Guest Post: Puppies Crying Bitter Tears

Description: Screenshot of tweets with hashtag "New Hugo
Categories" from Foz &Arthur Chu: "Best UNcritical Use of
1950s Gender Roles In Story Set 2000 Years In Future", "Best
Non-White Protagonist Portrayed By White Model On Cover" &
"The Dan Simmons Award For Best Time Traveller From
Future Telling You All Your Political Opinions Are Right".

Friend of the blog Ria, of Bibliotropic, had a lot to say about the spate of what the Puppies rhetoric has meant for them  personally as well as the field of writing in general recently. The Code is proud to present the following guest post from Ria. I also stand by everything they say here. Warning: contans swears.

"I dislike the both Puppy litter ideologies. I talked a bit about why last year, long before this current Puppy debacle began, with a post about Correia's comments on diversity in SFF. For those who don't want to read a long post about it, in a nutshell, someone who is now very strongly identified with the Puppies said, a while back, that including nonbinary characters and other forms of diversity in SFF would make for bad fiction, because doing so would come across solely as message fiction and remove any entertainment value. I objected to that, since what that amounts to in a practical sense is to erase people like me from having representation in fiction. The insinuation is that people such as myself aren't of any real value to have our stories, nor does anyone want to actually read about us or have us around. It's insulting, and it's dehumanizing.

So when this round of Puppy problems started, I admit I was already pretty inclined to dislike them, given that my experience of one of their figureheads was that he thinks people like me shouldn't play a central role in his beloved genre. And the more I read about what they stood for, the more my hackles rose. Accusations that women, people of colour, QUILTBAG folk were only getting nominations for awards due to affirmative action are galling, since what they essentially say is that these people getting nominations aren't actually as good as that straight white male over there and are only getting nominated because of quotas that need filling. If it wasn't for those quotas, that nomination would rightfully go to a dude. Comments that because certain of their books or series were popular with a certain crowd and sold well, they should totally be eligible for more award nominations. (Because quantity equals quality, I guess.)

There may be no AWARD for such well-selling books, but there is a REWARD. It's called a paycheque. A paycheque you get for doing a thing you love, which is something many people don't get to experience in their lives. That isn't to say that people with well-selling books don't deserve more than a simple paycheque. It's awesome to have fans, fan experiences, interaction, the knowledge that you're doing something people enjoy. Maybe there ought to be an award for the SFF book that sells the most copies in a year, I dunno. (Then, I suspect, there'd be a cry-out about how books released toward the end of a year just didn't have a chance, and look how many they sold the next year, so they should totally have won that award after all. Nobody gets everything.)

The problem I see with most of the Puppy stuff is that their message seems very unclear. First it appeared to be, "The Hugos are a stupid award full of politics I disagree with and all given to books I don't want to write or read. ...So how come I never win one?" Then it started to be about affirmative action accusations, about women and non-white and non-straight people swooping in and stealing awards that should go to more deserving folk. Then the hypocrisies really started coming to light, where Puppies would insult authors they disagreed with, very personally, but as soon as there was any retaliation against even their politics they'd cry defamation and abuse. At the end of it all, what I can see is that the Puppies stand for only the Puppies, and to hell with anything else. And by "to hell with," I mean largely that they'll insult and threaten people who don't toe the Puppy party line. it's fine and dandy for someone to come in and defend the Puppies and say, "Look, all they're saying is that they think their works should be judged as being just as valid as anyone else's, and that people are free to do as they please so long as he can do the same."

Sounds good on paper. And utterly out of context.

Because major Puppy authors are being allowed to write and publish the books they do. They're not being blocked from selling them. They may not qualify for awards, but hell, so do the vast majority of books published in a year. Big damn deal. The idea that everyone should have an award is a very liberal thing, and given that the Puppies seem to have a beef with politically liberal things, you'd think they'd be a bit more on board with a meritocracy. Nobody is imposing their ideals on the Puppies. The world can, amazingly, have multiple things in it, some of which by default disagree with other things. But the accusations made by them are harmful. Painful. Dismissive. And are largely focused on gender issues, sexuality, race, and a whole load of other things that make people say yes, there's some godsdamn bigotry happening here.

People love to say that so-and-so can't possibly be racist because they have black friends. Okay, so, by that logic, no heterosexual man can be sexist if they're married to a woman. Oh, wait, LOGIC DOES NOT COMPUTE! Someone can have black friends and still be racist. And since what a person writes and what a person believes aren't always walking along hand-in-hand, a person can also write about a black woman being just as kick-ass as a white man, but when they throw out n-word jokes at parties, sorry, that's still being racist.

I think some of the major Puppy supporters miss what a lot of people miss about prejudice. They hear the word sexism and assume that sexism comes in only one form: overt. You're only really sexist if you state that women are inferior to men and they shouldn't be allowed to do man things and should stay at home and quietly raise the kids. If you don't believe that, then you're totes not sexist. Except that sexism can also come in the form of believing that a woman only got an award nomination because she's a woman, which has the unspoken opinion that she didn't get it because she did something worthwhile. And since gender is brought into it, what's also unspoken is that she didn't do something as well as a man. Which means the award should rightfully go to men.

Sometimes bigotry is about what you don't say. It's about what you don't even think consciously. Sometimes this shit is so ingrained in you, thanks to a hundred and one different factors, that you don't even realise you're denigrating someone. Likewise, with racism and thinking you're only a racist if you want to bring back lynchings and banning black people from being around white people. There's no other way to be racist. Except that there is, and many of the Puppy opinions about race are very damn racist.

Surely there's going to be someone who wants to jump in and say, "Oh, fine, so you think all straight white men are worthless and wrong all the time, then." And no, I don't. And it's just a little bit ridiculous to say so. It's a bizarre extrapolation from my arguments. The fact that some straight white men have done some shitty-ass things doesn't make them wrong about everything. Just in the same way that I'm transgender doesn't make me right about everything. Including things involving gender politics.

Changing the subject a little, another thing that weirds me out about Puppy stuff? The way they seem to think that the Hugos have this liberal bias toward books that only talk about what liberals want talked about, and how nobody's actually reading these books. And how the voters at Worldcon are some elite subgroup of liberals who earned their voting privileges by, I dunno, helping an elderly Asian woman across the street to get to her ACA-funded doctor's appointment or something. That stuff straight-up ignores facts that are easily corrected. 30 seconds on Google will net you dozens of reviews for these books, showing that yes, people are reading them. Got the money to go to Worldcon? Great, here are your rights to vote on the Hugos and make your voice heard. It's not like you have to pass a liberal test or something in order to get these things. You pay money. And you read books. So the idea that books are winning a prestigious award when nobody's reading them because they suck so bad is just a touch ridiculous.

People have pointed this out before. I'm not the first. But this info seems to slide off people on the Puppy side of the fence because it doesn't mesh with what they see. It's not a flawless system. No system is. But some accusations are very easily refutable, and I'm not even sure where they came from beyond, "I'm not winning this award, so it must be a conspiracy against my politics." At the end of all this, I want the whole damn thing to be over. I want people to stop insulting each other for daring to like a different subset of SFF than they do. There's room for a lot of opinions here. A lot.

And that includes both conservative "men doing manly things" fiction AND fiction involving nonbinary people in stories that look like they can right out of a liberal buzzword dictionary. Doesn't make either of them good or bad by default. That's the trick for the author to manage. You can make a terrible idea into a good story, and a great idea into a terrible story. So yeah, I dislike the Puppies on both a personal and political level, because they're largely insulting, ignorant, and seem like they'd be a lot happier if people like me shut our mouths and let them get on with doing what they do unopposed, but damn, am I ever eager for this bullshit to stop!"

Ria is an agender ex-pat Brit currently living on the east coast of Canada, along with 5 cats and a glorified budgie named Albert. When not reading and reviewing books on bibliotropic.net, Ria can often be found obsessively playing video games, being an amateur photographer, or experimenting with various fibre arts.

Tech's Gender Gap Is Real, Pervasive, Worse Than Men Realize

For all the idealism behind the idea that technology knows no borders, that data and the market-place of ideas offer equal access to meritous ideas, free from gender bias or that women have achieved parity with men in the technology field, the actual lived experience of scores of women in the tech industry, from app development to tech investments is rife with stories that tell otherwise. Last week, Wired published an eye-opening and unflinching look at the gender gap between men and women in the tech industry entitled "This Is What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like". An excerpt:

Shortly after Kathryn Tucker started RedRover, an app that showcases local events for kids, she pitched the idea to an angel investor at a New York tech event. But it didn’t go over well. When she finished her pitch, the investor said he didn’t invest in women. When she asked why, he told her. “I don’t like the way women think,” he said. “They haven’t mastered linear thinking.” To prove his point, he explained that his wife could never prioritize her to-do lists properly. And then, as if he was trying to compliment her, he told Tucker she was different. “You’re more male,” he said. Tucker didn’t need to hear any more. “I said, ‘Thanks very much,’ walked out, and never spoke to him again,” she recalled earlier this year, as part of a panel discussion on “fundraising while female” at the annual Internet Week conference in New York. 

It was one of many stories shared during a panel that painted the tech world as a place that—for all its efforts to push into the future with apps and gadgets and online services—is still very much stuck in the past when it comes to attitudes involving gender...  

But there’s another truth to remember: For every story you hear about investors behaving badly, there are far worse stories that many women wouldn’t dare to tell. “The most common thing I hear from other women is: ‘Oh the stories I’ll tell once I’m far enough along that I don’t have to worry about being shamed,’” says Kathryn Minshew, co-founder of the job search and career advice site The Muse. For women who have experienced this bias—and there are many—the simple act of talking about it is taboo... And yet, it’s only through these stories that we can begin to understand that the statistics aren’t the result of some fluke or mass oversight, but a very real problem that needs to be solved.

The entire article is worth a thorough read, and hopefully serves as a decent wake-up call. A word of advice, though: Don't read the comments on the article. They're particularly loathsome.

Mattie Brice on Identity, Representation and Game Design

Image via mattiebrice.com

Mattie Brice (who first came ot my attention when writing about the excellent "Depression Quest" by Zoe Quinn) has a great personal essay up about what she's been studying and considering about game design and identity entitled "Passing Through: Another Take On Identity In Activism & Design". An excerpt:

This past year, I've sat down with a lot of creators about representation in games. One of the first questions out of their mouth is “How do you depict minorities well in games?” Maybe it’s because this is usually over dinner, knife and fork in hand, that I want to reply with “Human?” Thinking of my grandmother who doesn't have a clearly identifiable race by American standards trying to explain herself to an official. ‘Human’ is loaded though; dominant identities are conflated with universal traits of humanity while minoritized people must be loud about their diverging qualities. Usually, I would fall back on trying to tap what is really human, and in turn, interrogate and separate what we assume is default about humanity and is really dominant culture... 

I've started to think of my grandmother’s story a little differently lately. I feel like there’s a more active, personal dynamic with identity than what we currently conceive. Contemporary activism has a strong slant towards self-identification, particularly within established minoritized groups. This makes sense; a person is who they say they are, and that needs to be respected. What does that say about my grandmother, who didn't have an answer for her race until she lived in America? Would she be outside today’s activism if she didn't explicitly label herself?

It's a thoughtful and engaging read, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to read the entire essay.

Cerebus Creator Will Only Talk To You If You Sign A Petition Saying He's Not a Misogynist

No, the above headline isn't some rejected headline from parody news outlet The Onion. It's true.

For the past decade or so, Dave Sim, Cerebus creator and publisher of one of the longest running independent comics in history, has been dogged by criticism of misogyny in his work. It started first after publication of an essay in Cerebus #186, "Reads" in which he attacked Oprah, the intelligence of women, feminism, gender differences, and something called the "Female Void" and the "Male Light". Two more out-of-left field essays popped up again in Cerebus #264 and #265.

Issue #264 printed a challenge to Bone creator Jeff Smith to a fist-fight, a gesture that that drove his longtime proofreader, Diana Schutz to resign. He followed thatup in #265 with an essay titled "Tangents," an essay-length "DEBUNKING" of feminism, abortion, the "feminist-homosexualist axis," and his thoughts on, er... spanking adult women. Carol West, his adminstrative assitant, and the last of his female employees, quit in disgust midway through typing up the essay. The Comics Journal has a rather extensive write-up on that part of Dave Sim's history with his employees.

CBR's Gail has a scathing parody of both of those essays in "Dave Sim's Guide To Getting Chicks".

Dave Sim recently published "Glamourpuss", a satirical take on women's fashion magazines, and in what is one of the oddest moves I've seen in years makes you agree to an odd terms of service agreement before he'll even talk to you.

Fellow nerdcore rapperDoc Popular had this to say:

" ...[he] decided the best way to handle such a situation was to send out a form letter requiring anyone who wished to correspond with him to fill out and return with a note saying “I don’t believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.”. “If you aren’t willing to extend that minimal courtesy to me,” he states “then I would respectfully ask that you not attempt to contact me in the future.”
You can read a scan of the original letter on the fantastic Inkstuds Blog, or hear their recent (and relatively rant free) interview with Dave here.
...
In his letter Dave asks “What sort of friends and fans allow a friend or the person they are a fan of to be called the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity?”. The Dave Sim Misogyny Page is chock full of his quotes on gender and Heidi McDonald has an interesting piece on the subject in The Beat.
...
Although I am not willing to on the record and state that I feel Dave Sim is not a Misogynist, I will state that a terms of service of correspondence is a great idea! As a matter of fact, I have decided to enact my own Doctor Popular TOS on this very blog; by commenting, reading, hearing about, or in anyway thinking about Doctor Popular or DocPop.org, the user is hearby stating that they agree that “Doc Pop is the awesomest guy on the internet!”.

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea to me, Doc.

My take? For me, my whole sense of awe regarding Dave Sim is that he has an eye for the design elements and page layout of a comic book that have few equals in the comics industry, even today. Sadly, his views are repulsive and wrong. I do think it's worth reading Cerebus, but I would certainly say you aren't missing anything is you stop after the sixth "phone book" volume.

What, you don't want to take my word for it on the fact that he's a great artist? Alright, howzabout this post from metafilter user :
Here's an early page, showcasing some of his writing. Here you get a feel for his comedy writing and dialogue.

Over time, he started putting negative space to work really well, see here, here, and here

Here's three pages from a climate fight between major characters. The art is gorgeous, the panels and transitions great and there's several years of weight between this confrontation that give it an emotional impact.

The rest, I'm just gonna link to and let you decide on your own.

Cerebus as pope

Cerebus pisses off Red Sonya

Who has a husband?

Face off

Doorway

Boom!

Three more pages.
See?

I still don't think that invalidates Dave Sim being a messed up pile of hate and misogyny, though. He DID declare that all women are incapable of rational thought, that they want to be raped by doctors, and that "equal pay for equal work" = Communism. It's all just layer after icky, oozing layer of justification for his personal contempt and loathing for women.