No Award for Best Fan Writer
There is one non-pathetic puppy nominee for best fan writer, Laura J Mixon. She was nominated for a post about Requires Hate/Winterfox/Benjanun Sriduangkaew among other aliases. I will not be voting for her. Here are the reasons why:
1. Statistics, you're doing it wrong. - In her blog post Mixon announces that she is going to take a "statistical approach" at looking at RH's pattern of harassment. What she means is that she has curated 47 anecdotes and then whispered the words "random sample" over thirty of them and pretended that turned them into statistical data. It doesn't. Her sample has at least two obvious sources of bias - pre-selection bias (from when Mixon decided whether or not to include certain accounts) and self-selection bias (since RH deleted all the evidence, many of the accounts are based on self reporting.)
I want to be clear that I don't think this makes any of the accounts untrue. I believe they are, and I in no way defend RH's behavior. But drawing conclusions about patterns of behavior from a limited number of accounts is a dubious practice. So, about those conclusions:
BS/RH’s targets, by and large, are her peers. An overwhelming 77% of her attacks have been launched at professional writers.
This is disingenuous at best. It may be true that most of her attacks are against people who are currently her peers, but this completely ignores that RH stopped writing her blog around the time she first became a published author of fiction. Everything from her WF days and probably most everything from her RH days was published before she became a professional writer so she was not addressing her peers when RH made the comments.
A large majority of BS/RH’s targets have been women, at between 73 and 81% of the targeted population (two targets provided information anonymously, without clues to their gender).
Between 37 and 40% of her targets, or nearly two-fifths, were people of color. Given that the field has been, and still is, predominantly white, this is disproportionately high.
I was able to think of a fair number of white male authors/bloggers RH attacked off the top of my head that did not make Mixon's list (Joe Abercrombie, Peter Watts, Scott Lynch, Patrick from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, Mark Lawrence) I also recall quite a bit of mocking of "neckbeards" for liking certain types of fiction. My recollections are anecdotes as much as Mixon's. I feel certain I could curate a set of "data" that gives the opposite impression from Mixon's post, and that's the heart of the problem here.
RH attacked a lot of women and POC. I think if you broke down the harassment by era you would likely find that during her WF days her harassment was predominantly of women and POCs. I would also expect that this is partly a result of 50_books_POC being largely populated by women and POC. During her RH days, I imagine she was more ecumenical. And I'm very sure that RH was like a dog with a bone[1] relentless when someone reacted - she would double and triple down just to get under their skin.
But honestly, RH's actions were bad enough based on the anecdotes we have. There was no need to try to dress things up and overstate the case to "prove" by "math" a "conclusion" that fit Mixon's preconceived notions. (The conclusion about RH's peers is what seals for me that she was working to an agenda.) We do not have the data to do the analysis Mixon pretends to do. There were true and valuable things in the post, but the whole thing is overshadowed by this intellectual dishonesty.
2. One post is not enough. If you want to nominate a single blog post, best related work is where it belongs. My personal preference is for best fan writer to go to someone who is writing interesting things about science fiction and not about fandom. Regardless, it should be for a body of work, not one post. (And I really hope we aren't going to have a load of nominees next year for writings about the pathetic puppies.)
3. I will never vote for someone who campaigns. Mixon recently wrote the following:
A vote for me sends a clear signal that the community stands firm on this basic principle: that our politics can’t outweigh our humanity. That everyone has a fundamental right to be here, to engage in online and in-person discourse without being threatened with annihilation.
Nope. Nope. Nope. This is flat out campaigning. It's also the worst sort of campaigning because it carries with it the implied negative: if you don't vote for Mixon you are against inclusiveness and human decency. I reject that narrative.
I've condemned the pathetic puppies for their campaigning. I'd be a hypocrite if I supported Mixon when she is doing the same.
[1]It has been pointed out to me this phrasing is racist. I am sorry. It was not my intent.
1. Statistics, you're doing it wrong. - In her blog post Mixon announces that she is going to take a "statistical approach" at looking at RH's pattern of harassment. What she means is that she has curated 47 anecdotes and then whispered the words "random sample" over thirty of them and pretended that turned them into statistical data. It doesn't. Her sample has at least two obvious sources of bias - pre-selection bias (from when Mixon decided whether or not to include certain accounts) and self-selection bias (since RH deleted all the evidence, many of the accounts are based on self reporting.)
I want to be clear that I don't think this makes any of the accounts untrue. I believe they are, and I in no way defend RH's behavior. But drawing conclusions about patterns of behavior from a limited number of accounts is a dubious practice. So, about those conclusions:
BS/RH’s targets, by and large, are her peers. An overwhelming 77% of her attacks have been launched at professional writers.
This is disingenuous at best. It may be true that most of her attacks are against people who are currently her peers, but this completely ignores that RH stopped writing her blog around the time she first became a published author of fiction. Everything from her WF days and probably most everything from her RH days was published before she became a professional writer so she was not addressing her peers when RH made the comments.
A large majority of BS/RH’s targets have been women, at between 73 and 81% of the targeted population (two targets provided information anonymously, without clues to their gender).
Between 37 and 40% of her targets, or nearly two-fifths, were people of color. Given that the field has been, and still is, predominantly white, this is disproportionately high.
I was able to think of a fair number of white male authors/bloggers RH attacked off the top of my head that did not make Mixon's list (Joe Abercrombie, Peter Watts, Scott Lynch, Patrick from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, Mark Lawrence) I also recall quite a bit of mocking of "neckbeards" for liking certain types of fiction. My recollections are anecdotes as much as Mixon's. I feel certain I could curate a set of "data" that gives the opposite impression from Mixon's post, and that's the heart of the problem here.
RH attacked a lot of women and POC. I think if you broke down the harassment by era you would likely find that during her WF days her harassment was predominantly of women and POCs. I would also expect that this is partly a result of 50_books_POC being largely populated by women and POC. During her RH days, I imagine she was more ecumenical. And I'm very sure that RH was like a dog with a bone[1] relentless when someone reacted - she would double and triple down just to get under their skin.
But honestly, RH's actions were bad enough based on the anecdotes we have. There was no need to try to dress things up and overstate the case to "prove" by "math" a "conclusion" that fit Mixon's preconceived notions. (The conclusion about RH's peers is what seals for me that she was working to an agenda.) We do not have the data to do the analysis Mixon pretends to do. There were true and valuable things in the post, but the whole thing is overshadowed by this intellectual dishonesty.
2. One post is not enough. If you want to nominate a single blog post, best related work is where it belongs. My personal preference is for best fan writer to go to someone who is writing interesting things about science fiction and not about fandom. Regardless, it should be for a body of work, not one post. (And I really hope we aren't going to have a load of nominees next year for writings about the pathetic puppies.)
3. I will never vote for someone who campaigns. Mixon recently wrote the following:
A vote for me sends a clear signal that the community stands firm on this basic principle: that our politics can’t outweigh our humanity. That everyone has a fundamental right to be here, to engage in online and in-person discourse without being threatened with annihilation.
Nope. Nope. Nope. This is flat out campaigning. It's also the worst sort of campaigning because it carries with it the implied negative: if you don't vote for Mixon you are against inclusiveness and human decency. I reject that narrative.
I've condemned the pathetic puppies for their campaigning. I'd be a hypocrite if I supported Mixon when she is doing the same.
[1]It has been pointed out to me this phrasing is racist. I am sorry. It was not my intent.