Fandom & Bigotry

[woodwardiocom]

This article on the generation gap in fandom is an interesting read. Over on FB, there's a thread on this article which, among other topics, covers the question of whether a con (WorldCon in particular) focused exclusively on literary SF has merit, or is a dinosaur.

I don't actually have a specific problem with a hyperfocused con like that, though it wouldn't be my choice. The problem is that the "classic literary SF tent", because it skews older, has a lot of bigots in it. (The eldest generation of SF writers includes the last generation mentored by John Campbell, who was an admitted sexist and racist.)

I believe the bigots to be in a minority, but they are definitely, visibly there. And, anytime it's suggested that they should be kicked out of the tent, there's a huge fuss from most of the rest of the tent. "He wrote six Hugo-winners in the 1970s! We can't kick him out!" "She's been volunteering for this con since I was a baby! We can't kick her out!" "We mustn't let their personal views affect our appraisal of the quality of their work! We can't kick them out!"

The tent stinks. Kick them out.

EDIT: I spent the past hour worrying about my overly-strong "kick out" phrasing, which is more part of the "tent" metaphor than literal. When I say "kick them out", please read, "Make it clear to them that bigoted behavior is not acceptable, may lead to a literal and physical removal, and don't let the bigots be the public face of the tent."

Comments

[donnad.livejournal.com]

The tent stinks. Kick them out.

I got into fandom because it was inclusive, not exclusive.

This attitude, we don't like your attitude so we will kick you out/ban you from attending, really bothers me.

How is it any different from the attitudes of those people you want to kick out?

Is it just because they don't share your opinions? Because they are not politically correct? Whatever happened to that acceptance that brought me to fandom 30 years ago? Fandom is becoming an exclusive club and if you don't agree or have the same opinions you are not a part of that club anymore. It reeks of elitism and junior high school type bullying.

People need to take a good look in the mirror, advocating to kick people out or ban them is no better than the bigotry that they are wanting to kick people out over. It's bigotry in itself.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I am fine with kicking people out who harass, assault, stalk, and otherwise make other people's lives difficult. Having nasty opinions shouldn't get you kicked out, but certainly I'm not going to keep quiet about it. Brushing off what bigots say, "Oh, that's just how he is/fandom has always been, is not an acceptable viewpoint to push tho.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

For these purposes, I will let you define "bigot" as you see fit, Donna, so long as it isn't a strawman. Are you actually comfortable with letting elder fans who use the n-word be the face of literary SF? (Which actually happened at WorldCon this year.)

And my "kick out" language was too strong; please see my edits.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Are you actually comfortable with letting elder fans who use the n-word be the face of literary SF? (Which actually happened at WorldCon this year.)

Having lived for the last decade and a third in Oakland, CA, where people use the n-word on the bus every freaking day, I'm a bit desensitized to that.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Seeing the edit makes a difference. I am not saying one should not "call them out" and question and point out their bigotry, but exclusion because they have differing views and ways of looking at things is bigotry as well.

As for the language used in that particular case, (yes I heard about it.)it's a generational thing I'm sure. I grew up with my parents using the N word, As a kid I probably used it. I wont now because I know how sensitive some people are about it, but I know I heard it more than once in public when I was in London last week. So perhaps it's commonplace in some circles.

The dictionary I have in front of me (I must be the only person in the world that has a paper dictionary sitting next to my computer) defines Bigot as "One who regards or treats members of a group with hatred and intolerance." So that's my definition of bigot.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I am a-ok with kicking people out because they are hurtful or hateful. This has the side effect of letting other people remain.

Comparing this to the supposed "inclusive" nature of fandom (itself something of a myth) is a false equivalency. Relevant reading: GSF#1.
http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I am a-ok with kicking people out because they are hurtful or hateful. This has the side effect of letting other people remain.

"Other people" can't "remain" if anyone disagrees with them? May I suggest that fandom is better without such milquetoasts, regardless of their skin tones?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

And note -- among the people he wants to "kick out" are Barry Malzberg and Mike Resnick, who actually said nothing "bigoted." What they did was praise a female editor in politically incorrect terms (I think the actual phrase was on the order of "she looks good in a bikini"). And the female editor in question was happy with the praise. It was others who took offense on her behalf and without consulting her opinion.

What's more, he's arguing for kicking out or despising or at least distrusting writers for having been mentored by John W. Campbell.

Full stop.

If you know anything about the history of science fiction, you know what's wrong with that.

So, when "science fiction" expels all the good writers from its history, and indeed all the good writers from its present who have sufficient self-esteem not to kowtow to them, who will they have left? The apparatchiks?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

And note -- among the people he wants to "kick out" are Barry Malzberg and Mike Resnick, who actually said nothing "bigoted."

I'm not sure I've ever typed those names in my life. You must be referring to someone else.

What's more, he's arguing for kicking out or despising or at least distrusting writers for having been mentored by John W. Campbell.

Campbell was a genius, who did amazing and wonderful things for the genre, but he was definitely a bigot. (Asimov, for example, discusses it in his autobiography.) I find that bigotry problematic, both in engaging with the man's works, and in its impact on the genre to this day.

Jordan, as I said to Donna, above, I'll be happy to work with your definition of "bigot", so long as it isn't a deliberate strawman.

[dpolicar]

My two cents... if Sam routinely acts in such a way as to make Pat feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, and/or unsafe, then being "inclusive" becomes complicated, because welcoming Sam means Pat gets excluded.

More generally: if I include everyone equally, the result is that some people are excluded.

So if the important thing is that fandom be inclusive and not exclusive, then including everyone equally doesn't achieve that; if we want to achieve that, we need a different strategy.

Of course, I can alternatively adopt the "well, as long as I'm not the one taking active measures to exclude Pat, everything is fine." Which makes sense if the important person here is me, which I suppose is possible.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

People need to take a good look in the mirror, advocating to kick people out or ban them is no better than the bigotry that they are wanting to kick people out over. It's bigotry in itself.

No. Bigoted behavior is chosen by the bigot, and it is reasonable to expect them to stop as they are free to do if they want to be included by the larger number of well-behaved tent dwellers. Expecting most people to change their race and/or sex to be accepted by the self-chosen minority of bigoted tent dwellers is not reasonable.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

When you drive out all the great writers of the past, and all the writers of the present who have sufficient self-esteem to laugh in your face when you tell them how to think, what will you have left? Those without the courage to do anything but run with the herd?

What, then, will be left of science fiction?

And what of yourself, a few decades down the road when some belief that you cherish runs afoul of the latest intellectual fashion? What belief will that be? I don't know. I can't predict it, any more than Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg could have predicted a feminism so paranoid that it would berate them for praising the beauty of an editor.

I'm old enough (50) that I can personally remember the way in which intellectual fashions have changed. And I have too much self-respect to blindly change with them. If I blindly followed the fashions of the day, I never would have gotten into science fiction in the first place.

And if science fiction had done so, it never would have established itself as a meaningful literary form.

The future of your movement will be to become a tiny little rump of politically-correct science fiction writers, conforming to each other and whining about how crass everyone else is, while the real writers, who have the intellectual courage to hew their own paths, make the science fiction future.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Jordan, you're putting lots of words in my mouth that aren't there.

Let's try to find some common ground by boiling things down: racism. Do you think our SF elders should get a free pass on being visibly racist, or should they be told that it's unacceptable?

(And let's assume I mean flamingly racist, not "polite disagreement over the complicated issues surrounding Ferguson".)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Do you think our SF elders should get a free pass on being visibly racist, or should they be told that it's unacceptable?

I'm not aware that there is a tendency for older science fiction writers to be racist. Science fiction was in the forefront of the racial equality movement, and at times when that movement was still unpopular. Though John W. Campbell himself was slightly racist, most of his stable of writers weren't. And I notice you're not saying anything about currently racist writers and fans, such as the ones who established a racially-segregated area at WisCon. Why's that?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I'm old enough (50)

I'm 45, by the way.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

All right. Then when the fandom of 2040 turn on you because of your repeated insensitive use of a Bald-American stereotypical image, which shows utter scorn of the unfortunate victims of the Balding-Plague of 2030 (you know, the one which started with male-pattern baldness and finished with the skull and brain melting?) and demand that your opinions be devalued for this, I'm sure you'll be just fine with that? Because, after all, the herd will have spoken (or more like baaed meaningfully), and deviant opinions will not be tolerated?

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Those "real writers" with the "intellectual courage to hew their own paths" started the Mad Genius Club, and spoiler alert, they suck.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

"Kick them out" certainly is too strong; it has a "fascism of the left" sound. Specifically, it sounds as if you are saying, not "have standards of decorum that attendees are expected to follow," but "pick people out who have unacceptable ideas and beliefs, and don't let them attend or participate"—an enforced orthodoxy of opinion. If that's not what you mean, I recommend a more careful phrasing, and perhaps the choice of a metaphor that doesn't invite such phrasings.

As far as the public face of fandom is concerned, it seems to me that it pretty much always has been, and still is, the people in strange costumes talking volubly about their favorite fandom; that's what we see in nearly every news story. Anything else is secondary.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

"Kick them out" certainly is too strong

Agreed.

As far as the public face of fandom is concerned

I said "public face of the tent", meaning "the face that classic literary SF presents to the rest of SF fandom". Classic literary SF fandom has an image problem within fandom.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That's not what I take "public" to mean.

And I'm not sure that what you mean by "the rest of fandom" really is the rest of fandom. I run into a lot of media fans to whom the big issue about literary SF isn't that it's politically incorrect, but that it's snobbish about the film and television properties that are the common cultural references of SF for a lot of people.

I grant that there are complexities to this, and I haven't addressed them in these brief comments—and I'm not sure I should presume on the hospitality of your thread to try to do so, even if I weren't on my way out the door in a few minutes. Really I probably should think about this before I say anything substantial. . . .

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Getting back to the article you linked to...

The writer of the article appears be lumping together at least three groups:
1) the "older generation" of fans and authors (related to the generation gap problem)
2) the "books are better than other media" snobs, and
3) the "bigoted" people (sexist, racist, etc.-- and even those categories might be broken apart).

There might be some correlations between these groups, but lumping them together seems to me to lead fruitless stereotyping, precisely what the author is trying to decry. I suspect it's both easier and more accurate to look at those categories/problems separately (while acknowledging that they might overlap somewhat). My thoughts:

#1 is not a big deal in and of itself, unless it leads to pushing out younger fans. Unfortunately, it often does. The "graying of fandom" has been an ongoing issue during the entire nearly-three-decades I've been in fandom.

#2 seems to be decreasing with time, and is heavily con-dependent in any case. At larger cons like WorldCon, I've always been able to find plenty of panels and discussion venues for comics, TV, fanfic, etc.

#3 is bad, but I'm not sure it's particularly related to age/generation or to media snobbery. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the topic this year, especially about sexism and sexual harassment, but I don't have any firm conclusions (yet).

Clearly there is a problem, but I'm not at all clear how widespread the different forms are. For example, the instances of female panelists getting shouted down by male audience members" mentioned in the article is indeed awful, but I don't recall witnessing such a thing personally during my past several years attending panels (most recently at DetCon). Granted, being male, it's possible it might've happened and I didn't notice, but I tend to pretty sensitive to rude audience members in general (they irk me-- I came to hear the panelists and for civil discussion), so I think I would've. The "Fake Geek Girl test" is still a problem, but I think much less so than it used to be. Online harassment, however, seems to me to be quite a serious issue.

I'm also not clear what the best ways to counter each of these forms of sexism and harassment are. I tend towards the "cultural change through individual action" side (e.g. don't stand idly by, call out someone when they say a bigoted statement, make clear that it's not OK) more than the "written rules will fix the problem" side, but, wow, it's all a very complicated ball of wax.

I'm going to punt on the "racism in fandom" issue for another day, other than to say that's yet another facet of bigotry.

Anyway, as I said, there are a lot of different dimensions to the problems mentioned in the article, and I don't have any firm conclusions. I want to learn from others' experiences and ideas. OTOH, I'm going to be very suspicious of any "simple" solutions that proponents claim will have no ill side effects (or none that matter).

[drwex]

Stuck your face in the blender, did you? </ yoda>

I read the article (someone posted it to the Arisia LJ) and I think the author has some extremely important points, not least of which is that cons need to train their moderators better. You and I have both moderated panels and I've heard people praising your moderation so I'm certain you understand how hard it is, and how poorly some people do it. In particular, the role of moderator includes not letting people (of any age) talk over or shout down other people who are trying to contribute (again of any age). Cons need to take moderatorship seriously and help moderators run better panels.

That said, the comments on the article also raised a good point in calling out the article author for age-ism. That someone is older, or of the Cambellian generation, does not make them automatically bad, wrong, or part of the problem. It's an error to label and shun a group for what appear to be purely demographic reasons, rather than identifying problematic behaviors and attempting to exterminate those. It's important to realize that most (all?) of the shouting-down is being done by older white males and most (all?) of the people being silenced are younger, often female-identified fans. But that truth does not excuse demonizing all older white cis-male fans.

It's my opinion that this truth does identify a responsibility for older white cis-male fans such as yourself and myself, which is a need to be more clear and more vocal about behavior and attitudes we find unacceptable in our perceived peer group. I take your entry to be an attempt at such, and I'm sorry if it caused your nose to intersect the rotating metal blades.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think it's always pretty funny when the politically-correct turn on each other over doctrinal differences of the Faith.

[beowabbit]

Haven’t read the linked article yet, but just wanted to thank you for this post. (And FTR, I appreciate your clarification, but I got the meaning you intended before reading it.)

And a general comment: If “tolerance” has to mean not distinguishing between right and wrong, between kindness and cruelty, between justice and evil, then “tolerance” is kind of a meaningless concept. I don’t think it has to mean that, and I don’t think people who make a distinction between harming people and not harming them are necessarily intolerant. I recognize that this is a controversial position, and I don’t care.

[jicama]

I think it's only controversial for concern trolls.