison.
But what if I have listened? What if I disagree because the science really does suggest that the ability to reason flies out the window when we walk down the moral outrage road? What if I disagree because I encounter the kind of reactionary backlash evidenced by the google search you never made all the bloody time among men and women. What if it really is the case that ROH is simply making things worse?
That is an honest question. Why I should accept that I can’t see the larger picture from people who think I should ‘Shut up and listen’ is quite beyond me.
I didn’t google “feminist shaming techniques”, honestly I missed that or plain forgot in these pile of responses just like I can’t find where you broke down why yo was racist – I just discovered that WordPress tracks where/when someone replies to your comments directly. I do try to keep up with the references though I’m not 100% successful.
Anyway, just to clarify my position, I think you do have the right to defend yourself. Cuss back if you want, I just think you should switch out Dude for something that doesn’t fall into a classic sexist track. If you feel the need Troll would be better.
I just think right now people are conflating your defense, and your opinion of one site, with your opinions about feminism.
“My picture is smaller because the positivity of ROH strikes you as obvious, and somehow I just can’t find my way to see that, probably because I’m grinding this or that axe, or clinging to some kind of subconscious agenda – pick your poison.”
No, I think your picture is smaller because you aren’t considering the fact that the issues Moon brings up wouldn’t be discussed outside those who agree with her if not for her performance rage pieces.
Do you really think women/minorities/queer-persons/etc have never encountered and weighed in reactionary backlash? I get that I may have seemed oblivious when I tried to be honest about privileges I’ve received (though now I have people thinking I grew up in a mansion or something), but I feel like common sense dictates that it should be obvious.
As for the certainty of its efficacy, I believe the very first post in this series of posts goes to me mentioning a discussion on RoH about its efficacy.
“You seem to take my lack of agreement as an unwillingness to ‘listen,’ as you put it.”
No, I take your seeming lack of empathy and selection of one review on one site as the Primary, Exhibit A example of groupthink over three blog posts as an unwillingness to listen.
In the interest of scientific/political accuracy, wouldn’t it make sense to highlight bad behavior that ‘supports’ you (or Pat or whoever) as well as good behavior that argues against your position?
Shut Up and Listen seems like an appropriate response if someone felt you were trying to talk down to a group or tell that group how to judge prejudice against it. Outside TPB your Criteria Question was read as a man deciding for women what is and is not sexism.
Not your intent, but it is hard to parse out your feelings on RoH vs Feminism.
This is why I said you need to separate your concerns, as it appears to the other side that you are having what IIRC Nick Mamatas noted as your “melt down”.
Heh, you edit your Halftime Show even as I type. Very sneaky Mr. Bakker. 🙂
Is the identification of trolls kind of tricky in the same way that someone else saying ‘that’s sexist, obviously’ is?
Yeah, pain in the ass to think acrackedmoon somehow is mysteriously, beyond our current comprehension, providing deep thought critique (instead of knee jerk reaction poking), but hey, it seems equally a pain in the ass for those who claim sexism to think actually the text involves deep thought…somethingsomething critique somethingsomething darkside. Now I’m being sithist…
And as I said before, if one party doubts their postion but the other party just keeps pushing and pushing without utter certainty, they tend to bully the doubting party into a thought pattern.
I just wonder if the certainty of there being a troll helps feed others certainty of a sexist text? One stubborness encourages another? Just a blunt probe in the area of empathy and what might be making it switch off in the other parties. I guess another criteria question is, when is a claim of someone being a troll serious and when is it spurious?
That makes sense. Thanks for explaining.
I agree about the asymmetry of his replies, and what might be considered as a patronizing tone. Although I’d be inclined to think that that (mis)interpretation stems from the same bias.
“Am I wrong in thinking this is even more a problem than the one I faced with Vox?”
It is a much bigger problem.
With Vox, you were coming up against alliances based on cultural precepts, whereas in this case, the BIOLOGY is mixed up.
I think of it like this: Vox disliked your work presumably because of its materialistic subtext and its refusal to abide by certain standards of fantasy narrative. Big whoop… this is ideology.
Some of these women feel as though you have attacked their GENDER, a fundamental aspect of who they are that cannot be debated, and changed and furthermore carries a long history of injustice.
So, yeah, you kinda pissed on the third rail here man.
(The above image was chosen purposefully. Because a woman would have a harder time pissing on a third rail than a man would. My text is clearly misogynist. Note, the preceding is heavy sarcasm to illustrate a point.)
Yeah. This is what I’m thinking as well. You know, through all of this, I can’t help think about all the feminists I’ve read and admired, from Irigaray and Steinem to Doyle and what they would think about this.
@Jorge – What point are you trying to illustrate?
I think you are looking at a straw man of the argument that is being made by what I guess we can think of as the “other side”.
The view from that side is something like the Criteria Question, the Haidt interview (and subsequent “nobody clicked on my link!” as proof of something), and finally this post are all a massive derailment.
Admittedly, one can say that is unfair if you are looking from the perspective of the TPB side as those hear might be more inclined to see Bakker attempting to keep things on topic.
So now the question, as I see it, is how to engage in meaningful dialogue. This whole thing started with accusations of misogyny with regards to a text and an author’s comments. Perhaps the thing to ask is why at least some women (and men) are reading text and author this way? (And I don’t mean me and Kalbear, but rather one of these other persons who aren’t regular Bakker readers.)
Or we can keep going with…whatever this discussion has become.
“Perhaps the thing to ask is why at least some women (and men) are reading text and author this way?”
Actually… yeah, this is reasonable.
I *think* the text is being read as mysoginistic because in Earwa, old-testament patriarchical values are essentially “objectively correct” (if you accept Yatwer, The Judging Eye, and Damnation as prima facie evidence).
Because Scott has built his fantasy novels as a “metaphysical whodunnit” (and thanks to “The False Sun” now we know who some of the main suspects are) it’s entirely possible that EVERYTHING we take for granted about the history and metaphysics of Earwa are completely incorrect.
My personal bias is that people miss this because Scott is a skilled and subtle writer. (This IS an example of Magic Belief Lottery since I believe I have some insight into the plot/context that other people do not.)
The question becomes now… how can Scott fix this, if indeed he intends it to be fixed.
Well, he can reach a compromise (that dirty word again…).
How about 3 simple things:
1. No more POV from hookers.
2. Have at least one (non-sexually) empowered female character by the end of TUC.
3. Purposefully include one or two scenes that fulfill the criteria of the Bechdel test.
Now, personally, if he does none of these things… I don’t give a damn. BUT since he seems concerned with engaging a broader audience, maybe he should make good on these compromises.
And then subtly subvert it all- because that’s how he rolls.
I’ve actually considered this! But with the fantasies, it really makes no sense, especially given the way the unpublished parts circle back to the published, and apparently damning, parts.
Yeah, at this point it feels like you’re committed to the way you’ve been doing things.
It’s fine though: it’s gonna be epically epic. Like with Howard Shore/ Hans Zimmer score Epic, amirite?
I posted a link, but somehow it ended up in the middle somewhere.
Ctrl+F “Unrelated:” and you should find it.
Perhaps you start with the premise that you don’t know as much as they do and you’re willing to listen first?
Perhaps when talking to them you do not use words like ‘but’ or lump them in with the other neuroscience topics that you love, and instead attempt to understand what they are talking about?
Perhaps you do the Ben Franklin thing and you make them do you a kindness first instead of defending yourself at all?
You know more about the psychologist’s tricks, Scott. Frame things not as coalitions of opposition but as coalitions of allies. Want to be a good voice for feminists? Win over feminists. Put it another way: while I don’t think LeGuin would have written anything like what you wrote (in particular she would have shied hugely away from the graphic depictions of rape and the constant references to cocks) if she wrote a story about a world like Earwa with a similar plot she’d be given a hell of a lot more leeway in it because of who she is and what she’s written before. You’ve not earned that feminist cred yet.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but it really would make me feel disingenuous – as well as paternalistic. Have you studied Speech Act Theory, Kal? What you’re suggesting strikes me as perlocutionary through and through.
Since you really do occupy the middle-ground, I encourage you to give it a go. I’m half-inclined to think whatever ‘feminist cred’ you have will be boiled away in short order.
Scott, what’s more important – that you don’t feel paternalistic but everyone thinks that you are, or that you’re paternalistic but everyone commends you for it?
If the questions you have to ask are important, how you ask the questions is equally important.
I’ve never studied Speech Act Theory. I also don’t claim to have much feminist cred; I’ve studied only a little bit and only know some of it. I’m aces at recognizing patterns of arguments though.
Bah, your against sexual urges as well. Totally misohorny….
(it had to be done. there was no choice)
Did the comments screw up my post position? This is supposed to be beneath Scotts post…my comic timing is foiled, I tell you!
Freak it! This post is supposed to be under this post. The posts not even important to explain except how weird it looks if I don’t, dammit!
@Callan S: I thought it was funny.
@Scott:
“Fair question, but one I’ve discussed ad nauseum in previous incarnations of this debate.”
Heh, you think you’re the only one feeling like they’re shouting into the wind? 🙂
Anyway, what I was actually asking was why you personally came to feel that engaging with feminist issues was important at all. Less “what”/”how” (for once!) and more “why?”
“Bah, your against sexual urges as well. Totally misohorny….
(it had to be done. there was no choice)”
Yes, when you have the option to reference a racist remark about prostitution in Vietnam you’ve got to go there. What other choice would you have?
Are you speaking for someone, Kal? Did they ask you to or do you just know what’s best for them?
Replied to that post. Post was wasn’t allowed/was dumped (kinda guessed that). Only one side is supposed to listen, it seems. It’s like they give reasonings, but when it comes to recieving some, no.
I guess I’m peeved in the same way when I lose a post to a browser crash or such.
I think centering discussion around one review from one blog is too narrow.
Right now it seems we have sort of a pattern, where people make posts, eventually it becomes too many to have a real discussion, and here and there people link to various cognition related things.
Every now and then we get some of my favorite responses, like how it’s okay to be sexist and racist because it hasn’t hurt a lot of famous authors….
Some of this is really good, but it seems in the end we’re left with the same circle that we started with. Things blow over, and the next topic is engaged until someone else has an issue with depiction of women in the books.
If nothing else I’d be interested in what made Scott even want to tackle the issue of feminism in the books. Yes, no matter what you say it’ll be mocked, but at least it is a start to pushing this discussion onto new ground.
Fair question, but one I’ve discussed ad nauseum in previous incarnations of this debate. The idea, from the very beginning, was to sexualize violence and evil (the way we have with our greatest contemporary bogeyman, the psychopath (serial murderers are almost all serial rapists as well)), and to show the kinds of institutionalized gendered brutality that was the social norm for so many pre-modern societies. In short, I don’t think there’s any way to desentimentalize fantastic caricatures of the past short of yielding pride of place to what is ugly. The idea, then, was to introduce Kellhus as a cipher for modernity, an ’emancipator,’ only to show the ways this ‘enlightenment’ (like our own) simply shifted the ground of oppression – which is why Esmenet remains trapped in the maze until this point, and apparently why you and Kal keep complaining about an ‘agency’ that would completely short-circuit the critique.
The text is packed with ciphers for this reading – apparently not enough. Thus the irony: I see the book as misandrous.
what is going on with Light, Time, and Gravity? not listed on Insomniac Press’s website…not in stock…thanks
Man Scott… you’ve actually achieved something here. The disparate groups you have managed to simultaneously offend is prodigious.
But seriously, since The Badger claims we should be talking numbers here… what percentage of female readers do you think can’t see past you “occluding the dialog with all this overt misogynistic text”? What percentage of male readers?
Honestly, I think Vox/Theo was a more interesting character. He may have disagreed with a lot of stuff, but at least he GOT what you were trying to do.
Out of this pile of crap, the only nugget I have gained is the following:
“In the consciousness paper I’m working up…”
YAY! A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE SHIT TUNNEL!
Bakker she’s claims to be a british scot, as a Scot I can confirm she swears on about the same word to “curse” ratio as your average Glaswegian speaking to their local pastor, cunt can be a term of affection for me, i kid you not.
One thing that might or might not be a salient point, (we’re all dumber than we think we are, eh?)
If only a woman can define a good feminist argument, what happens if 10 woman all disagree, what other criteria do they go to that only woman have to decide what a good argument is? Can a woman pick a bad argument, what is it that made her pick the bad argument and do men have it?
Point 2 and 3 I don’t know about. Point 1 is ludicrous, how can reading 5 pages of something then making charges against the writer be useful?
Here’s my favourite guy doing an experiment about swearing and its neurological affects
I’m talking about Brian Blessed not Stephen Fry, although you remind me of stephen fry in your fingers get burned earnestness.
Sorry i fecked this up. Should be down a bit.
I’m utterly bored by this whole deal that now reached epic proportions and is involving an impressive number of links.
I also kind of recognize vaguely myself in some of Bakker reactions since they were similar to my reactions to some internet things in these past 10 years.
I just wanted to say this:
People in general consider internet as a “thing”. Something written on the internet is different than something written on a piece of paper. The “message”, on the internet, is irrelevant. What counts are the ripples it creates, the positions that people take. It must become a recognizable familiar form. A meme.
Scott, you’re taking this too seriously. It won’t work because the internet is a place of superficiality. Attention goes to what’s amusing. It’s all about shortcuts.
The point being missed is that a blog and blogger like ROTYH can get very popular BECAUSE of tone.
The real question here is not if you are or not a misogynist, or if your work reflects that. The real question is WHY this specific discussion has become so big that it obscures everything else. Even if these charges were legitimate and true they wouldn’t be strong or so interesting enough to draw this volume of attention.
Scott, your way of presenting ideas in a radical way requires a dedication. Otherwise you are very easily misunderstood. But you can demand or force that kind of dedication. Most of those who pass give your blog post very little time to make its point clearly. The more you sophisticate and draw lines of difference, the more the whole thing is seen as undivided pretentiousness, and refused.
You can’t engage these people on their terms, because the “journey” of your arguments is too complex and long to follow and explain. It’s like you’re showing a complex geometric demonstration, but by seeing only the latest blog post it’s like you see only a final piece. And it’s bullshit because no one sees all the premises that validate what follows.
So, things make sense to you because you are dedicated to yourself and your argument. But things don’t make sense to most people because most people don’t have any intention of following you all the way.
There’s a tiny bit of legitimacy in not being willingly to follow your ego around.
I meant “But you CAN’T demand or force that kind of dedication.”
I do love the core of this whole brouhaha, btw, in which there must be quantifiable standards for sexism approved by you men before we’re allowed to call something sexist. That you don’t appreciate the inherent fallacy in this has started to make me laugh.
So all accusations of sexism are automatically true?
Several years ago a friend of mine played a hell of a prank on me by making me think I had to independently account for the baldness version of the sorites paradox in three day’s time using only my half assed understanding of first-order logic. With friends like that, who need a philosophy degree?
How do I know something is misogynist? When I feel it’s misogynist. Why do I feel something is misogynist? Now that’s asking me to consciously account for all my internalized cultural influences on gender, as well as be aware of how all the modules of the brain can shape my decisions for this topic on all occasions. My reflexive criteria for what does and doesn’t fit a particular pattern is probably going to be one hell of a checklist, even if it never feels that way. Maybe expecting someone to post a concise response to your criteria question is setting the bar way too high.
On a somewhat related point, I think pushing the ‘it can only be social consequences’ answer to the question of what makes a book sexist or racist would include being willing to defend something like the modern day pro-Jewishness of Mein Kampf on the grounds that it might be doing more nowadays to raise awareness than convert people to anti-semitism. Even if you’re right, unless you’re real careful with your words you’re going to end up sounding like a crazy person, and probably get labelled as an anti-semite to boot. Maybe trying to score points like carries too many risks of crashing your attempts to communicate anything else.
In a way, you actually make my point: first, that the issue is horrifically complex and fraught with untoward consequences, and second, that the social function of a book depends upon the audience. Everyone is censorious in some respect. Everyone thinks someone shouldn’t say this or that. The universality of this instinct, and the intensity of the accompanying emotions, suggests that policing belief played an important social role in our evolutionary past, and that we are instinctively sensitive to the social consequences of words.
In other words, despite all the complications, actual social consequences likely stand at the root. That’s the difference maker.
“Everyone thinks someone shouldn’t say this or that. ”
This is another big misunderstanding. You hear people complain that something is sexist or horrible and you hear ‘they are saying I shouldn’t write that’. What they’re saying is that you did write that and that this is what it implies. Thus, if you don’t want to imply this, don’t write it like that.
They aren’t telling you that you shouldn’t write these things; The Wild Child deals with significantly more rape and more brutality than Earwa does by a far margin, as does The Handmaid’s Tale.
They are saying that if you mean something, you should write it differently, because you’re failing at communicating these messages. That’s it. Or don’t, but be thought of as a misogynist.
Let’s try it another way, Scott. If you when around and said the n-word all the time in the book, but you had established that in your world that meant, oh, Bread or something. Do you think that even after explicitly specifying what you meant in the text that people would not be offended?
No, it’s true. Censoriousness is a universal trait.
The argument you make is one I conceded long ago.
I’m not saying censoriousness is a universal trait or not; I’m saying that you’re lumping what they’re saying into what you think they mean, and I think you’re not correct.
Do you honestly believe that the folks who call you misogynist or sexist or have major problems reading your books want you (and everyone else) to not write those sorts of things at all? Even when presented with evidence that they’re fine with other people writing them? This, I think, is one of the reasons that you appear to many as so defensive and unable to concede – that when people say ‘this is offensive’ you say either that they cannot judge offensiveness for everyone or you say that they want to make you not write it at all – when a simple ‘yes, this can easily be taken as offensive’ would suffice.
Especially since you deliberately wanted to offend.
Of course not. Why did you assume this was what I was talking about as opposed to the shaming and vitriol? Man, you’re bad for strawmen sometimes, Kal.
“Of course not. Why did you assume this was what I was talking about as opposed to the shaming and vitriol? Man, you’re bad for strawmen sometimes, Kal.”
You stated two sentences with multiple indirect references. I still don’t entirely know what you’re talking about. You brought up censoring; how is it that odd that I think you’re talking about censoring still?
Bah. These boards so suck for conversation.
True. When it gets really busy like this, it’s hard to follow, especially when I’m busy. It becomes impossible to do anyone justice, let alone you’re long-winded rants! *snickers* All I would ask, Kal, is when in doubt, ask, don’t assume the worst.
In the meantime, I’m going to work up a new post.
“I’m saying that you’re lumping what they’re saying into what you think they mean, and I think you’re not correct.”
Is that your interpretation or an objective fact? You’re assuming when he said “Everyone is censorious in some respect” he really means “they are saying I shouldn’t write that.”? You’re also assuming this interpretation is right, but even if it’s not, your misinterpretation is again totally his fault for failing to communicate, right?
The day I realized I could easily come of as an internet asshole was the day I actually tried to debate myself.
Frank, I think that’s pretty clear that it’s my interpretation. Using words like ‘say’ or ‘I think’ makes that reasonably clear. I guess I could make it even weaker as far as it goes, but I don’t think I need to that much.
As I made clear, I blamed the forums for the miscommunication more than anything. It’s hard to multi-quote without making huge skinny messes, posts end up gods know where and it’s hard to write a lot in general.
Awfully big on saying stuff without anchoring or backing it up with accomapaning literature or reasoning.
Your proposition was only women can say what a good femionist argument is. To me that sounds very reasonable it just makes sense.
However what is also reasonable is that not all claims are equal. what we are doing is testing the proposition through a thought exercise, we’re asking you to be beholden to reason not “you men”.
So if the above proposition is true, then what happens if 10 women disagree on what a good argument is? What criteria is used? because if they are diametrically opposed and the only rule is a woman can make a good argument then someones going to have to turn into a man for your proposition to hold true.
Amy childs claims are equal to Germaine Greers and greater than every man who has ever lived.
you get asked the above, then launch off into a straw-man about approval from “you men”.
No one is saying a man has to be in the process we’re asking how women differenciate claims, as they cannot all be equal that’s just common sense, no one is saying we can teach oor grannies to suck eggs.
Cheers
john, I don’t think they’re all necessarily equal, but they certainly carry weight. Some will carry more weight than others, naturally. Some might be the sort of authority figure that carry super amounts of weight. But they all very likely have more experience than you do.
And I don’t think it’s going to be something that can be reasonably be explained, not to perfection. People have already pointed out some of the topics that trigger this – tons of rape, male gaze, women as whores, objectifying women, making women objectively less worth than men. If that’s not enough, that’s probably what you’ll get.
I gave up on trying to believe I know what sexism is compared to a woman. At best I can try to explain what I understand sexism to be to other men.
Oh, I guess a congratulations is in order for succeeding to appear as a misogynist AND suffering a fall in book sales. So, really, you’re kind of failing as a decent human being and as an author just to show us women (or Dudes, whatever you like to fail to intimidate us with) that we don’t know what sexism really is?
I mean, that was all part of the plan, right? Right? If only my tiny female mind could comprehend all of this!
You know, if Scott strikes you as only thinking he can be right, fair enough your approach, Jordan.
On the intent thing, it depends – do you think you can know someone elses intent better than they do? Granted, he thinks he can only be right on his own intent. Some other people think intent doesn’t matter.
Does he strike you as him thinking he could only be right? On various things or on intent, etc?
I’d be pissed at someone as well, if I thought they thought they could only be right.
My tiny male mind is unable to empathize with your tiny female mind. What am I doing wrong?
I’m sorry you feel this way. Is there any way for me to respectfully disagree with you without being lumped into some category? If not, I would suggest that what you have is more a fundamentalist religion than a commitment to feminisim – and that your motives may be far more selfish than feminist.
In the meantime, how do you square your accusations with the fact that I really do have a harder time trusting the competency and reliability of men over that of women? Or the fact that my accountant, my doctor, my optometrist – everyone except my dentist! – is female? Do you think I’m just lying?
Do you think a law should be passed preventing people from me asking people like you questions?
“Or the fact that my accountant, my doctor, my optometrist – everyone except my dentist! – is female? ”
That’s probably not a good argument; the obvious answer to that would be that you think they’re all hot and want to fuck them, or at least stare at them while they’re doing your taxes/physical/eye test.
That’s the way it’s certain to be gamed. Entirely not true, but then we’ve entered a realm where facts don’t matter all that much.
Really, what I’m being told over and over is, “You’ve been accused, ergo you are guilty, so shut up and suck it up.”
Tell me, honestly, aren’t a little dismayed and troubled by all this? Think about how little your average SFF reader has contact with self-proclaimed feminists, and how inclined we are over-generalize, and tell me you think these people are doing more good than harm to their cause.
“Really, what I’m being told over and over is, “You’ve been accused, ergo you are guilty, so shut up and suck it up.””
I don’t think that’s true. That’s certainly not the interpretation that I have of it. It’s clear from the multiple statements of ‘so all accusations of misogyny are good’ that you do – but to me you spend more time attacking the accuser than the points that they make, which is naturally going to rekindle people AND make you appear a lot more guilty.
” and tell me you think these people are doing more good than harm to their cause.”
I don’t pretend to know their cause. One thing that I think folks like acrackedmoon is doing well is raising awareness; a lot of people are completely and utterly thoughtless with respect to how sci-fi/fantasy (or even most literature) is incredibly misogynistic and sexist. I also think that the quote ‘well behaved women rarely make history’ is a valid thing here. Yes, it alienates some; it provokes, it doesn’t go away, it forces confrontation. Confrontation is not always so bad.
Scott, you’ve been accused, ergo they think you’re guilty. Should you fix it or ignore it? And if you are going to fix it, is what you’re doing making things worse?
You set out to game people’s unquestioned self perceptions, but it’s all too easy to latch on to a premise and automatically project it onto the author. Yes, so the thinking goes, feudal societies oppressed women horribly. Why did you need to be so gratuitous about it? Do you support it or something? Yes, a lot of fantasy and slasher tropes are sexist. We already know that. Why are you being such a horrible misogynist by repeating them? And so on and so forth. For some people it doesn’t matter that you’re using Khellus as a cipher of emancipatory modernity to question our unflinching belief in the power of that to free women. It doesn’t matter you want readers to enjoy the sword and sorcery but come back after the fact thinking “hey, that rape scene was way nasty. Why wasn’t I troubled sooner? Do I always read fantasy like this?” Some people spot female oppression in the first six pages and have their perceptions of you tarnished forever. They either won’t finish the rest of the book or can’t help but view it through the “Scott Bakker is a misogynist” lens from now on and cherry pick all the way to the end.
I agree with badger to an extent that regardless of whether it’s mostly their “fault” for reveling in their lack of self awareness or your “fault” for utterly failing to bust through their coalitional mindset, the end result is still a tragic failure to communicate. I think partial failure is just the cost of doing what you do, and maybe there’s room for improvement on those grounds as well, but I think throwing up the criteria question in such a front and center way isn’t actually challenging anyone at this point. The BBH supporters who realise what you’re doing get confirmation on the feebleness of critical thinking, while the knee jerk “Scott’s a misogynist” camp find more fodder to shout about even louder. I think the only people who might benefit are those who went through the entire book never giving a second thought to the prevalent brutality against women, but those people don’t seem to be chiming in aside from an occasional “I don’t think you’re a misogynist. I like your books,” which suggests to me some of them didn’t get what you were doing, or liked you so much that they’re willing to excuse you for your “faults”
I think the criteria question should be asked, and should be given a fair chance by those who are asked, but intentions mean squat if the results are 300 comments of loud mouthed back and forth before anyone even bothers to consider it. It is as much evidence of our collective failure to think past our coalition mindset, as it is evidence of your failure to get someone to post about it way before the 300 comment mark.
Keep trying though. I don’t think you’re a misogynist. I like your books.
I definitely don’t think I’m doing myself any favours, that’s for sure. But for all the thousands who have visited this site, many have their first encounter with a human critique as opposed to a gender or a personal one. They’ll encounter more of them as the years pass and this stuff crawls deeper into the popular imagination. Nobody wants to hear this shit. Everybody needs to.
And maybe, some magical day in the future, our schools will actually start teaching our children about themselves, and all the ways their weaknesses lead them into so many socially and personally destructive dead ends. Sexism, racism, classism, demagoguery, etc., will be seen on a par with drug addiction – as destructive short cuts, props for a false sense of well-being and superiority.
” the end result is still a tragic failure to communicate. I think partial failure is just the cost of doing what you do, and maybe there’s room for improvement on those grounds as well, but I think throwing up the criteria question in such a front and center way isn’t actually challenging anyone at this point”
“I think the criteria question should be asked, and should be given a fair chance by those who are asked, but intentions mean squat if the results are 300 comments of loud mouthed back and forth before anyone even bothers to consider it”
Really well said.
Listen, Bakker, I’m sorry sounding angry, and probably rude. I’m really not to comfortable getting mad at people, even over the internet. But I AM angry, because *I* have to live with sexist crap, not you or your male friends here, and to hear it come from people who sound like they want to be feminist allies or at least identify as non-sexists is really, really upsetting — in fact, it seems like men are trying to assert their authority over what is essentially an issue that only a woman can really know about and be involved in.
Saying that, I completely realise what you’re trying to do with your work. I get that it’s supposed to be anti-sexist, and I actually really do like the idea of women being treated as inferior because they ARE inferior being explored. But your conscious desire to do good was scuttled by your subconscious. Plainly put, you write like a privileged heterosexual man, and just about every other man in fantasy/sci-fi writes like that, so how is your work any better? Millions, if not billions of women live in a world that genuinely thinks they’re inferior. Reading your book isn’t a revelation. What would have been awesome was if you wrote with sensitivity towards womanhood, and treated them as equals on a meta level — i.e, the author’s level. I know women are raped, abused, and treated like crap, but when the narrative voice does the same I get angry.
You are guilty of this. You tried, and you failed. You don’t get to be a man writing on feminism AND be able to use the narrative voice to reinforce sexism, even if it’s true to your universe. A straight person doesn’t get to write a story where gay people are scientifically proven to be “wrong” and call the gay protagonist “faggot”, and then never really do anything to prove any of that is wrong (obviously you can’t, if you’re being true to your universe, like I can’t prove gravity doesn’t exist in ours without the place shattering in two). Or, no, that’s wrong. You DO get to write that story — it’s just that nobody is going to take you seriously when you say you’re for gay rights on your blog, and then call a gay man — who, admittedly, very strongly rebukes/insults you for your perceived homophobia — “The Woman”, and then proceeds to talk over every gay person who arrives on their blog as if they don’t really know what homophobia is because you, a straight person, have a much more profound insight into it because…because…
Well, I’m still trying to figure out why you (and your friends) know more about sexism/human nature than me. I can guarantee you I’m just as pretentious as you are when it comes to introspection and reflection on human nature, being a philosophy major and all that. I’m absolutely positive you have some great insights into psychology, so it kills me that you’re hurting your books and your career by doing what you’re doing. Just, next time, maybe you could pick a subject that you have more authority on? Be controversial, but be ready to be *wrong*, and be ready to apologise when you’ve offended a fairly vulnerable group. I’m ready to be wrong, but I don’t appreciate men telling me I’m wrong about female experiences, just like I’ve got no authority on what it’s like to be a man — I don’t like the idea of men being cornered into stereotypes/roles just as much as I don’t like it happening to women.
I think this will be my last post here, because I’m tired. That, and much cleverer women and men here are doing a better job at arguing than me. *sweats* And sorry for the typos/misspellings in advance.
I
I just don’t see the bid for authority, I guess. The psychology I’m talking about is human, plain and simple. No one is exempt. We all run afoul it. When I use it to critique the indiscriminate use of shaming tactics, I’m not second guessing the movement, and certainly not your experience. How does asking questions and voicing concerns about shaming tactics becomes a personal affront?
The irony is that this has been my point all along. Coalition thinking shuts the possibility of reasoned discourse down because it interprets everything personally. And this places men in a double-bind: either they dare ask questions, forward counterarguments, and be labelled this or that, or they succumb to paternalism, and argue as some have argued here that victim groups be exempted from the public space of giving and asking for reasons.
Everyone is abused in my books. Everyone. The moral inferiority of women in my world is something intended for male readers – especially readers with evangelical christian backgrounds. As is the prurience. I know I’m no Nabokov, but that doesn’t mean I can’t attempt a similar mode of narrative critique, to engage their assumptions, implicate them with their own desires, and deliver them to a very, very uncomfortable place. I wanted this book to resonate with the 14-year old wanker in the heart of so many male SFF readers, so that I could then crank the volume and blow the speakers. The same 14 year old wanker in my heart/subconscious, the one who hung Frank Frazetta posters on his wall. The question of whether I’ve ultimately failed (because the wanker won out) awaits the conclusion of the story. The series is preposterously ambitious in a number of respects, and probably doomed to fail because of it. All along my reasoning has been that even a failure would be interesting and perhaps valuable.
As for the story, no one know where this is all headed (which is why I complain about being convicted for half a crime). But the point of my books is to engage the readers moral intuitions, and to pull them in directions they do not want to go. That’s why I find debates like this vindicating: what the books condemn over and over again, is moral certainty, and the way it close hearts, licenses violence, and sets the world at its own throat.
Otherwise, I’m not sure who I’ve talked over. I’ve certainly never questioned anyone’s experience. All I’ve been talking about are recent things we’re learning about the way humans shut reasoning down, and why this makes shaming tactics so problematic. My use of ‘Dude’ in response to use of ‘shiteater’ and the dozens of other names she’s used to flatter me is my only quid pro quo, one that I’ve used to raise issues about double-standards and the problem of paternalism.
That’s the thing: where have I questioned your experience? Where have I questioned anything aside from a particular blogger and a particular set of tactics that are even problematic within feminism? ROH kicks up a fuss, and I guarantee you that for a good number of SFF readers, it’s THE face of feminism, their only real encounter. I know it’s meant to empower, to embolden – and I’m sure it does for those who already agree – but for vast majority it simply confirms any number of ugly preconceptions. It locks people into a competitive mindset… “You think I’m a shiteater?” It manufactures motive for sexism.
Jordan, look on the web for a male response like mine, one that doesn’t respond in kind. They’re hard to find. I’m not making this stuff up.
What do you think of Doyle’s piece I linked?
Jordan, I really appreciate your introspection on the narrative voice. To me though, it had struck me as horribly neutral. Kind of Dr Manhattan neutral – without condoning or condeming?
Does the narratives voice’s lack of condemation for the rape and oppression come across as condoning?
It’d be a shame if you didn’t post again. Please come back 🙂
Scott, I’d taken the narrative voice as neither condemning nor condoning? It always struck me as horribly neutral, like a big nihilistic shrug either way. Did I read too charitably and it does condone in one or more parts? I’d like to think its neutral so as to allow those inner 14 year olds to think it condones, like a mouse is lulled to think a mouse trap offers cheese. Well, I’d like to think that, anyway?
“1) Because you’re only convincing yourselves and alienating everyone else. “
As opposed to TPB, where it seems we have yet to really escape the “sausage fest” designation beyond the occasional female poster?
“2) Because if you all agree with each other and no one is asking questions and you’re shouting over any outside voices then you are just patting each other on the back.”
How do you know no one is asking questions? I think the examination of Le Guin’s The Wild Girls was a personal reflection on why certain examinations of misogyny feel, to the reviewer, more true than others.
I know to you the Criteria Question seems like a central point, but that’s because as I see it to you (not unjustifiably) the question is dealing with the danger of unfounded accusations. But too those on the other side of that question it reads like the classic guide for getting out of dealing with privilege+prejudice by shifting the onus onto the person attempting to articulate their perceptions.
Why I linked to the mansplaining article – You aren’t a sexist, but there are times when you sound like one.
” 3) Actually all I want is a feminist position that doesn’t discredit feminism, let alone create a mass organized opposition (just google ‘feminist shaming tactics’ – some troubling stuff, and lots of it) and feed into an entire demographic tuning out feminists as name-calling outcasts.”
Do you think you’re able to accurately judge what discredits feminism? You suggest that currently such a position doesn’t exist – Perhaps it would be good to provide some links to the feminist literature that influenced your own work?
-Sci
I don’t know if this post will be where it’s supposed to be, I think wordpress comments are trying to do an impression of Earwa’s outside. It’s supposed to be in reply to Sci.
Why I linked to the mansplaining article – You aren’t a sexist, but there are times when you sound like one.
One of the criteria in that was when a man argues with a woman when the woman knows she’s right?
You can’t see the error in that? Do you actually believe if a particular gender (in this case a woman) thinks they are right, they always are?
Here’s my take of what originally generated the mansplaining definition – you have a male who bloody mindedly thinks he is absolutely right, he then talks to the woman as if only she could be the wrong party.
What happens? The woman becomes as bloody minded she’s right as the man is. Bloody mindedness begets bloody mindedness.
In a way, there is no choice. When someone bloody mindedly thinks they are right and the other person doubts at all, the will eventually be caved in by the bloody minded. Even if the doubting person was actually right.
And so you get ‘mansplaining’, the bloody minded, can only be right female counterpart to males who think they can only be right. But here’s the fun bit, mansplaining gets pinned even to men who are prepared to doubt but also want to pitch an arguement. Men who are not bloody minded get tagged with mansplaining as well.
That or you see no issue in a definition where someone somehow knows, with deific clarity, when they are right.
@Callan S: I think that example, in context, was about when a man tries to explain to something to a woman in the manner of talking over her and not bothering to think she could possibly be correct.
For example, I have a friend who is female who knows a lot about pitbulls, guns, and trucks. It is interesting that so many men think they might know more than she does, not because they have any real expertise but because those things are “man things”.
In context to these blog posts, they seem to be at best talking to those who agree and otherwise missing their mark. See woman commenting here about the talking over issue.
I think that example, in context, was about when a man tries to explain to something to a woman in the manner of talking over her and not bothering to think she could possibly be correct.
So the woman would otherwise have been prepared, equally, to think the man could be correct?
Yes, Callan. Similarly, in that example the man was never expecting or even bothering to think that the woman could at all know as much as he does.
Yes, Callan. Similarly, in that example the man was never expecting or even bothering to think that the woman could at all know as much as he does.
And the woman knows the man is doing this, knows it so well she could never be wrong.
That’s the prob with your defintions, Kal, they often start with absolute, infallable god like knowledge that something DID happen. Eg, a sexist remark DID happen. That the man DOES only think he’s right. As if anyone has a perfect detection method to actually match your definitions.
Guessing that the guy only thinks he’s right, seems fair enough. I’m pretty sure I’ve met a few men that I guess are like that, myself. But guessing means admitting inside that maybe you guessed wrong.
As defined, the defintion of mansplainer works completely – for any individual who has a capacity to perfectly detect those conditions.
“And the woman knows the man is doing this, knows it so well she could never be wrong.”
She’s certainly much less likely to be wrong. Given the studies of how women vs. men are treated in school and in workplaces as well as sociological studies of how men talk over women this seems unlikely that she’s wrong. Sure, it’s possible. It’s just not that likely.
“That’s the prob with your defintions, Kal, they often start with absolute, infallable god like knowledge that something DID happen. Eg, a sexist remark DID happen. That the man DOES only think he’s right. As if anyone has a perfect detection method to actually match your definitions.
”
Again, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of this is that it doesn’t matter if there is some objective sexism that has been met or not. If I write that a woman is a cunt in the US I can fully expect quite a few people to be offended. Is ‘cunt’ a universally offensive word? Nope; in particular the British use it a lot more than the US does and it’s not that big a deal as far as swear words go. Why is this so hard for you? It seems like you want to reduce everything to some universal truth, some objective morality that must exist for everyone, everywhere.
I’m well aware that not everyone will see something as sexist or misogynistic. Even something that is very clearly sexist will be completely ignored by others. The important thing is that the people who are most harmed by sexism are also the ones who are most sensitive to it. Same goes for misogyny. That’s because they aren’t objective truths. So what? Does it not being objective make a claim invalid? If you can’t prove it’s sexist, so what?
She’s certainly much less likely to be wrong. Given the studies of how women vs. men are treated in school and in workplaces as well as sociological studies of how men talk over women this seems unlikely that she’s wrong. Sure, it’s possible. It’s just not that likely.
So unlikely that you can forget about it and treat it as a certainty.
Is it fine when men feel it’s so unlikely a woman knows something they don’t, they can forget about it and treat it as a certainty they know better?
You don’t like them doing that. Let me guess, prior history of victimisation means it’s okay to do the exact same thing back? Whether the target is a false positive or not.
You do realise your handing over this victimisation blank cheque, right? Or are you going to do the tired old ‘Well, everyone else is doing it, so it’s a thing that just exists, it’s not me! And so I don’t have to think about how I’m doing it as well/me thinking about it is (somehow) irrelevant, it’ll just happen anyway whether I think or not’
Otherwise your handing this power over. Your choice. Since when were you qualified to make this choice?
Why is this so hard for you?
*snip*
Same goes for misogyny. That’s because they aren’t objective truths. So what? Does it not being objective make a claim invalid? If you can’t prove it’s sexist, so what?
You really think there is no ramification of making these claims.
Here, atleast do me a favour and back up your belief – promise that if it is proven Scott has missed out on fiscal gain, you will pay him back that amount, personally.
C’mon, you don’t believe these claims have any effect, so surely such a promise wont ever require you to deliver, right?
Or even just say you’ll pay up to five thousand dollars to him or such, if it’s shown claims of sexism actually reduce his sales.
I can already predict the “I’m not going to make such a rediculous promise blah blah blah”. Which is the total gutlessness this paradigm is founded on. You are DEFINATELY sure there is no fiscal loss due to these sexism claims. Except the personal risk starts to ram home to you that you could very well be wrong.
Back up your belief with a restitution (you’ll never have to make), if you’re so certain.
Or waffle and name call to cover over the fact you don’t really believe this shit.
Or even say you don’t 100% believe claims of sexism have no fiscal effect. And I’ll say fair enough and we’ll move on.
Sure, Callan. I’ll happily pay money to Scott if he can prove to my satisfaction that claims of misogyny or sexism by random strangers have caused his books to suffer.
I suspect strongly that there is fiscal loss to his books because of opinions of misogyny or sexism in his books, but they come from things like internet reviews and critics, not random rants from acrackedmoon. It’s one of my primary reasons that I have that i keep bugging Scott about it – I’d really like him to succeed. But I don’t think he will financially until he recognizes that he’s hitting big button points that hurt him as much as his readers.
To your satisfaction? Yeah, as if such a requirement couldn’t be gamed to avoid ever being forfilled (are you inclined at all to use some third party emperical system as a determiner (as of course, you equally wouldn’t be happy using ‘to my satisfaction) when it comes to my satisfaction). And why can’t I just say what I feel, or get a whole bunch of people to repeat my words on how I feel – no, you argue I have to show reasoning to you? But, but…okay, I’m convinced by your argument, you’d need to be shown some reasoning.
Anyway, you believe you’d pay, which is atleast a step towards taking responsibility if one was wrong.
I can’t distinguish between a review and something like acrackedmoons blog, they both reach a bunch of people. I’m not sure people who go to her blog treat her posts less seriously than a review sites posts. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’d take it more seriously because of the swearing at someone – swearing at someone seems like acts of hate towards that someone.
“Just how do you establish a constructive dialogue with people locked in a coalitional mindset – this one in particular, where identity and victimization seem to play the same all-justifying role as fundamentalist scripture?
Yeah, I’m not sure how to get the author of TPB to listen to me either. 😉
But seriously, I think you’re looking at this too narrowly, or (justifiably) taking it too personally. You see people falling into groupthink, they see you as making an ass of yourself and talking over women.
I think the problem is the necessity for some kind of method of engagement where you can disagree with the analysis of yourself on RoH without (seemingly?) getting into a grudge match with a circle of feminist bloggers.
On a larger scale, the question becomes how to engage on the internet when the sides in dispute are engaging pseudo-indirectly in their own safe spaces?
The logistics, as you point out, are a barrier – and one of the reasons I’m inclined to be pessimistic about the internet.
And trust me, I understand that I only have a cartoon interpretation of what’s going on – it’s one of many reasons why you and Kal will always be welcome here, as well as Jordan or Alex or anyone with a modicum of sanity and a critical perspective on my work. But I also understand that everyone else is stranded with cartoons as well.
So my questions: What criteria do you use to sort spurious from serious accusations of misogyny? Given what we know about coalition psychology, how can you be sure your tactics aren’t undermining feminism?
These are fair questions to ask of anyone making public accusations of misogyny and engaging in public vitriol and shaming in the name of feminism. To say that these people should be spared these questions is paternalism, plain and simple. And I hate to say it, but much of what you and Kal have offered by way of counter-argument does strike me as paternalistic.
“You need to be more sensitive to their plight.” As a survivor of domestic abuse, it would be pretty hard for me to have a more vivid understanding, as a male, of what some women suffer. I don’t see how this abrogates me of any responsibility to justify the accusations I make. Saying they shouldn’t be held likewise responsible is to classify them with children and the mentally ill – as a group that is exempt from the game of giving and asking for reasons. Paternalism – no?
“You need to communicate with them in a special way.” I haven’t opted for shaming or vitriol, and I’ve acknowledged my own culpability. Aside for answering ‘Shit-eater,’ etc., with the ‘Dude,’ I have been persistant and polite. Anything beyond this, once again, smacks of paternalism – no?
I do understand the idea of “equal rights, equal fights”. I think that there’s a difference between disagreeing with someone adamantly and recognizing when tactics are failing.
Right now, it seems that your tactics are failing, and in some sense they’ve been failing for awhile. This is why I suggested taking a broader approach than a single review.
Paternalism, to me, is agreeing with someone because they are a woman, a minority, etc. I think this is the error you’re making. The goal is, in my experience, to feel like you are being heard rather than wringing out a false capitulation. I’ve been called out for various things I’ve said, and while I’ve listened I haven’t always changed my behavior.
If there’s supposed to be a discussion about feminism, or the perception of misogyny, the Criteria Question in my opinion is how to facilitate a means of open dialogue with the critics (again, without focusing on a single review or person). As we’re men talking about women, the first thing to acknowledge a genuine interest in listening and continually reevaluating whether the books are doing more harm than good.
At the moment, I think your self defense has overshadowed this sense of concern. Which is understandable, but this entanglement makes it seem like you are dismissing, at minimum, the feminist critique of SFF.
Posted this on Ms MacFarlane’s blog but I am guessing it will be removed.
“And yeah, Ms MacFarlane, the fact that you’re a woman is relevant, because half of what you say makes it sound like you want manly discussions you’re comfortable with, and no others, when manly discussions are not primarily for you. You do not get to define a good manly discussion. Manly men do. If a man was saying [some random Manly-Blog] is harmful to manlyism it would be a different argument. Stop trying to be the cleverest man-ist. Shut up and listen.
Food for thought….”
ABALIENO wrote:
“The real problem, deep down, is how you can break this chain of violence and prejudice. Because, really, you can’t blame a victim for being “hateful”. She earned that right. You can’t talk to her as long you don’t share her same experience. That’s, I think, what she’s really saying.
What do you think?”
Although I understand your point (“You can’t understand me and know my motivations and opinions if you have not experienced the exact same thing as I have”), I do not fully agree that it means you cannot talk to a person until such requisite is met.
I assume you don’t mean it literal, but more in the sense of discussing with her regarding misogyny [for example]. Thereby rendering her the expert on that subject, for being a woman and possibly with the experience of being violated, and Scott [or any man] the ‘ignorant’.
I’ll grant you that without certain experience you cannot talk about something as if you understand it or ‘know’ it, because you don’t. You can’t talk about what it is like to lose a fortune while gambling if it has never happened to you.
However, that does not mean that Scott [or, again, any man] cannot discuss someone’s interpretation of a work. As you said, it’s the psychological baggage/experience that makes someone judge the work in the way they do it. It is a skewed opinion, if you will. The measuring stick is not a ‘regular’ one, insofar as possible.
I’m not saying that makes the opinion or critique irrelevant, but it gives a certain responsibility to the person judging to be aware of their bias. I cannot ignore the fact that she is free not to read the book, or at least put it into perspective.
If I were raped by my soccer coach when I was small that means I will be biased to think that all soccer coaches, or men of a certain age, whichever sticks with me, are abusers and dangerous. And, like you said, I’d be justified in feeling that way. But the keyword for me is ‘feeling’. It’s subjective and not objective. I don’t think it’s ok to present your feelings and opinions as facts, based only on that, feelings.
Note, I am no in way belittling or ignoring that people who experience horrible things such as abuse have a justified deep-rooted fear of certain people. But if that fear rules your every interaction with anything resembling something related to the traumatic experience, even if only on paper, is not healthy.
/end too long rant without clear point.
We live in a dream world? I knew the Matrix had it right.
Problem is, you have over two thousand pills you need to choose from…
“Have you studied Speech Act Theory, Kal? What you’re suggesting strikes me as perlocutionary through and through.”
Ah, I see – the notion of what the speech actually DOES instead of what the words mean or what its intent was. Interesting. Yes, that’s precisely what I’m talking about and what is significantly more important and interesting – what the writing actually does as far as a response is far bigger a deal than what is written or what is intended. And it’s assuredly easy to fuck up. But I think that you often discount this entirely – that people should be able to read or interpret intent without having their response taken into consideration – and this causes a lot of frission with you.
“Tell me, honestly, aren’t a little dismayed and troubled by all this? Think about how little your average SFF reader has contact with self-proclaimed feminists, and how inclined we are [to] over-generalize, and tell me you think these people are doing more good than harm to their cause.”
This sounds a bit like what the Democrats have been saying for decades. Don’t scare the swing voters. Reach out to the South. Win back the white factory workers. Sound reasonable, don’t be too liberal, don’t be inflexible on anything, never get angry. Take your base for granted, they’re already converted. Quote the facts and figures, don’t name-call.
And it’s this moderate approach we can thank for the unbroken triumphant march of progressive dominance that has held sway throughout living memory.
Murphy, I have to ask: Is the last sentence sarcastic?
Just a tad.
Unrelated:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/
(If you’ve never heard of this before, it’s a fascinating read. I first encountered it about 10 years ago when I read Zimmer’s Parasite Rex.)
So is there an irony here, that the more time spent typing on this subject, the longer it takes for those final books to come out and the proposed “Ah, see!” moment to occur? Yeah, yeah, I know, the muse decides its own pace! Just loling!
Aside: Can we have this sort of examination of gender issues on the fiction of Orson Scott Card? He truly is guilty of everything Kal can gleefully imagine to accuse Bakker of (and more!) and there are incredibly disturbing implications to so much of his writing, in part because his works are in intentional worlds that have an important metaphysical component (often where women explicitly have less value than men, for example and even more offensively tend to proclaim in nonstop speeches in how proud they are to be lesser than men, to be vessels of man’s seed and cooker of man’s meals and…). I mean, the philosophy of Ender Wiggin is a sort of Jesus Ninja Warrior bastardization. Know your enemies so well that you love them totally and completely because you then really understand them… and then destroy them. That’s not all that different from the “Jesus moment” Mimara has at the end of WLW, except it’s male view instead and it gets the male all jazzed up by marrying unconditional love with unconditional violence. We’re literally ganging up and attacking someone on our side while the real villian goes unpunished. I’d love to have a discussion about the misogyny of OSC that didn’t degenerate into a contest of who can be the most creative at variants of calling him a crazy mormon homophobe.
Actual reason I came here to comment. RSB. If you’re going to write a statement page, I think I have the right model for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU
That’s Obama’s 3/18/08 speech on race. Obama was in a no win position and he somehow moved himself out of that position and into one where he was not disadvantaged by the race question.
Note: He did not try to beat the race question, he just repositioned it so that it longer disadvantaged him, or backed him into another unescapable corner. Please use that speech as a model of how to address this misogyny question.
I wonder how many times certain folk are commenting to their friends “well see i’m defending feminism against this author you see”
I’ve already seen at least one claim from a participant here on another website that their repsonsible for 60% of ALL Bakkers’ excasperation, plus numerous other name drops about it over the weeks.
What do you do, oh well i’m an “anti-groupie” of Bakkers.
Let me know if this tactic helps you getting laid when you’re recounting it socially for the 50th time?
Cheers 😉
You do realize my argument is that moral certainty reduces people to insults and insinuations, robs them of the ability to actually engage in constructive discourse.
Well, all right. I said I wouldn’t come back, but Callan asked so nicely that I have to. xD
@Callan: I see what you’re saying. When you’re trying to shove something in someone’s face, you really can’t afford to be neutral, otherwise it’ll probably just wash right off. But my issue is that Bakker’s (purposely) misogynistic narrative isn’t shocking, simply because it’s *standard*. So, maybe, the problem is more that Bakker’s already been beaten to the punch by people who’ve got nothing to say on sexism at all other than to reinforce it. I don’t know how you’d beat that, because it relies on the industry and what/how other authors write, and he Bakker can’t control that.
My suggestion, and it’s only a suggestion, is that using an intentionally sexist grimdark universe as a means of exploring sexism just *can’t* work. When it’s written into the laws of the world you can’t write out of it without breaking the fourth wall, so the only way I see out is to never put those walls up in the first place, or to set the walls up on an artificial level — a god makes women inferior, ergo kill the god. But then I worry that I’m telling an author what they CAN and CAN’T do, which is not what I want to do at all, hence it’s a suggestion.
@Bakker: Hmm, it’s hard to explain this authority thing. Point is, I know we’re both humans, and that you have a right to say whatever you like, same as me. Maybe ‘authority’ is a bad term, but it’s all I’ve got. What I’m trying to say is that be virtue of me being a woman, I automatically have more say-so on being a woman than you do, just like you can say more on being a man than me. So, when a group of women come at you for what they perceive to be misogyny, then you should probably appreciate their opinions above and beyond yours and your male supporters, just like I’d sit down and listen if you told me that something about being a man — you HAVE to know better than me, because you live as a man. No amount of reading/researching can put me on your level. My opinions can be worthwhile, and I’m allowed to present them, but they can’t really match yours, because I’m only guessing, no matter how “informed” the guesswork is.
So, when it comes to opinions, we’re not exactly “equal”, and that’s not a bad thing. I dunno, has any of that made sense? I just think you’re pushing equality in absolutely everything a bit too much, to the point where’s it unrealistic. Women and men should be treated to equal opportunities, but we’re not really equal in everything, by virtue of our physiology — that doesn’t mean women (or men) are really lesser in anything, just different. Inequality isn’t necessarily bad, because it can be compensated with other things, but I’m one of those Taoist people who likes the whole balance thing…
On why you failed, I kind of answered it in my response to Callan. I do understand what you’re doing, but it won’t work, and hasn’t. 14 year old turds aren’t going to read your work and get a slap in the face, they’re just going to accept it as normal because it is normal. To go back to Taoism, you’re better off being the water that wears down a rock than a boulder crashing down on something. Maybe you could write with more sensitivity next time, and you might win over a few of these 14 year olds who are too scared to acknowledge their own sensitivity (and therefore disguise it with the usual sexual/sexist aggression). Not only that, but you’d have a lot of us ladies on your side too, and most of us aren’t as intimidating as Moon is (I am not insulting her there whatsoever).
I also understand that some SFF fans only exposure to feminism is going to be on ROH, and therefore it’ll probably make them worse, but that’s not Moon’s fault — it’s theirs. You can’t just tiptoe through life in case you piss an asshole off — I thought you’d know about that, considering how you wrote your books! Moon’s angry for a reason, but she shouldn’t feel as if she needs to meekly stick her hand up and ask for permission to talk. The people that are vilifying her now were never all that interested in feminism, so they’re not exactly lost causes. They were looking for reasons to continue their misogyny, and they’ve “found” one in her. Well, that’s their own damn problem. I personally wouldn’t have attacked you in the manner she did, but that’s me and she’s her.
Anyway, as somebody who seems to have some clout with the men that choose to be solely exposed to feminism through ROH, why don’t *you* point them to other places? What about to other sci-fi works, like Le Guin? She’s not particularly “threatening” like Joanna Russ (who I’m not a big fan of because I’m a little conservative lol), and she writes absolutely beautifully in both sci-fi and fantasy. She’s a shining example of how you win more resistant people over because you’re right, having it shoved in your face like Moon does seems to work less, but does a really great and worthwhile job bringing like-minded people together — not EVERYTHING has to be about winning sexists over…sometimes us crazy ladies like to laugh and talk to each other too. I’d rec Le Guin, but they won’t listen to me: I’m a woman. That’s where I’d like some help from men when it comes to feminism. I’d really love it if you guys could help spread the word, not write thousands of new ones that only cause problems.
I know you probably had other points in there, but I can’t keep up! Again, sorry for the typos, and if I’ve replied in an odd place (I’m kinda lost here…)
You’re the authority when it comes to your life, no doubt. As a woman, that makes you an authority on what it’s like to be a woman. I wouldn’t dream of contesting this. But you’re human as well, and that’s what I’m talking about – what we share, which happens to dwarf what don’t, though I think it’s easy to forget this some time.
I completely concede your point regarding the actual 14 year-old: the ‘Archie Bunker Effect’ is my single biggest worry about the books. But I don’t think many 14-years read them. I’m talking about the prurience of men in general, the 14 year old ‘within.’ Sex and violence are huge problems in popular culture – what I’m trying to do is to take the kinds of simplistic representations you find and complicate them, to hold the appeal and the revulsion side by side and say, ‘Is this what you’re talking about.’ But I’m far from the best writer the world has seen, and I have always been willing to admit that I may have bitten off more than I can chew – and maybe generate more harm than good.
Something I genuinely worry about. So the question is, why isn’t moon worried about it as well? I know first hand what ‘making things worse’ means.
The only equality I’m demanding is equality in the space of public institutions and discourse. When it comes to men and women I literally think men have the longer row to hoe, biologically, that they are saddled with all kinds of defensive, destructive impulses that make evolutionary sense but are morally horrific. And I think moon’s discourse feeds directly into these gender specific shortcomings. I actually think her brand of discourse could be one we evolved to better initiate and organize violent acts against the perceived target or targets.
Traditional feminism has largely taken a semiotic, social constructivist approach to the problem of inequality and violence against women. But what if turned out the problem was largely biological? In my fantasies, my ‘evil race,’ the Sranc, have literally been hardwired to rape – and throughout the series I draw parallels between them and men. If biological differences play a major role in the problem of violence against women, then the problem is drastically different, and lot’s of uncomfortable and controversial questions need to be asked.
This is the debate I’m trying to get off the ground. It’s a nasty one, and it demands that everyone, male and female, eat a big piece of humble pie, but it needs to be had.
Sigh. This post is in reference to this post
Requires only comments that work…
Gah, this post in reply to this post
I wonder if my post will go in the middle again…
Scott you waste to much time worrying about this. Your books are clearly written in a patriarchal society that mirrors much or middle age or renaissance history. This is a good thing. Fantasy fiction would be a better place if more people actually wrote in this way.
Anyone who gets their panties in a bunch over such a society not being as “enlightened” as ours, who seeks to force a modern construct of male and female relationships on an abstract social structure based on factual historical paradigms has to much fucking time on their hands.
If they are really warriors for feminism they could get off their keyboard and go to a country that actually oppresses women and fight the good fight rather than sit about complaining about a work of fiction. These people are idiots who do not realise that their easy lives give them the luxury to mentally masturbate in this way.
Get back to writing great fiction.
Get back to reading good history – it’s the depth of your historical reading that shines through your writing, especially on war, that makes your works so solid.
Ignore these tossers for what they are.
Best regards
Martin