(no subject)
I think about the shitstorm already occurring thanks to the outing of coffeeandink, and I think about SF culture and how it has struggled to change, and I think: this is the old-guard power-structure reasserting its control. You see it in the parental disciplinary language, the condescenscion, the assumption that "we" -- those who object to racism-avoidance -- are all east-coast college students (as opposed to, say, east-coast college professors, or east-coast college janitors). This is a fine derailment tactic -- I mean, we are after all talking about white people now -- but it's also a signal of how it's going to be, now and in the future. It's going to be a fight, maybe a very ugly one, to get real social change back on the SFF agenda.
Probably the old guard doesn't really understand how one outing (of a white person, even) could negatively impact the racial and cultural diversity of the field. (Perhaps it doesn't care either; I can't tell.) Probably the old guard hasn't even thought this through, how much pseudonymy can matter, how ghastly a breach of trust it is when broken. The Feminist SF Wiki did not have a harassment policy, when I asked about how they might handle malicious outings; they'd never dealt with that situation before. (Taken in the most positive light, the earliest outing of coffeeandink might have been clueless rather than malicious, but today's, NSM.) It is even possible that the old guard has not had to think through the outcomes of serious, unpleasant argument at all, and does not have functioning social mechanisms for changing or updating its customs.
Charitably, the old guard's continuing cluelessness is a desperate problem; uncharitably, that cluelessness is a crutch and a weapon and a razor-wire fence.
Where are the con-comms, going apeshit to distance themselves from these serial fails of race and culture? Where are the guests-of-honor, specifically inviting underserved communities to visit at an upcoming con? (Where are the "discount if this is your first con evar" programs?) Why aren't the SF organizations like SFWA (okay, bad example) having a cow and putting out official position statements on outreach? Where are press-releases from the publishing houses, explaining their diversity efforts (in their lists and in their workplaces)?
Of all the opportunities! Of all the opportunities being missed even now.
Probably the old guard doesn't really understand how one outing (of a white person, even) could negatively impact the racial and cultural diversity of the field. (Perhaps it doesn't care either; I can't tell.) Probably the old guard hasn't even thought this through, how much pseudonymy can matter, how ghastly a breach of trust it is when broken. The Feminist SF Wiki did not have a harassment policy, when I asked about how they might handle malicious outings; they'd never dealt with that situation before. (Taken in the most positive light, the earliest outing of coffeeandink might have been clueless rather than malicious, but today's, NSM.) It is even possible that the old guard has not had to think through the outcomes of serious, unpleasant argument at all, and does not have functioning social mechanisms for changing or updating its customs.
Charitably, the old guard's continuing cluelessness is a desperate problem; uncharitably, that cluelessness is a crutch and a weapon and a razor-wire fence.
Where are the con-comms, going apeshit to distance themselves from these serial fails of race and culture? Where are the guests-of-honor, specifically inviting underserved communities to visit at an upcoming con? (Where are the "discount if this is your first con evar" programs?) Why aren't the SF organizations like SFWA (okay, bad example) having a cow and putting out official position statements on outreach? Where are press-releases from the publishing houses, explaining their diversity efforts (in their lists and in their workplaces)?
Of all the opportunities! Of all the opportunities being missed even now.