Will Shetterly's Blog, page 60

A reminder that Obama could have passed single-payer in 2009 if he had wanted to

Crossing National Public Radio (NPR) Off My List for Health Care Coverage | naked capitalism: “Cobble together the votes” is sloppy language that conflates two arguments: First, a sin of commission: The argument that Democrats needed 60 votes to pass the bill against a filibuster. This is a lie, since the filibuster rules can be changed with a majority vote, which Reid did in 2013 (but for

Emma Bull's take on how the writers should handle the change of gender on Doctor Who

I wrote, They don't need to do more than have the doctor glance in a mirror and react visually, or say something casual like, "That's interesting." Emma wrote, I remember when he complained about never regenerating as a ginger. Which would itself be a pretty great comment on this regeneration: "STILL not a ginger."

Speech, not skin or gender, matters most when recasting characters

On Twitter, talking about the new star of Dr. Who, John Bullock said, Oh hang on. I'll accept a lady doc, black doc, gay doc, trans doc... but make the doc not British and I'm out. Some lines you don't cross! Someone asked why, and I replied, Because what ultimately characterizes people is speech, not skin. Batman must talk like a rich New Yorker, and the doctor, like a Brit. This is why it

On Sandwichfail, Hipsters, and Foodie Privilege: Why Liberals Quibble with the Wrong Part of David Brooks' Essay

David Brooks, a conservative, talks about culture and class in How We Are Ruining America - The New York Times. The liberal internet is generally ignoring the parts about class—thereby showing class continues to be the US's last taboo—and focusing on this paragraph: Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly

How to make us believe characters are in love

Emma and I are watching an old TV show that currently has two sets of characters involved in romances. One couple convinces me they're in love; the other does not. My first thought was the actors in the second couple didn't have chemistry. Then I realized I was letting the writers off the hook by failing to ask why those characters didn't have the vague thing we call chemistry. The answer is

Cultural appropriation theory criticized by people of color

Because identitarians believe the thoughts of people with "lived experience" matter most when discussing issues of social identity, here are some thinkers on race and culture who have unquestionable "lived experience": Arun Gupta - I was sent this list below of "White-Owned Appropriative Restaurants in Portland.": They want to fix all cultures as fossils in a museum, not allowing for

On Zootopia and the problem with using species as a metaphor for race or ethnicity

I thought Zootopia was fun, but I hated its metaphor, something that's bugged me at least since Spiegelman's Maus. A human race is an artificial concept, a tribe allows outsiders to join and insiders to leave, but a species is an immutable aspect of identity. The fox and rabbit of Zootopia can be friends, unlike the cats and mice of Maus who are genetically driven to be enemies, but they

William Sanders is dead. He was a better man and a better writer than his haters.

I never met William Sanders, but I admired his work, and after I began studying mobbing and call-out culture, I admired the man, too. I wrote about him in the second half of The Outing of Zathlazip and the Hounding of William Sanders. The story of his that is most likely to be remembered is online: "The Undiscovered" by William Sanders (pdf). He retired from writing, then wrote a couple of

When anti-racists say they are racist, they mean you are

The original anti-racists—not the first people to fight racism, but the people who developed the race reductionist approach called Critical Race Theory—taught that all white people are racist because they grow up in a racist society. If you think about that, you'll know in a second it's nonsense because every society produces rebels. But the original anti-racists were not rebels. They were Ivy

The Terrible Sea Lion: Persistent Politeness is Loved by Friends and Feared by Foes

A year ago, I shared this observation: "Its 'sea lioning' when it's someone you don't agree with and 'calling out' when you do." —James 'Grim' Desborough I noted, There is one important difference: A sea lion must be polite, while a caller-out must be filled with (self-)righteous fury. Sealioning came up in the discussion at Steven Brust’s Fourth Street Fantasy Remarks Generate Heat. These