You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds

By:  TempestConventions, Rants, Blog Against Racism
You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds

Can someone please explain to me how one makes the leap from “We no longer want to honor this person” to “Book burning and censorship“? You people do not even understand what censorship means, do you? And to this asshole who threw up the Heinlein quote: since when was WisCon ever a government or a church?

Do you people even read? Do you have brains that work in a logical manner? Or do you just simply wander through life parroting the things you read without any understanding or absorption of them?

Goddamn you stupid, ignorant troglodytes. I am ashamed to share a planet with you, much less a community.

Also, can I just point out that at no point has anyone said Elizabeth Moon can’t come to WisCon. At no point has anyone said that there can’t be a discussion about the issues raised by her post, with or without her. Hell, it’s WisCon, there is going to be a lot of fucking discussion. But I love how these useless wankers run right to that mission statement and declare that there obviously won’t be any of those things because… apparently because they’ve imagined it in their tiny minds.

Your tiny, dirty imagination has no bearing on actual fact. And, you know what, I am hella glad you all won’t be coming to WisCon. I wish you would refrain from coming to World Fantasy, Readercon, or any other con I happen to attend. People like you we don’t need. But thanks to the free speech you so loudly claim no one at WisCon has1, you can spread your bullshit in public places and at public events. All the while whining about how you’re being oppressed.

I have reached a real breaking point with the cowards in this community. The sad, pathetic people who wish to stir up shit just for the sake of pageviews or getting well-known as crusader against people who think racism and sexism are bad2. I am tired of this utter bullshit that comes up Every. Single. Time.

The bottom line is this: you are wrong. You’re just wrong. Bigotry: is wrong. Elizabeth Moon: was wrong.

That doesn’t mean that things or people or ideas or thoughts can’t change. But this is immutable: Bigotry has no place at any con, and I can only be thankful that many of the people who run and attend WisCon work very hard to eliminate it from that one. And that starts by not honoring someone whose bigotry is not in question and who does not, apparently, feel she’s done anything wrong nor has shown any proclivity to dialogue that would lead to something valuable. Therefore, it was the right decision to remove her.

If you feel differently, then say so. But do it out in the open.

Footnotes

  1. Because of RaceFail, doncha know. It’s just so hard to be racist when all of your friends are totally against it! [⇧]
  2. I know people think the same thing about me — that I say what i do just to stir up shit and get attention. Because it’s so totally fun being an activist and working to eliminate racism and sexism. It is just too, too exciting feeling all the time like there is a giant group of people out there that thinks nasty thoughts about me, or wishes harm on me, or thinks I’m less than nothing because I’m a black person or a woman or queer or any combination thereof. I absolutely love that! And if I open my mouth even a little bit to say: Hey, that’s not cool, that is hurtful, that is fundamentally wrong, suddenly I am the problem? What even worse: I am not the only person in the community to whom this paragraph could apply. [⇧]

37 thoughts on “You People Are Out Of Your Goddamned Minds”

  1. re what Annalee Newitz said above:

    “What the Instapundit crowd may not realize, since they aren’t SF fans, is that rescinding ‘guest of honor’ isn’t the same thing as excommunicating.”

    Based on what I’ve seen, it isn’t just the Instapundit crowd that doesn’t get this; there are SF fans and writers who don’t either. I can somewhat understand their concerns about losing GoHships, but I think they’re wrong and coming at this from the wrong angle. Maybe I don’t know anything because I’m not a writer, but since I see writers blogging about this who agree with me, I figure I’m not totally full of it. *wry* Someone I know said something cryptic about “thought police” the day the announcement came out, and when I queried, mentioned Juan Williams and equated him and Moon as victims of “thought police”. I told hir I politely disagreed, and ze said “You’re fired! You can’t come to my convention!” (as if to illustrate a point) and I left it at “I think it is rather complicated, actually.” Which was lame of me, but I lacked the rhetorical resources to come up with a better response at the time.

    And I think hir response is common in the community. The idea that I’m not the only one who thinks it is utter offal is heartening, but I am dreading a convention I’m heading to this weekend to support a project I’m working on because of it . . . *sigh*

    But that’s no excuse to back down, and every time I think of doing so, I’ll think of this post to kick myself in the ass.

  4. Thanks for posting this. I repeat what people have said about Instapundit causing people to comment about this who are not part of the SF/F community. And everyone who wails about free speech on this topic fails to realize that free speech isn’t about being able to say whatever you want without repercussions–free speech is about the government not being allowed to silence your speech. But if you make bigoted comments on Fox News which cause you to lose your NPR job, that isn’t a free speech issue. Same with losing your GoH spot.

    Yes, free speech is a great thing, but free speech doesn’t stop others from being able to criticize your speech, or from there being consequences to what you say. And if the Supreme Court is able to find a free-speech right in corporations being able to spend millions of dollars to buy an election–which I totally disagree with–then it is easily within the free speech rights of WisCon to determine who they GoH will be.

  7. I love you so much, Tempest. :D

    Seriously, all these people who don’t even know what WisCon is come in to lecture (often mansplaining/whitesplaining) those who do about how things should go. What? Um, no. Everyone may have an (often completely uninformed) opinion, but there’s no need to inflict it on others.

  8. Great post! Thank you for taking a stand on this issue and for blogging about feminism and racism in general! Anyone who thinks you do it for “attention” has clearly never stood up for any truly unpopular cause.

    I was on the fence about attending WisCon until I read that the organizing committee had the guts to dis-invite Elizabeth Moon. I know it took a long time, but the fact that it happened at all is stunning and wonderful. How can I not support that?

  10. Totally agree. What the Instapundit crowd may not realize, since they aren’t SF fans, is that rescinding “guest of honor” isn’t the same thing as excommunicating. It doesn’t make sense to honor somebody who makes racist comments at con that’s explicitly anti-racist. Period. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to honor Tempest at a Mama Bears rally (though might be amusing for us to hear her speech).

      1. Now I’m picturing an editorial cartoon-style pen and ink drawing of you standing there, and a couple of (literal) bears are standing next to you and one’s got the paw-up-to-the-mouth-sidelong-whisper pose going and the caption says, “I wouldn’t want to get caught between her and a cub.”

  14. My favorite was definitely the Heinlein quote. As for so many of the other comments, talk about not getting it and/or not wanting to *sigh*

  15. Thanks. Someone had to say this and you said it very well.

    (I am having a lot of trouble with OpenID. Sorry if this posts more than once.)

  17. I’m still fascinated that people will rant like this and yet and still be amazed that poc obviously dont do scifi b/c they wont come to conventions, to share good times w/ people who rant like this.

  19. I’m tired of people equating free speech with free speech without consequences. People are free to say things, but there’s almost always consequences.

    I’m also tired of concoms being afraid to take action because they’re afraid of conflict. If a staffer or a guest doesn’t uphold the ideals of the convention, get rid of them. If they’re behaving badly to the detriment of the convention, get rid of them. If, in the case of staffers, they’re not doing what the convention needs, get rid of them (the proper response to “Waah, I’m just a volunteer!” is “You volunteered to do X, and you’re not doing it, so we have to find someone else who will.”).

  20. Pingback: Not being honoured is not the same thing at Feminist SF – The Blog!

  21. My favorite part was how “Anonymous” castigated everyone as “Cowards”. That about sums up all of the comments that Instapundit generated.

  22. Vox Day posted about it as well in oh-so-lovely racist, ablist, misogynist, and fat-phobic terms. Blech. My brain requires bleaching.

    1. When I’m able to killfile VD from my entire internet experience, the net will finally be all that I want it to be.

      VD. He lives up to his initials.

  23. You know what really bothers me about these anti-PC crusaders? That it’s a fucking game to them. The Underqualified Black Woman bogey-person in that Apex blogger’s anecdote is just a cipher, not a person. The Muslims in that prissy, mannered essay were mere abstractions. They never think about the Other, except as symbols or tokens. Brown folk perplex and irritate them. Not one shred of empathy. And the whole cries of “free speech” and “censorship” make as much sense when Dr. Laura/Sarah Palin played that same card.

    1. Truth. Intellectual (?) fun and games for them. Gosh. Why the hell are poc taking this so seriously?

  27. The answer to all of those questions is “entitlement”, I believe. Moon is apparently entitled to be honored by a con with a strong social justice component despite her anti-social justice public statements, and people in general are entitled to be bigoted asshats without anyone being mean to them about it.

    “You suck and everyone of your religious tradition and/or ethnic self-identification sucks unless you go out of the way to toady to us normal people” is free speech; “Hey! Those are really inappropriate comments, and I don’t think people spouting that rhetoric in public deserve to be honored by this con” is outrageous personal attack. Apparently, SF fans don’t read 1984 anymore?

  28. Ugh. Thank you, Instapundit, for making everything better!

    Though some of those comments are from people who are in the community enough to know about Racefail and such. And, of course, there’s the Shetterly. Still, I am glad (?) that many are just there to troll and not actual people I have to ever contend with.

  29. Tempest, the SF3 blog post & others got linked to by Instapundit. People unironically using the word “feminazi” are probably not part of the Wiscon community.

  30. The good (?) news is that most of those jackasses are coming over from Instapundit, not from anywhere within the SF community. So the odds of ever running into any of them at any of your regular cons is pretty low. (I mean, I’m not saying those opinions don’t also have proponents within the SF community. Just that these guys are even more outside of the WisCon community than normal.)

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