Wednesday
7 May 2008 2:06 pm
eta: Removed link because original poster is offline and my issue is really not with a single person, but with the frequency and context with which these arguments are presented.
Critcizing "dogpiles" as inherently "moblike," destructive, negative, and childish without considering the content which has evoked this response has the same in-built political and structural issues as the demand that oppressed, discriminated, or harassed groups moderate their tone before their objections will be considered. Both actions attempt to codify behavior while treating speech content as empty; they ignore power differentials; they treat actions or speech acts as if they take place in a vacuums free of social circumstances, historical knowledge, or political influences, rather than as if they are what constitutes or destroys communities.
Wear courtesy's velvet gloves as often as you like. They do not disguise the steel fingers beneath, especially when they're choking some of us to death. The RP community formerly known as Kristallnacht and the
daily_deviant mods who decided to use "miscegenation" as a prompt clearly thought that their responses were polite because they were using "polite language." This is sophistry. There is no polite way to tell someone you do not care about the genocide or oppression of their people. There is no polite way to make rape jokes. There is no polite way to use "gay" or "girl" as a synonym for "bad," "weak," or "ugly." There is no polite way to blame a victim for their own harassment or abuse.
To riff off Stephen Sondheim: polite language is not good, it's not right, it's just
nice. And when
nice is prioritized over
right or
good, it's just another form of oppression. It's just another attempt by those in power to attempt to maintain the status quo.
Arguing that polite language in the face of offense is "more effective" is specious. People initially approached f/k/a Kristallnacht and
theferrett with tactfully phrased objections, in some case approaching with an assumption and history of friendship. Politeness got nowhere. Outrage and group protest got somewhere. They didn't necessarily change the minds of the offenders: defenders f/k/a Kristallnacht clearly don't understand what's wrong with calling someone a Nazi for protesting the trivialization of the Holocaust and
theferrett is clearly nursing a sense of his grand utopian intentions having been foully misunderstood. What these protests do is establish the limits of community tolerance. You may think whatever you like; what you may not do is take public action in our community space--whether virtual or actual--that perpetuates harm to members of our community. Fandom, like the societies it comes from, has historically not recognized racism, anti-Semitism, or many forms of sexism as harmful. Group protests are an attempt to change that.
That said: Is group protest always right or good? No, it's not. It's a way to establish and enforce community norms, and it's only as right and good as the community norms are. It can be profoundly oppressive and profoundly abusive. But silence in the face of injury is also a way to establish and enforce community norms. You don't opt out of a community by remaining in it and never commenting on its big controversies; you just opt to abide by whatever party wins. You only opt out of a community by
leaving that community. You can leave the fannish community, sure. Leaving the human community, that's harder.
Wednesday
7 May 2008 11:09 am
I don't see an online version of the program up yet; usually it comes out during the week or two after programming assignments go out. "Guerrilla programming" is called something else at the con, but I forget what; basically there are some rooms kept open for people to create their own programming items at the con. Last year, IIRC, there were impromptu programming items on discrimination against transpeople (in response to a flyer inserted in the programming packet) and a vidshow (because
cofax7 and
veejane are agitators who like watching vids).
Some of the program items came up after the program process and some are program items for which I volunteered. In the latter case, I want to wait for the full schedule, because there's no point in creating an impromptu program item if the item already exists. Myself, I would love to see/attend all the items in my last post, but I don't think I will have the energy to organize more than two.
Seal Press girlcottThe Seal Press imbroglios broke out after programming planning. I think that it's important to discuss, and I want to solicit involvement in it from the feminist and particularly feminist academic community at Wiscon (Wiscon has a fairly strong academic track). My take towards the session is more persuasive than exploratory: I am going to argue for a girlcott. I'm not sure whether or not to solicit a co-moderator who would argue against the girlcott; I do think that it's important to discuss the questions and objections people are going to have. I'll be putting a post about this up in the Wiscon LJ community later this week, advertising the panel/discussion and soliciting help making and distributing informational flyers, once I have time to put together a description and obtain permission to link to explanatory posts.
For me, this is the most emotionally difficult and most politically important of the impromptu items. Now that I have confirmation it won't be me talking to an empty room, I am determined to hold it.
Octavian NothingM.T. Anderson's
Octavian Nothing is a brilliant and heartbreaking young adult novel that examines race, capitalism, history, science, and the racial and political implications of the construction of knowledge, liberty, property, and freedom in the colonial U.S. It is heartbreaking. It is not science fiction and it is not alternate history or even secret history: it's historical fiction about history in ways that history books have not put history together. Reading it was like reading, in narrative form, a story that perfectly exemplified what so many of us have been trying to articulate over the past few years in fandom about the connections between race, power, oppression, and how the constructions of "objectivity," "science," and "knowledge" are affected by and implicated in the oppression of people of color. It is both specifically about American history and globally about world history and how the principles of the Enlightenment acted as instruments of European imperialism and white supremacy.
oyceter suggested a panel on this, and we both volunteered to be on it. If there's already a program item, then I will happily attend that. If not, I would love to have a book club discussion and/or panel on the book with other Wiscon attendees.
The Sarah Connor ChroniclesI know there were a bunch of SF TV panels which will probably include some discussion of SCC, but perhaps because it began airing so close to the programming deadline, I don't think there were any panels devoted to this. I adore this show; I don't think it's perfect. I'd love to talk about its virtues and flaws, aesthetic and/or political, with other fans.
Again, if there turns out to be an item on the show already on the program, I don't think this will be necessary.
ViddingI'd love to see a vidshow and/or participate in a discussion of vidding, whether among people already familiar with the concept or to introduce it to the Wiscon community. I think there's some terrific feminist and antiracist critique and celebration going on here in this underground, sometimes undercover art form; I want more people who will appreciate it and benefit from it to become familiar with it.
But I also don't think I will have the energy to wrangle all the tech stuff. So I encourage the other vidders and vidfans I know will be attending to organize this.