Sigh.
I wrote a long rant to farewell rasfc. Then life intervened (my emotional energy in writing it was already interfering with my job yesterday and I just had to take a break, and get some work done). And now I'm thinking why bother post it?
Bill Swears wrote:
> Aqua wrote:
>> Bill Swears wrote:
>>> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:06:49 -0800, Bill Swears
>>>> wrote in
>>>>
>>>> in rec.arts.sf.misc:
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>>> This is a good case in point. By informing David that his
>>>>> approach to understanding Zeborah's issue works
>>>>> differently from your own approaches to cognition, is
>>>>> taken as self-centred, callous, or worse, you're telling
>>>>> him that you think he's self-centered, callous or worse. But he
>>>>> isn't any of those things.
>>>>
>>>> His behavior in rasfc has been both.
>>>
>>> So has mine, at times. I could probably find a similar point for
>>> you, though it would take a bit of searching. Aqua isn't a bad guy,
>>> she's a good guy, and I have committed a fox paws.
>>
>> I'm not a guy, actually.
>>
>> Aqua
>> much eye rolling.
> Thus, precisely, my comment about fox paws. I've been using the term
> guys as a generic term for persons for about thirty years. It's
> shorter, and seems to have remained unloaded. It also seems to be
> moving into broader use.
>
> I'd use folks, but somehow "Good Folks" seems so, ugh, folksy, that it
> might make people suspect my intent. Anyway, yes, I recognize that in
> the current debate, using an originally sex based informal that I have
> unilaterally decided shouldn't be offensive, is probably a faux pas.
I appreciate the good intentions, but......
To get back to what I think the point is:
I am not a "good" guy/person/being any more than I'm a "bad" guy/person/being. I am simply a person/being (and in this context, "guy" will very definitely Not Work) and with very few exceptions, the way I am treated by rasfc is as an Other*, if not completely invisible.
And when I point that out, I'm not pointing it out to be all virtuous and PC and enforce the correct social behaviour on the group or whatever-the-fuck it is some people imagine I'm doing. I'm pointing it out because while I can put up with being Other quite a bit**, it is hard work, and I would prefer my time in rasfc to be relaxing, among friends, and not a continuing awareness of my Otherness.
My recent actual rage hasn't been over my continuing status as Other***, but the fact that Zeborah and Darkhawk have been on rasfc for about *ten* years, they're actual writers writing actual sf and have been for the entire time they've been here, and *they're* Other. They're *still* Other. The maintainer of the FAQ, the voice of exquisite reason expressed in the politest, most feminine (in the entirely positive sense of "feminine") language, is not heard. I rage about that.
And so many other (in the other sense, sigh) interesting diverse voices here have been lost because they also became too tired of being Other, or of having to carefully tiptoe around certain subjects, never express how they actually felt, because they did not want to be told they were Other, did not want to have their feelings, desires and world-view dismissed as some ludicruous PC police getting in the way of the Real Boys expressing their Real Creativity so we can have more Real Escapism(tm).
I keep hearing that sf publishing is slowly dying. That used to make me sad. Now I think I understand what sf publishing is about, what it's trying to publish, and I am actually pleased the chickens have come home to roost. I can't wait for this monstrosity of white heterosexual male privilege, this relic of late colonialism's belief it owned the entire world, and everything in it, and everything that was to come out of it, that the world and humanity could ever become, for sf to die. So I can dance on its grave, at least slightly freer to move as my spirit tells me to move, tell the stories only I can tell about what we can be, and listen freely to all the other stories that are not being heard, to increase my wonder and joy in being human.
Aqua
* I mean 'Other' in the sense that Western culture treats people who don't belong to the culture as curiosities, novelties, sources of interesting vocabulary, dress, styles, and customs to make boring ordinary life or a boring ordinary story exotic and fresh. In the sense of religions and traditions being a supermarket of neat-o ideas that can be cooked up into something tasty for "global" (Western local) consumption, and you are met with blank stares when you ask how the people whose ideas these are originally might feel about what you're doing. Those other people being so Other that their genuine people-ness, their births, lives, and deaths, their mundane everydays, special joys, close friendships, difficult relatives, misunderstandings that devolve into long-running arguments, disappointments and losses, life-shattering tragedies and slow remaking of themselves, deepening their own understanding of themselves and the world along the way, is all completely invisible and ignored. That 'Other'.
** I've moved continents several times both as a child and adult. If I hadn't politely put up with being an Other I would simply have been unable to function, and I imagine I'd be in a mental institution or dead by now.
*** I've become resigned by now to the fact that that is all I ever will be and can be in rasfc, short of turning into some instrument of malicious, meaningless vengeance purely bent on destruction - not even a troll, because to the extent I've ever got the sense of a troll's motivation this would be a completely different, entirely more primal thing, although possibly not from the outside. Exhausting for me, and just not enough payoff or relavance to the rest of my life to make it worthwhile. Yes, the Queen of the Night's army includes berserker valkyries, didn't you know?
Manually reposted as my attempt to cross-post failed.
Bill Swears wrote:
> Aqua wrote:
>> Bill Swears wrote:
>>> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:06:49 -0800, Bill Swears
>>>> wrote in
>>>>
>>>> in rec.arts.sf.misc:
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>>> This is a good case in point. By informing David that his
>>>>> approach to understanding Zeborah's issue works
>>>>> differently from your own approaches to cognition, is
>>>>> taken as self-centred, callous, or worse, you're telling
>>>>> him that you think he's self-centered, callous or worse. But he
>>>>> isn't any of those things.
>>>>
>>>> His behavior in rasfc has been both.
>>>
>>> So has mine, at times. I could probably find a similar point for
>>> you, though it would take a bit of searching. Aqua isn't a bad guy,
>>> she's a good guy, and I have committed a fox paws.
>>
>> I'm not a guy, actually.
>>
>> Aqua
>> much eye rolling.
> Thus, precisely, my comment about fox paws. I've been using the term
> guys as a generic term for persons for about thirty years. It's
> shorter, and seems to have remained unloaded. It also seems to be
> moving into broader use.
>
> I'd use folks, but somehow "Good Folks" seems so, ugh, folksy, that it
> might make people suspect my intent. Anyway, yes, I recognize that in
> the current debate, using an originally sex based informal that I have
> unilaterally decided shouldn't be offensive, is probably a faux pas.
I appreciate the good intentions, but......
To get back to what I think the point is:
I am not a "good" guy/person/being any more than I'm a "bad" guy/person/being. I am simply a person/being (and in this context, "guy" will very definitely Not Work) and with very few exceptions, the way I am treated by rasfc is as an Other*, if not completely invisible.
And when I point that out, I'm not pointing it out to be all virtuous and PC and enforce the correct social behaviour on the group or whatever-the-fuck it is some people imagine I'm doing. I'm pointing it out because while I can put up with being Other quite a bit**, it is hard work, and I would prefer my time in rasfc to be relaxing, among friends, and not a continuing awareness of my Otherness.
My recent actual rage hasn't been over my continuing status as Other***, but the fact that Zeborah and Darkhawk have been on rasfc for about *ten* years, they're actual writers writing actual sf and have been for the entire time they've been here, and *they're* Other. They're *still* Other. The maintainer of the FAQ, the voice of exquisite reason expressed in the politest, most feminine (in the entirely positive sense of "feminine") language, is not heard. I rage about that.
And so many other (in the other sense, sigh) interesting diverse voices here have been lost because they also became too tired of being Other, or of having to carefully tiptoe around certain subjects, never express how they actually felt, because they did not want to be told they were Other, did not want to have their feelings, desires and world-view dismissed as some ludicruous PC police getting in the way of the Real Boys expressing their Real Creativity so we can have more Real Escapism(tm).
I keep hearing that sf publishing is slowly dying. That used to make me sad. Now I think I understand what sf publishing is about, what it's trying to publish, and I am actually pleased the chickens have come home to roost. I can't wait for this monstrosity of white heterosexual male privilege, this relic of late colonialism's belief it owned the entire world, and everything in it, and everything that was to come out of it, that the world and humanity could ever become, for sf to die. So I can dance on its grave, at least slightly freer to move as my spirit tells me to move, tell the stories only I can tell about what we can be, and listen freely to all the other stories that are not being heard, to increase my wonder and joy in being human.
Aqua
* I mean 'Other' in the sense that Western culture treats people who don't belong to the culture as curiosities, novelties, sources of interesting vocabulary, dress, styles, and customs to make boring ordinary life or a boring ordinary story exotic and fresh. In the sense of religions and traditions being a supermarket of neat-o ideas that can be cooked up into something tasty for "global" (Western local) consumption, and you are met with blank stares when you ask how the people whose ideas these are originally might feel about what you're doing. Those other people being so Other that their genuine people-ness, their births, lives, and deaths, their mundane everydays, special joys, close friendships, difficult relatives, misunderstandings that devolve into long-running arguments, disappointments and losses, life-shattering tragedies and slow remaking of themselves, deepening their own understanding of themselves and the world along the way, is all completely invisible and ignored. That 'Other'.
** I've moved continents several times both as a child and adult. If I hadn't politely put up with being an Other I would simply have been unable to function, and I imagine I'd be in a mental institution or dead by now.
*** I've become resigned by now to the fact that that is all I ever will be and can be in rasfc, short of turning into some instrument of malicious, meaningless vengeance purely bent on destruction - not even a troll, because to the extent I've ever got the sense of a troll's motivation this would be a completely different, entirely more primal thing, although possibly not from the outside. Exhausting for me, and just not enough payoff or relavance to the rest of my life to make it worthwhile. Yes, the Queen of the Night's army includes berserker valkyries, didn't you know?
Manually reposted as my attempt to cross-post failed.