Moritheil has a cousin, one Bobby Banagher, except instead of dicking around with co-opting LGBT discourse this dude co-opts anti-racist discourse instead. No, it’s not just that weeaboos suffer from oppression just like people of color–it’s that white people in general are targets of hurtful comments.
There are sometimes flippant remarks made towards whites on twitter that I find very hurtful. Like whites are privileged or hold down other races, which isn’t true nowadays at all with such things as Affirmative Action, having special scholarships for minorities, welcoming lots of different races into white countries, offering free welfare to poor minorities, donating to other non-White countries like Africa and Brazil, etc. Also there is especially a type of superiority that some American whites feel over Southerners who may don’t have their exact same values. Overall I’d say words that insult whites are words like cracker, hick, etc. Sometimes words like “fundie” also.
[...]
So basically, being called white can’t really be an insult in an English speaking, white dominated society with a successful white history. It’s like insulting a jock because he’s strong, fast, always wins and dates the prom queen. So you can try to find a way to undermine his moral character like calling him bigoted, racist or sexist. And those three things are the main attacks used to insult whites nowadays.
A follow-up occurred on twitter; the dude has since been suspended. Beware, it’s long and chock-full of racism.
Fantasy Faction is a kind of neckbeard den with some of the worst font/color scheme known to man, but they attracted a hilarious self-published dude who flipped his shit after his topic was moved to the “self-published” forum section.
I am not a small press or even self published. M. R. Mathias’ books are PUBLISHED by Michael Robb Mathias Jr. and should be treated no differently that any big named publishers title. WHY? Because I do my job as a publisher too. Please quit sending my posts into the self published/small press thread. My titles are neither. I have 92k twitter followers @DahgMahn and 10 titles in their genre bestselling list. There is nothing self pubbed, or small, about books written by M. R. Mathias.
Twitter follow-up.
It looks like Laurell K. Hamilton is blowing up–again–in true Anne Rice style.
Why will they hate you? So many reasons, here are just a few.
They may hate you for the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, that you’re prettier than they are, that you’re uglier than they are… that you write better than they ever will, that you have a happy family & they don’t, that your married & they want to be, that you’re single & they want to be, you have kids, you don’t have kids, you have a bigger house than they do, better job, no job, a lot of money… getting more sex than they are . . . The list goes on forever.
Yes, a straight white woman born and bred in the United States of White Supremacists can certainly teach us a lot about how being hated for any of these things is precisely like being hated for the color of one’s skin or one’s sexual orientation. I imagine her Amazon average for her latest plotless sex scene must’ve gotten to her. Anyway, some other writer or whoever chimed in.
On a note less lulzy, Saajan Patel (thanks!) linked me to this somewhat lengthy but entirely worthwhile essay about Ender’s Game: “Creating the Innocent Killer.”
What bothers me about OSC and Ender’s Game is that he says that only intentions matter in making such judgments. This I absolutely reject. It is the classic excuse of someone who commits a heinous act to say that his intentions were good, and to justify his questionable means by referring to his good ends. We see this all too obviously, for example, in the justifications the Bush administration gave for the Iraq war. They said they thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that he had links to terrorism, that we were there to promote democracy, etc. Millions of people even at the time knew that these justifications were inadequate, or in many cases outright fabrications.
Very interesting, and further exposes how fucked-up Orson Scott Card’s “morals” really are. It’s troubling how popular Ender’s Game continues to be, how it’s consumed and written about completely without criticism: when younger I liked it too, and it’s easy to take it at face value.
Latest news from the People’s Republic of Misogyny! A feminist was told to change her “inappropriate” t-shirt.
The shirt was gray with the wording, “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fuck a senator.” I must also mention that when I boarded the plane, I was one of the first groups to board (did not pass by many folks). I was wearing my shawl just loosely around my neck and upon sitting down in my seat the lady next to me, who was already seated, praised me for wearing the shirt.
When I was leaving the plane the captain stepped off with me and told me I should not have been allowed to board the plane in DC and needed to change before boarding my next flight. This conversation led to me missing my connecting flight. I assumed that because I was held up by the captain, they would have called ahead to let the connecting flight know I was in route. Well, upon my hastened arrival at the gate of the connecting flight, it was discovered that they did indeed call ahead but not to hold the flight, only to tell them I needed to change my shirt. I was given a seat on the next flight and told to change shirts.
[...]
In this country, you see, fundamentalist right-wing male legislators in every state can take away your rights. They can deny you access to contraception, breast exams, Pap smears, and other primary preventive care. They can deny you access to safe emergency contraception and safe medication abortion. They can force any woman in need of a safe abortion to listen to lies about outcomes of the procedure long disproven by medical science and public health professionals. They can mandate that you to listen to religious dogma at crisis pregnancy centers, force you to look at an ultrasound or hear a heartbeat, make you wait 24-, 36-, 72-hours before you can get a safe, legal abortion, just because they feel like it, and just because they feel like it, they can raise the costs of that abortion — in terms of travel, childcare, medical expenses and time — to really shame you good. Moreover, they feel empowered to coerce you into procedures like trans-vaginal ultrasounds, which I maintain is a form of state-sponsored rape.
Glad I’m not a woman living in America. Or living in America, period. Sounds like an awful place. If they aren’t bombing people with democracy they’re violating women’s bodies.
Dr Sheila Addison posted a response to Scalzi. It is much more complex than his thing and just as accessible to 101-ers, though still a bit reductive, but hey.
If you have privilege, YOU ARE THE RED FLOWERS.The red flowers didn’t set up the garden. Not all red flowers grow tall and strong – some get more light, some get more water, some are in areas that get too damp and get drowned, aphids may gnaw some and not others.
But the red flowers are benefiting nonetheless. And if you look over at the pink flowers and deny the difference between your conditions?
- If you blame the pink flowers for not trying hard enough?
- If you blame the pink flowers for causing strife by speaking up about the difference in your boxes?
- If you also internalize the preference of the gardener for red over pink flowers?
- If you say “well red and pink flowers are all equal now; that planting stuff, that happened in the past!”?
- If you say “well if gardeners don’t like pink flowers, it’s up to the pink flowers to do something about it”?
- If every time the subject of the boxes comes up you want to change the subject to how your corner of the box doesn’t get as much light as you’d want?
- you are part of the problem.
Whenever Dear Author reviews something that features POC it’s time to start cringing, because 90% of the time racism is inevitable (not on the author’s part but the reviewer’s), and in this case we have…
I’m fascinated by China and its complex history. I cannot say I was fascinated by this book. I was actually rather repulsed by it and found it to be so bizarre I wondered perhaps, in order to make sense of the story, I needed some sort of cultural Rosetta stone. I questioned if I was too Western or too humdrum for your book for not only did much of the novel baffle me, much of it made me cringe.
It’d be too much to expect a Dear Author reviewer to cotton on to the fact that things like these might be deeply racist, I suppose:
He promises he will take her to the address she has for Max, bundles her onto his rickshaw, and promptly delivers her to a brothel, the Garden of Perfumed Flowers, where she is drugged with opium tea and abandoned to her fate.
[...]
“Then you must buy the white girl. You must establish her in an apartment close enough to see her every day. You must partake of her essence every moment that you can.” Shi Po stepped even closer, pressing her point. “And as her water flows into you, your family’s fortunes will recover and your pathway back to the Tao will be revealed.” She lowered her voice into a seductive murmur. “Your mind will find peace, your body rest. You will return to the middle path with new energy, and as her yin mixes with your yang, the spiritual embryo will be born. You will become an Immortal. You can, Ru Shan, if only you will do what is necessary.”
Unsurprisingly, only one (1) commentator sees anything off and orientalist about this.
Dabney Grinnan (@DabneyGrinnan)
/ May 25, 2012As the reviled racist reviewer at DA let me point out that I agreed up front my own cultural background my limit my understanding of the book and also that, independent of its cultural orientation, I found it to be a poorly written confusing novel. I’ve reviewed other books set in other non-Western cultures and praised them for both their insight into a cultural other than mine and for their writing.
acrackedmoon
/ May 25, 2012No, I didn’t call you racist; rather I said that you didn’t remark on the, errr, really blatant orientalism.
Dabney Grinnan (@DabneyGrinnan)
/ May 25, 2012Oh, I see. As a privileged white woman, I try and make sure I’ve acknowledged my biases when I review (I know it’s never possible to do completely, but one has to try.) and I thought I had done so in my review of Ms. Lee’s book. I think your criticism is exactly why I felt I needed a cultural Rosetta stone. Her portrayal of the Chinese culture seemed stereotypical in many negative ways, but I, genuinely don’t know enough about that time period and the attitudes therein to say “Hey this book makes much of the people and mores of the time appear one-dimensional and small minded.” When I compare “White Tigress” to “Capturing the Silken Thief” by Jeanne Lin (different Asian country, I know), the latter is so nuanced and layered and the former seems so monotone.
acrackedmoon
/ May 25, 2012That’s fair enough; I’ve myself admitted when reviewing some things that I don’t know enough about the culture in question to say anything of substance about it, but I do try to make note of it when I find things that are egregious. For that matter though, I feel the notion of a “cultural rosetta stone”–and I realize you said that in passing, not as a dead-serious thing–somewhat reductive. But apart from that, the whole “white woman arrives in YELLOW PERIL LAND and is KIDNAPPED and delivered to a brothel” is itself pretty offensive independent of specific cultural details.
Namtab (@goddamnnamtab)
/ May 25, 2012Lmao at that Bobby Banagher guy. He even uses the n-word.
And where can I find information on this country called “Africa” that white people talk so much about?
the twisted spinster
/ May 25, 2012Re that article at Fantasy Fiction, I have to laugh at this: “Ten years ago, only the elite among writers got into bookshops. Waterstones or Boarders wouldn’t put rubbish on their shelves.” That’s, well, let’s just say “in the eye of the beholder.” Being published by a RealPublisher™ as opposed to being self-pubbed hasn’t been a guarantee of quality material in quite some time, if it ever had been. The phrase caveat emptor predates Amazon.com’s KDP by quite a few centuries. (In other words, don’t believe what you see on book covers. People are paid to write favorable blurbs. The shiny colorful cover is merely that. And so on.)
Stacey Picard (@cabanagirl18)
/ May 26, 2012I just read the Innocent Killer piece yesterday, coincidentally enough, and I really enjoyed it.
I remember something about at the very end of Speaker for the Dead, EG’s sequel, where a kid asks Ender, “WTF? You blew up an entire species pre-emptively?” And Ender’s like, “Yeah, I thought I was playing games. But I tots would have done it anyway because, yo, self-defense!” And I thought it was a really interesting comment because it suggested that Ender was a hypocrite and his pretense of lofty healer who solves everything was a mask he put on to deceive himself into believing he was a special human being when he was really just a rich, android-assisted, easily-manipulated bastard who needs to intervene in other people’s lives to make his own life worth living.
In my world, that’s why he was chosen as humanity’s messiah figure in the first place. He was intelligent and charismatic, but also extremely gullible. Enough so that he could be manipulated by adults who wanted to protect themselves from being tarred by the brush of vigilante massacreists and who didn’t want to go to sleep at night knowing they had been the ones who chose who lived and died in the cold vacuum of space. That would be a really interesting re-writing of the Christian story I’d like to see–God sent his son to die because Jesus was the only one dumb and self-deluded enough to go.
I guess that’s why I was so pissed-off when I read Ender-in-Exile, because it destroyed my view of Ender as a self-centered failure. And because it was poorly written. And preachy. And I’m a frickin’ Mormon, so when it’s preachy to me, you’re really doing it wrong.
I’m curious to see what happened if you read OSC’s Shadows in Flight, because he had a throwaway line about the galaxy banning artificial wombs because it made women feel useless. My head almost exploded. It made me wonder if OSC isn’t really an internet troll who’s been putting on some elaborate act all along. His editor’s a woman and I’m surprised he didn’t reach out and smack him.
acrackedmoon
/ May 26, 2012What the fuck. No, I’m afraid I haven’t read it–though unfortunately I have read the Shadow series, the one featuring Bean, but I don’t remember much about it now beyond the godshittery of “PETRA BABBIES BABBIES” and that Indian girl who becomes a megalomaniac because hurr women are dumb hurr. In fact, I remember very little about any of OSC’s books I’ve read, which I guess is just as well.
meditatingontherain
/ May 31, 2012I don’t remember that line; I do remember one (I think in Xenocide) where he stops someone from doing the same thing again; the guy thinks Ender is an unsung hero (and that whoever wrote Speaker for the Dead is a terrible liar) and Ender tells him, “No, I have spent centuries regretting what I did and all I want is a chance to NOT KILL AN ENTIRE SPECIES.” Which seems like OSC has no idea what his story is about, if nothing else.
Emil Söderman
/ May 26, 2012I’ve always found Ender’s game kind of interesting because most reviewers I’ve seen who haven’t been very into Orson Scott Card (or SFF in general) and don’t know the context…. Has kind of tended to read Ender’s game as “The story about how children are purposefully molded into soldiers/killers”. That it’s about constructions of otherness, of conditioning people to kill, etc. (note: Those people almost inevitably didn’t read the sequels, neither have I by the way)
Eg. On it’s own a lot of people seems to have read it as pretty much the exact opposite of what OSC intended. (although I’m not certain the degree to which he actually intended what he now says about it, and the degree to which trying to retcon it into his own canon of crazyness ex-post-facto)
I think Ender’s Game as a work is so very interesting because it’s such a good example of a text standing in some sense apart from the author, and how interpretations are going to vary from the author’s intentions.
Inverarity Pynchon
/ May 26, 2012My impression is that OSC lost it at some point post-EG. I mean, he was always a religious conservative, but I’ve read interviews and reviews by many people who found the messages in Ender’s Game to be powerful and critical and engaging and they thought Card was a man who possessed empathy and humanity and a sense of awareness for oppression and injustice… and then they find out that he basically hates liberals and homosexuals and his books became increasingly polemical about his hobby horses. And now he claims the point of EG is entirely different from what people have been reading into it for years, and the later books apparently start completely screwing with earlier interpretations. So, yeah, my theory is that at some point some switch was flipped in Card’s brain that turned him from a bit of a tool but mostly inoffensive (e.g., Brandon Sanderson) to a raging hatemonger (e.g., John C. Wright), who felt he had a responsibility to use his writers’ pulpit to fight “evil” (i.e., liberals, gays, feminists, etc.).
Stacey Picard (@cabanagirl18)
/ May 28, 2012Uh, yeah, I remember that baby book (shudder). And Ender in Exile brought back the crazy Indian lady. She couldn’t even run a colony, because I guess that takes man skillz.
I’ve been thinking about that a bit after reading a piece on mental illness portrayal in fiction and Bellatrix Lestrange–can you have a crazy, meglomanic Loki-style woman who doesn’t play into teh traditional stereotypes? Where’s the female Heath-Ledger Joker?
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
/ May 28, 2012The only Rosetta Stone you need is the willingness to move beyond acknowledging bias to overcoming it.
Arthur B (@awakeasaurusrex)
/ May 29, 2012I always thought Ender’s Game was just dull, cliched, and poorly written. Like a Warhams parody of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
saajanpatel
/ June 2, 2012I was thinking, when the Enders Game movie comes out, people should tweet the endersgame film hash tag with stories about happy gay couples and all the reasons the US should legalize gay marriage.
Try to get people to make the tag a trend (or whatever the top tags are called) but for all the right reasons.