Huh?

[sabotabby]

I missed the whole Requires Hate dust-up and now everyone is posting references to it. Is it the same as the Readercon dust-up?

Help, I am out of the loop and there is obvious drama.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Don't quit the internet! It would be so much less awesome.

LJ always had a dramarama factor. And I admittedly like a lot of that. I think the fact that it's shrunken so much contributes to the feeling that there's not a lot going on besides the dramarama.

[sabotabby]

There's nothing delicate or wilting about that. Personally, LJ's where I go to relax and let off steam. I was pretty traumatized last summer when I felt like it was no longer a safe place for that.

[sabotabby]

That was how it was for me at around this time last year. Now I'm feeling the warm fuzzies again even though that situation was never actually resolved.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I hear ya. *hugs*

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I can't follow it all, but the parts I can follow seem more like a revival of Racefail.

[sabotabby]

It seems like it, but I can't locate the actual flamewar or even what it was about.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

I think it's in the comments of the top couple of entries here: http://catvalente.livejournal.com/

[sabotabby]

Wait, so Valente is getting blasted just for being friends with RH or not condemning her or something? That makes no sense. And I'm still confused over what RH did to piss everyone off. I mean, her blog is pure flamebait but that's kind of her schtick.

I don't understaaaaaaand.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Liz Williams called her out for one of her Internet Tough Guy tricks and related information about how she had once been winterfox on lj and how she was a bad fan fiction writer and was personally offended on the whole "let's throw acid in Liz Williams' face" bit. Don't know why.

http://mevennen.livejournal.com/889924.html

However, before that Caitlin Kiernan was bothered by the fact that RH called her a racist. Even though the original RH review completely missed some points (like the fact that the word exotic is being used to describe stamps) and went off the deep end in other points (yes, the Asian character is described in an exotic other way but the narrative makes it obvious that everyone in that book is trying to be an exotic other and everyone is seeing everyone else as exotic others and getting off on it - add to the fact that Silk is Kiernan being all nostalgic about her late teen years when she was goth and hung out in coffeehouses smoking and picking up random girls - reading it as racist is really reductive)

Anyhow RH got all "LOOK! Someone is calling me a psychopath" on Twitter and linking to their blogs so her followers could go and harass them for their racefail or whatever. And she did it a lot. To the point where it went from shticky violent reviews to outright harassment.

[sabotabby]

Sigh.

I was really excited when I first started reading RH, because calling out genre authors on race, class, and gender issues is fun and interesting. But threatening to throw acid in someone's face? Calm down, step away from the internet.

I should also add that I hate that SJW has become an acceptable internet acronym.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

SJW? What is that?

[sabotabby]

Social Justice Warrior.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Oh lord.

[sabotabby]

It makes me hate everything.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Now I wish I could zap a few brain-cells and un-know that.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You forgot the bit where someone* RH made fun of decided to either try suicide or tell people that she was trying suicide, which Liz turned into "RH was goading someone into suicide."


*Same person had previously complained that Cat Valente committed the sin of enjoying the city of Edinburgh.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but declaring that one attempted suicide after a twitter interaction is emotional blackmail. (I'm assuming that it is true.) Someone that close to the edge-,an I saw the tweets as they were coming in- has no right to turn their crisis into a political point a month later. She certainly doesn't behave or speak as though anyone with whom she might interact is close to the edge, as Cat herself pointed out.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. You were talking about something that actually happened? I thought that Liz was just using a rhetorical flourish and moving into the hyperbole.

Damn. The things I miss by getting bored with internet fights, feeling bad about myself for enjoying them and then moving on.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

It's not the suicide attempt that's mockable. It's Liz trying to turn the suicide attempt into grounds for an indictment of RH that's mockable and mockworthy. The "goaded" party's prior criticism of catvalente is only brought into the picture by virtue of the decision by certain of Liz's supporters to try and use that (and RH's past praise of Cat's work) as a way of dragging her into the drama through guilt-by-association.

And it's shit like this that, as I've said before apropos of Readercon, makes me want to focus on crime fiction and "literary fiction" instead of SF and fantasy.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I hear that the tough guy vs. cozy mystery writers are at each others' throats.

Beyond that, I just don't think that Crime Fiction is going to be the oasis of sanity considering that Jame Elroy is one of the most popular ones and that fucker is proud of being a crazy misanthrope.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I agree.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

True. Liz went way off the deep end in some cases. Although most of the post is a classic of rhetorical savagery with that "this reminds me of a crazy Jewish lesbian I once knew" and mentions of bad fan fiction that basically portrayed RH as a frustrated writer taking it out on the rest of the world.

I pretty much saw those death threats as the equivalent of Howard Stern asking his female guests to get naked for him. Some people loved them; other people just overlooked them to get to the interesting stuff.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I feel stupid for even knowing that.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

As far as I've been able to figure out, they're not even actually friends or anything. Cat got dragged into it when, in the comments on her post on the Readercon sexual harassment issue, someone brought up RH (referring to her as "one of your fans", even though RH has been loudly critical of at least one of Cat's books) and basically demanded that, if she was going to be critical of a white guy sexually harassing women, she had to be equally critical of everything RH posted, because it was totally the same thing and that this was totally not derailing or anything like that. Cat pointed out that it was not, in fact, the same thing, had nothing to do with the discussion at hand, and that yes, actually, this was derailing.

Most of the immediate responses in the discussion thread seemed to be supportive of Cat and agreeing that these things were not exactly related, but apparently a whole bunch of people pretty much went batshit over it later, and demanding that she "denounce" RH, and seemed to somehow hold her responsible for everything RH posted if she didn't, on the basis that RH was supposedly a fan of hers, even though she isn't, or at least not consistently or uncritically.

No, it doesn't make any sense to me either. The internet is a very strange and scary place sometimes.

[sabotabby]

This makes the opposite of sense. What the actual fuck?

Glad Cat has support, though. She sounded like this whole thing hit her really hard.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I believe that person was Liz Williams herself, or at least Liz Williams was the one who called RH "Requires Meds".

In terms of the whole "acid attack" accusation, I still have not seen the dox on that one. Not saying it did not happen, but no one has been able to produce me dox yet.

EDIT: I should add that I don't' completely understand the totality of the situation, however.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

This was all inevitable.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I mean, one knows that derailing is bad and the tone argument is bad and ableist language is bad and that certain 'subject positions' have a better window on their own conditions of life than one would from outside, but at the same time the minute it was conceded that every position is absolutely sovereign and can levy unconditional demands on every other, you're doomed. There's nothing left to talk about. Then you're in Carl Schmitt land, friends and enemies, I and thou and never the twain shall meet. It's all fairly dumb, because nothing so highly theoretical is needed, except to have some sense than others are speaking in good faith. You know it when they're not.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

RH is hilarious. It would be a terrible mistake to cut her loose. Her instincts are right on. How else are you going to deal with people like R Scott Bakker? Another interminable dialogic - so dull and useless.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

I remember the first time I had this argument. It was 1992. It never gets old.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I also have memories

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Which is to say that I agree with you about RH. She's not nice, but the people she's not nice to don't deserve nice.

Also, Liz Williams's books? OMG, the racefail.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

This is the point at which procedural rationality fails, when all it serves to do is work over and redistribute and stir and reproduce the existing situation, when what is needed is a radical break.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

those books sounds pretty bad. What is it with people who have degrees in philosophy?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Wait, liz williams is mevennen? Oy.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I told you I went to grad school with R Scott Bakker, didn't I?

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

You see it's this twitter crap that gets on my nerves the "Omg the racefail" bit. It's just too damn easy a criticism to make. It's like there's this rubber stamp going around with either racefail or SJW. How are they racist? How do they get the culture wrong? Why is this more offensive than other books?

Not that I love reading books that work on a particular culture as a metaphor for the white character's internal struggles and make all of the non-white characters into some chorus (oh damn, I was joking about Howard Stern being like Requires Hate but I just remembered that the last time I heard him on the radio, he was talking about how South Pacific is a stupid fucking musical since it's all just WHite People in Love with a very supportive Asian cast who really only care about the White People) but there's usually more a problem with laziness on the part of the writer than "racefail"

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

We'll always have Howard Stern.

[sabotabby]

It always is.

[joysilence.livejournal.com]

The main message I've taken home from this business is that Liz Williams is an arse-clenchingly dreadful writer who also makes Laurell K Hamilton seem well-adjusted and modest. Wiliams' blog is a real comedy corner, especially the fiction extracts.

"...At this time that is not a time, in this place that is not a place, on this day that is not a day..."
He did not speak in English, but in old Welsh, the sibilance whispering through the vaults. Movement caught the corner of his eye, but he ignored it. He stared straight ahead, to the red candle. In the pool of its own light, it looked like a column of meat: the white wick a sliver of fiery bone."

Meat candles! With wicks of fiery bone! I wonder what they smell like. Maybe bacon. Maybe they just smell of soul-deflatingly bollocks metaphor though. Either way, if I wrote like she did I would be very quiet during literature-related arguments.

[sabotabby]

Meat candles are hilarious. Somehow, I think that the authorial intent is quite different than the mental image I have right now.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I read a bunch of the links and I still do not get it.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Where does cheese come from? Is there a possibility of racefail in your cheese articles?

[byshmen.livejournal.com]

wars of Syria