Requires Only Haidt
by rsbakker
Definition of the Day – Troll: 1) Someone who thinks indiscriminately pissing on legs is more an accomplishment and than an embarrassment; 2) A folkloric creature notorious for blocking bridges and blaming its farts on others.
[Note: This post is presently receiving a tremendous amount of traffic. Though I appreciate the moral passion this issue generates, I would ask those who reply to recall the topic of this post is the way that moral passion derails our ability to think rationally. This is what I’m interested in debating. While all posts are welcome, those without arguments have the unfortunate effect of making my case for me. To spare you this indignity, let me assure you that yes, I am a very, very bad man, but that my questions are actually not that bad at all, which is why this post is presently receiving a tremendous amount of traffic.]
‘Speriment’s over.
So Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is coming out the beginning of next month. Moyers interviewed him for an hour on PBS last night (pretty much ruining the Superbowl for me) and it turns out he deals directly with what we’re discussing here. He actually discusses many things that I’ve been flogging over the years, if not here, then in interviews. The data backing (at least orthogonally) what I’ve been calling Compartmentalization seems to be slowly piling up. The thesis, for those of you not familiar, is that the combination of human cognitive shortcomings and the plethora of ideologically skewed media choices is completely transforming the cultural commons – and with problematic results. Human cognition is self-interested through and through, something which likely paid real reproductive dividends back in the day where you depended on all the people you knew. Compromise is unavoidable in conditions of material and emotional interdependency. So the real question is one of what happens when you pluck that psychology out of the stone age and plop it in the age of the internet. Suddenly, the need for compromise becomes an abstraction. Suddenly, you are no longer forced to engage dissenting views – you can indulge your assumptions and prejudices at will without any immediate consequence. No matter how extreme or destructive the view, there’s a social support system hanging out in the aether – an endless supply of those two great human drugs, affirmation and confirmation.
What if the belief polarization presently gripping America, perhaps even strangling it, is simply the future, one where ersatz radicalism and resurgent tribalism hijacks the political apparatus of the state and delivers what it typically delivers: conflict and destruction? Let’s hope not. I want to think not, because I actually have a great deal of admiration for the American system, but we really are sailing into uncharted sociological waters here.
In the meantime, just reflect on the raucous response to my previous post. Because my ‘Criteria Question’ had been entirely ignored the first time round, I wrote the post with an experimental mindset. I was curious to see just how long it would take before one of the Dude’s defenders answered it. 232 replies later, none – not one! – and this despite repeating it I don’t know how many times. I think Murphy finally chipped in his thoughts out of sheer embarrassment for me.
Allowing me – at last – to write this post. Let’s just pause to reflect on all the alienated egos out there. I was actually tempted to post a link on Vox’s site to demonstrate how amusing people who truly believe that women ‘have a proper place’ would find the spectacle that the Dude has precipitated. It really does ‘require only hate.’
Belief polarization is real. Vitriolic, indiscriminate moral condemnation really does shut down people’s (already limited) capacity to reason as opposed to rationalize. It ramps up sensitivities, and things devolve from there. It triggers the psychological mechanisms that bring out the worst in us. The fact that I’m reacting to actual slander, and am therefore as interested – if not more – as anyone in this debate, doesn’t change this fact one bit.
The core of the problem, I think, lies in the difficulty posed by my Criteria Question. How do you distinguish between serious and spurious accusations of racism and sexism? As Murphy points out in his answer, you have to take avowals with a grain of salt. I’ll never forget walking behind these three college students back in my professor days, two men and a woman, not really paying attention until one of them said, “That’s racist!”
“I’m not racist,” the guy on the right replied. “I just watch COPS.”
It’s a kind of pattern you’re looking for, as Murphy says. Avowals are simply one source of information. Actions are another, as are verbal interactions more generally.
The problems are obvious. Not only is our access to the information we require limited, in some cases extremely so, it just so happens that our brains are profoundly skewed pattern seeking machines. We see patterns that do not exist all the time, moreso when the subject matter is socially (that is, morally) charged.
At the same time, we live in an age when simply making the charge can do real social damage. As Republican campaign strategists will tell you, a person, as a rule, only has to encounter an accusation three times before they simply assume it’s true. The Republican primaries are providing an excellent example of the power of negative marketing to condition the attitudes of various populations of voters.
In other words, if you actually give a damn about people, then you need to be careful about accusing them of being sexist or racist, because, as a simple matter of fact, you could do real damage and you could be wrong.
This, I think, is what makes the Criteria Question so prickly, so difficult. Our moral systems seem to be designed to avoid false negatives by being completely insensitive to the problem of false positives. Apparently it doesn’t matter how many innocents you round up, so long as the drag-net catches the guilty party. The Criteria Question, in other words, forces us to take a genuinely counterintuitive mindset, one that requires work and self-doubt – two things that our brains generally happen to despise.
And most importantly, the Criteria Question, which I posed to the Dude and she locked in moderation, throws a rather damning light on sites like ROH. She literally appeals to what is worst in our nature – is it any wonder that so much trust and friendship has been grenaded? If you find yourself laughing at her aspersions, agreeing with her summary judgments, it only means that you’re human, another mammal ruthlessly designed to ruthlessly survive in a world far, far less forgiving than our own. Same as me. Same as everyone else.
We all have the program. That’s the bloody problem. That’s why I fear for the world my daughter will inherit.
Everyone should.
Three Pound Brain 
Scott: do you think that a site like ROH can be a useful part of — forgive the metaphor — a ‘balanced diet’? That it’s possible to incorporate its perspective into attitude formation without being centrifuged out to the polarized edge?
I read and enjoy ROH. I also read and enjoy your work! I think ROH gets me to contemplate aspects of your work in a critical light, and helps me reify things I’d like to see in your work going forward. Conversely, I think your work tackles critical questions of psychology that ROH doesn’t engage with, catering, as it does, to the basic pathways of ingroup identification and outgroup derogation.
Am I doomed?
Also, regarding your intent to juxtapose revulsion and beauty in certain scenes in the book (for example, the rape of Valrissa scene that ROH examined): you made a remark about how ultimately, your subconscious wrote the text.
I think a lot of the criticism that’s coming your way short-circuits questions of your intent by suggesting that your objectives are simply rationalizations for your subconscious desire to depict sexual violence. This is a hell of a thing to say, and it’s also almost impossible to defend against. Your own arguments, arguments I agree with, regarding how we deceive ourselves are some of the best support for this allegation.
Moreover, I think it’s one of the core elements of criticism aimed at male writers of dark fantasy: that they’ve found an acceptable way to express their subconscious darkness. (I admit, and I hope you won’t take this as a condemnation, that I sometimes felt this way reading the climactic scenes in Neuropath.)
When I read your work I feel that I understand your intent. I often find myself uncomfortable (as you intend), and I often find myself trying to decide whether you’ve made a point, whether your subconscious attitudes are influencing your text, or whether you’ve managed to combine the two: being, arguably, misogynistic, but also leveraging that misogyny into a statement and an examination.
(If I had a wish for your future handling of women, it’d be for one female character who is not an object of angst and desire for a man, as in the case of Serwe, Esmenet, Mimara, Serwa, and Sam + wife character from neuropath. No matter how well-rendered they are, the statistical frequency of the male-fixated-on-female dynamic seems to gender the narrative as whole towards a male gaze, a gaze preoccupied with the rape and cuckoldry of the female object.)
I’d like to restate, in closing, that I love your work and I find it consistently challenging. Although I am a huge feminist, and I go nuts for strong characters, female, I’m insulated enough by my male privilege that I can see what you’re trying to say.
I think it’s possible that you’re both delivering a lesson and exposing your ugly side, and that the two don’t necessarily work against each other. I think it’s brave of you to take up an argument that inevitably exposes you to such searing and personal criticism.
Neuropath is an excellent case in point, simply because it was written after I started taking lots and lots of heat for what I was doing in the fantasies. There’s nothing regarding gender in that book that I didn’t rethink and rewrite several times. My unconscious was very busy. Most of what I wrote, I knew I would be pigeon-holed and pilloried for. I wrote it as a kind of fem-washing trap, the idea being to make the sexploitation you find throughout the ‘psychothriller’ rubric literally painful to read. I think I succeeded, by and large.
As for ‘traditionally strong’ characters I don’t think I’ve written one yet, outside of Kellhus, who is a special case. I don’t feel the need to include certain types of characters for the sake of conforming to some moral or commercial imperative. With each book I find myself with a set of problems, which I set out to share and explore. I can’t help but see dogmatic moral intuitions as opportunities.
Gender will always be a problem in my books because gender always is a problem in the world. All I can guarantee is that it won’t be a socially sanctioned ‘pseudo-problem,’ one designed to simply confirm the reader’s intuitions under the guise of ‘challenging’ people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading.
I don’t find myself wishing for traditionally strong characters — thus the use of ‘strong character, female’ rather than the badly compromised ‘strong female character’, which suggests a Hollywood sop template of the bad action girl.
I’m sure you can find a way to create a fascinatingly broken relationship with a different pattern than the existing one, wherein men suffer pain over a woman who is a sexual object. Whether this emerges organically from a narrative problem you want to tackle, though, is another matter – I hope some day it does!
Again, because conversation tends to drift towards extremes without a little centering thrust: I am a huge admirer of your work and think it’s attempting something ambitious and important.
Well, like I said before, I remain locked in when it comes to the fantasy series. There’s plenty o’ twists to come – I just wish I could say that everyone will be happy with them!
I also think the ‘gender-alienated male’ is an interesting character to explore. I see it so often in the men around me, and almost nowhere in fiction or on the screen.
“I think it’s possible that you’re both delivering a lesson and exposing your ugly side, and that the two don’t necessarily work against each other. I think it’s brave of you to take up an argument that inevitably exposes you to such searing and personal criticism.”
Well put, Seth, that last paragraph really encapsulates it for me. Delivering a lesson while exposing the ugly side. That’s how I read it as well.
But what was ‘critical’ about her reading of me? Kalbear is critical. Sci is critical. Dude – not so much.
That said, the question you ask is entirely fair: Haidt discusses the issue himself in that interview I linked, but in more generalized terms. Make no mistake, the self-righteous vitriol Dude uses is the same self-righteous vitriol that accompanies so much historical tragedy.
I am but one person who does not have the capacity to encompass all things that passes and to observe all people’s thoughts. I follow my natural inclination to choose to read certain objects only. Where did my natural inclination come from?? Probably from my social, cultural, educational and family backgrounds (korean american immigrant, single woman) and born personalities, etc. However, what I like to read or choose to read in limited selections does not always reaffirm and confirm my views about the politics and other matters. In the presence of others such as social gathering, I tend to express one sided view but in the absence of all others, I may think of dual possibilities with no conclusions reached, hopefully because the conclusion is not reachable? I am guessing that I am not that different from other people around the world? The polarization in politics has always been a part of our history, has it not? As long as we try to ensure the freedom of thoughts for ourselves, I believe we will not have a severe conflict in this country.
Odds are, your right. I always remind my more anti-American friends here that if Ottawa had as much money and power focussed on it as Washington, we’d probably have lapsed into something ugly and undemocratic long ago. And as much as I hated the Clinton impeachment attempt, I was mightily impressed that the most powerful individual in the world could be called to account by his own institutions. I guarantee that would never happen here.
But the fact remains, we’re the same flawed humans we always were, our boilerplate institutions are the product of agrarian societies, and thanks to technology things are changing faster than they ever have.
Ah! Hello, new post. I see we were thinking of roughly the same dilemma after all. I support the gist of this post, too. A current political example is the use of the accusation of anti-semitism to shut down criticism of Israel (above all within Israel itself). It’s not that one side of the debate disagrees with the other – one side of the debate doesn’t accept that the other side’s view should even be heard. The cruelty of the tactic is that it only works if you do in fact understand that there’s nothing worse than anti-semitism.
That does seem to be the primary use of moral condemnation as a political tool. If you don’t want to confront hard questions, call the questioner this or that, and turn the debate about something substantial into a vacuous debate that simply polarizes and further aggravates the problem. I have a friend who was accused of anti-Semitism for simply arguing against the philosopy of Emmanuel Levinas. It’s a bizarre situation to find yourself in, and has been the undoing of many well-meaning politicians, I’m sure.
Bizarre and, of course, more than bizarre. As you say, in the post, people get emotionally destroyed by these methods. And false accusations create a crack for the real thing to seep through. “The biggest problem is all these false accusations of racism… why, even I myself have been called…”
Word.
I am a woman and I never even thought about how women in your books were depicted in certain ways while I was reading your book. I read all your books and can’t wait to read the next one! I had a really good time thinking of mind/body/brain/god/religion/infinite possiblities/conditions/absolute freedom, etc. while reading your book. To me, these questions are much more fundamental than racism and sexism.
I actually disagree! For me, the political trumps the metaphysical every time, just because we have no choice but to come up with answers for the former, answers that impact the lives of real people.
That said, my inclinations are much the same as your own. I definitely find myself more interested in the metaphysical. Which is probably why I enjoy writing the books and you enjoy reading them!
I came for the lyrical prose, and stayed for the paradigm-shattering cognitive theory. I know for me at least the books changed the way I look at the world (and of course at the human race). Some days I wish I could unthink some of what you’ve gotten me to think since reading them, but in truth I wouldn’t go back even if I could. So from me at least, a heartfelt thanks, and keep it coming!
Thank you. I actually needed that this particular moment.
You’re welcome, I’m just amazed you can handle it all. Felt compelled to offer a little unalloyed praise where it was due.
I’m surprised as well. More sturdy than I.
“I wrote it as a kind of fem-washing trap, the idea being to make the sexploitation you find throughout the ‘psychothriller’ rubric literally painful to read.”
You realize that this sounds a lot like after-the-fact rationalization, even to someone like me who is inherently predisposed to dismiss ludicrous allegations of ‘sexism’?
In a Philosophy of Law class I took, between discussing Aquinas’s Natural Law or something equally lofty, our professor went on a surprisingly pragmatic tangent. He said something like this:
“You know, many politicians are aware that when they are accused of something immoral, one of the best tactics is to treat it as though it were a splash of mud. If mud gets on your pants, and you immediately start to try and rub it out, it’s just going to get smeared all over the place. BUT, if wait for the mud to dry… you can just flick it off later with minimal effort.”
You’re getting shit all over your pants Scott.
I don’t know, the gender stuff in N. felt very deliberate (and was successful: it was very uncomfortable). I’d say that dog was trotted out once too often with DotD, however, making it predictable.
Ach… And here I thought I was being even sneakiery.
Don’t I know it! Both in terms of the mud and in terms of how it sounds post hoc. It’s one of many things that make these debates losing propositions: in the course of fighting a label, you end up labelling yourself. But I stand by it: anybody who is masochistic enough to reread NP doesn’t need to look far to see all the ways I connect sexism and nihilism in the book.
Which reminds me… If anyone reading this happens to be within a degree or two of separation from the band Tool, send them a copy of NP! There’s alienation, and then there’s alienation.
I saw a couple of articles on Huffington POst today that I though were relevant to the discussion…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/roland-martin-david-beckham-glaad-super-bowl_n_1257036.html
Apparently, upon seeing an H&M commercial feat. David Beckham in his undies, a CNN analyst tweeted the following, “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!” GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) tweeted as a response, “advocates of gay bashing have no place at @CNN” and is now calling for CNN to fire the analyst. The analyst claims that the tweet was not an anit-gay tweet but was an anti-soccer tweet.
I don’t like the tweet. As a gay man, I happen to think that David Beckham in his underwear can only be interpreted as a good thing. 🙂
Is calling for the termination of this guy the appropriate course of action? Will it acutally change anything?
If everyone who has ever tweeted or said something that could be interpreted as anti-gay were fired would we have a world full of open and accepting people or just a really shitty economy?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/pete-hoekstra-ad-china-michigan_n_1256912.html
A political ad featuring a young Asian woman speaking in broken English when describing the impacts of Obama/Democratic economic policies. Apparently, the young Asian woman is supposed to be a Chinese woman who is very happy that the Democratic ecomonic policies will help enrich the Chinese.
What is the point of using broken English when depiciting this young woman? Why not have her speaking in Mandarin and provide English subtitles? Wouldn’t this better drive home the intended point?
This is the dilemma, isn’t it. Groupishness/chauvinism is part of the floorplan – it almost seems like the ‘Despicable Other’ is simply this place that must be filled, if not by one stereotype then by another. There’s no eradicating it, so what do we do? We clean up our institutions, that’s well and fine. But when we demand that our institutions police individual verbal behaviour then things start getting creepy very fast, like Bolshevik Russia or the Spanish Inquisition, where people start making spurious accusations as a way to personally profit. It’s always going to be ugly, which is what makes it so important to be understood.
A review of The Wild Girls by Le Guin, which I admittedly have not read, talks about depiction of misogynistic societies:
http://www.alexdallymacfarlane.com/2012/02/the-wild-girls-thoughts-about-passion/
It specifically mentions you, but just to be clear I am not posting it here to get my digs in (I think I’ve shown my asshole tendencies can manage that on their own) but rather as evidence that there seems to be a large groups of historically marginalized persons (for lack of a better term), specifically women in this case, that have felt the need to find their own spaces on the internet.
What’s interesting, and as you note troubling, is that these conversations seem separate from those other groups concerned about depiction are having.
This of course leads to the question of where the meeting ground can be held between these diverse groups when it most assuredly won’t be a safe space due to its very purpose. Westeros has seen, in the past few months, some interesting discussions. Larry has had some posts on his blog as well, and it seems the intersection of varied groups does read The OF Blog.
So passion is great because it feels great? Is.. wha…I… my head hurts.
It really is kind of amazing, isn’t it? I post on how reason flies out the window when it comes to moral condemnation and every seems hell-bent on demonstrating the point by disagreeing with it/me.
Hmmm. Some of that linked article was crap. But I’ll admit in the paragraph starting with “I don’t doubt that Bakker thinks sexism and racism are bad (mm’kay), but when he tries to ask the hard questions there is something he lacks: passion.” I have somewhat of a parralel. I’ll post something I wrote up awhile ago but just kept on wordpad till now.
I’ll say one thing that struck me – the (early) books seem to depict not only a world that the gods seem to have left it, but the author seemed to have left it as well! I remember a scene with the consult where ‘raping thrust’ was described and I was literally thankful that a judgemental term like rape was used, instead of just ‘thrust’. It’s just a sample size of one, but you just didn’t seem present at all in judgemental terms, most of the time. It’s kind of like the phrase ‘Women are great’ – it can be said genuinely, or with sarcasm. Only tone distinguishes. And you seemed by and large gone, throughout the text, not there to present any tone. Which is possibly a mark of great writing, to just present world, not predecided opinion. But I didn’t know which tone it was so I was like WTF? It’s generally only reading this blog (and what I could search around and find from the past) that informed me of tone. Or atleast what tone I ended up reading.
Just saying that zero tone is hard – it’s really hard. Sheer cliff face hard. I’m not saying this as a pressure on you, I’m saying it as an excuse for us who couldn’t scale it (yeah, emotionally I’ll lump myself in with crackedmoon, even though I didn’t do the same thing as her nor to the same emotional extent (I think, anyway))
I’m still amazed by your link that someone can cheer on the internet hate machine just because it happens to agree with them in this case and still talk about empathy in the same breath.
Hm.
This whole thing reminds me of the fiasco over ‘American Psycho’ (the novel, not the movie so much).
From Wikipedia:
“Feminist activist Gloria Steinem was among those opposed to the release of Ellis’ book because of its portrayal of violence toward women.”
Oh noes! Violence towards women… being portrayed! Oh noes!
(Note:Violence towards men is of course completely acceptable. I mean, that’s what we’re FOR, right? No one cries for Comphas.)
Violence toward the privileged largely cannot affect the privileged. Violence toward those without privilege reinforces an extant reality that society naturally pushes.
Note when a privileged person upsets others, he is a jerk/asshole/etc. When someone without privilege does the same, they are the *reason* an entire group can be written off and marginalized.
Glancing through varied comments over the internet over some recent ROH stuff, it is pretty telling when you come across gems like “She’s the reason the Greeks had institutionalized misogyny and made their monsters female”, “This is why we shouldn’t give any of these countries aid”, to “She just needs to get laid and then her opinion will become like ours.”
This is what I noted in the great divergence between groups. What’s more troubling is that the women interested and knowledgeable about this stuff are in a different group than many of the rest of us. This doesn’t bode well for the genre of SFF, and if this sample is anything to judge the population from which it is drawn…well…call me Cassandra…
But it is a sample. These attitudes are everywhere, simply because we find them instinctive. Anyone who is shocked by them is simply out of touch with the way things are drifting, locked in liberal elite circles (where bigotry finds different forms of expression). You say she does us a service by ‘outing’ these voices, when really what she is doing is encouraging and ‘confirming’ them.
Have you ever followed Vox’s site? He continually quotes people like her, makes flags of them, uses them as evidence.
Anyone who thinks she’s providing a ‘service’ simply has no clue as to the beast they are doing battle with.
Note:Violence towards men is of course completely acceptable. I mean, that’s what we’re FOR, right? No one cries for Comphas.
Aye. I’ve laughed at a story of a man being chased by his ex with scissors in her hands, which I wouldn’t laugh at if it was a man chasing a woman.
When theory of mind is about imagining yourself in the other persons shoes, and you treat yourself as quite an okay target for violence…what happens when you imagine yourself in womens shoes?
That heels pinch like a bitch…wait, that’s not quite…
You realise that saying “The Dude” all the time reinforces the idea that you’re just interested in being right, rather than actually answering the “Criteria Question”? You’re telling someone off for being a troll uninterested in debate, while at the same time using a gendered, dismissive term for acrackedmoon. Regardless of the merits of points being made, your tone is at least as problematic as hers.
The Dude is my one concession to interpersonal quid pro quo. Have you read some of the things she’s called me? Holy moly. Besides, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for me to consistently betray my interest in this way. And like I say, every time someone brings this up, I can’t help but marvel at the elasticity of yardsticks.
Yet the issue is that “Feminist who disagrees with me is really a whiny PC white man who isn’t masculine enough” is something of a trope, falling under:
“All my friends who are X like me, so this person who dislikes me must be a Y and have the same privilege as me.”
That women encounter this so much goes to explain much about the divergence of groups interested in the very questions you’re asking. You may think of it as a tit-for-tat with Moon, but in truth it directly conflicts with your larger stated purpose of preventing the bifurcation of interested parties into warring camps.
So I should ‘coddle’ her?
Not coddle, no. But if you’re ACTUALLY interested in the principle, you should engage on the arguments, which I think you’ve actually done only to a limited extent. If you’re worried about someone being a dick to you on the internet (which I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t deny she was), then go ahead, continue to use a belittling name.
What arguments have I failed to engage?
Guys, is it really a concern for the development of the discussion? Or do you actually just have zero tolerance for someone being a little human and giving some sass back?
Tell me how much sass someone can give back, even just by your own individual standards (they don’t have to match between you)? I’m suspecting you’ll say nothing, all such tolerance for sass has run absolute dry. Sass from one side, anyway.
BTW, somehow it’s quite fun saying ‘sass’ alot. Great word…sass!
It’s a lot different when the 90 pound weakling calls the bully an asshole and the bully calls the 90 pound weakling an asshole.
What if everyone involved is a three pound weakling?
If everyone’ a 3-pound weakling then everyone lives in an ideal society where things like class, race and sex have no bearing on their lives past a genetic value. Good luck with that.
Thanks, looks like I’ll need it.
I’ve seen martial force have a bearing on peoples lives. Class, race and sex, just by themselves, not at all. Unless you want to treat each as having martial force built into them.
Then, Callan, you’ve lived a very sheltered life.
Give a thought to seperating sex from violence, then a moment after that pidgeon hole me.
“Have you ever followed Vox’s site? He continually quotes people like her, makes flags of them, uses them as evidence.
Anyone who thinks she’s providing a ‘service’ simply has no clue as to the beast they are doing battle with.”
Do you think people like Vox wouldn’t find something, anything to confirm their world view?
As for all this stuff about tit-for-tat, reverse sexism/racism/whatever, I like to think of the saying:
“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
Given the 200-400 post threads on Westeros started at least partially if not specifically due to Moon’s post on Abercrombie, one cannot help but see the efficacy even if one doesn’t always agree with every aspect of the performance rage pieces.
In the last thread, I brought up the guy who wanted me to play the role of Indian-with-thick-accent in his movie, and even after I said I’d do it without the accent he still pestered me about how it wasn’t offensive.
Do you see the problem. He is telling *me* what is offensive and not offensive to Indians. As an “Indian-American”, this is something *I* wouldn’t feel comfortable telling to a person natively born to India possessing such an accent.
That is just a small sample of the kind of things subgroups and historically marginalized groups go through. As I’ve said I’ve been isolated from the worst of it, and even had to have a good deal of this explained to me by a friend who is a Korean women who group up in the American South.
Moon didn’t create the frustration women/gays/PoCs have with SFF or with media in general, she just calls it out without having to feel apologetic about it. And, IRL, we always have to be apologetic about it or we risk losing our friends because we’re apparently in the wrong for making people feel bad about pointing out privilege.
That’s what I think you don’t get. The groups that find Moon’s performance rage refreshing have to deal with this bullshit a lot, possibly everyday. The African American woman who has to balance being strong and competent without being seen as the “uppity bitch”. The Asian gay man who has to fight not one, but *two* stereotypes about him being “effeminate” and “unmasculine”.
And for all that, these are the groups that have to walk on eggshells when protesting the very things that in the ideal world you propose they wouldn’t have to deal with at all. So when Moon cuts off people asking her to be nicer, when she guts responses that resemble the rationalizations many people have to go through on a perhaps daily basis, many of us laugh wickedly because finally finally finally it feels like the tables are turned. Finally “you” get to see what “we” deal with.
That’s part of the reason I linked to the Wild Girls review. Notice what she says, how she asks if you’ve ever had to tremble in anger while trying to ask for a modicum of respect for your first person viewpoint on the very topics of racism/sexism/homophobia. If some supposedly tiny thing has upset you because it triggers all kinds of memories of prejudice but you don’t even get to talk about it because you’ll be the wet blanket, the bad guy.
And God only knows what the multiplier on that is if you are a woman, because when you get upset you’re the overly emotional one, the bitchy one, the one who just needs a (implied forced) sexual act to set you straight (pun intended).
And that’s the thing that really gets people, and why they rally to Requires. The real life experiences that they have to deal with are seen as the trivial, and they should feel bad because when they try to fight about depictions in SFF they are told “oh, come on, it’s just a book.”
It is obviously not just a book to them, it is every moment of their lives, but apparently this isn’t as important as the enjoyment people need to have of Tolkien or whatever depiction of fantasy has come down the pipeline. When they ask for a strong female character, they have to hear long whines about tokenism, when the number of men given power often *just* b/c they are men (or white, or straight) is tokenism^1000000000000…
So, yes, maybe in some theoretical world of people based on academic studies Moon’s site will lead to the great race/sex war. In the meantime, it seems many people will be enjoying the breath of fresh air that the performance rants provide.
But then, honestly, I *don’t* know why so many women/PoCs/queer-persons feel so comfortable at Moon’s site. They might even have *individual* reasons for liking RoH that the people (guessing white men?) talking in your linked interview don’t know about.
I suppose if I-as-You was genuinely interested, I might do something crazy like ask them rather than quote academic studies and interviews *at* them.
In the last thread, I brought up the guy who wanted me to play the role of Indian-with-thick-accent in his movie, and even after I said I’d do it without the accent he still pestered me about how it wasn’t offensive.
Do you see the problem. He is telling *me* what is offensive and not offensive to Indians.
If you read him as saying he wasn’t trying to be offensive/his intent was not to be offensive, then what you get is a flipside – your saying you get to decide what *his* intent is, by saying you get to decide what is offensive and what isn’t. Your offended? Suddenly his intent was to offend.
Saying “I get your not trying to be offensive, but I still find that stuff offensive” works. Saying “That’s offensive” actually contains bullshit. Wait, let me state that in align with this post by saying myself; I get your not trying to bullshit, but I still find that stuff bullshitty.
There’s the crux. As a person of Indian descent, I do get to decide what is offensive when it comes to depictions of my people. The only person who might be able to overrule me is a person natively born to India.
And come on, if we’re thinking that me talking with a thick Indian accent is not putting on a show for the privileged, then we live in two different universes.
I may be misunderstanding you but honestly that you think there’s wiggle room is, to me, a sign of rampant privilege in and of itself.
Meh, I’m going to go read some ROH now before I smash something…
Intent matters far less than effect with offensiveness. For example, if you called me a faggot, I’d be offended, regardless of what your intentions were. Or what about using blackface as a halloween costume? The cultural baggage of that practice (in Nth America at least) is horrific, yet I bet plenty of white people these days have no idea. Does that mean I’m ‘wrong’ as a gay person to be offended by being called faggot? Or that a black person offended by blackface has to say “oh, that’s ok, I know you didn’t mean to be offensive”?
Sci, if what you mean by ‘I do get to decide what is offensive’ is if you have decided something is offensive then you also get to decide the persons intent was to offend…well, you get to decide peoples intents for them?
Hypothetical situation: Your offended but the persons intent was not to offend. Is this situation not possible?
Meh, I’m going to go read some ROH now before I smash something…
I find that threatening, but I don’t think your intent was to threaten. All the same though, I find it threatening.
Ultimately deciding their intent doesn’t matter. They’re either ignorant or offensive, and both suck. However, the notion that the people who are being insulted should be the ones who are trying to give charitable views is a good example of privilege.
Eddie C, are you saying that when someone intends to offend and upset you, that’s no different than when someone did not intend to offend and upset you, but their actions ending up doing so? Are you saying both of these are the same, neither better or worse than the other?
Wow, okay, Kalbear atleast is definately saying both are exactly the same. Even though were all pretty ignorant.
There’s something about Eddies ‘has to say’ and Kalbears ‘should’. I think were talking on different wavelengths. If I say don’t stick your hand in the fire, I’m not saying you have to not do it, or should not, nor that if you do so you are wrong somehow. It’s practical.
The same goes here. Goes around, comes around. Treat both as the same, act as if you know someones intent by how offended you are and one day you might ignorantly say something, accidentally offend, and they will act as if they know your intent and can judge you as such. Such is the fire.
When I was about 10 I was really pissed off at something and was having this rage fantasy when suddenly my mind projected my imaginary point of view in the shoes of the person the rage fantasy was about, where it was all a mistake but now as much as the rage fantasy was absolute in its delivery of righteous justice, now I was absolutely fucked. It scared the shit out of me and hey, maybe I’m brain damaged from it to this day and this post?
Again, Callan, the difference is that you’re the bully.
You’re asking the 90 pound weakling to tell you why they feel insulted when you insult them. And you’re probably doing so not because you want greater understanding but because you want to argue with them about why they’re wrong for feeling insulted. Want to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? Okay – go ahead and do that. Picture yourself as a black man growing up in the South US. Do you have any notion of what that’s like? Do you have any notion of dealing with institutionalized discrimination is?
I don’t, honestly. But I also recognize that I don’t have even the capability to judge someone else on that aspect of their lives. If they tell me that I’ve offended them for something I said or that something is offensive to them, the first thing I need to do is understand that they were offended and they have a right to it.
You’re asking the 90 pound weakling to tell you why they feel insulted when you insult them.
I’ve said “Hey, why did you think I was trying to run you over when actually a spider dropped from the ceiling of my car into my lap, I screamed and steered wildly as a result”. You then repeat it as “Hey, why did you think I was trying to run you over when I was trying to run you over?”
Kal, these little oversights make you the bully. Well, more so your coming lack of acknowledgement of your own error. You acknowledge above I talked about ignorance/accident Vs deliberate offensiveness. Then you put words in my mouth as if I only talked about the latter.
It’s not good enough.
If they tell me that I’ve offended them for something I said
If someone told you your intent, Kal. Not just that you offended by action, but also by intent. Like they know your intent better than you do.
I just told you your a bully and your going to balk at that. The principle is right there, in your balking at it. But I’m not sure you can watch yourself reacting against someone telling you your intent. I think you may be stuck entirely in the very rush and tumult of doing it.
Oh, I’m fine being called a bully. Especially when you’re acting so willfully ignorant.
Callan, do you understand that some people do not have the same privileges and life experiences that you do? Can you understand that? Do you get that not everyone sees everyone else as pure equals and that it is not humanity but society that determines these things? I think that’s the real problem talking with you – you’re talking as if everyone exists outside of social groups and society at large and then wonder why I think some people have issues others don’t; shouldn’t they all be valued the same? Start thinking a bit more macro.
No acknowledgment of your error. Not good enough.
While seemingly, being told your own intent ricochets very neatly off you. Seemingly your perfectly unaware of your resistance to being told your own intent. Unaware for doing it so smoothly. I wonder if a group telling you you are a bully would make for a less neat ricochet?
Do you get that not everyone sees everyone else as pure equals and that it is not humanity but society that determines these things?
I’m not sure I understand you, but if I read ‘humanity’ as ‘individuals’, then it seems you’ve given up as an individual? Society somehow dominates (you). Well, if you’ve given up as an individual, why are you blathering on as an individual, here? Or are you some kind of agent of society? Just following its orders in what you post here? Hey, if the agent thing sounds odd, does that mean your outside of society when you post here? Or are you on the inside? An agent of it?
I’ll pay that to the extent your own certainty of you being right on this sexism lark is unbreachable, so too would people who are racist/sexist be certian of them being right in just the same way. So if I can’t raise some uncertainty with you, how could I raise some uncertainty with people who are racist/sexist? Your own determination that your right proves that.
But then again if you doubt, just for a second even, that’d also be a proof that the other side can doubt as well.
It’s an interesting moment that pivots on a soul.
You’re equating the guy who gets run over and then gets mad at the person who ran them over with a person who is bullying, Callan. I think that the idiocy of that analogy would be apparent. But I’ll even coopt your analogy; I think the person who gets run over has every right to be mad at the person who ran them over regardless of the intent of the guy who ran them over. Does it matter to the guy with two broken legs that the driver was distracted or there was a bee or whatever? Not really; at the end of the day that and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee, as it turns out.
See, you’re acting like you’re the wounded one – how dare people come in and tell me I’m a bad person for running that guy over! Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Perhaps, Callan, the issue isn’t that I can’t be dissuaded that I’m right; it’s that I can’t be dissuaded that I’m right by your silly arguments. No, I refuse to buy the monty python ‘we’re all individuals, we’re all different’ argument; things are too complex for such reductions. No, I don’t think that being victimized and the victim blaming the attacker are the same. Yes, I think these things are obvious. I’ve changed my mind on many things over the course of my life, but those were based on good arguments and sound reasoning. Get back to me when you have either or preferably both.
You’re equating the guy who gets run over and then gets mad at the person who ran them over with a person who is bullying, Callan. I think that the idiocy of that analogy would be apparent. But I’ll even coopt your analogy; I think the person who gets run over has every right to be mad at the person who ran them over regardless of the intent of the guy who ran them over. Does it matter to the guy with two broken legs that the driver was distracted or there was a bee or whatever? Not really; at the end of the day that and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee, as it turns out.
Actually when my significant other was hit by a truck (that was turning left while looking right. Not even a spider or bee involved), legally there was a big difference. Personally as well, neither myself nor my partner (who thankfully survived) would want him jailed for attempted murder when what the driver did was fuck up.
And I was pissed as hell. But just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I get to decide the guys intent was murder. Just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I get to act like I have been granted psychic powers and can read his mind and speak his true intent, ala Peter Griffin on family guy consulting the ghost who never lies (who only Peter can hear, of course).
With you it does.
Perhaps, Callan, the issue isn’t that I can’t be dissuaded that I’m right; it’s that I can’t be dissuaded that I’m right by your silly arguments.
Your not making or hearing argument, Kal – you just treat accident or willful intent as both sucking/both being the same, as stated in your post above.
I wasn’t even bothering to touch that. Were you trying to make an argument with that?
No, I refuse to buy the monty python ‘we’re all individuals, we’re all different’ argument; things are too complex for such reductions.
Things are too complex to do anything but treat everyone as being the same?
“And I was pissed as hell. But just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I get to decide the guys intent was murder. Just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I get to act like I have been granted psychic powers and can read his mind and speak his true intent, ala Peter Griffin on family guy consulting the ghost who never lies (who only Peter can hear, of course).
With you it does.”
Yeah. We have a serious problem of communication. Probably because of idiotic analogies.
Here’s the straight statement, Callan, without analogy. If someone makes a racist remark regardless of their intent they should be responsible for that remark, the pain it causes and the reaction it elides. That does not make them a racist necessarily (though it certainly hints at such). If they make several remarks like that, eventually that becomes much better evidence that they are a racist.
I’m not talking about intent. I don’t care about intent. Intent ultimately doesn’t matter; actions do. I am making zero value judgments about intent and am leaving it out entirely. You’re the one making a big deal about it.
“Your not making or hearing argument, Kal – you just treat accident or willful intent as both sucking/both being the same, as stated in your post above.”
If someone calls a woman a fucking cunt, I don’t really care if they were intending to be misogynistic or intending to just hurt or intending to joke; once they state it their intent doesn’t matter nearly as much as the interpretation of what they said. And if someone interprets it as being hurtful or misogynistic that is a reasonable interpretation.
“Things are too complex to do anything but treat everyone as being the same?” YES. A thousand times yes.
Kal, so if in your future you accidentally hit someone while driving, you’ll expect the same punishment as if you had tried to run someone down?
Let’s say they fine you $204 dollars (I draw this number from what the truck driver was fined). So now, if you want, you can try and run someone down who you wish to murder and…it’ll just cost you $204 dollars.
That’s your world where intent don’t mean shit.
I’m begining to see why Scott has this big deal about writing this damnation stuff where no consideration is made.
I guess the question is whether you lap it up or start to see it as problematic. Because as far as I can tell Earwa damnation doesn’t give a shit about intent either. And you seem well into it.
If someone makes a racist remark
This is the process your thinking by.
A: Someone DID make a racist remark
B: So how do we find out what is a racist remark?
C: Well someone DID make one, that’s clear. So let’s simply look to whoever heard it. There, since a racist remark DID happen and they heard it, they are capable of detecting them, clearly.
No doubt that’ll all sound perfectly straight forward to you. The coin just appears.
“Kal, so if in your future you accidentally hit someone while driving, you’ll expect the same punishment as if you had tried to run someone down?”
Not exactly. I expect that regardless of what else happens I’d have to pay for damages caused. That I’d be expected to deal with the ramifications. That that person would be pretty pissed at me, one way or another.
And more importantly, I’d care about it not happening again. At least if I was the one getting run over that’d be one of my biggest issues.
You care about punishments, as if racists have some way of being punished by bloggers. I care about the results. It’s funny; you keep framing this from the perspective of the person who is making the racist/sexist remarks. Why do you think that is?
“That’s your world where intent don’t mean shit.”
Yes, if you assume that I believe a racist remark is the same pain as being hit by a car. Try actually addressing things without the analogies. It’ll make your life a lot easier.
“A: Someone DID make a racist remark
B: So how do we find out what is a racist remark?
C: Well someone DID make one, that’s clear. So let’s simply look to whoever heard it. There, since a racist remark DID happen and they heard it, they are capable of detecting them, clearly.
No doubt that’ll all sound perfectly straight forward to you. The coin just appears.
”
Actually, similar to much of your writing I don’t understand your point at all, including a few of your sentences.
I think, maybe, this is getting at the notion that there is some Objective Truth About Racism. And that’s not accurate. Racism and sexism are very much determined by societal mores, not by some specific measure. It is as important to have the person’s reaction to the remark as the remark itself. When I say “someone did make a racist remark” it presumes the listener because otherwise what’s the point? Do you think it matters to me that you’re a racist bigot in the privacy of your own home? It doesn’t to me; it might shock people to see it, but no more than countless other behaviors you have when others aren’t around.
Racism, sexism, misogyny are all judgment values. That implies a judge.
Not exactly. I expect that regardless of what else happens I’d have to pay for damages caused. That I’d be expected to deal with the ramifications.
How do you deal with the ramifications of a murder you commited?
It’s funny; you keep framing this from the perspective of the person who is making the racist/sexist remarks. Why do you think that is?
Why do you adopt this bullying – how on earth did people treat you when you were young that you adopt this method? Did other people do this to you – imply something and if you argued, well, they imply something about you arguing?
Why do you never frame this from the perspective of the person making a remark that by the listeners own decisions on what is or isn’t racist/sexist, makes a declaration?
Are they sub human to you? Do you hate to even think from their perspective, even for a second? They are orcs, you are Legolas?
Hopefully your right there is no effect from bloggers, but see my other post on the benefit hand out test, where one test group is primed to think someones sexist while the other isn’t, then we record the average of how much of a bonus for work done is given by each group. Actually really that test should have two groups who can buy a book, prime one group to think the author is sexist. See how many in each group would buy the book.
When I say “someone did make a racist remark” it presumes the listener because otherwise what’s the point?
I can’t parse this sentence. The listener made a racist remark?
It is as important to have the person’s reaction to the remark as the remark itself.
So you aught to be saying “I think some people would find that racist if they heard it”. You don’t try and speak for them by saying “That’s racist”? It’d be atleast a bit patronising to act as if you know their own minds as well as they do.
I’ve suffered my fair share at the hands of others, trust me. Enough to curl your toes, if your life is as coddled as you say. I understand how nice the pseudo-empowerment that comes with voicing indiscriminate rage feels. Injuring innocents? Descrediting voices? That’s no way to win this particular fight.
Otherwise, as I said, if she’s interested in hanging up her troll spurs, I have no problem debating. Otherwise, she’s filled my metaphorical orifices with quite enough invective as it is. You suggesting that I’m remiss for not willing to ‘rationally engage’ someone who literally sneers at rational engagement is… I just dunno what to make of it.
“That’s no way to win this particular fight.”
I used to think this way too, Scott – that the truly vitriolic haters do nothing but push people towards the edges, and that only moderation will win votes.
Sometimes when you’re the oppressed party it just feels good to let it go and not worry about offending – or purposely do offend. And telling them to talk more quietly or that you’re being offended and that they should stop – that’s just another means of oppression.
Very rarely has true, consistent, effective change happened when people came to an agreement about values and agreed to compromise. Very rarely does the majority grant rights to the minorities without a fight.
What do you think of Haidt interview?
What do you make of the fact that out of the thousand plus who have checked the post, a mere ten have bothered to click on the link?
Have you even read it?
I’ve not watched the 47 minute video, no. I have read the transcript.
What I make of the fact about Haidt’s link not being discussed is essentially that you did a good job of derailing your own discussion without asking anything hugely important about it. You don’t discuss his points much; why should your readers?
As to the article, I think it cherry-picks. We are certainly tribal in nature (my favorite analogy is the monkeysphere) but that doesn’t mean we can’t or don’t belong to many tribes at once. It does limit our critical thinking to some degree but thankfully tribal membership is often very mercurial and plastic these days. People change their mind all the time. I do think that the US has been in particular pushing these tribal stupidities to the point of uselessness in the government, but that doesn’t mean that personal tribal affiliations are so cut and dried.
My strong suspicion is that the media portrays a significantly more fractured and divisive electorate than is the actual truth. I don’t have data to back that up; it’s entirely anecdotal. It’s based on talking to tons of people across the US from all sorts of places and economic viewpoints – and they don’t all agree on anything. As Haidt himself says, “So, but most Americans are not that politically engaged, and they’re the ones that decide the elections.”
I also think Haidt errs too much on the side of evopysch.
“You don’t discuss his points much; why should your readers?”
Huh? You out and out baffle me sometimes. Probably because I don’t mention his terms, like sacralization?
Evopsych is speculative – no doubt about that. What alternative do you think he ignores?
“Huh? You out and out baffle me sometimes. Probably because I don’t mention his terms, like sacralization?
Evopsych is speculative – no doubt about that. What alternative do you think he ignores?
”
Yes. You don’t talk about the article much at all. you don’t quote it and you don’t use his terminology. It’s a poor way to encourage people to read the article if that was your goal.
Haidt primarily discussed how humans are hardwired for this tribal fight and whatnot based on us being social monkeys; I think that this ignores the notion that this isn’t necessarily a global phenomenon, that culturally it is very disparate (Eastern cultures, for example, often do not show this kind of us vs. them value proposition at a smaller scale and can work in significantly larger monkeysphere schemes well), and that fractionalism appears to be correlated a lot more with the ability to connect to more like-minded people. At the same time, he completely ignores things like the diversification of the US. My strong suspicion about a lot of ‘human as monkey’ notions is that they’re tied much more strongly to linguistics than anthropology. Both are hard to test.
That’s a pretty facile characterization of his views. The complexity issue, he wouldn’t deny at all. He’s talking about a specific bind the kinds of mechanisms that may lay behind it. How did all this complexity and diversity get boiled down into a binary stand-off? I agree the answer as he poses it is too simplistic, but I suspect he would acknowledge as much. The cognitive psych stuff certainly jibes with everything I’ve read on the topic.
I think the issue I have with acrackedmoon’s blog is that she does not balance her views. She displays no inkling of doubt. She does not acknowledge what the author has done right but only harps upon (with such strong language) what she thinks is wrong.
Let’s use this example: You are doing something that most would agree is wrong e.g. addicted to gambling. Under what circumstances would you stop?
1) Someone you know doesn’t give a hoot about you asks you to stop
2) Someone who cares about you (and who you know acknowledges your qualities) asks you to stop
I would think (2) would stand a much better chance (perhaps still low) than (1) of working.
Same applies to acrackedmoon’s posts. She rants and rants. Most people would just switch off or would immediately experience strong negative emotions that results in less room for rationale argument.
Contrast that to a more balanced reviewer who points out both the positives and negatives. I believe criticism in this manner would filter through better (admittedly may still not work, but better chance of working)
No scientific basis for this claim – anyone seen any studies? I only know of the post on ‘you are not so smart’ that might support this point.
She displays no inkling of doubt.
I think it’s scary that so many people seem to find that attractive. I guess when you feel vulnerable (I’m guessing from Sci’s account of people giving stories there of disability and oppression), the last thing you want is more uncertainty. Or atleast you’ll not readily gravitate to uncertainty.
This is partially the focus of Haidt’s research. There’s tonnes of research on belief polarization to this effect as well.
The ‘no inkling of doubt’ could be expressed about Scott as well, with similar cult of personality results.
KB, you mean on his own intent he has no doubt? So others could tell him his own intent?
Does that apply to you as well? Who can tell you your own intent, Kal? If I say your intent here is trying to make up for a mistake you made a long time ago, do I know your intent better than you do? How do you know I’m wrong?
Great post, saajanpatel.
“The ‘no inkling of doubt’ could be expressed about Scott as well, with similar cult of personality results.”
In what way? He seems quite burdened by doubt to me.
Why don’t you post a link to Vox’s site? It’d be amusing at the very least.
What happened to your feud with Vox anyway? I feel like he and the evolutionary psychology espousing pickup artists do far more damage any number of angry feminists can.
I have my hands full quite enough. I have been meaning to post a link to his article on rape, though, at the very least to remind everyone of the real stakes. And the fact that he probably gets 100x the traffic of me, Larry, Pat, and the Dude combined.
Fuck this noise.
On the one hand, we have the girl who answers every piece of criticism with gems such as ‘neckbeards’, ‘mansplaining’ & ‘lol’. Then we have Bakker, (and you’re not doing yourself ANY favours, dude) trying to explain about the how this is all so unfair (vagsplaining?) in an increasingly brittle tone. And lastly we have Larry pretending to be the moderate intermediary, all the while being a condescending dick on twitter.
Everybody’s louder than everyone else, everybody’s outrage is more valid than everybody else’s, and NOTHING is being accomplished. This is time that I could have spent reading some other useless crap elsewhere or getting drunk alone.
Internet drama. Just precious.
You’re probably right. But the proof’s in the pudding now, isn’t it?
How about you? Will you ever forget the Criteria Question?
No, most likely I will not, but that’s irrelevant at this point, as the Criteria Question ought to precede the debate, not be tacked on three clusterfucks later after everyone has already gotten their rage on.
As you said, the answer is in the pudding, but no one actually reads the pudding, we eat it, smear it all over ourselves and then strut around proud as a prepubescent boy with his first boner as if we’ve won something.
Questions like these are so utterly unfitting for the internet arena, I don’t see why anyone would ever bother. This whole conversation would have been PERFECT as a panel discussion at a con or something, where the participants can’t cherry pick which aspects of the problem to approach. Here, in the cultural pit that is the internet, not so much.
What did you think of the Haidt interview?
I thought it was depressing, and I came out feeling that any resoution for anything ever is further away than ever before. Then again, I am a glutton for punishment (though not as much as you, I suspect), so I think I’ll read the book before succumbing completely to despair.
I have a question for you as well: Are you enjoying this? I read Elodie’s reply at the bottom of the page and the rancour nearly floored me. How anyone can be so venomous towards another human being, disagreements or not, is just beyond me, and I don’t understand how this is worth it for you. To some, you’ll always be just another white man and nothing you ever say will ever change that.
Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, say, “This is what I was trying to do, and this is what I wanted to achieve. If my text offended you, I am deeply sorry, and if I did not, I hope it inspired you to consider my intended message.”
Defeatist, I know, but it’ll be better for your soul.
I’ve tried that route before with the Vox crowd and it seemed pretty effective. I dunno… Maybe I’m switching it up out of a sense of vindictiveness. The strange thing is that none of this stuff ‘gets’ to me anymore. I get the odd death threat now and again, and maybe that helps police a sense of proportion. Either that, or maybe I’ve just grown numb. Elodie’s post just made me feel sad… not for anyone in particular. All of us, I suppose.
Alright, I guess I’ll end this depressing exchange by pointing out that I was introduced to your works by Larry, a man I have always held in the highest regard, and still do even if I a slightly miffed at how this whole circus has played out, and have since introduced them to several of my friends, men and women.
As of this moment, they stand on the far left side of the shelf that also houses works by authors such as M. John Harrison, China Mieville, Mervyn Peake & Ursula K. Le Guin.
So yeah, you can take that for what it’s worth.
I hold Larry in the highest regard as well. All I said was that he was wrong about ROH. I’ve disagreed with him online and off about many things over the years and it’s never been a problem.
Disagreements are fine. i was annoyed by the exchange that ran parallell on twitter.
I don’t twitter. Why?
I don’t feel like quoting him, but just check out his profile. It’s Squirrelpunkd, and it goes back a couple of days.
Will it bum me out? I really do consider Larry a friend.
All I found is this…
I think I have to reach as far back as public school to remember what it was like to be entertained, let alone convinced by this kind of discourse.
Oh well. She thinks of me.
I suppose I should note at this point that what troubles me most about all of this is that there’s crosstalking going on here when I think it’d be more judicious to just stop and listen and not respond. I know we disagree on the value of acrackedmoon’s commentaries (for what it’s worth, I do try to give you the benefit of the doubt in your fiction, despite my increasing misgivings about certain themes, of which misogyny as Scripture based is only a fraction of the unease, but you probably knew this from discussions years ago), but what I think what’s happened here is something like this:
1) You resurrect an argument from several months ago, using a comment I made in passing in regards to an unrelated issue as the gateway for provoking a discussion. Yes, I said provoking, because the rhetoric that followed certainly wasn’t indicative of a willingness to listen. You may believe differently, but looking at the terms of the debate, it’s hard not to see it otherwise.
2) Of course it gets out on Twitter. At this point, I see this as a supersized version of that old truism of “Authors should try, whenever possible, to refrain from responding to critics.” Ann Rice made a fool out of herself responding in an Amazon comment about one of her novels. It’s hard not to see something similar here, because all you are doing is providing fodder for ridicule.
3) What follows is embarrassing to read. Scott, I know you a bit better than most others responding here or elsewhere. I don’t think you’re a raging misogynist (the more insidious version lurks among the vast majority of the human population), but what I think has happened is that instead of just accepting that the text as it stands right now supports a misogynistic interpretation of it, you’ve done a seemingly clever reversal in which the readers’ interpretative schemata are on trial instead of the text itself. To that, I just shrug, because while that certainly could be the case to some extent, what I see happening is that you’ve privileged your understanding of what you’ve written to the extent that it easily comes across as a disparagement of readers. In that case, it is understandable that the reactions would be fierce and that there would be quite a bit of validity to counterarguments that what you are doing is derailing the discussion from the original terms of the argument (reader reactions to graphic scenes of rape and violence that do not readily support anything other than an apparent justification of textual misogyny (I read it as textual misanthropy, but that’s a different matter for another time)).
4) Humans being what they are, line drawings take place. You seem to place great value on neuroscience discoveries regarding the limitations of the human brain (duh, the title) and the brain’s ability to “game the system” for certain evolutionary ends. I’m not arguing against that, but I would note that in the course of making such comments in the course of a heated discussion, that you are downplaying, if not overlooking entirely, the powerful impulse, often referred to as empathy or altruism, where people, when they aren’t trying to conceive of “the other” are trying to make “the other” something to which they could relate on some level, which causes problems in parsing the fictions, because there are so few places where one could use this ability to “relate with the characters.” Because I’ve met you in person, it is much easier for me to empathize to an extent the dilemma you perceive yourself in, but there are limits to this. I know you are different in person than when “talking shop” online, which makes all of this so frustrating to read. You are coming across, even to me on occasion, as being vindictive and worst of all, petty in having this argument. I know it’s difficult to be quiet when someone dog cusses you (after all, I have taught emotionally disturbed teens for most of the past four years), but sometimes you just need to parse what is being said under the rhetoric. To date, I don’t think you’ve done this effectively. What’s so hard about just going quiet and thinking things over and keeping what good can be taken from the points made and rejecting silently what needs to be rejected? That’s what I was trying to say a few days ago, but I don’t think that was understood well, or if it was, it was rejected out of hand.
5) Sarcasm is a good release of frustrations, on occasion. I use it frequently, which seems to have caused some consternation in some quarters. But beyond it, what I think is happening is that you’ve lost control of this discussion (if you ever wanted it, I grant) and that it’s devolved into “Why is Bakker continuing to make an ass and fool out of himself by constantly sounding as if he’s talking over/ignoring the points made by others who have bones of contention?” At that point, if there isn’t a mea culpa or some heroic effort to engage the arguments in terms that may hint at the author’s fallability, it seems things will just continue to devolve until it becomes a parody of a discussion. It makes me uncomfortable to see this, because I see some valid points being dismissed by you out-of-hand and your justification for using the pejorative “the Dude” is just sad, because you’re better than that. It reads like you’re trying to win some mythical points rather than tackling the issue head-on by engaging the points instead of the rage rhetoric.
Damn, I’ve written an essay here. I don’t have time to do this and I am tempted to cuss you out for getting me involved enough in this that I wrote so much! The shorter version would be to question why you are even responding if you aren’t going to engage the actual arguments being made. In the meantime, I can’t help but think that things are a bit too dogmatic at the time for healthy discourse. Maybe next time just be quiet when someone criticizes you/the text?
The problem being, Larry, that I have bitten many a bullet over the issue of misogyny in my books. Just ask Kalbear – my arch-critic on this topic for many a year. If you have an argument for some other bullet I need to bite, then by all means, let me have it.
Otherwise, I’ve been told so many times by so many people about how badly I come off about this or that topic I’m debating the opposing side of that I really find it difficult to care anymore. I don’t verbally abuse people (though I get prickly sometimes). I consider actual arguments carefully. I still find myself honestly stumped by things that people write here. You’ll find “You’re probably right…” in my replies fairly regularly. But most of the time I’m just arguing for a new way to look at old assumptions and old problems, be they literary, philosophical, or political. Thus this blog. Readers have their readings, and writer’s have their readings, and the possibilities of the text lies somewhere in between. The mechanisms that govern them are largely unconscious, and they are neither fair nor rational.
And you know what? I’ve watched the discourse change. I’ve seen the New Weird criticisms of epic fantasy dry up and blow away. I’ve seen the last of the avowed ‘post modernists’ abandon their posts. I’ve long ago lost count of the references I’ve encountered to the ideas I’ve expressed here and elsewhere. Unpopularity is a small price to pay. And I’m sure the internet has seen far, far worse than the likes of me.
As for the Dude. As I’ve said many times, it’s the one interpersonal quid pro quo which I’ll indulge – a small disrespect to match the well-nigh endless list of names she has for me. It’s a trap street, like I say: a way to show people how disproportionate our moral yardsticks tend to be when we succumb to coalition thinking. Think about it: Why are you castigating me for calling the Dude the Dude? Have you castigated her in turn?
So lay it on me, Larry! What bullets do I need to bite?
And in the meantime, how about replying to the posts as they are written: What did you think of the Haidt interview? Do you not believe that rationality flies out the window in the vicinity of discourse like the Dude’s? Do you not believe that discourse like the Dude’s generates belief polarizaton?
Does the thought of contradicting her worry you?
“Think about it: Why are you castigating me for calling the Dude the Dude? Have you castigated her in turn?”
You talk as if you are equals. You speak as if you have the same power and privilege as a Thai woman. You then question why people would condemn you when cheering her and never stop to think why people cheer the underdog.
I think the differential between our relative ‘power and privilege’ and between me calling her Dude and her calling me everything long of a litterbug more than warrants my stupid little moniker. How about you log onto ROH under an unfamiliar name and say ‘Stop that name-calling?’ What do you think will happen?
When she and her friends tweet about hating white men do you pump your fist and shout, ‘Go Girl!’?
I fully believe that institutional power differentials have a powerful bearing on the meaning of sexism and racism. I also think if someone personally starts haranguing and you politely turn your back on them or patiently suffer their assault simply because they are a minority you are actually doing something more racist/sexist – paternalistic – than if you engage them the way you would someone belonging to your group.
Well Scott, the first obvious bullet to bite is the one regarding authorial intent. Sometimes, you just have to let that Text take that pounding from those Readers whose interpretational models are different from your own conceptions of the Text’s context. But from what I gather, you seem to want to provoke discussion along the lines dictated by your reading and understanding of certain texts. NB: Your desire for me to discuss the Haidt interview instead of me engaging in my original intent in responding, which was to note the reasons for my disagreement with you in this case regarding acrackedmoon. Who was it that said something about “shifting goalposts?” 😉 I’ll address the Haidt interview shortly, but first a few other comments.
In regards to your commentary style, I seem to recall you getting so entrenched at times about a particular issue that you worry at that until the point of exhaustion. One example being the rebuttal/discussion you and Jeff VanderMeer had over politics in fantasy. It got to the point where it seemed the minutiae had superceded the actual, slight difference in opinion. It is something that I’ve noticed in several online discussions with you over the years. It’s not something that offends me or even irritates me much (even if I do grow weary of conflict after a short while with almost anyone, minus a few core issues that rarely ever come up for online discussion), but others do view it as verbal wanking to the point that an ocean could be filled with it.
But you derail the discussions sometimes, which is strange, considering what I just said above. You switch to specific critiques of a barely-related topic. To that all I can say is that critique models, just like people, adapt and change. As for New Weird, it seems a stronger argument is being made that it is a group-specific crystallization emerging from a stronger, older literary subgenre that is diffuse in its origins and in its forms of presentation. Of course, I’m a bit biased in this, seeing that I am a columnist for Weird Fiction Review, but still I don’t think your rationale there is airtight.
So let me see if I understand this correctly: I need to castigate her directly (and presumably loudly and frequently) because she used invective to discuss how disgusted she was with the text and possible authorial intent? Change her to say “radical Muslims” and me to “a moderate Muslim” and what happens to the imploring message? Is it not enough that I say directly on Twitter and now here that despite the problematic nature of this particular discussion, that I still consider you to be a friend of mine, albeit one with some views with which I disagree? Sadly, to me it sounds more like a defensive justification that says “Well, she started it!” I am used to people using all sorts of profanities to voice their frustration and rage at things. Tell me honestly, do you think that if her post was all cookies and cream that her outrage would have been as apparent? Would you have linked to it in the first place (and repeat it six months later) if she had merely said “I strongly disagree with how he approaches the issue of women in an epic fantasy setting and I no longer wish to read any more of this disappointing book.”? The sad reality is that too often the so-called “marginalized” are pushed off to the side and ignored unless they transgress that imposed boundary of polite discourse to which only certain members of a society are entitled to comment at length. I don’t lecture her on that because I understand to a slight extent the motivations beyond it. Likewise, I pay really close attention to the underlying issues and I consider them, just like I’m trying to do here. I don’t always succeed, but there is some effort at least some of the time.
Now to the Haidt after a long than intended commentary. If the interview is indicative of the book, then I would be apt to distrust his arguments on the grounds that 1) it attempts to create a polarized duality without examining the coalitions within the American model, and 2) it does not appear, based on the interview, that the context for his arguments goes beyond an Anglo-American conceptualization of social/cultural politics. For example, I come from an educated family that has distinct working class (I’m not going to use middle class except for those that might be called “white collar”) roots. My father is an evangelical Protestant social conservative, yet he does not favor the elimination of Medicare/Medicaid. My mother grew up in a Yellow Dog household and has never voted Republican, yet she does not like the social issues raised by the so-called liberals. I am closer to being an anarchist than I am to being a Democrat (again, using the American model that Haidt seems to employ, based on the interview), yet as I grow older I’m beginning to abhor more than earlier explicit violence, while having to accept that it is done without my conscious desire. Those personal examples do not fit neatly with what he is discussing. There are still a plethora of regional issues (Westerners in general are more likely to have a different attitude toward water conservation than an Easterner; Southerners across the political spectrum tend to have a different outlook on society than a Midwesterner might; etc.). There are several interstices between these various social/regional/cultural/economic groups that do not encourage much polarization. Now granted, it is much more difficult to find these interstices when you do not know the other people well and that does seem to lead to stronger confrontation. However, I do not accept Haidt’s hypotheses because it seems to lean too strongly toward a dualist (and perhaps duelist? ;)) conceptual model. People fracture too easily in coalitions (and both the Republicans and Democrats are political coalitions due to necessity caused by how elections are determined in the US: very different story in France, Italy, or even Germany, to use the countries with whose political models I know something about) for true, lasting social or belief polarization to occur. What I suspect is nearer to the case is there is a spectrum that occurs along several fields and some will be distant on one or more of them and close on one or more others. So to answer your final comment, no, I do not think she inspire belief polarization as much as she fractures certain people’s conceptualizations of gender/ethnic/sexuality issues. The first leads to a coalescing of opinion, while the other can also spark self-doubt and re-assessment of their previously-held opinion. For myself at least, the latter has occurred.
I don’t understand what you mean at the beginning: by biting the bullet, I mean concede an error in judgement or execution. I’ve acknowledged many times that my writing fails too many readers regarding gender. All I’ve ever argued against is that my intent is sexist, or that these readings are the TRUE readings – and only because there’s no such thing as ‘true’ readings. Are you saying I should have conceded these two points as well?
The Vandemeer debate was what, some five or six years ago? Longer?
As far as our debates go I’m inclined to say almost the identical thing about you! It’s funny how it’s always the other guy that seems narrow… But then that’s my point.
Haidt only gives us a thumbnail, to be sure. And I would quibble with many of the specifics of his analysis as well. But you do believe that moral vitriol sabotages our ability to reason as well as generates belief polarization?
What I’m saying is that you probably shouldn’t have responded in the first place if it ends up being a quibbling over words.
I think it was around 5-6 years ago, but it just came to mind as an event where you argued at length on something that I think would have been handled differently if in person. Remember, you went radio silent soon after that for a few years, so there wasn’t much else I could have remembered during the time before certain things changed in my personal life as well and I became more than just an occasional online commentator/blogger.
Oh, I’ll readily concede that I have my blind spots, but I would add that the difference is that over the intervening years that my interests have changed and that has affected my perspectives somewhat. When you have a class full of teen girls who were the victims of sexual abuse/incest, it does affect your mindset on what is okay and what is verboten when it comes to scenes of violence. I recently did a post on my blog where I looked at a month’s worth of reads and noticed that I was continuing to self-select against works that depict violence graphically. It’s not that I can’t handle it (I still read your fiction, not to mention even more unsettling fictions and non-fictions), but that I was growing weary of detecting the dissonance between what I had witnessed from dozens of my students over the past four years since I started teaching in residential treatment centers after a hiatus from teaching (that I’m on another hiatus is due to company issues and not my performance). Interactions that are intense like that startle assumptions.
As for vitriolic interactions, it’s not a universal thing, as our differing reactions show. Yes, I’ve had more positive interactions, but that may simply be because I’m trained to listen to what lies beyond the anger and frustration. As for the sabotaging of reason, I would merely note that reason, like so many other interpretative tools, is double-edged and liable to betray its wielder. I reason, yes, but I do tend to feel first (which is a point of Haidt’s with which I can agree to a limited degree), as that is my baseline personality trait (on the Keirsey scale, I’m an ENFP, flawed as that Jungian-based approach may be). It certainly colors my world to the extent that as much as I need to write this long-delayed commentary on poet/writer Eric Basso’s poetry collections, I find myself delaying it because I’m responding emotionally to several of the poems (having seen the pain my grandmother’s five years of dementia inflicted on my mother and experiencing it occasionally myself when I’d visit), his poems and silences depicting his caring for his mother and the anguish her suffering was causing him has triggered memories of my still fresh grief at her passing three months ago. For some readers, those “triggers” are going to override the reason tool. It may be incomprehensible for some, but it happens and is a vital part of human life I suspect.
So what if someone reacts emotionally (too much being a relative matter)? It may be a human quality or flaw, depending on how you look at it, but it is still there. How do you respond? That’s the tricky part, as it seems that there’s no universal default setting. Angry frustration in response does happen. I certainly have not been full of love and concern when I was called a goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch on a few occasions. But I tended to regret those moments and tried to see if some common ground could be found. Sure, in this case, it’s unlikely to occur, but there is something to that religious adage of turning the other cheek on occasion. Permanent polarization does not have to occur. We just too often choose to allow it to happen, sometimes vaguely regretting afterward that it was just “meant to be.”
But what Haidt says regarding the sacralization of values, the kinds of blindness and hypocrisy that results, and the descent into vitriol is true. She literally divides the world into two camps: those who are ‘in’ and those who are not. There’s always more people on the outside. She is a feminist who is bent on undermining feminism in the name of feminism. There’s a damn good chance.
You’re right about the perception issue… But my next post actually responds to what you’re saying.
“I think the differential between our relative ‘power and privilege’ and between me calling her Dude and her calling me everything long of a litterbug more than warrants my stupid little moniker. How about you log onto ROH under an unfamiliar name and say ‘Stop that name-calling?’ What do you think will happen?”
I think she’d ban me because I’m being a pretentious, oppressive neckbeard dickhead. Her blog is about dealing with paternalistic, white, male oppression; your blog is about…hmm. I should probably not say what I think your blog is about. In any case, why would you think that her banning someone trying to suppress her viewpoint when the whole point of the blog is lambasting and lampooning people who suppress viewpoints to be inconsistent?
Again, you act as if you and her have an equal footing. You act as if you are as oppressed as her.
“When she and her friends tweet about hating white men do you pump your fist and shout, ‘Go Girl!’?” No, because I don’t read twitter. When she makes posts sometimes I agree and sometimes I don’t, but what I do do regardless is think about it. Which is what the best comedians do.
” I also think if someone personally starts haranguing and you politely turn your back on them or patiently suffer their assault simply because they are a minority you are actually doing something more racist/sexist – paternalistic – than if you engage them the way you would someone belonging to your group.” Grats. You have that privilege. So useful of you to exercise it.
Actually, you’re the one who’s being paternalistic, don’t you think?
I’m calling her out, individual to individual. I understand that she belongs to a victim group, but I don’t see that as warranting anything other than acknowledgement on the individual level. (The institutional, policy level, is a different story). You’re talking about special treatment, concessions… Are you not?
“Actually, you’re the one who’s being paternalistic, don’t you think?” Not particularly; how am I being paternalistic? I respect her views and don’t think about correcting her because that’s not constructive or useful due to who I am. The thing is, she has openly stated that she doesn’t want white men coming on her blog and telling her why she’s wrong. How is me saying ‘okay’ paternalism? This seems akin to being upset that you can’t sing at someone else’s concert even when they asked you not to, or being upset that you can’t compete in a woman’s marathon.
” I understand that she belongs to a victim group, but I don’t see that as warranting anything other than acknowledgement on the individual level. (The institutional, policy level, is a different story). You’re talking about special treatment, concessions… Are you not?”
I’m talking about understanding. I’m saying that you calling her ‘dude’ is tacit reinforcement that she is right about you. I’m saying that her calling you misogynist does not have the same power as you calling her a bitch. If you believe that means special treatment or concessions, so it goes – I see it as recognizing the implicit power imbalances and respecting them when possible.
So where does the magic line between ‘respecting differences’ and paternalism reside?
“So where does the magic line between ‘respecting differences’ and paternalism reside?”
What’s the phrase – “what is the difference between the weed and the flower in the garden?” To answer you question above, I’d say the magic line is owned by the person you’d be paternalizing/respecting.
The best I can do is try, and accept that I get it wrong sometimes. And when I do get it wrong, to try and be better. I’m sure that I am as sexist or racist as the next white man out there; the difference is that I’ve stopped trying to knee-jerk question it when someone calls me on it.
In other words, it’s damn difficult, isn’t it?
Actually no. It’s very easy. It’s very easy to not question as the first instinct, to not debate. To not get offended. It’s almost liberating in its ease.
It’s easy to ask forgiveness. And it’s easy to accept that some people aren’t going to forgive.
if you actually give a damn about people
I don’t think they do (as a hypothesis). I think they give a damn about principle. Which is kind of understandable in evolutionary terms as social groups and laws rest upon principle and so holding on to them has been so important. But yeah, it goes so far that principles are not there to support people, but instead people are there to support principles. To further my hypothesis, a poster in the previous thread surmised that acrackedmoon actually comes from a privileged background. Privileged who have never been at the sharp end/been threatened with scavenger status. So there is no metric for a particular principle ever failing – and so the particular principle becomes even more holy and the natural urge to maintain the principle further reinforced. It’s the great new movie this summer “Trading places”, where a self doubting literary writer trades places with a spoilt Chinese-Thai rich girl! Hilarity ensues! Will she change a culture? Will he find make up that matches his skin tone? Coming to a theatre near you!
Now to turn around and play devils advocate, particular in light of the criteria question: How does one determine when someone isn’t sexist, Vs when someone is but has a multitude of clever, intellectual arguements that simply outwit? Kind of a Kellhus issue – smart enough, and he could be doing anything deep in there? Where’s the weakpoint, instead of perfect Kellhus armour?
Further, if not all claims of sexism are genuine, what about all claims of intent? Are all such claims genuine? If not, how does one determine which intent claims are genuine and which are false?
I think saying “That’s offensive” is different than saying “You are deliberately trying to offend me.”
Of course, after he wouldn’t stop being butt hurt over me making complications in his apparently really important movie schedule and kept trying to cajole me after I told him how I felt – that *is* deliberately offensive. He wanted to put the onus on me to defend my feeling of being offended about depictions of a group I belonged to.
To me, that speaks to the very heart of privilege, and as I said it is ultimately a harmless one compared to the daily realities of many.
This is what I see as the crux. Knowing Moon’s ethnic or economic background doesn’t remove the original burden of a male making statements about feminism, in my mind it is a mark of privilege to think that it could. And yeah, I get that it all feels like a damned-if-do-or-don’t situation, where standing up for yourself at all seems to be seen as an act of sexism in itself.
Yet what is interesting is how quickly things turn on her gender or race. Saying she must be a man, or that she’s the reason the Greeks instituted misogyny, to me reveals some underlying sexism on the part of the person who likely feels like they are simply defending themselves or some work they care about.
How to go forward is a big open problem. Where one person sees injustice and false claims, another is going to see privilege once again asserting itself.
I think answering the issue of communication, let alone trying to discuss solutions, is a great challenge, because our very perceptions of these things seem to exist across a chasm whose crossing I’m not even sure how to address.
Of course, after he wouldn’t stop being butt hurt over me making complications in his apparently really important movie schedule and kept trying to cajole me after I told him how I felt – that *is* deliberately offensive. He wanted to put the onus on me to defend my feeling of being offended about depictions of a group I belonged to.
See, this is after, though. I was more talking at the very moment. I’m inclined to think he’s being borishly insenstive in this example, instead, but maybe that’s splitting hairs. As I said above, in pratical terms someone needs a chance to be told no go areas – if only, so one day you are protected yourself by the same principle, where your ignorant of something but someone else then tells you so you have a chance to know, instead of jumping on you straight away for your ignorance (and dang, we all have lots of ignorance! That day will come!). Possitive goes around comes around! He seems to have been told, but not taken advantage of that knowledge, or perhaps one or two other possibilities.
Knowing Moon’s ethnic or economic background doesn’t remove the original burden of a male making statements about feminism, in my mind it is a mark of privilege to think that it could.
What original burden? In this context I just see two people claiming it, moon and yourself? The claim isn’t ‘there’, somehow existing all by its self. And so it comes down to the particulars of what each of you mean by this ‘male making statements about feminism’ thing (where the particulars might not match or possibly even contrary)
How to go forward is a big open problem. Where one person sees injustice and false claims, another is going to see privilege once again asserting itself.
Metrics, as far as I can tell. I think Scott has atleast asked for a metric method of claim sifting.
If not – well, lets look at a hypothetical situationa and in it, say she’s wrong. Well, she’s repeatedly slandering Scott. Perhaps other authors as well. It’s not just emotional – it means they will have less in this short life we get. An economic stab. Sure, this is just a hypothetical, but isn’t it disturbing to think of it at all?
Not on topic, or even about topic. But of interest to some who can usually be found around here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/07/neuroscience-soldiers-control-weapons-mind
How much of this is conjecture…. well. But it is food for thought
If you need a sniff test for whether a claim of [insert group]-ism is likely to be accurate, I’d suggest checking out whether it’s a habitual complaint from the [insert group.]
Transwomen frequently complain about media portraying them as prostitutes and ‘traps’ for straight men. A story where a transwoman is portrayed as a prostitute or a trap for a straight man is likely transphobic. Blacks frequently complain about media portraying them as dangerous criminals. A story where a black man is a drug dealing gangster is likely racist.
Unless…
Perhaps not even “unless”. Selective examples have their systemic uses, no?
But there has to be, otherwise depiction simply equals sexism/racism/etc. which is clearly not the case. What we generally mean is that first-order representations without any second-order consciousness of the status of those representations, within a socially apologetic (status quo reinforcing) narrative. Fair?
You asked for a reasonable way to determine whether an accusation of racism/sexism is serious or not. I gave you one. There wasn’t an ‘unless’ in there.
So Boyz in the Hood is racist?
Were a lot of black people complaining about Boyz in the Hood being racist? If so, then it’s probably racist. If not, then it’s probably not.
I don’t see why this is so hard.
So accusation does equal racism?
If it comes from a large collection of black people, probably.
If a large collection of women call you sexist, chances are you’re sexist.
Again, don’t see how this is so hard.
So I AM sexist, then? I thought you said you believed I wasn’t.
Wow. So how does that work? If enough people say the sun revolves around the earth, is it true?
Or is sexism some sort of quasi metaphysical that exists by sheer power of belief from a group?
Scott: I don’t think you are. But I’ve always said that I can easily understand how people could come to that conclusion. And since you said very specifically that you are sexist, I’m not sure that this should be all that painful for you.
Callan: You can’t equate normative concepts with scientific ones. Sexism is not physics. Things like societal viewpoints and normative baselines do essentially come from groups. Sexism here is not the same as sexism in China or sexism in Africa, assuming these even exist as concepts there.
KB, this is really part of your problem. Nothing comes from groups. Your own perception is rounding up a bunch of stuff, then saying the group produced that when it was your own perception that created it. Even your idea of a cohesive group is simply you thinking X amount of people constitute a ‘group’.
You can’t see your own perception folding these together, so it does so outside of your control. And so it appears these group things you can’t help seeing produced this stuff.
Your ‘groups’ are really just a form of superstition.
Really? I mean the vast majority of the black characters on The Wire are drug dealing gangsters, crooked cops or corrupt politicians, but I haven’t heard many people people seriously call that show racist.
This example is the problem being highlighted here in a nutshell. Initial impressions have to be resisted, because we’re so bad at quickly analyzing complex portrayals of anything politically charged.
“What we generally mean is that first-order representations without any second-order consciousness of the status of those representations, within a socially apologetic (status quo reinforcing) narrative. Fair?”
Yes, THAT’s fair. Curly’s example of The Wire is useful. I wouldn’t agree it’s racist. But this is not unrelated to the fact I think it’s good. In point of fact, there are critics who think it is racist and I think those critiques are extremely valuable.
Without a doubt, they’re useful. The same goes for my work. It should be critiqued. But there’s a far cry between that and what we’re witnessing here right now.
I love that fact that neither you nor Bakker seem to remember what his Criteria Question was.
The question was ‘How do you distinguish between serious and spurious accusations of racism and sexism?’
You’re correct, the Wire wasn’t accused of racism. As a matter of fact, it was praised by many of the people who are routinely critical of depictions of race in America. The most frequent criticisms I read was for the later seasons: that the Wire made it seem as though almost every person in Baltimore’s poor, black community was involved in the Game.
Which is a legitimate complaint for a show that prides itself on its authenticity.
So your criterion (as opposed to criteria) is that it simply has to be accused of racism or sexism?
@M Caliban
Your post doesn’t have a reply button, so I figure if you reread the thread you’ll get this.
“that the Wire made it seem as though almost every person in Baltimore’s poor, black community was involved in the Game.”
This is as a person who doesn’t live in Baltimore and who isn’t black.
That said, I think what the Wire was trying to do was to show the *effect* the Game has on young, poor, black people. I’m not saying the point you’re raising is wrong, or anything, just that as a non-minority, the perception I had of the show was not that everyone was in the Game, just that the Game has a long reach.
What on earth is this, I don’t even understand what just happened. It just seems to be the text from “Derailing for Dummies,” reiterated over and over, with huge helpings of Godwin’s Law and talking over women.
And then, to cap it all off, IT WAS ALL A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT, GUISE. I haven’t seen that one in a few months.
I feel like this was a long performance-art piece that unfortunately lacked a topic.
Obviously you missed the part with the argument. What’s your counter-argument? Or do you just use glib second-order dismissal to cover for the lack of one?
You’ve never heard of Godwin’s Second Law?
“You can’t troll me because I’m trolling YOU,” he sobs into his cornflakes, surreptitiously Googling Godwin’s Law and wondering what a tone argument is. “Why do you keep saying mean things to me? Here I am, talking over you ONLY in order to argue on your behalf, with more vocabulary words than you used – why can’t you just shut up and be grateful? Why do you have to get so ANGRY!”
He pauses to marshal his thoughts. “I’m Oppressed too,” he goes on. “ONLY I CAN DEFINE RACISM AND SEXISM! My definitions are so much better than yours! My oppression runs so much deeper! Why won’t you just shut up when I’m talking to you?”
His sadness turns slowly to rage. “WHY DIDN’T THAT ONE BITCH LIKE MY BOOK,” he seethes. “THINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH EASIER IF THAT ONE ANGRY BITCH HAD JUST SHUT UP AND LIKED MY BOOK SIX MONTHS AGO! Now people are coming on to my blog, being glib at me! Dismissing me! Telling me I’m not relevant! Telling me I’m sexist! People who actually know me tell me that I’m VERY relevant and NOT sexist! They tell me so frequently!”
Knowledge dawns on him in the darkness. “The feminists are here to steal the bread from my family’s mouths,” he breathes. “THAT’S IT.”
I guess you missed the first part… All the better.
Should I lump you into this category, or do you actually have an argument beyond your ‘tone’? I’m guessing…
“That’s it,” he continues. Tension throbs in his neck. “That’s it. They’re trolls. They’re all trolls. I don’t have to listen to them, because they’re trolls. Trying to tell me what they think. Trying to have opinions – no! Trolls!”
“Pissing on me,” he rages, “Tearing me down.”
Doubt – a seed of it. The spark flickers across his vision. “What if they’re right?” the voice whispers. “What if the other people on the Internet are right.”
“No,” he says coldly. “They can’t be right.”
“But there are so many of them. So many voices, saying the same thing, over and over… saying we’re wrong, R. They keep saying we’re wrong. They keep laughing at us. Some are men. Some are women. Some have PhDs. Some are writers, too. Some are journalists who might write articles.”
“NO,” he says, more loudly now. “They’re TROLLS. Trolly women from trolly woman blogs that nobody reads. By definition: WRONG!”
“But what if they’re right?”
“THEY ARE PISSING ON THE LEGS OF ACCOMPLISHMENT,” he froths. He calms himself. This is not the way. “Our moral systems seem to be designed to avoid false negatives by being completely insensitive to the problem of false positives.” He coughs. “Nazis,” he mutters. “I will be validated by history.”
The voice slithers like Lovecraftian fog. “But there are so many women, R. So many women telling us that we were being misogynistic, and that calling ourselves a feminist and laughing at them and trolling them doesn’t excuse their behavior. What if they don’t stop?”
He shakes his head, hoping to dislodge the insidious voice. “I’ll just keep telling them that they’re wrong, to be quiet and go away. If I shout loudly enough, I’ll be right!”
“What if you have to BE right to … be right?” the traitorous voice murmurs. “What if a lot of people telling you that you’re wrong means that you might be wrong?”
Cold clarity seeps into his head. “YOU,” he breathes. “YOU’RE ONE OF THEM. You’re a troll.”
He reaches into the drawer of his desk. Next to the hand lotion, the wad of tissues, and the well-thumbed ARC of his own first novel, there is a hammer. Just a normal hammer. One end for smashing. One end for clawing.
The voice says, slightly apprehensively, “Do you really think that this is how a public figure who makes his living based on his reputation should confront criticism in public? Because it hasn’t worked well for, you know, Anne Rice or anybody.”
“The cleansing begins tonight,” he tells the hammer. The claw is cold against his forehead. “You will be silent.”
“This certainly seems to be true for the anonymous trolls today. After Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old Long Island girl, committed suicide earlier this year, trolls descended on her online tribute page to post pictures of nooses, references to hangings and other hateful comments. A better-known example involves Nicole Catsouras, an 18-year-old who died in a car crash in California in 2006. Photographs of her badly disfigured body were posted on the Internet, where anonymous trolls set up fake tribute pages and in some cases e-mailed the photos to her parents with subject lines like “Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive.”” The New York Times.
The human brain does not look very much like goo, nor is it pink, despite the assertions of grimdark fantasy writers who can’t be bothered to do their research. It is creamy, both in color and consistency. It resembles pork, grayish, intensely flavored, veined delicately with threads of blood that trace the paths of thoughts and matter. It can shatter, but it cannot melt or spill. It is both tougher and more delicate than we think. It is meat. It always has been. Faced with such truths, the skull has barely the strength of an eggshell.
He thinks that this will be his phoenix moment. Fans will assemble his books into a funeral pyre, and weep as they mourn the passing of something bright and otherworldly, a falling star whose like shall never grace the earth again. Everyone will be sorry that they were mean to him. They will read the obituary of the Insidious Voice, and say “Thank God that one lone man was able to stand up to such targeted misandry! Why, if he hadn’t carved that voice out of his brain, think of the damage that such accusations of sexism could have done to his state of mind. SO much worse than the sexism he perpetrated and defended daily, don’t you think, dear? Make me a sandwich.”
What they really say, though, are things like “Why did he have a hammer in his desk next to his masturbatory aids? Did he smash his dick with it while reading his own graphic rape scenes? Or while writing them?”
and “Why the FUCK didn’t he finish the cornflakes he was crying into at the beginning of the story?”
and “Who?”
“Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.” The New York Times.
I won’t lie I read this blog almost solely for Elodies responses. You are amazing.
Banhammer, my friend. There is only one solution to Elodie’s poison. End it! Drive her from this place!
Why? She’s putting the ‘living’ into ‘proof!’ Maybe a few people are cheering her on, but the hits are climbing into the thousands today.
That’s a fair point. You should advertise on the site? Profit from people who hate you.
While I too am outraged at the implication that having tissues in your desk drawer is in any way “wrong”, a banning would only validate her point.
Gentlemen use handkerchiefs, sir.
“So your criterion (as opposed to criteria) is that it simply has to be accused of racism or sexism?”
Don’t leave out the part of the above proposed definition that if A LOT of members of a group feel that something is bigotted, then there is automatically an issue that should be treated with respect. In your original question, you didn’t ask, “true vs false accusation”, you asked serious or spurious. So if A LOT of black people say you’re racist, and you don’t think so, then at the very least it qualifies as a serious criticism. Ideally, one black person saying someone is racist would be taken seriously, but certainly if for years or decades an accusation is made by a large proportion of a racial group, then it won’t do to say “no, no, no, I need sturdier criteria.” But you know this.
Of course. It’s the single biggest worry with my books.
Thank you Murphy.
IF the work is being criticized in regards to social justice issues AND the criticism is one minority groups frequently level at media THEN the criticism should treated seriously. It works because minority groups know what cultural narratives are most damaging or insulting to them, and those are the ones they’ll focus on.
My criteria are simple: from something to be “ist”, there has to be both a depiction and an endorsement (even if the endorsement is implicit instead of explicit). OR there can be no depiction, but the endorsement is is explicit.
It’s not enough for the protagonist to be involved in doing something, the text has to make a logical or emotional appeal that this racist/sexist/whatever-ist action is actually how things OUGHT to be.
For example, let’s take Lovecraft.
Within his narrative we not only find unfair depictions of other cultures, but the narrative itself establishes xenophobic feelings as justified and rational. It can be stated as “Of course we should hate those other people! They worship evil entities that will destroy the world.”
This contrasts wildly with what Scott is doing. The whole work is saddled with a startling sense of moral disorientation… while we are starting to see the kinds of things that damn people in Earwa, we do not know WHO or WHAT is making the moral judgments, we do not know its nature.
Because of this, we can’t actually say “Well, Scott wrote a world in which it is objectively morally correct for women to just be baby factories so HURR DURR he endorses that in the real world HERP DERP.”
“Because of this, we can’t actually say ‘Well, Scott wrote a world in which it is objectively morally correct for women to just be baby factories so HURR DURR he endorses that in the real world HERP DERP.'”
Forgive my ignorance, but what is HURR DURR and HERP DERP?
“My criteria are simple: from something to be “ist”, there has to be both a depiction and an endorsement (even if the endorsement is implicit instead of explicit). OR there can be no depiction, but the endorsement is is explicit.
It’s not enough for the protagonist to be involved in doing something, the text has to make a logical or emotional appeal that this racist/sexist/whatever-ist action is actually how things OUGHT to be.”
I just spent probably an hour trying to type and post my thoughts in regards to criteria but then I navigated away from TPB before I hit POST (d’oh…that’s what i get for doing this while working). Instead of retyping my ramblings, I will say my criteria is the same as Jorge’s.
Small addition to this. Endorsement is not the only way to be -ist. You can lament the supposed failings of a group, wishing that it could be another way, but alas that’s just how they are. So while saying women should be this or that is a clear example of sexism, so is saying women ARE this or that. Scott noted this in the last post – he has a list of positives he associates with women, and this is a form of sexism, too.
What Scott didn’t note is that associating positives with women as he did (in a blanket statement about all women) is also misogynistic. It’s much easier to hate the things we covet, as Kellhus actually points out in his books to Esme at one point.
I second Jorge Azpurua’s post. Scott’s books in no way condone misogyny. The narrative, in my understanding, is about the way belief shapes reality. If enough people believe something, it will become truth, real. No matter how horrid.
I understand, however, that the way he wrote it leaves some room for people to feel ambiguous about his intention with why he wrote women, and their subsequent rape, the way he did. Yet I don’t believe that you can conclude his “obvious misogyny” by reading these books. It just doesn’t make sense.
Even in the context of (wo)men who have been abused, or (wo)men who belong to minorities. He is not belittling your awful experiences or the daily abuses you suffer. there must be scenes or words that will trigger memories thereof, but those are not aimed at provoking that. It is not their purpose. Which means that you can be offended by them, you take offense by them, but you cannot put the weight of what happened in your life, on an author using it as an instrument. That’s (almost, but not quite) tantamount to censorship. And saying he shouldn’t have written the book the way he wrote it, because you don’t like the world it paints.
Your last statement is the conclusion I have such a hard time not jumping into wholesale. The depiction equals endorsement fallacy has a lot to do with this, I think.
HURR DURR and HERP DERP is onomatopoetic short hand for the noises a fucking moron makes.
See, this debate is so profoundly stupid that I can’t help but use ad hominem attacks on Scott’s detractors.
See here’s the thing: when they say their reading is right, by extension they say my reading (the non-sexist view) is wrong and invalid. If you extrapolate from that, it means that they think that people like me are either stupid or uneducated or “not properly trained to think critically like someone educated in the finer art of literary analysis”.
To which I answer: you sir, are a fucking imbecile. Tit for tat and all that.
I thought I’d chime in simply to throw gas on this fire.
Your brain just might be a sexist, racist, homophobic, heterophobic, or any other ‘ism’ or ‘ist’ despite any vaunted self-aware claims to the contrary. Just see for yourself:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
This is simply one example I pulled from David Eagleman’s recent book Incognito. Though if I feel incited enough, I may just delve into the, literally, hundreds of examples I have at my disposal, in my small library of books and case studies and forgo some midterm preparations.
There are increasing neuroethic and neurolegislative debates concerning this. If my brain is a sexist, despite my adamant conviction otherwise, and I kill a woman, does that make it a misogynistic crime? Should I be further punished, over and above murder, for this?
Coming to a courtroom near you.
Despite all the bruised egos around here, this conversation is important and relevant, not only to Bakker’s writings, but to our worldwide conduct as human beings.
Hope you and yours are well, Bakker. Apologies for my absence from the intranet, though I’ve been lurking. School’s time consuming. Expect an e-mail shortly.
Thanks again for everything.
And thank you for linking that site. It is awesome, and troubling! You could actually use it to empirically test the effects of sites like ROH, see if it has a negative or positive impact. Let me know how things have been!
Awesome. Thanks for posting the link.
HAH, Suck it IAT:
“Your data suggest little or no association between Male and Female with Career and Family”
1. On the subject of the internet hate machine. I think the thing that people are perhaps not realizing is the internet, as a microcosm of society, has a gradient that supports the direction of privilege.
Men in general tend to talk over women, it is a subconscious thing we don’t even realize. I’ve had to be called out on it, I’m sure others have. Now add to this the natural desire for defensiveness when we – meaning any of us – are accused of prejudice. So a woman talking in a civil tone in person can be talked over, a woman on the internet can simply be outright ignored.
So I think an important question is why does it continually seem the women interested in exploring feminist issues in the text site TPB as an example of men talking over women?
I look at ROH as performance comedy in the rants, as Kalbear noted it bears similarities to Lewis Black. I think focusing on one particular review undercuts the larger picture of privilege, and thus the more important dialogue, we should be having.
Now, as to the reviews on ROH, I think there are valuable criteria to examine:
Are women helping women in the texts? Do they pass anything resembling the Bechdel Test? Is the treatment of sexual assault a narrative hat trick, or a genuine story *about* the victim and a realistic examination of her (and in some cases his) dealing with the issues without going for the classic broken-victim trope? Is the rape included to have some message about forgiveness without considering the completely justified position that victim may not forgive her assailant?
2. The reason I linked the review was, as I noted, was to look at the question of what are women who are having this discussion on their own interested in. One thing it seems we might glean from the review is the feeling of genuine empathy.
I think this is the challenge with the narrative arcs of PoN and AE. I think there is a deep message of compassion, and I think when the books focus on this they do well.
Now, as to the feminist message in the books, I feel like there is intent. But who is the message for? What was the inspiration? What texts is the feminist message seeking to have dialogue with?
I have no idea. The bigger challenge is that the feminist message, to hear Scott describe aspects of it, feels more academic than the message of compassion which feels more personal and thus feels more effective.
3. In a discussion regarding depiction of women, women have first person viewpoint and thus the expertise. It is only right to defer to them. Now, we’ve seen not every woman has a problem with the books, but we do need to consider those that do and why they do. Not every claim will be the same.
What’s also important to keep in mind is how the book made a woman feel as a woman is arguably more important than the intent of the author. This is not a call for censorship, but recognition that writing the other is always a form of appropriation.
4. I am sexist because I am a man. Even if I were to fully cleanse myself of every subconscious prejudice against women I still, just by being male, possess privileges that society grants to me.
(Now there are other privileges, and as I’ve said before my concern is that class privilege trumps all others but even then the gradient will favor men.)
My point in saying this is that, as previously stated, being an overt sexist is different from being one on some subconscious level. If things we do are being perceived as sexist, we may be subconsciously sexist or we are engaging in behavior that is offending women.
For example, if you used The Troll instead of The Dude, you wouldn’t be committing a stereotypical faux pas. As it is, well, the trap sheet kinda trapped you.
As for criteria, I personally don’t think you are overtly sexist Scott, and I don’t feel qualified to critique your subconscious, but I cringe when I see you fitting the pattern of mansplainer so very well:
http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php
This is sorta what I’ve been trying to get at, and it is a more general problem than just this feud you have with Moon.
A lot of the times it just doesn’t come across that the opinion of the person you are talking to matters. That kernel of empathy doesn’t seem to be there, even though given what I know about you and the message of compassion in your books I do think it is there.
And yes, we can go in circles and ask if Moon’s post about you was empathic and so on but as I’ve noted those rage pieces are comedic performances and spending so much time on them is detrimental to what I see as a part of the larger dialogue, trying to reach across the chasms separating privilege and lack of it.
I agree with most of what you say, Sci, with a couple of important exceptions.
First off, the criteria for ‘mansplaining’ (which I followed through Tiger Beatdown) are horrible: it can, and I suspect has, been used to bludgeon any man who dares dissent, regardless of his sensibilities.
Second, you do realize that your reply can be interpreted as paternalistic? Almost painfully so in places.
Third, calling it ‘comedy’ is interesting, given that I encountered conservatives who defend Rush Limbaugh using the same tack. The bottom line is that it’s a discursive mode that we seem to have evolved to better kill one another. I know that sounds extreme, but that’s the way it looks.
Otherwise, please appreciate simply how much frickin typing I do when I find myself embroiled in this topic. Attacked, challenged, on and on – the compassion bulb tends to burn dim, I admit.
Jeez Sci, it’s all push one way?
Where is the point where you can write A (no matter how small A is), even if it upsets someone to any degree?
Or whenever anyone gets upset to any degree, you have to change the media created?
So what you write in you life, what you can or can’t do, is controlled utterly by someone elses emotions?
“No, only when it’s sexist”
“And how do we determine if it’s sexist”
“Well, how it makes people feel…oh”
Where is the room for liberty which might upset someone, but ultimately might raise discussions/issues, possibly even that the upset might in retrospect agree with? Even a small room for such liberty? Can you concretely define the room for it? Even if your def seems utterly small to me*, atleast we’d share a parralel of some sort of room for that? As is, it seems there is none at all?
* Like maybe you can’t have rape, only a brush with potential rape then punching the assailant on the nose and getting away, or you can have rape but just the one occurance per book, it had to happen years in the past, the character does a whole bunch of other stuff, it gets hinted at for ages then revealed at the end of the book as the climax of the book and resolved in some way (imprisonment for the rapist, something like that). Rediculously restrictive, IMO, but atleast there is some room allowed for writing that might upset someone and so we have a parralel on granting some room (just not the amount).
Although the “Bechdel Test” (I like how they gave it a sciency name to try and make people think it’s like super legitimate or something) is pretty arbitrary, I think TJE passes it easily due scenes with Psatma Nannaferi. The original trilogy has some trouble due to the lack of female characters overall, but females do certainly get into conversations with male characters over subjects not involving other men. Furthermore, the discussions women participate in are not limited to relationships, period. They involve historical, philosophical, and pragmatic matters. (Mainly Esmenet and the Empress).
@Jorge: My intent was not to suggest whether the series passes or fails the test. My instincts and memory tell me the books have women focused around the concerns of men first and foremost, but I don’t necessarily think a book doing so is outright bad or proof of an author’s personal character.
I was previously familiar with the origins of the name of the test, but I’ve actually forgotten it. I think it does have validity as a rubric of evaluation, and not sure why you feel otherwise. What tests do you feel are “super sciency”?
@Scott:
“Second, you do realize that your reply can be interpreted as paternalistic? Almost painfully so in places.”
Touche. I will admit I am smiling because this is how I’ve read a lot of your replies to me. 😉
My intent was actually to shed as much of my online asshole persona as possible, perhaps my ego is just too blazing to ever come across as the nice humble guy I envision typing these posts. (Mind you, I often think of my posts as messianic watershed moments in the discussion and am disappointed when they don’t have the intended effects.) 🙂
My point in bringing up mansplaining is because this is something women are saying to each other with regards to discussions of sexism and feminism. This is what they are dealing with.
That you think of the criteria as a possible tool to negate the opinions of men is problematic in that it speaks further to this great divide in how different groups see the same things. I suppose it could be a means of dismissing men’s concerns, but I look at it as a criteria for not engaging women in ways they find dismissive.
I’m not sure what more I can say about RoH. I see its place in the greater shifts of society. Reading through the comments here, at RoH, and Pat’s blog I do think it has gotten people with widely different views to engage in dialogue that otherwise wouldn’t have taken place. (I’d be curious to see you do a retrospective on groupthink and bias regarding the comments at Fantasy Hotlist actually.)
As to empathy/compassion, I wasn’t talking about these latter hours of this ongoing dialogue but rather your responses in general. I guess it just comes across that you are not interested in the concerns women have in how they are depicted in your novels. Before Moon linked to your interview, I cringed when I read the parts about blaming the reader and how people confirm their own biases. It just feels like at no point did you wonder if perhaps your texts had done more harm than good, or at minimum reinforced problematic viewpoints.
If the concern had been depictions of Indians rather than women and I read your responses, I’d have thought “Who the fuck does this guy think he is? He’s telling me where and when I get to take offense to his books?”
-Sci
Just to be clear, I’m not saying you don’t care, just that perception of your responses feels that way.
The reply structures getting hazy again so I don’t know if you missed my post above, Sci, but if so there it is.
“, but females do certainly get into conversations with male characters over subjects not involving other men”
It’s female characters getting into conversations with other FEMALES about subjects not involving men.
it’s Kal conveniently declaring that examples that fit his misleading declarative restatement of the text amounts to the only evidence in existence. All counter textual examples will be ignored.
Yes, I know you fucking dolt. But if you read below, I argue that this is precisely why the goddamn thing is completely worthless and arbitrary.
lockesnow, if you have issues with specific examples bring them up. I’d be happy to talk about them.
Jorge, thanks. It’s not completely worthless; it illustrated a very important point about casting and plots in movies. And no, your example about two women talking about an evil general or whatever would be perfectly fine as far as the bechdel test goes.
The Empress has a c0ck dude and no soul. She shouldn’t count towards this “Bechdel Test” thing imo.
Esme has conversations with Akka about the cants of compulsion and also with Kellhus, She also talks about maithanet being a spy, talks about skinspies and why they put one in the spires jarvah (sp?), we see her running her incanti (sp?) meeting with and cowing the two ranking magi.
Off the top of my head i can think of quite a few conversations in the first triology, which wouldn’t violate the little i know of the “Bechdel Test”.
Sorry just taking the opportunity to discuss the story when it arises.
Ah other females , my bad, i was twittering nonsense then
We don’t know exactly when the Empress was ‘replaced’, but I’ll grant you this point.
“I was previously familiar with the origins of the name of the test, but I’ve actually forgotten it. I think it does have validity as a rubric of evaluation, and not sure why you feel otherwise. What tests do you feel are “super sciency”?”
There are no scientific tests in literary studies. And whatever merits it has are marginal: Consider a narrative in which two female spies are talking about Nikita Khrushchev’s personal habits. Two empowered women talking about a man outside of a relationship context, but this still fails the test. Pretty worthless.
The origin of the test’s name is explained in Wikipedia.
I personally think Scott has bitten too many bullets and given too much credit to these cretins, but what the hell do I know? I didn’t write the damn thing.
On a semi-related note, I was thinking today about the Codex Alera books by Jim Butcher. Here we have a society based on Roman values where the legality of slavery is openly detested by all the protagonists we’re supposed to empathize with.
Complete bullshit. (Not crapping on Butcher too much, the Alera books were good, in a fun goofy sort of way… but there was zero PATHOS which is what Scott can muster like no other)
Elodie: The human brain does not look very much like goo, nor is it pink, despite the assertions of grimdark fantasy writers who can’t be bothered to do their research.
But I’ve SEEN brain surgery on the Discovery channel. It is so pink, it IS! Having got this wrong, how can I possibly enjoy the rest of your story? for shame… 😉
That’s the fine network of tiny blood vessels that surround it in a delicate membrane, my darling! ♥ A rubbery, pinkish beige is a good descriptor; your first thought when you see a raw mammalian brain will be “pork” rather than “cotton candy.” But let’s not get too kinky on this poor man’s blog, I don’t think he likes it…
I work with brains once in a while (rodent brains, but close enough).
They can certainly be described as beige, but when you SPLATTER THEM, it tends to get mixed up with other colors, mainly Hemoglobin Red (that should be a Crayola color).
‘Pink’ is a suitable descriptor for this pastiche.
The idea is to gull you into wasting your time, Mike. Don’t bite.
Anyone watch Joss Whedon’s show Dollhouse? Some of the conversation reminds me of issues Joss Whedon and co. had with their show, esp. when it comes to the depiction = endorsement issue.
For those not familiar, the premise of the show is that a company, Rossum, has developed technology which allows them to reprogram people. Rossum offers people obscene amounts of money to sign over 5 years of their life and during that 5 years, their true personality will be wiped from them and they exist as Dolls (blank slates). These dolls are hired out to Rossum clients, mainly as prostitutes. The clients come up with specifications, Rossum reprograms the Dolls to meet those specifications. When the engagement is over, the Dolls return to Dollhouse to be wiped until the next client comes a calling.
I also like the video below. It features a man who has, what I assume to be, a companion android (compandroid?)/lovebot shipped to him. He gets some use of it, but then gets bored. The song was written for an episode of Dollhouse. The video is NOT footage from Dollhouse (although, it features actors from the show).
Creepy, but pretty sentimental, I think. The subtexts of use and abuse are interesting. I’m always amazed by the way human appearance always implies human emotion in robot representations.
@Callan – Actually I didn’t see your post, but first off I’ll note that the post lacks the fawning over my brilliance.;-)
In all seriousness, I wasn’t referring to a moral imperative on what to write but rather how to possibly engage this demographic of feminists – which clearly is larger than the author of RoH – reviewing SFF who express dismay at the text.
We’ve already seen not everyone and not every woman has a problem with the books, but some people have major problems. From there, obviously not everyone is willing to engage, but ideally someone among this camp of dissenters might want to explain the issues with the books and issues with “talking over”.
I don’t think of this as capitulation, because people are perfectly free to consider and reject criticism or accept criticism. The important thing, IMO, is to set up some kind of dialogue with someone in the other camp, obviously doesn’t have to be Moon.
First off, is saajanpatel your name or surname? Should I keep using Sci, have I been missing the mark to keep doing so? I’m not sure?
On your post, it doesn’t touch on the sexism claims? Again it strikes me that you don’t differentiate between something like, for example, someone disliking a series of multisylable words in the text (I’m recalling a review I read yesterday to bring that up) Vs a claim of sexism. The former is a dislike, the latter is basically claiming a crime. Your just raising it as if both are the same and the whole matter is just how to reach through to this demographic. If we were just talking about preferences, like the sylable thing, I’d agree with you.
Or am I insisting on my own definition and people are treating a claim of sexism as equal to a claim of too many multisylable words?
The important thing, IMO, is to set up some kind of dialogue with someone in the other camp, obviously doesn’t have to be Moon.
That sounds like a good idea!
I do think that you don’t get any sort of ‘Requires only amenableness’ blogs to contrast with. You don’t get people writing whole blogs on how they were just fine with something, for example (ie, see Kathleen’s comment in the about section – is she about to write a blog on that?). A much larger number might write that they are fine with the novels – but people tend not to write what they are fine about (Even Scott – does he write what he’s fine about? Or does he write about what bothers him? Same issue, heh!).
“Or am I insisting on my own definition and people are treating a claim of sexism as equal to a claim of too many multisylable words?”
It’s significantly closer to that than it is a crime. Being offensive isn’t a crime in most places. It’s just a degree ruder than shitstain.
You can’t be tried for misogyny. You can’t be fined for being a sexist except under very specific conditions (such as hiring laws and workplace environments)
Also, the issue about setting up a dialog is that too often this is used as a way to shout down the issues and show how much more you know than the others. Some people will explain to you – or try to – why your views are sexist or misogynistic and how they fit the patterns of privilege, but most of the time they won’t – because they’ve too often seen that ‘but’ come in without listening. Or learning.
Two sample groups. All are given a chance of buying a book. One group is primed to read the ROH review, the other isn’t. See how many buy the book in each group.
Maybe it’d come out equal, who knows.
Some people will explain to you – or try to – why your views are sexist or misogynistic
Let’s front up. I am interested in hearing a process by which the other person could be wrong. Even Richard Dawkins does so in regards to evolution, as in a rabbit in the wrong fossil record blows the whole theory.
What your offering Kal, is for someone who is right and could only ever be right to explain how they are right and could only ever be right on the subject. Someone will explain how views are sexist or misogynistic, without any doubt that they could be wrong.
Mind you, you find there to be no ramification for these determinations. Although your incredibly adamant people should listen to them, all the same. I don’t know why your so adamant people should listen if it has as much ramification as someone stating their 80’s pop song preferences.
[…] Scott Bakker – Requires Only Haidt – dated 6 February […]
I dunno if I actually agree with you or if you’re right. This is a response to the original post, I haven’t read any of the comments. Belive me, the chick who runs requires hate is off her fucking rock. Don’t give her insanity more ammunition. Honestly, I don’t know you but you seem like a pretty nice guy. Don’t give them more attention, they don’t deserve it.
[…] find anything relevant. Sorry. But let’s celebrate this bit of flash fiction by Elodie starring everyone’s favorite punching bag, reproduced here just in case (haven’t asked the author’s permission but, hopefully, […]
“In other words, if you actually give a damn about people, then you need to be careful about accusing them of being sexist or racist, because, as a simple matter of fact, you could do real damage and you could be wrong.”
1. “You could do real damage.” Not as much damage as sexism or racism does. Don’t try to pretend that the supposed stigma of being considered sexist/racist is anywhere near as bad as being subject to sexism/racism themselves. The latter is much worse, which is why we should err on the side of being oversensitive to these issues.
2. “You could be wrong.” No, you really couldn’t. Sexism and racism are not found in the intentions of the writer. They are found in people’s reactions to what they wrote. If enough people are offended by something, then it doesn’t matter what the original writer’s intention was, it IS sexist/racist. Saying ‘but I didn’t mean to offend anybody!’ is beside the point. *Most* sexism/racism is unintentional. That doesn’t provide any legitimate excuse for it.
That’s why your ‘Criteria Question’ is silly – it’s not the case that there are ‘serious and spurious’ accusations of misogyny. It’s not the case that a work either is misogynist or is not. Sexism is everywhere in our culture, and virtually all works are affected by it to some extent. The point of raising these issues is *not* to dismiss a work outright as misogynist, but to question it critically and consider how its treatment of women could have been improved. Yes, some claimed examples of misogyny are more serious than others, but all are worth at least considering.
(Actually, on second thoughts, there *is* such a thing as a spurious accusation of misogyny – one which is made dishonestly, by someone who really doesn’t care about gender issues but is simply trolling or mud-throwing. They’re easy to tell; just look at how the person acts in the rest of their life to see if their alleged concern for women is genuine. But that certainly does not describe the author of Requires Only Hate, who is both (i) genuinely concerned about gender issues and (ii) female herself, so you should probably stop calling her ‘Dude’.)
What I want to know is: why are you so afraid of even *considering the possibility* that you might have unintentionally written something misogynist? That’s not something shocking or unusual; probably every one of us has accidentally said or done something offensive at some point in our lives. The difference is, most of us respond to being criticised for such behaviour by taking those criticisms seriously and trying not to do that offensive thing again; not by acting gravely wounded and lashing out at the critic for having the temerity to accuse us of prejudice.
To use your own words, Mr. Bakker, recognising when you have done something offensive necessitates a ‘counterintuitive mindset, one that requires work and self-doubt’. It’s unfortunate that you seem to lack such a mindset yourself, and have zero self-doubt when it comes to your own mistakes. It must be nice to be absolutely convinced that you are always in the right, your intentions are always pure, and nothing you do is ever problematic, and that any offence taken at something you’ve written must therefore be mistaken. If only all of us could share such confidence.
This is the thing. I agree that sexism is everywhere in this society, that it is a tremendous problem requiring a plurality of approaches to solve, which is precisely why it is such a prominent theme in my books. All of it thought through (more thoroughly than anything in my books), and filled with critical subtexts. Then I get the most superficial reading imaginable, someone who automatically thinks depiction equals endorsement, declares me a misogynist (!) on the basis of reading 6 pages (!) and I’m supposed to… ?
Fight back seems like the obvious answer.
Gender is an important artistic theme in general. The point of art is to provoke.
I think I’ve been quite successful so far!
“The point of art is to provoke. I think I’ve been quite successful so far!”
Well, if this was the reaction you were originally going for, congratulations…
Look, I haven’t actually read any of your books, so I can’t say whether ROH’s criticisms of them are fair or representative or whatever. All I’m saying is the fact that they are highly ‘thought through’ and ‘filled with critical subtexts’ does not necessarily mean you succeeded in writing something without any sexist connotations. You might have tried very hard not to, but you might still have accidentally written something that many people could find sexist.
Now, I understand how unpleasant it must feel to be criticised for something which you’ve put so much work into, and on what seems to you like a trivial basis. And I’m not saying you don’t have the right to defend yourself against those criticisms. I’m just saying that, before you start ‘fighting back’, you should take those criticisms seriously; and even if they seem unreasonable to you, consider where the author is coming from and why they seem reasonable to her. Just try to put yourself in the shoes of your critics for a moment and see things from their perspective. And for all you’ve written on this subject, I don’t see any sign that you’re prepared to do that.
Just check out my interviews going back the better part of a decade. I’ve taken these criticism very seriously from the very beginning – the whole point was to engage readers moral sensibilities. I’ve also conceded a number of points to my critics, particularly with regards to the problems posed by the Archie Bunker effect. I understand that I’m doing something very tricky, something I may not have the skills to pull off. This was an old and well-worn debate long before ACM came along.
The thing is, my original response to her wasn’t motivated by defensiveness on my part. The whole point of TPB (and my books) is too short-circuit the way the web has had the effect of allowing extremist views to germinate, spread, and gain broader social credibility. Part of the strategy involves initiating ‘blog wars’: my first target was a right wing extremist, Theo Beale, who believes women should be stripped of the right to vote – and whose blog is actually ranked in the top 1000 (!) by alexa. Think about it: a blogger with views so regressive, even fascistic, having over 14 million views. I chose ACM as an extremist foil on the left because her blog and her tactics were the very things that Theo uses to recruit! She wants to think her shaming tactics are having a positive impact, but all you need to do is take a tour of just how enormous the explicitly misogynistic blogosphere has become, and you’ll see that there’s good reason to fear she’s having the opposite effect.
Belief polarization is the problem. This is the phenomena responsible for every society that tears itself apart, and it burns rhetoric like ACM`s for fuel. Thus all the social and cognitive psych stuff you see me bringing up time and again: everyone, let alone feminists, needs to realize that the rules (and the stakes) of the ‘public awareness’ game have radically changed in the web age – and what’s more, that the bad guys are winning! Never in my life have I been subjected to more insults – let alone an organized attempt to assassinate my reputation! – so I did descend into snark on occasion, but you’ll see that I consistently raise this issue time and time and time again, only to be subjected to another round of personal attack.
It`s actually been an illuminating oddyssey, one with a kind of circus craziness about it. I tried to keep Jonathan Haidt front and centre: his research shows quite clearly how moral outrage almost completely short-circuits our ability to reason, how it puts us into outgroup demonization mode, where the only thing that is important is to shame, injure, belittle, minimize, discredit the Other.
Which in this case is what happened to be me! Arguing over and over that moral outrage puts us into outgroup demonization mode, where the only thing that is important is to shame, injure, belittle, minimize, discredit the Other. It`s been surreal, and worrisome. I already think all the defamatory things said have nixed one job application I`ve made. And I worry what my daughter will think when she gets old enough to google her pop, all these people with all their name-calling and uncensored hatred.
I`m afraid the criteria are very important in this day and age.
In the meantime, it`s sent me back to the communicative drawing board. One thing I can tell you, in the future I’ll be careful to reference all the feminist reading I`ve done over the years!
Very energetic post, I enjoyed that a lot.
Will there be a part 2?
So with hindsight how does everyone feel now?
Nobody?