Will Shetterly's Blog, page 151

"Tango of the Archangel" by Kees Van Dongen

via The Pictorial Arts: Once Upon a High Place

a note to Roz Kaveney about trans identity: new identity is not erasure

(Note: This post is effectively Part Two of the question that comes from the clash between feminists and transgender activists.)

Roz tweeted something with my twitter address, so I saw it:

Roz Kaveney ‏@RozKaveney34mBut of course @willshetterly is on Twitter. How could I have thought he was not?
So I went looking and found this:

  FollowRoz Kaveney‏@RozKaveneyIn a perfect storm of not knowing when to STFU, Will Shetterley tries to resolve teh Trans http://itsallonething.livejo...

the question that comes from the clash between feminists and transgender activists

If you're interested in the tension between biological and social identity, this discussion is fascinating:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Julian Vigo

These Are Not the Radicals You’re Looking For by Dorian Adams

It inspired this question: Are you entitled to claim a social identity if you reject the one you were raised with?

For transfolk who want to be accepted as full members of the gender they feel they belong in, the answer is "yes".

But I reject whiteness. Does that mean I get t...

on white-washing book covers: Throne of the Crescent Moon and Liavek

From Beyond ‘Game of Thrones’: Exploring diversity in speculative fiction:

“My editor and another editor who made an offer on the book explicitly committed to not whitewashing the cover,” said Ahmed of the industry’s practice of slapping white people on the cover of books that don’t feature white protagonists. “That to me is a clear example that the protest on the Internet got through to at least a certain level of editors.”

There are people on the US hardcover:

But not on the British editi...

W. E. B. Du Bois on class and race

"I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to b...

Why John Scalzi deserves even-more-than full blame for the SFWA Bulletin fiasco, and should have done more to support Jean Rabe

It's not Scalzi's fault that his Presidential Statement on the SFWA Bulletin fails to make clear something that's been missed by the people who are pleased by Jean Rabe's resignation—insiders often forget how little outsiders know. Medievalist stresses an essential point about Rabe's limited power as editor in The Latest SFWA Controversy:

If you look closely, you'll see she did not have editorial control; hence the content was passed on to the Publisher i.e. the President o...

the right to offend is the heart of free speech

Censorship by governments and by private citizens has always about what offends the powerful, whether the powerful are princes, priests, or mobs. In internet slang, censorship is all about the hurt fee fees.

Today, liberal censors defend "hate speech" laws and speech codes, even though there's no evidence that they're more than a feel-good solution for complex problems, and there are many examples of them backfiring horribly.

But don't take this from me. A few better thinkers:

"The idea that any...

the First Amendment protects private censorship, but opposing free speech is still wrong: a few points from the ACLU, Popehat, Salman Rushdie, and others

Some people claim censorship can only be done by governments. Neither dictionaries nor the American Civil Liberties Union agree. From What Is Censorship?:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

In contrast, when private...

the First Amendment protects private censorship, but opposing free speech is still wrong: a few points from the ACLU, Popehat, Salmon Rushdie, and others

People who like to silence others often claim censorship can only be done by governments. Neither dictionaries nor the American Civil Liberties Union agree. From What Is Censorship?:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional...

diversity of thought vs diversity of identity: a little about the SFWA Bulletin brouhaha

The most objective account I've found of the basic events in the Great Flamewar about Mike Resnick, Barry Malzberg, and the SFWA Bulletin is in Russell Davis's Sexism and SFWA—but it should be noted that, as always happens in war time, partisans see attempts at objectivity as collaboration with the enemy, and Davis has already felt it necessary to apologize in What I Learned Yesterday.

His account has its quirks—he seems to think there's no difference between sexist and sexual, so he...