On Free Speech.

[sarren]

My interaction with the internetz has been to not engage in controversial matters, to not express an opinion that people might take ‘the wrong way’, especially in their own journals. Because fandom IS my happy place, I feel I engage on subjects that are important to me in real life quite enough

Comments

[jamethiel_bane]

I think that he does have the right to say them. I firmly believe however, that he is an objectionable human being who causes untold pain and distress and that as such he should not find an audience.

I further believe that the sneaky implications behind what he says, of a jewish conspiracy and the anti-semitism that supports such an idea is nasty and dangerous.

The trouble is, I don't believe a few polite comments actually do the job. The Haiti fic was... well. It wasn't just the fact that it was set in Haiti, it displayed some enormously troubling stereotypes (the natural servility of brown folks, some "awww shucks massa" dialogue. Not to mention the dismissal of their religion). I know that I facepalmed all the way through reading it.

I don't think a few comments would have enlightened the author as to how badly they'd transgressed. I was enlightened by reading the commentaries--there were things that I didn't pick up, as I am most emphatically white. Shouldn't community response be proportional to community views on the matter? Doesn't an author have the responsibility to go "Hey, I'm dealing with some troubling matter here, maybe I should get a once over from someone with good cred in this issue."

Or they can decide that they know it's problematic but they want to go ahead anyway, damn the torpedos and just take their lumps.

I don't believe that thoughtlessness gives people a pass for being arses. I myself didn't leave a comment. I just went "... um, NO" in my head and closed the tab. And like I said, I disapprove of others being rude, and I certainly would not in any way stop other people from commenting because others have already done so.

And even if she is driven out and comes back under another name, I honestly believe that she would have learned. Even if she doesn't understand, she's not going to do that again, because it was so unpleasant last time. And that's a worst case scenario. Best case is, she tries to engage as an ally.

[sarren]

Unfortunately he does find an audience, and his conspiracy views are dangerous. Most of the people who listen to him are bigots to start with - I think the danger is of his convincing people who’ve never been taught to think for themselves. Should those people be protected from him? Or should the rest of us make more effort to refute his lies?

How do we know a few polite comments wouldn’t have worked? I think before something like this goes viral more effort should made in a low key way. I honestly don’t think she set out to write about ‘troubling’ issues, she thought she was writing a romance - it was ignorance.

I loved that list you linked to about being polite to people, I think it makes another good point - they may be new to fandom, or lj - I think she (and others like her) deserve that benefit of the doubt too. I do not think a proportional response is the answer. I am arguing exactly the opposite. *G*

[jamethiel_bane]

Ah well! We'll have to disagree on the proportional response thing. Like I said, if everyone expresses themselves politely, I don't think that lots of comments is a bad thing or that critical analysis is mean. I like fandom being thinky!

Re: the haiti thing, it was... ok, yes. Trivialising tragedy, that's not good, but what was really, really disturbing were the racist attitudes the fic displayed. Maybe she'd never thought about it, but the sentiments and framing of the CoC was appalling. Does ignorance excuse someone calling an African-American "Boy" or "Girl"? (Hint: I don't think it does. We all fuck up. However, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves and treat others as they would like to be treated, within reason. We don't live in bubbles and there is somewhat of a responsibility to be aware of cultural history.) I believe that she'd absorbed racist attitudes somewhere along the way and never had them challenged before. To say that people should be nice, etc and that critiquing problematic behaviour/attitudes/language should be done sparingly and circumspectly so as to avoid overwhelming people runs perilously close to a "tone argument" and puts the onus on the oppressed and hurt people and their allies to be "nice" rather than on the OP not to hurt people by writing racist things in the first place.

Re: David Irving, I think that I would give money to a cause that says "Fine. You can have your time on stage. Provided that every single person who listens to you onstage spends the same amount of time listening to the alternative viewpoint." Assuming people weren't biased, that'd take care of the people who are ignorant. But, like you said, there are a lot of bigots out there. I don't know what we do about those.

[sarren]

Happy to agree to disagree :) We're debating! (I'm new at this, you can probably tell).

I don't think the onus is on OPs to be polite to racists, but I think anyone who wishes to engage people in debate with any intention of attempting to change their minds/opinions has to do it reasonably politely.

Ooh, I really like the idea of people having to listen to both sides of a debate. Sadly most people don't like to have their world views challenged. That includes us. I'm not going to listen to anything David Irving says with an open mind because I dislike everything he stands for. People rarely change their minds when hold a position on something and they think they're right.

[jamethiel_bane]

The thing about being polite to people who are casually...

It's really, really hard when you're a victim of casual, unthinking prejudice--being followed when you go into a store or being stopped to have your bags checked every single time. Being a manager at work and having people assume that you'll perform a function that a waiter would perform just because of your skin colour when they don't treat white people that way. (This is only half of the stuff that happens)

So when someone comes along and unthinkingly perpetuates the same, tired old stereotypes and attitudes, yes, some of the responses may have gotten testy. But given the degree of harm that racism causes to people on a daily basis? That's completely understandable!

She was racist. I read the fic. It was enormously problematic. People reacted. Some people may have been impolite, which is regrettable, but...

Honestly, it takes getting your arse handed to you a few times before you can even try to get over the defensive reaction of "I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG." I can only do it because there was one time when I was majorly, (in)gloriously wrong and being an arse about it and I defended myself and defended myself until even I had to admit that I was being an arse. And since then, when someone tells me I'm being problematic, I abandon the computer for a bit and breathe and then I apologise and try to be less of an arse. But it wasn't being treated gently that got me to being able to do that--it was having friends, multiple friends issue the smackdown. And they had to be very, very direct.

And even now, I still get a bit caught up in things, so it doesn't always work.