Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 80

Rape is never an answer…

Over on Twitter, I was talking about the jury of Larry King's murder trial becoming confused over whether shooting someone with a gun was premeditated murder. Someone else looked over the article I was riffing off of and declared, "I hope they get gang-raped in prison."

And I felt that moment of conflict, which comes up every single time an ally says something dreadful or misguided. Do I let it slide for the sake of maintaining peace? Or do I speak up and attempt an education of an ally, even if it risks distancing them? Obviously, I went with option B, and I want to explain this to y'all in a slightly expanded post. I can't type fast or angry, but on this topic, I'm relatively calm. So we'll see what happens.

I'm sure lots of my allies don't see a big deal wishing rape on a bad person. But the simplest explanation to counter this is, "So long as you celebrate rape as a tool of justice, the other side has justification to do the same to innocent people like me." And it really is that simple. You may think that it's okay for you to feel that way about criminals, because they're just thugs and killers, or whatever. They don't matter.

But the religious hate groups take your attitude about hardened criminals and apply it to other people they don't like who, while not violating civil ordinance, are in violation or some religious belief. So if you can see corrective rape as a form of justice against real criminals, they can use the same "tool" against innocent people. In fact, when asked not to, these people will point to you and say "They do it too."

This is also how Americans justify racism in their country, by pointing to Europe and saying "They do it too." So, forget leading by example or setting a good example for others. Let's just all be dicks because "they do it too." And, why don't you recall what your mothers said about this: "If everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?"

Wishing rape on someone or celebrating rape as justice is a morally reprehensible view, but it's a socially acceptable view as well. The people you're wishing violence on aren't real people. They're criminals, which means you can debase them without guilt. But your inhumanity for the least of us is the justification used by righteous people to keep the cycle of violence going.

If you folks on the left stopped celebrating raped criminals, the people on the right would be left alone to support their backwards views of justice and mercy. So long as you agree with them that certain people deserve cruelty, they will be allowed to expand the definition of who deserves this treatment. Again, you stop, and they have no choice but to follow suit. Yes, it really is that simple.

But, the hard part is actually getting y'all to let go of your hate and stop wishing for violent revenge. You want to break this cycle of violence? Then be the first to step back and say, "No more."

Another review for The Life and Death of a Sex Doll

Well, look at this review for The Life & Death of a Sex Doll. Why, I believe that's yet another positive review for my first published sci-fi effort. I like this part best:

I tend to avoid sci-fi because heavily used computer jargon and a superfluous presence of robots and androids can be hard for me to connect to. I guess I've never been much of a techie geek. But with The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, I was able to breeze through the shop talk with a comprehension I usually struggle to find. There was plenty of humor throughout, which I always appreciate, and the story flowed easily.

As always, I want to thank the reviewer, in this case Jezzy Wolfe. This is a very good streak of favorable reviews for my book from Belfire Press, and I'm grateful, both to the publisher for sticking with me despite my being insane, and to the many reviewers who have thus far graced their opinions on the two novellas.

I'm told by my publisher that print sales this quarter are atrocious, but that Kindle sales are doing good. I do not yet have specific numbers, but we are not yet at the end of the publishing quarter from whence my title came. And while I am batshit insane, I know how to read a calendar and am adamantly opposed to picking up stalking as a habit. I have far too many hobbies already.

Where was I? Oh, right…thing is, sales should be better in theory now. I'm not saying "You should be buying more copies of the book" because I don't have a clue what numbers I have. I'm just saying, with this many good reviews in public, I would imagine that sales should be higher. Then again, perhaps I haven't yet hit the saturation point of enough good reviews to get better sales. I'll still have to wait a bit longer to find out. Freakin' suspense is killing me.

But it is a great review, isn't it? Makes me feel like a proud nerd to know I made my tech lingo approachable to an outsider. =^) So, thanks again to Jazzy for the review and to Liquid Imagination for hosting the review. After y'all check out my review, be sure to look around the site, as Jezzy has another review for another Belfire title, The White Faced Bear, which you might like. Or, I could just post the link too. Yay, Team Belfire. =^)

New Book: Books of Daniel

In my only other post for today, SPAM. Yes, I'm releasing Books of Daniel.

Daniel Rafferty is an apartment handyman and ex-con who helps a pair of delinquents living in his complex. His efforts to straighten out Patrick and Matt Campbell also draw the interest of their sister Miranda. Her interest grows as she learns that Daniel is a writer. Miranda thinks falling in love is no big deal, but Daniel knows better. But even knowing the truth, he still can't push her away.

This is labeled as a tragedy, although on Smashwords there is no tragedy and I was forced to use transgressional instead because they both start with the same letters. And besides, it is actually transgressional in the right context, and it features the least amount of plot devices possible to present a story about bad people making bad choices.

The main character is an ex-con who went in for statutory rape, and the family he moves in with are drug dealers. Anybody buying this book going in and expecting a positive moral message is living so far in denial that they should be able to swim in it. I will cheerfully ignore reviews that attack the book for promoting anything that actually goes on in the story. I'm. Just. Telling. The. Story. Slowly, and using lots of boring scenes that will annoy people looking for action and fast resolutions.

Probably going to get some deserved accusations from this one too, and one of the charges may be…head hopping. This, for once, is an accurate charge. At times I couldn't seem to decide if I wanted the narrator to be omniscient or not. Multiple revisions still can't completely wipe the head hopping effect, so at this point, I'm giving it up and moving on to other projects. I try to keep the POV pinned from scene to scene, but sometimes my narrator goes all psychic on me for some reason. I totally apologize for that, and reviewers who hit on this or any other legitimate writing problems, it's a fair cop. Also, I think I'll get hit for "stilted language." Another fair cop.

And I never said directly that Daniel is mildly retarded, so some people might not get why he still behaves like a kid in some scenes and then displays maturity in others. I didn't want him to explain that his condition came from constant head injuries, because I wanted to give the idea that Daniel isn't aware of the full extent of his brain damage. I hope I implied his mental illness well enough with the flashbacks of Daniel's abuse. But some of you people and subtle pass each other like strangers in the night. So I fully expect to see some people complaining that Daniel's childish behavior is unrealistic. Those people, I will also ignore. But that's just me being childish.

Finally, in the sake of full disclosure for the prudes, this book features goo-goo eyes, cheek touching, hand holding, hot kissing, and a one sentence sex scene that would make Nabokov proud for its visual obscurity. There is not one hump and grind or molest, but this still does not mean what's going on in this book is all good. Even if at times, it seems to be saying "It's all good." There's a nasty punch line at the end, which is what makes this a tragedy, and that makes all of these mistakes lead to a logical conclusion. And then, I dare to suggest that after the tragedy, life goes on, even for evil people. Dreadful, shameful stuff.

You won't buy it either, I know. But there it is. And if you think this book is terrible, just wait until I drop A Penny for Your Debts. There's some other books in between here and there, though.

You probably won't buy any of those books either.

Denial of the Nerds (or, What Comes After Revenge)

I have to type this very, very slowly and lightly. I cannot make this a long post, or angry. Because I love a challenge.

Nerds, as children, you were beaten up, stuffed in lockers, and tormented just as badly as any trans kid. I have felt your pain, and not in a political metaphor kind of way, either. I've really been in the same bruised, bloodied position.

I am a gaming nerd myself, a lover of Star Trek (Picard 4 Life), Star Wars, horror novels, fantasy novels, sci-fi novels, comic books, card games, video games, anime, D&D, and porn (Animated or not). With the right costumes, I can even find furries sexy. I am one of you, and have slipped in and out of your many social sublayers without being made to feel like too much of an outsider. So I'm asking this as nicely as I can, from one nerd to alla y'all.

How in the hell do the most bullied kids in school grow up to become the most entitled fucking whiner adults on the Internet? A video game doesn't include the right DLC item you'd heard rumored, and you go ape shit. A woman disses the Magic World Champion, and you attack her with sexism about how one of your socially backwards gamers is really a great catch and she just can't see that. Some feminist disses your favorite sexist fantasy show, and you pull out token women to drub her about how she just can't understand you.

And, when she said she couldn't expect you to parse fine language, she's right. You couldn't be bothered to read ANY criticism of your show, deserved or not. But your inability to stop whining does not mean she shouldn't express her opinion about your shitty sexist show. It just means that for a few weeks, she has to put up with your entitled opinion bashing. You hated bullying, but you LOVE to cyber bully others. Hypocritical much? Oh, you betcha.

And you know what? Instead of whining over being called sexist, go find a video gamer girl, or a wargaming chica, and say, "Hey, be honest with me. Do you think male nerds have a problem with sexism?" Then, don't listen to her answer. Watch her body language and you'll see her squirm as she tries to avoid admitting that you nerd males are a real Grade-A bag of dicks.

"But Zoe—" you'll try to say. But I jump back in to remind you of the facts. Girl gamers frequently discuss feeling preyed upon in every gaming environment dominated by males. They frequently form all girl guilds to work against this, only to be called complaining bitches by male gamers. They report sexual harassment in every MMO, find sexism prevalent in wargaming, and can't run in any male-dominated role-play group without multiple males asking for dates. And when they point out your possessive, stalking behavior, you whine out the "I'm a nice guy" defense. No, you're not. You're a typical male objectifying a woman into a sex object without admitting it. You're using your male privilege with impunity and being an oppressor, and then you're internalizing your knowledge of how much like the bullies you've become. You ain't no nice guy. You're just another guy, and not in the good sense.

Take off the blindfolds, nerds. While you were whining about the sensitive feelings of a white adult male card game player dissed online, a trans child was beaten outside a skate park with a bat over her identity. Not by other kids. By an adult woman who felt qualified to be a member of the gender police. While you nerds whined about your TV show being critically dumped on in one person's opinion column, other people talked about real issues like racism, the need for better social protection for all minorities, and denial of rape's growing menace in society and in public school. That's what the real world has been talking about while you complained that people can't respect you for being excited about Doctor Who. (Which is a suck fest of melodramatic writing, horrid acting and wretched CGI. Even Neil Gaiman couldn't make that dog walk. Oh yeah, I fucking went there. Boo hoo, I dissed the Doctor. A trans child was beaten with a bat. Put it in perspective, and admit which is a real travesty.)

You claim to care and get really excited about stuff, but you're the excitement equivalent of idiot savants. You can only care about things that interest you. Everything outside those spheres of influence is dismissed, often with just as much derogatory vitriol as the best bully ever dished out on you. Very good, Padawan. You picked up the tool of your oppressors. And, you use it in the exact same way to keep people underneath you. Now, you're ready to accept your anger, so come to the dark side. (See what I did there? Because I'm a nerd.)

You must feel so proud of all your progress, being able to bully and objectify others for a change of pace. But you're really quite pathetic, and not one indignant protest will change the truth. Sometimes when I watch you lose your shit over your first world issues, it's hard for me to feel proud of the old times when we stormed Castle Blackthorn together.

Gonna be quiet for a bit…

Please, do not be concerned that I'm entering a depression. What's happened is, I've injured my wrists from too much angry typing. Yes, seriously. I already have nerve damage and wrist problems, and I'm supposed to be careful about not pounding the keys. But then I get mad and it's like I'm trying to transfer ki into every keystroke.

This makes writing for me much slower, so for the time being, I'm doing some editing on Books of Daniel. If you hate Peter, you'll hate Daniel too, so, fair warning.

Anyway, apologies for the break in ranting, but this chica has suffered a keyboard related injury and will need time to heal. Be back as soon as these girly wrists are ready to handle work again.

One more for rape…

I shouldn't be blogging about this post. I've got sore wrists from a few weeks of angry typing, and I really should cool off for a bit. But I want you to appreciate this. In a school in America, a girl was raped, forced to recant on her story, forced to write an apology to her rapist, and then raped again. By the same rapist.

And let me quote the author:

If I had written this storyline in a novel, my editor would have dismissed it as ridiculous. She'd say something like, "That would never happen in America today. School officials know that they are mandated reporters. They would have called the police the first time the girl spoke up."

They would, if Americans acted like they did in movies. But the truth is, the image you present about being champions of the unjust is all bullshit and couldn't be any further from the truth of your apathetic lifestyles. You're all too happy letting all kinds of people suffer. Just look away, and voila, you don't have to see or acknowledge the problems.

People will bitch at me for writing a story that's offensive, because I'm an easy small target for their outrage. But when a real girl is raped, somehow people can't seem to generate any give a fuck because "the school system is too complex. We just can't wrap our heads around the problem."

The problem is, children get raped IN SCHOOL. The one fucking place you claim that they will be safe, isn't. And instead of hunting down the little violent bastards making life hell for others, people let it happen. The teachers, the principals, the parents. The denial about the problem is shared equally by every party.

The author of Speak is right. If I wrote a book with a character like this girl, folks would drub me for writing something awful and unrealistic. Or they'd day I was promoting rape, rather than rape awareness. Because there is no way to bring up these topics without "good people" working damned hard to maintain constant silence. You could work to stop rape, but most of you are too fucking lazy to care.

Read that story. Think about being raped twice, and being forced to apologize to your rapist. Now, explain to me why we as a society can't punish privileged males and stop school bullying and rape in public schools.

Down with those trope traps!

So, I've done my part to promote others and raise social awareness all week, and now it's time to do some whining for me. But, since we've developed this comfy pattern, here's your link to provide the food for my thought. I found myself nodding enthusiastically throughout this fantastic rant about overdone and clichéd American tropes.

I want to do a couple of block quotes first:

I'm tired of the casual acceptance of violence as a valid answer to anything, of the proliferation of guns in movies and books, of how it's always acceptable to go face the bad guys with a sword or a pistol instead of seeking a peaceful resolve.

I don't want stories in which the main character has to be sympathetic and with the moral high ground in order to be worthwhile; in which people have to change in order for the plot to be significant;

You probably know from that second quote where this is going. But in talking about Peter, I often only talk about Peter. I don't talk about all the other people in his story because I didn't want to spoil the experience for you. But, since everyone decided that Peter isn't sympathetic and won't buy his book, I've decided that some spoilers are okay.

First, I want to mention Judy, Peter's foster sister, a cheerleader with a high IQ who hides this from her friends. Working from within the clique, she tries to help people and do the right thing, even if sometimes she isn't sure how to deal with Peter's extreme problems. She's both a stereotype for her looks, and yet she's not a mean cheerleader, nor a ditz. She's Peter's tutor throughout the story, and he frequently acknowledges that without her help he'd be getting grades worse than the jocks. I'm quite proud of Judy for all her patience with Peter, but no one will notice her performance after Peter's lusty appetites for child flesh are revealed.

Next, let's talk about Josie, Peter's best friend. Peter meets Josie through his job at the mall, and she's a foster kid too. She was abused by her father and is now asexual and incapable of intimacy. When Peter tries to seduce her, she goes into tears, and Peter realizes that all she wants from him is platonic love. And, despite his monstrous side, he remains a loyal and platonic friend to her. But no one notices this because Peter isn't so great in how he handles Alice.

Let's talk about Pi, who in book one is referred to in gender neutral terms. Pi is a hermaphrodite and a bigender. But this does not mean Pi is enlightened. When Peter reveals his past, Pi kind of freaks out about it and compares Peter to terrorists. When Peter becomes a social pariah, Pi avoids him because Pi doesn't want any more social problems than they already have for being androgynous. While Pi redeems themself by helping Peter save Alice, I wanted to stress that even a gender variant character can make thick-headed mistakes. I also wanted to show flawed people who don't make the right choices. Again, no one notices Pi, or ANY of the diversity of my cast, because of Peter.

Let's talk about David and Kathy Preston, Peter's foster parents. I got so sick of seeing parents in fiction who are never home, who are always conveniently out of the way so that fictional kids end up looking neglected, even if the effect is unintentional. We're told by the narrator (and thus the writer) that these are "cool" parents, but mostly, they're nonexistent and unrealistic.

So I made parents who try to punish Peter for his mistakes, and who try to keep him from seeing Alice. You know, like real parents. So, like real rebellious children, they have to sneak around behind their parents' backs. Will I win any points for depicting real adults struggling with a troubled teen? No. Will I win points for depicting real rebellious youts? (Not a typo) No. Why? Because Peter's choice of girlfriend is socially unacceptable.

Because Peter is evil. Never mind his past or what his parents trained into him. What he is now, is evil, and nothing about him or his story is worth some people's time because they don't feel evil people have any story worth telling.

Since I'm spoiling this, I'll warn you first…spoiler alert…

At the end of the first book, Alice is kidnapped by Peter's mother, and she is raped, tortured, and bitten, infecting her with Naomi's curse. Despite Naomi's efforts to goad Peter into a fight to the death, Alice prevents Peter from killing Naomi. Alice says this will make Peter a monster as evil as her. Peter lets his mother live, and then he and Alice are tracked down by the FBI. Naomi goes back to prison. As a result of her abuse, Alice is just as traumatized as Peter. The burden of guilt adds another invisible weight on Peter, because he knows Alice would be safe if he'd just walked away from her in the beginning. Despite this guilt, he still cannot stay away from her.

Let me skip a few events and give you the punch line. Hey, you won't buy any of the books in between, so it's no biggie, right?

In book four, after fulfilling the harpy's task and returning to Dallas with an adopted psychic vampire child to care for, Peter begins coming to terms with his sexuality, and with his animal appetites. He struggles to avoid Judy and Alice. But when Josie and Pi have their commitment ceremony, it's Peter and Pi who end up developing a soul bond while Josie watches on. This further confuses Peter, who's already having enough issues sorting out whether he's in love with Alice or just in lust. Then there's Judy, who is still trying to return to intimacy with Peter despite the fact that he raped her and that she now has a steady boyfriend.

Peter is also dealing in bitter pack politics with the weredogs because of his foster family becoming unsanctioned werewolves. Peter's biological father arrives in town and reveals that he planted the bomb from book two as a plot to kill some weredog elders. Peter seemingly agrees to join his father, but this is revealed as an FBI undercover operation. After his father's capture, Peter decides that he doesn't want to be a monster like either of his biological parents. He wants to be good, like David and Kathy, and so he also lets the FBI take him in for training. And that's the end, with Peter realizing that the best solution is for him to go away and leave all of his friends and family alone.

Along the way, Peter will do things I'm sure many people will not like. Because they only want to see stories about strong heroes with good moral values. Peter's story is the complete opposite of this. Peter is a weak person who wants to be better, if he could just get rid of the crap in his head. He's not a hero. In another book, he'd be the villain with no character development beside a quick flash of child rape detail so you know he's "one of those kind." Then he can justifiably be killed by a righteous hero.

It's a shame that I put all this effort in trying to create something unique and challenging with a diverse cast of flawed people, only to have some readers focus on one element in their mental picture. But I can't make people see the rest if they don't want to. I can't make people accept that there is merit in this story.

I don't suppose I have a final point this time. I just want people to know, there's a lot more to this story than the sexuality of the main character. Alice and Peter have exactly two chances for intimacy over the course of this 90K book. In the first scene, Peter molests Alice, and then confesses to his and her parents. Nobody just accepts this or lets it happen. Peter and Alice are separated, but Alice begins sneaking over to see Peter.

In the second intimate scene, two years later, Alice attempts a clumsy seduction during a gymnastics competition out of town and is busted by the team captain and her uncle before her plan can lead to sex. Again, punishments are dished out, with Peter being kicked off the squad and warned by Alice's parents to stay away.

The one time Peter has sex in the book, it's with an adult woman, and it's consensual. But because Peter sticks his hand down Alice's pants, he's evil. And since Alice sticks her hand down his, she's unrealistic. Because young girls don't have any sexuality of their own, not even years after they've been initiated into the world of sexual intimacy by someone older. Real life girls probably have their sexuality injected into them after puberty in small doses using tampons. Or maybe it goes on in layers from watching clothing commercials. In any case, there's no way that people could accept the idea that Alice might have a mind of her own. So she's unrealistic for displaying an interest in Peter.

I'm sorry for ranting about this, but I made a story unlike anything you'll pick up from the bestseller rack. In a world of werewolf stories all covering the same ideas and tropes, I made a unique monster, and my interpretation of the werewolves used an old cast off facet of the lycanthrope legends that I promise nobody else is using in the current crop of weretales. (weretails?)

Despite its uniqueness, I don't expect Peter's series to be popular. I don't expect that this explanation will change any minds about the merits of the story, or about Peter's merits as a character. But in reading over Aliette's rant, the first thought that came to me was, Hot damn, if more people really felt like this, Peter might have a hope in hell of finding an audience.

Instead, I'm begging and pleading for anyone to try my stuff, and the books that promote mindless violence and "might makes right" will turn over a few thousand copies, easy. Talking about a major sexual and social problem is taboo, but promoting justifiable murder is profitable.

Feh. Sometimes it sucks being different.

Eyewitnesses aren't so reliable…

One last post for today, and then I'm letting the keyboard cool while I go burn some belly fat on the Kinect. This one is a doozy too: the New Jersey Supreme court is revising rules on eyewitnesses. Why? because solid scientific evidence is proving that coerced eyewitnesses help put innocent people in prison.

The chief justice, Stuart J. Rabner, wrote in a unanimous decision that the legal system had to catch up with scientific evidence in order to ensure justice. "Study after study revealed a troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications….From social science research to the review of actual police lineups, from laboratory experiments to DNA exonerations, the record proves that the possibility of mistaken identification is real. Indeed, it is now widely known that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions across the country."

Bolding is mine, obviously.

I hear people talk a lot about justice, and about how important justice is. But most people are talking are what they see on Law and Order and CSI, where every criminal is guilty and the cops always get their man. I realize that if Bruckheimer tried to make a series with a real success ratio of a real police department, it would make for damned depressing and dull TV. "No, sorry, no leads here. It's a cold trail. Next case, please?" So yeah, I get why the cop shows glorify the bust.

But that's not the real world, people. In the real world, the police aren't so great at solving cases, and sometimes, they get desperate to produce ANY results, even if it means putting someone innocent away. So sometimes they sweat a witness: "Come on, one of these five suspects surely HAS to be the guy. You're just not looking at them the right way."

And this is a Bad Thing. And the NJ Supreme Court has taken an amazing step toward reason with this decision. I fully expect and await the howls of "activist judges" to be ringing through the conservative world tomorrow, with these "moral folks" never once admitting that this decision will make it harder to put innocent people in prison. But why see a good thing as a good thing, right?

Right.

N. K. Jemisin speaks out…

Read this post from fantasy author N. K. Jemisin about how her race affects her role as a writer:

But this does not in any way mean I talk about race and gender because I enjoy doing so. I don't. It sucks up energy I desperately need to stay afloat while I've got two demanding fulltime jobs. And nobody really listens, anyway — for every one person I reach, five more declare me a PC Nazi and run off to lament the passing of the Good Old Days when they could be assholes with impunity.

This is a lament I'm familiar with, though in a slightly different refrain. I could talk about this from "my angle" and cover how hard it is to be taken seriously as a trans advocate when no one thinks I'm justified in being mad. But instead I want to keep this strictly a race issue and allow you folks to appreciate this problem without me trying to attach my shit to it.

Long after we fought a civil war and went through segregation and the civil rights fights, there is still a visible taint of racism in America. It is seen in white washed covers, in recent movies that purport to be about "empowerment", in the blatantly vile social attitudes toward rap and hip hop, in dropped backhand compliments of being well spoke or a fine example of one's people. It was seen nationally when a black college football player proposed to his white cheerleader girlfriend on television and caused outrage instead of "Aaaaw."

Yes, America, in addition to all your other troubling problems, you're still not done with racism. Don't point to having a token black president as proof that you aren't because I can show you a toilet with a sign above it pointing down that says "Free Obama Dolls." I can show you effigies of Obama in a noose. You may have voted for him. But a lot of other people think he's a Muslim (He's Christian and using that as an excuse to oppress gays, so he's not much better) or that he's not "really from here."

You can say "but he's half black, and that shows the changing face of America." Nuh-uh, because America still believes quietly in the one drop rule. One drop of negro, and you're all black. Period. Doesn't matter if you pass for white. To some backwards morons, you're not, because you have teh blackness in your soul.

And all of this is just as ridiculous now as it was before the internet was invented. But the fact is, we have a global method of communication, and of informing each other of our separate concerns about equality. So if someone in this day and age is spouting privileged, racist bullshit, it's because they cannot be bothered to use Google and educate their ignorant asses.

The kind of people who stomp off at statements like mine are pathetic, because there's nothing to turn around those kinds of willfully ignorant motherfuckers. They wouldn't listen if I said they were racist nicely, and they wouldn't listen if I found some other word besides racist that was perhaps less truthful and "divisive." But the person walking away uneducated is still a racist even if they don't believe it.

Look at media coverage, even on so-called liberal feeds. A black person in a flooded area is tugging food and diapers out of a store, and he's "a looter taking supplies," while a white person with the same items is labeled simply as "a man foraging for supplies for his family." (Happened on Yahoo during Katrina, and similar examples occurred on CNN. It happened on Fox too, but there, you expect racism.)

I'm going to open up a very ugly can of worms too: white mistreatment of blacks has led to white stereotypes forming, and this gives some idiot whites the validation to declare "reverse racism." Right because hostility in response to ignorance and racism is also racism…oh wait, no, it's a healthy reaction to being oppressed.

Let me tell you about this, because in the projects, I had to deal with white stereotypes and resentment. According to these stereotypes explained by my bullies, all white people are rich. The ones who are poor are just hiding their money to avoid paying taxes. That me and my brother owned nothing was beside the point. We were white, so we had money.

But is this reverse racism? No, not really. This is a reaction to hundreds of years of mistreatment, and that still hasn't ended. Colored schools in inner cities have to deal with metal detectors that white predominant schools don't, even if the safety level of the schools is the same. People of color can count on higher profiling with police and security guards, and on open suspicions doing normal activities that no one would notice a white person doing. And should they keep their cool about all of this bullshit, they can count on some white friend to take them aside and thank them for not being "like those other people."

In fucking 2011. This was material for a fucking laugh track on Archie Bunker. How in the fuck did we get back around to this being our social reality?

And, to remind you, you can still find white adults telling black kids not to "dirty up the swimming pool." But they're not racist, just helping the little people to understand their place in the world.

When these things happen, a very few white people see this and react. The rest are indifferent. "Hey, I'm not really a racist," they complain to charges that they are. "If the black people want to live their rap culture lifestyle, I'm diggity down with that, for shizzle, yo."

But, just like all your other declarations of support, white peoples' alliance with people of color only amounts to lip service when pressed by one of your affected "friends." It does not now, nor has it involved actual work on your part for a long, long time.

To close, let's talk about the modern white concept of friends. This is a shallow term that doesn't mean you're invested in anyone emotionally. If a modern friend displeases you with an inconvenient truth about yourself, well fuck them, they must not be a very good friend. Unfriend them and walk on. Because very good friends are the ones who tell you how great you are, and who make excuses for your mistakes.

Oh, wait, those are fake friends. Real friends are the people telling you the truth. The truth is, we're still racists, and we still need to address this. Not as a whites only support group where y'all "feel cleansed for feeling bad" but go right back to the same status quo bullshit. Y'all have got to get off your lily white asses and start caring about racism. And then you need to deal with the racists directly. Yes, you really need to fight. That's why it's called the "civil rights fight," not the "civil rights discourse."

The racists are doing a great job making social advances by taking advantage of "discourse" and steering the conversation only to questions like "why do blacks have to be so negative?" and "why don't blacks stop black culture if they know white people don't like it?" Which gets this fight entirely away from the real issue, "Why are white people still treating black people like second class citizens?"

In some cases, the people doing the worst kinds of oppression get away with it because white people on the left say, "We wouldn't want to seem unreasonable." That's expressing your privileged right to ignore racism and its effect on your allies. Yes, you do need to be unreasonable to racists. Yes, you do need to get ugly when they do. Otherwise, you're not an ally or even a sympathizer. You're one of the oppressors, and just won't admit it.

The top 20 writing advice lists I won't read

Despite my love for writers, it's time to go here. I wrote a blog post some time back complaining about editors and writers who made the bulk of their posts writing advice or complaints about common grammar errors. This stuff is incredibly dull, and I've seen very few advice columns that I didn't start skimming after the first three paragraphs.

"But Zoe," you say, "You never stop learning, and these columns might have some new advice. And besides, part of my audience is writers. I have to cater to them too."

Bullshit, on all counts. Advice gets recycled over and over, but is phrased in increasingly longer paragraphs. You're not doing it better, you're doing it longer. That's only nice in sex.

Do I as a writer need you to devote another 1800 words to why I should "show don't tell"? No, I don't think so. I don't need your list on how to make characters more believable. I don't need your advice for what to do when I'm stuck in a scene. I don't need your advice for what to do when writer's block hits. I don't care how you use social media for big impact, or that I might be making Twelve Twitter Travesties, and I don't want to see the list of 7 highly effective habits for successful ass kissers.

Writers may be in your blog audience, but they don't really buy that many books. The sad thing is, being a writer, you should already know the statistics of how broke writers are. You should know they have to be more finicky with their cash and probably won't buy your book. But, you apparently think that the post that's going to seal the deal for them is yet another writing advice list that your subconscious recycled from another writers' blog? (Not truly plagiarism, but you aren't being original either.)

Setting that aside, there's a disproportionate amount of advice columns for writers under the claim that you're trying to "cater to a market." But your real market is being ignored with all of this writer-centric stuff. And, being honest, the posts you write for readers are usually pretty dull too. Why? Because you're struggling to be nice for the sake of niceness, and it shows. Everything you write screams "I'm so desperate to be liked."

I'm not going to tell you what to write on your blog, but have you considered taking up some important social issues to talk about on make work days? I don't mean reposting my stuff. I mean finding issues that you care about, and then supporting them with your blog in between your other posts. At least then when I snap at you, "Oh yeah, what do you do?" you can shut me up with "I post about important issues on my blog, and I donate to causes!" (And this WILL shut me up about you, because if you're doing these things, I can't harass you to do more than I do myself.)

No matter what you do, stop writing your blog like you're trying to appeal to other writers. Those guys are flat broke, and the people you need to appeal to don't care about these lists. The readers care more about your fitness hobby than they do about your lists of writing advice. And no, that was not sarcasm. People who read your books also want to know you as a person, and you talking about your fitness hobby is giving them a glimpse into who you are "off the clock." (Because readers have trouble grasping that writers are never off the clock unless they're asleep. And even then, some writers are still cataloging stuff for future stories.) But instead of talking more about your hobbies, you present readers with more professional masks using these advice posts. You're almost incapable of showing a truly human side to anyone, like you're afraid of the rejection you might get for being real for a change. This behavior is misguided and self-defeating, at best.

You don't have to deliver piss and vinegar or talk about troubling issues. I do that on my blog because I'm clearing out the mainstream readers with "preemptive strikes." I can't get that many bad reviews from the easily offended if they left my blog without ever checking out a book. So the only people reading my stuff are those patient folks who are statistically more likely to make it to the last page. Some people still won't make it, and I still get dinged with bad reviews. But now those poor reviews are the exception instead of the rule. Nifty how that works, huh?

"But Zoe," you say, "isn't the whole point of this writing game to make more sales?" No, the whole point of my writing hobby is to make stories and to get said stories into the hands of people who WANT to read them. Sales are meaningless to me, just another arbitrary number that won't get me into the right afterlife either. What matters to me is, "Did the people who bought it really read it?"

I make stories about transsexuals, gays, bis, sex abuse survivors, sexual predators, and yes, even pedophiles. Not many modern writers would consider writing a new Lolita, but I would. I write about people who make the mainstream squirm with icky feelings. And if the mainstream readers reviewed my stuff, they'd likely give it one star because they don't like being made to feel awkward or angry while reading.

Fair enough. So I'll offend them upfront, and they don't have to hate my book and give it one star. They can just hate my blog and one-star my post. Which is much easier to deal with emotionally anyway. What I'm saying is, I'm intentionally abrasive for a reason. It's part of my plan to push away some people. You don't have to go this far, and probably shouldn't if you're so concerned with getting as many sales as you can.

But a lot of you are on the opposite extreme, being so nice to pull in more people that everyone can tell you're faking it. You look and act like a poser, and after you've made this clear in enough posts, I don't bother coming back to check up on you. Which is sad because it's not your writing turning me off of your books. It's your writing advice that's killing the deal.

One last group I want to hit on before closing this is the writers who every day write nonsense posts in an effort to be funny. This would be understandable if these were comedy or absurdist writers. But these are genre writers who in other social venues complain that their writing is never being taken seriously.

Uh, dude, people might take your writing more seriously if you took yourself seriously. There's nothing wrong with silly posts, and I do them too. My favorite thus far is "How not to Get Eaten by a Lycanthrope." But when every single post from you is more "gonzo waka waka waka," you're going to lose the respect of people trying to follow you. You can stop being silly for some posts to write something else. Again, I'm not going to say what. But you need some variety if you want people to stop seeing you as a goofball.

One last time: I'm not telling you that your blogs ought to be more like mine. What I'm doing here isn't conducive to mega-sales success. I'm just pointing out that these blog habits you're developing have turned me off as a reader, and I know I'm not the only one tired of your advice columns and fake veneer of cheerfulness.

But hey, I'm just a crazy lady, awaiting the shipment of two new cats, even. So what do I know about writing? Nothing. And this is why I don't make a list of writing advice for you. I'm just suggesting that maybe you should cut down the number of make-work advice lists you produce.