Will Shetterly's Blog, page 150

Respect everyone

Steve Brust retweeted this:

P Nielsen Hayden ‏@pnh16hTNH: “No. Ad hominem is attacking the argument by attacking the person. I said your argument was evidence that you're an idiot.” #love

It reminded me of a joke I loved when I was six: A boy told his sister, "You're stupid." His mom said, "Tell your sister you're sorry." The boy said, "I'm sorry you're stupid."

Little did I know I'd been given the template for political and religious discourse on the internet.

Both St. Peter and Malcolm X s...

Whoever bet I would be blogging again in eight days

Wins.

Or loses, depending on your opinion of my blogging, of course.

Blog on!

a farewell to blogging

I might post news about my writing here in the future, but I think I'm done with this blog. I'll leave you with one of the poems my father recommended to me as a boy. Kipling's often damned as an imperialist by people with simple understandings of art and politics. If you think he's sexist, remember that he was probably writing to his beloved son. His advice applies to everyone, and on reading it again after many years, I'm struck by how much especially applies to life on the internet.

May you...

in support of Edward Snowden

In my youth, my definition of patriotism was Carl Schurz's: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” This was a time when "America: Love it or leave it" was a popular slogan with people who did not understand that if you love something, you stay and set it right. Daniel Ellsberg understood that. When he shared the Pentagon Papers, he became one of my first heroes. That list of heroes now extends through Bradley Manning to Edward Snowden.

The...

on Vox Day and N. K. Jemisin, the feuding heirs of Racial Realism, and a note about respect

In N. K. Jemisin's Continuum GoH Speech, she called Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, "a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole." He rejected that characterization in A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation and called her "an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by "a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys" than an illiterate Igbotu tribes...

Freddie's "What to Do When Someone Hates You on The Internet" is solid advice

L'Hôte: Getting to good enough:

What to Do When Someone Hates You on The Internet

Step one: Close laptop.
Step two: Go outside.
Step three: Look at the people out on the street.
Step four: Realize that not one of them has ever heard of you, heard of the person who hates you, or could possibly care.
Step five: Imagine that person out on the street, with you. Imagine them free from the power of their blog or their magazine or whatever, away from sympathetic commenters and co...

the appropriation of "cultural appropriation"

Two panels at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention thrashed around the subject of cultural appropriation. I wasn't on "Syncretism, Real and Fantastic", so I can't take the blame there. I dove into it on "Journey's End" because explorers, invaders, and traders bring home more than memories. They brought Mithraism to Rome, pasta and syphilis to Europe, and art that explicitly inspired Orientalists and Fauves and indirectly inspired everyone. No culture is an island—Japan tried it, and foun...

your spoiler warning triggered me; your trigger warning spoilered me

At this year's Fourth Street Fantasy Con, Lynne Thomas announced that Apex Magazine would put trigger warnings on stories from now on. That surprised me a little, but what surprised me more was a small group applauding with fierce partisan fervor, as though Fort Sumter had just fallen and the Confederacy would soon be free.

I get the usefulness of warnings for fanfic and personal accounts on a blog. But magazines and anthologies provide a context: if a story doesn't fit the editor's agenda, wh...

Ricky Gervais on offending people

Ricky Gervais: You can't worry about offending people - Telegraph:

A comedian's job isn't just to make people laugh, it's to make them think. If there's a meaning to it, and a substance and a bit of a depth, then you're doing something. Now, here's the rub: offence, is never given, its taken. If you're not offended by something, then there was no offence, it's as simple as that. If you are offended by something, walk away. I'm offended by things all the time but I haven't got the right not to...

all I needed to say about the SFWA Bulletin controversy

I left this comment at Science fiction authors attack sexism amid row over SFWA magazine:

It seems rather disingenuous not to mention that the most controversial issue also had a column by Jim C. Hines titled "Cover Art and the Radical Notion that Women are People". Traditionally, the SFWA Bulletin has let writers speak for themselves on the theory that it's better to have a dialogue than silence people. A diverse organization will have diverse views.

But while I blathered much too long in...