TWD - Chapter 01 - kaisa 02/13/16 (V, L, G) 5364 words

[neongrey]

It's not the responsibility of marginalized people to do emotional labour for the privileged, though, and I mean-- just think about that. For someone who's already marginalized to be told that no, what they're going through somehow doesn't count fully unless they also educate the people who are marginalizing them. Thats contributing to the problem, not alleviating it. It's continuing to cater to privilege.

People who can and do educate are valuable and their efforts must be respected, but it's wrong to require the person you're harming lay out the minutiae of the damage when they ask you to stop. Someone who is hurt is not obligated to the person who hurt them.

And you know-- I'm pretty sure Kaisa's going to let this one pass, because she's generally more forgiving of constant microaggressions than I am, but I'm not going to. As you say, one must, at times, "speak and keep speaking".

4 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

It's not on purpose.

Yes. Yes, it was on purpose. You may not have purposefully caused harm by doing this. But words did not magically happen when you started typing. They were not formed out of the ether. The words you used were chosen by you. You did a pretty specific thing after it was made clear to you that doing this was harmful. You need to take responsibility for what you say, and don't just wave it off as 'it's not on purpose' with the assumption that this will make everything okay.

Also, for eff's sake, read a book by someone who isn't white, and read more women. And don't say people of colour and women aren't writing the things you like to read; that's categorically not true especially since you're citing a list of chart-toppers. You're selecting the most heavily-marketed things, and it's not wrong to enjoy them, but realize that your selections are not per se coming from you.

 Though if you're reading Hobb and haven't somehow noticed that her books are in large part about gender, I'd also advise paying more attention to what you read.

Edited February 22, 2017 by neongrey

[M.Puddles]

30 minutes ago, Ernei said:

Ahh, I'm sorry to burst in here, but I though I'll mention - in Polish Magda is exclusively female name. The first time I read "queer" a assumed the "strange/odd" meaning, by dictionary, but now I'm thinking that it might be intended as "unisex" here. I don't know if this matters to you, and I understand if it doesn't.

I know I'm coming to understand this chapter late, but I assumed M was a girl too.  I know one M, she's blond, Polish, smokes and wears too much foundation. When I read the chapter I thought the non-soldiers were suggesting that S and M would be homosexual 'pals'.  

10 hours ago, neongrey said:

Yes. Yes, it was on purpose. You may not have purposefully caused harm by doing this. But words did not magically happen when you started typing. They were not formed out of the ether. The words you used were chosen by you. You did a pretty specific thing after it was made clear to you that doing this was harmful. You need to take responsibility for what you say, and don't just wave it off as 'it's not on purpose' with the assumption that this will make everything okay.

I'm sorry for upsetting you and Kasia.  I'm not happy I did that and my experience doesn't excuse it, and it does explain it.  When I made this error, it was not malicious, but an error.  After reading Kasia's response to my own, I assumed that S was a some either 'nongendered, or some sort of forest golem/creature.  I'm a little embarassed about how long it took me understand who S is, but when I read this:

Quote

“Are you her daughter then?” the short one asked. “S the…?”

I think I tagged the feminine tag to her.  When I wrote about her later, I inadvertently misquoted the text.  I didn't decide to do it to be stubborn.  I definitely would not have done that consciously after I knew it upset the author.  I did do it, but I didn't set out to do it, and I didn't realize I'd done it until after she pointed it out, again. 

I'm here to learn like anyone else.  That burden is on me, and I'll take what help as it is offered.  I think I've met three gay people in my life, at least, openly gay and I don't think I've met more than one non-cis white male. In university there was 'one,' yes only 'one' openly gay man that we knew about.  And everyone referred to him as 'D' the gay guy.  So I see similarities between the way we were and the nonguards in this story.  I'm actively reading Kasia's stories because I find them interesting and challenging. I'm considered a well-read libertarian where I live, but I live in a small Canadian city, teach in a Catholic school, and half the people I know thought Trump would be a great president *head/deask*.  

As for reading, 

I think the last dozen books I read were:

Speaker for the Dead (Card), Wenjack (Boydon),  Drive (Pink), Minsde (Dweck)t, Ex-Communication (P. Clines), Shades of Milk and Honey (Robinette-Kowal), Lost Stars (StarWars YA), Why Student's Don't Like School, The Last Guardian (Gemmel), A Darker Shade of Magic, and Hero Of Ages and The Miniaturist by (Brown).  I've read these in the last six weeks. I have no idea if any of them are of a minority. The only one I know of for sure is Boydon.  I've chosen which Non-Fiction i"m going to read and sprinkle in a few others based on recommendations at the back of the books I've learned from.  As for Fiction, I choose one I want to read, and then take someone else' recommendation, and read that. I do this because two years ago, I realized that my bookshelves had too narrow a focus and I needed to expose myself to more and varied fiction.  Feel free to recommend a book though, neongray.

Out of all the recommendations, I've only not finished one.  Kushiel's Dart.  I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't like the premise. 

I think I probably wrote too much, and this thread is veering away from the writing and towards issues that may be related to parts of the story, but not the story itself.  Unless Kasia replies or wants to discuss it more, I think will finish my entries for this thread here. 

neongrey/Kasia,

I'm sorry.  

 

 

[kais]

3 hours ago, Ernei said:

that it might be intended as "unisex" here.

Nope, I know its female. The not-guards were being incredibly dismissive, especially as the owner of the name in the story is quite adamantly female. 'Queer' is very loaded word, which is why I chose it. So many fun interpretations!

2 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

I thought the non-soldiers were suggesting that S and M would be homosexual 'pals'.

Well you weren't too terribly off. They were being snarky about gender expression. 

2 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

So I see similarities between the way we were and the nonguards in this story.

I'm going to call that a story win right there. Boom. +1 to #ownvoices

2 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

Kushiel's Dart.  I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't like the premise. 

I wasn't a fan of the Kushiel series but the author's other, less-known series is FANTASTIC. Santa Olivia and Saints Astray. 

2 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

neongrey/Kasia,

I'm sorry.  

I appreciate the apology and we shall endeavor to move forward with greater understanding! 

[neongrey]

4 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

The only one I know of for sure is Boydon.

Joseph Boydon is white, actually, and has come under a fair bit of fire lately for having straight-up lied about it, which, given his work, should be no surprise.  But yeah whiteness is the unifying thread between those authors which, unfortunately, is to be expected.

4 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

Feel free to recommend a book though, neongray.

grey, but thanks for noticing that I don't capitalize it.  

That said, I pretty recently gave a fairly decent introductory list in the reading like writers thread, so, uh, I'm not gonna go too far here but going by authors, off the top of my head, NK Jemisin (Fifth Season at the very least, it won that Hugo for a reason), Aliette de Bodard, Cassanda Khaw, Saladin Ahmed...

4 hours ago, M.Puddles said:

Out of all the recommendations, I've only not finished one.  Kushiel's Dart.  I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't like the premise. 

Goodness, the only time I would recommend these is if I somehow heard the phrase "I've been thinking of reading fifty shades of grey..." I like them for what they are, but what they are is softcore BDSM porn. And they get increasingly white savior-y with each successive book, each more ludicrously than the last. You can tell the author became aware of it by the end, but her 'solution' in that last book was... yikes. Even that aside it's absolutely jam-packed of that sort of well-intentioned not-thinking-about-it racism. Nothing ill-intended, no, but...

[Robinski]

22 minutes ago, neongrey said:

grey, but thanks for noticing that I don't capitalize it.

Aw, sh1t - I'm very prone to capitalising it - sorry.

[neongrey]

It's an affectation that's been kicking around for about as long as I've been using the nick. But it is, strictly speaking, an affectation and little else, so nbd lol.

(start of the sentence capitalization is fine lol)

[shadowkissed]

Replying now as I realized when I was going to comment on chapter 2 that I never got around to saying anything about chapter 1, so I'll be brief.

First off, I had a really hard time getting hooked on your character in this. I get that what she's doing is really technical and delicate, but I could use some personality or emotion injected into it. She's tired and frustrated and worried about her mother, yes, but she's still a teenage girl (I assume). Even if she's not going to be prattling on about boys and clothes, she's got to be thinking about something. It also took me a while to figure out her gender, which isn't the biggest deal (and kind of fitting with her pretending to be a boy), but it was a little disorienting when I figured it out--and no matter who else she's trying to fool, the reader should probably know. Secondly, I didn't really feel like there was a strong emotional shift as she figured out the soldiers weren't there for the piece. You have actions and even thoughts supporting her figuring it out, but no emotional or physical cues. If you added a couple of phrases like "something wasn't adding up" or "a prickle of panic danced up my spine" or "the air felt heavier with my growing unease" or something, I think it would go a long way to making Sorin feel more like a real, fleshed-out character we can root for.

[neongrey]

15 hours ago, shadowkissed said:

she's still a teenage girl

they're twenty-seven, and definitively not a girl and the text hammers and hammers and hammers the latter in and states the former outright. The age thing I think has been discussed fairly thoroughly as something that's seeming off to people right now but the thrust of your assumption is such that it requires ignoring a significant portion of the text and doing the very thing that the main character makes clear is highly distressing.

15 hours ago, shadowkissed said:

trying to fool,

also tying this sort of thing to deception is a major contributor to real-world transphobic violence jsyk

[shadowkissed]

5 hours ago, neongrey said:

they're twenty-seven, and definitively not a girl and the text hammers and hammers and hammers the latter in and states the former outright. The age thing I think has been discussed fairly thoroughly as something that's seeming off to people right now but the thrust of your assumption is such that it requires ignoring a significant portion of the text and doing the very thing that the main character makes clear is highly distressing.

also tying this sort of thing to deception is a major contributor to real-world transphobic violence jsyk

My apologies for missing the age; it had been a few days since I'd read it and I'd only skimmed it. That was my bad.

In regards to the gender, I'm sorry for offending you, and I can see in retrospect how the character could be non-binary. When I read it, however, I took it as a girl, or a woman, trying to hide her gender in order to avoid sex-based crime or otherwise being taken advantage of because of her gender--in that way, a deception. There is a limitation to weighing in on works in progress one chapter at a time, and it is that some aspects of character and some slow-burning plot points or reveals can be confused or misconstrued due to a lack of data points. With a lack of data points, either chapter-by-chapter or generally as a story progresses, we all naturally try to fill in the blanks with our own experiences.

[kais]

I've been putting off responding to your comment, @shadowkissed, because I wanted to let my emotions settle. I very much appreciate you taking the time to critique my work and it is nice to see how someone completely unfamiliar with the forum and with my writing (and the queer community) would see this work. That is valuable. I definitely need to work on putting more of S's emotions into chapter one. This area is something I struggle with in writing in general.

With that said, some of the language you used in your critique was hurtful, and I would ask that you consider how, especially in first person narratives, the protagonist refers to themselves (and how they react to others referring to them) before making an assumption about gender identity. Words like 'pretending' and 'fool' are not good choices when having any meaningful conversation about gender expression. 

[Robinski]

Apropos of nothing very much, and not trying to excuse any part of anything, I can relate to the 'difficulty' in correctly interpreting some references on first encountering this subject. Over the last year(?) I have had the privilege of some very patient tutoring on the subject of gender from two very erudite voices, and I still feel like sometimes I'm not reaching a position of clarity in my understanding. Closer no doubt, but still...

I was where I think Shadowkissed is now; I knew that there were people in the world whose gender was not M or F, but I had absolutely no contact with such an individual, and knew nothing beyond that one basic fact. Stick with it @shadowkissed, and be open to the fact that your automatic perceptions on certain elements of certain stories will be wrong - I know mine were at first, and sometimes still are. Goodness knows I try to tread more carefully now, if nothing else, I hope. I would also caution against straining too hard to understand and question - even with the best of intentions - which I tended to do at first, but which can send the wrong message.

Steady as xie goes, captain.

[neongrey]

18 hours ago, shadowkissed said:

I'm sorry for offending you

all of that said, you know, let's take a moment to talk about apologies.

This sort of apology is of a family best described at "I'm sorry that you have a problem with the thing that I did". This isn't quite down to "sorry you were offended" which is a well-known format for a non-apology, but it's not that far removed. This follows the form of "I'm sorry (for thing I did)" which, okay.

The problem is, y'know, what is this actually apologizing for? It's apologizing for "giving offense". There's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with that what the apology for is actually for hurting my feelings. The problem here of course is not that my feelings were hurt-- the problem here was twofold:

One, that this was a crit that somehow hinged on reading something that is laboriously instilled in the text and coming away with the literal opposite of what the text says. Somehow you managed to read a text where the first-person narrator repeatedly narrates great distress at the very concept of being considered a woman and read that as 'this is a girl pretending to be a boy'. Okay. Sure. Whatever. This is not to say the text leads the reader to a specific conclusion about the character's gender, but 'not a girl' is a key character trait hammered in throughout. So, you know, the fact that your crit is about 50% "you should make it more clear they're a girl" peppered in with some really gross misogyny (which I let pass as being tangential to the issue, but I really should not have) really throws into question the viability of the crit. 

Two, that you couched your crit in language that, I stress, is used in the real world to drive real violence. A fact which you don't acknowledge and simply attempt to justify your usage of in this case. But the fact is this attitude causes real harm and perpetuating it does real harm. Even when it's not being used to drive violence, it's used to invalidate people. It was used in this very crit to invalidate the given text.

So, I mean, the problem is not that I was offended, the problem was that the crit was dubious and couched in misogynistic and transphobic language.

But let's talk more about invalidation and the way the 'offense' form is used to do that. Like one, obviously, it recasts the issue away from any actual thing being done wrong to a perceptual issue of feelings. It carries with it the assumption that there was nothing wrong with the act that caused it, only its result.

Two is that specifically 'offense' is itself used to invalidate harm done by actions. 'Being offended' is far more often than not used as a rhetorical shield by the privileged against the marginalized-- in part because of the above recasting, and in part because it's treated as a thing people choose to do or be. This is not really true but this connotation is also part of why it's got no business being in an apology. 

Basically, any time "offense" comes up in an apology there's the inescapable connotation that the person doing the apologizing does not feel there is a valid reason to apologize.

I'm not big into huge self-flagellating apologies, those are gross, but I think an aplogy should actually correctly show awareness of what's being apologized for.

So, that being said, no, I don't accept that apology, because either you don't know what the problem actually was, or you don't care, and both are a lousy foundation for apology.

[neongrey]

3 hours ago, Robinski said:

Apropos of nothing very much, and not trying to excuse any part of anything, I can relate to the 'difficulty' in correctly interpreting some references on first encountering this subject. Over the last year(?) I have had the privilege of some very patient tutoring on the subject of gender from two very erudite voices, and I still feel like sometimes I'm not reaching a position of clarity in my understanding. Closer no doubt, but still...

 

Most of this seems to be coming in large part from a very firmly-held inherent assumption that there are exactly two genders and attempts to forcibly cast everything that occurs in that sense. This is lousy real-world practice, but it's downright ludicrous when it comes to SFF. 

[kais]

1 minute ago, neongrey said:

This is lousy real-world practice, but it's downright ludicrous when it comes to SFF. 

I've wondered this with SFF myself. When constraints of most kinds are removed, why do writers so often cling to the binary, when even in our world, and even if you subscribe to a binary gender structure for humans, there are plenty of other organisms on Earth that do not? Some fungal species have more than fifteen sexes. That's right here on Earth. It feels like it shouldn't be that hard for writers in speculative fiction to work with that.

Although I suppose too, the binary is comforting, and steeped in the patriarchal conditions of our western world, so perhaps it gives a firm grounding? Relatability as it were?

[Hobbit]

7 minutes ago, kaisa said:

Some fungal species have more than fifteen sexes.

Whaaaat?  I did not know about this!  Which one(s)?

And let's not forget all the lizards that are basically female-only.  And aphids, who can do both sexual and asexual reproduction.  And ferns.  I don't understand ferns.

I'm sure a small part of the problem is that most people don't learn about these alternate kinds of reproduction in school.  But I agree that the larger issue is that we default to what we're most comfortable/familiar with.

[Robinski]

6 minutes ago, kaisa said:

Although I suppose too, the binary is comforting, and steeped in the patriarchal conditions of our western world, so perhaps it gives a firm grounding? Relatability as it were?

I think it's exactly that. I've had 50 years of binary upbringing and experience, both personal and from the media, and one year of trying to assimilate a different situation - that's a lot of imprinting to overturn.

14 minutes ago, neongrey said:

Most of this seems to be coming in large part from a very firmly-held inherent assumption that there are exactly two genders

It may be a firm view (up to the point it became a thing on RE), but it's not consciously assumed. I didn't choose that world view, it was the only one presented to me until recently.

 

[neongrey]

I mean it's not just with genders-- we have people in this very group who've demonstrated that they value physicists talking physics over, say, black people talking about lived experience as black people. Or people taking more seriously when they hear their physics are wrong than their linguistics are wrong.

Social sciences are perceived less scientifically valid-- this extends to the real world too but it's very common to see people who know nothing about, say, sociology writing stories based on incredibly wrong sociological premises who would never dare to get their physics or their chemistry wrong. And this is in large part a problem of sociology, so...

Western SFF loves to reinforce existing power structures though too-- look back at the fifties and sixties and look at the handling of women in so many of the popular works from the time. Going back further-- Lovecraft's horror is a horror of privilege: the realization that you are not the most important thing in the universe. So much of the genre is founded on examining everything but deeply-held assumptions or treating such examination as an inherent ill.

20 minutes ago, Robinski said:

not consciously assumed

 

It doesn't make someone a better person to have been culturally indoctrinated into a way of thinking if they're going to defend that indoctrination. Ignorance is one thing, though there comes a point where people really should take some initiative to educate themselves rather than wait to put their foot in it, but I'm mostly talking about causes, not further action right now.

Edited February 28, 2017 by neongrey

[aeromancer]

46 minutes ago, neongrey said:

I mean it's not just with genders-- we have people in this very group who've demonstrated that they value physicists talking physics over, say, black people talking about lived experience as black people. Or people taking more seriously when they hear their physics are wrong than their linguistics are wrong.

Yes. We do have people like that, though I would like you to clearly define what 'black people talking about lived experience as black people' means. I've stated during the ownvoices discussion that I think ownvoices is a good tag for nonfiction, but there shouldn't be any limits towards fiction, as long as the content is good. I have more I'd like to say, but your statement is to unclear for me to say it.

48 minutes ago, neongrey said:

Lovecraft's horror is a horror of privilege: the realization that you are not the most important thing in the universe. 

Yes, but no. Lovecraftian horror isn't the realization that you aren't the most important thing, it's the realization of things you can't understand. The whole concept of eldritch beings is such that things exist beyond human comprehension, and that, no matter how strong you are, smart you are, etc, there are things out of your reach. The subtle difference between this and privilege is that Lovecraft puts his eldritch abominations beyond you, whereas privilege (or at least the sense that it is used in modern culture) implies that you've either put yourself, or have been put in a place you don't belong or deserve. 

 

1 hour ago, neongrey said:

all of that said, you know, let's take a moment to talk about apologies.

Okay. Lets. @shadowkissed made a mistake. A reasonable mistake, too. Non-binary people form up a very small percent of the population, and it's perfectly reasonable that it wouldn't be on someone's mind all the time. Now, kaisa's book is set in a rustic fantasy setting, which, historically speaking, is pretty discriminatory to females, so it's a pretty common trope that a female protagonist would fake being male. If I went into the book, not knowing that kaisa's writing it with the explicit intent to be ownvoices, I'd be wondering about the main character as well. I'd think possibly S is non-binary, but possibly S is just trying to hide her gender, seeing as it's never explicitly stated. Never mind the fact that the work is called 'TWD', which implies the protagonist (who's presumably the tile character) is female. The title of a book sets a reader's mindset.

Now, in response to a easily understandable mistake, you pointed out her mistake, and then accused shadowkissed of doing something bad because of the word 'fool'. Now, 'fool' would be a bad word to use in 'the non-binary is trying to fool people that she's a girl'. That is a horrible usage, and we can all agree on that. shadowkissed used it instead as:

On 2/27/2017 at 0:11 AM, shadowkissed said:

It also took me a while to figure out her gender, which isn't the biggest deal (and kind of fitting with her pretending to be a boy), but it was a little disorienting when I figured it out--and no matter who else she's trying to fool, the reader should probably know. 

and there is nothing wrong about that kind of sentence if the subject matter is a girl pretending to be a boy for socioeconomic reasons. There's nothing in the sentence condemning a girl pretending to be a boy because the of gender reasons. So, shadowkissed apologized for the statement, realizing that it was based on an inaccurate assumption, and offered an apology for offending you, @neongrey, because you misread shadowkissed's intent in making the statement, and therefore was (rightly) angered by it. You respond by missing the point.

I was going to stay out of this discussion, but you referenced me with the most recent post. Not by name, the first instance of you I quoted is clearly discussing the argument we had in Reading Like Writes. I've had enough attacks over the years that I don't mind getting bullied but I don't like bullies. Right now, what you are doing is bullying shadowkissed, who is a newcomer to this group because of an understandable mistake that wasn't meant to be taken the way you did. You may have some right points, but you did not express them the right way.

[neongrey]

Sure.

[industrialistDragon]

14 hours ago, aeromancer said:

I would like you to clearly define what 'black people talking about lived experience as black people' means. I've stated during the ownvoices discussion that I think ownvoices is a good tag for nonfiction, but there shouldn't be any limits towards fiction, as long as the content is good.

Thing 1: The publishing industry is overwhelmingly white. Like, make a polar bear in a blizzard look grey white. 

• Publisher's Weekly 2016 Salary and Demographics survey for the publishing industry : 88% white (2015: 89%; 2014: 89%)
• Lee and Lowe Books 2015 Diversity Baseline Study  : 86% white 

Thing 2: Humans are predisposed to favor things that are like themselves. Unconscious or implicit bias doesn't make you racist, but it does affect your subconscious decision-making processes

• Study: 3-month-olds prefer own-race faces
• Study: Humans tend to sit next to people who resemble themselves
• NYT overview of studies on unconscious bias 
• Psychology Today: Humans are predisposed to be attracted to people who look like themselves
• Scientific American: Humans tend to choose friends that are like themselves

Corollary to Thing 2: Having an "ethnic-sounding" name hurts your prospects when all people have to go on is your name and your cover letter

• Study from USA 
• Study from Canada 
• Study from Sweden 
• Study from Germany 
• Meta-analysis of studies from 1990 to 2015

Thing 3: Of the books published that feature minority characters or are about minority issues, a tiny fraction are actually written by someone from the subject minority

• CCBC survey of diversity in children's books : in 2015, out of 3400 books received, 278 were about black or african american issues, and only 92 were by African American Authors
• Fireside Fiction's Diversity in SFF report : in 2015, out of 2038 stories published, 38 were by African American authors

These numbers largely hold true for most of the English-speaking, Western world, and unconscious bias applies to literally all humans.

As a part of the dominant group, it is important to respect and support marginalized voices because being part of the dominant majority means that it is difficult or impossible to understand the biases at play for anyone outside of it. What seems like "too much" or "unnecessary" to those inside is barely a drop in an ocean to overwhelming numbers like these, no matter the genre. 

[Robinski]

3 hours ago, industrialistDragon said:

As a part of the dominant group, it is important to respect and support marginalized voices because being part of the dominant majority means that it is difficult or impossible to understand the biases at play for anyone outside of it. What seems like "too much" or "unnecessary" to those inside is barely a drop in an ocean to overwhelming numbers like these, no matter the genre.

I think it's worth saying again, welcome to Reading Excuses!! Really glad to have you onboard  

Edited March 1, 2017 by Robinski

[neongrey]

I mean honestly, there's a word for people writing about their own experiences as nonfiction, and that's memoir. Ownvoices is a thing specifically incepted to highlight those sorts of disparities in publishing fiction, and someone trying to say that this has no value outside of memoir is absolutely emblematic of the reason why it needs to exist. Saying ownvoices should only apply to memoir is saying that the very concept shouldn't belong to the people who incepted it, in favour of a so-called colourblind ideology--

Which, let me be absolutely clear, is a form of racism--

-- is contemptible. It is-- because I note that ownvoices was in large part incepted as a response to YA and children's books-- saying that marginalized children have no business seeing themselves in the fiction they consume. This is coming from someone whose perspective is consistently catered to in fiction, who has vast, vast swaths of literature being written from and marketed to cisgendered heterosexual abled white males. That's contemptible. It is a form of clutching all the toys to one's chest and saying no one else should have them.

So I'm going to put that forward as an example of racism being alive and well even within this group because, well, it's present. It's alive and well in this group. And if someone happens to feel personally called out over publicly and repeatedly espousing a fundamentally racist viewpoint-- honestly, I don't care. I really could not possibly care the slightest bit less. It needs to be called out. These things need to be dragged out into the light and exposed for what they are.

[aeromancer]

@industrialistDragon I was more hoping for neongrey to clarify, as we've hashed through multiple discussions of this before, but I don't mind that you did. That being said, there was really only one statement you made that I felt addressed the point I was trying to make

5 hours ago, industrialistDragon said:

As a part of the dominant group, it is important to respect and support marginalized voices because being part of the dominant majority means that it is difficult or impossible to understand the biases at play for anyone outside of it.

This is the juice of your argument, as I understand it, and this is really two points in one sentence. "As a part of the dominant group, it is important to respect and support marginalized voices." Yes. Agreement. If you are part of a dominant group, you have a moral responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves. "...[ B ]eing part of the dominant majority means that it is difficult or impossible to understand the biases at play for anyone outside of it." No, this is false. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that a human cannot comprehend how a human mind works. You yourself quote several articles citing 'unconscious and implicit bias', and then you claim 'it is difficult or impossible to understand the biases in play for anyone outside of it'? This argument is founded upon a false authority claim, that being 'You must be a member of Caste X or else you simply cannot understand.' I think that we can all agree that all human share the same basic brain structure, so that anything one human can conceive of, another human can do so to, except for actual experiences, which is why, as I said earlier:

19 hours ago, aeromancer said:

I think ownvoices is a good tag for nonfiction, but there shouldn't be any limits towards fiction, as long as the content is good.

I do realize that I should have stated it more strongly, perhaps, "I support #ownvoices in nonfiction.

In terms of fiction, as I stated, anything one human can conceive of, so can another. I place very little limits on where information can come from, so long as that information is correct. It's kind of ironic that neongrey stated earlier, talking about 'valu[ing a] physicists talking physics', yet I talk physics all the time, and I am not a physicists. If a physicists and a non-physicist were to get in a debate, the winner wouldn't be the one walking in with more credentials, the winner would be the one who's right. An argument from authority is, by itself, a useless argument.

Now, speaking of arguments, you (or anyone, really) may want to take this argument further, which I wholly encourage. However, I'm not sure kaisa likes the mess we've made of her feedback forum, so if you want to continue this, either PM me, or ask me about it in my AMA thread, the link is in my signature.

Edited March 1, 2017 by aeromancer

[neongrey]

25 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

I do realize that I should have stated it more strongly, perhaps, "I support #ownvoices in nonfiction.

Then to be absolutely clear: you do not actually know what ownvoices is or what it is for, because it specifically addresses disparities in publishing and representation in fiction. What you are describing is memoir. That is something else. You do not get to redefine what ownvoices is to better suit your own privilege.

Also, so-called meritocratic systems have been shown time and time again to not actually be reflective of merit-- they reinforce existing power structures, they don't level them. (I am at work and a little busy so I can't make my citations quite as thorough as I would prefer). What they do is disregard the systemic power imbalances and ways in which people have been systematically disadvantaged. As, frankly, you're arguing in favour of.

1 hour ago, aeromancer said:

I'm not sure kaisa likes the mess we've made of her feedback forum

Frankly, that's up to her and not you.

[aeromancer]

21 hours ago, neongrey said:

Then to be absolutely clear: you do not actually know what ownvoices is or what it is for, because it specifically addresses disparities in publishing and representation in fiction. What you are describing is memoir. That is something else. You do not get to redefine what ownvoices is to better suit your own privilege.

Oh. Then I disagree with it. EDIT: After thinking it over, I don't disagree with what #ownvoices represents, but I may disagree with it's usage in certain contexts.

Why didn't you mention that when we had a discussion about ownvoice in the Lounge?

21 hours ago, neongrey said:

Also, so-called meritocratic systems have been shown time and time again to not actually be reflective of merit-- they reinforce existing power structures, they don't level them. (I am at work and a little busy so I can't make my citations quite as thorough as I would prefer). What they do is disregard the systemic power imbalances and ways in which people have been systematically disadvantaged. As, frankly, you're arguing in favour of.

I didn't mention meritocracies. You did. Now, a meritocracy judges something based off merit. You aren't saying meritocracies don't work, you are saying that the systems in place aren't meritocracies. Okay. That's a valid point. What you are say I'm arguing in favor of meritocracies, and meritocracies cause 'systemic power imbalances', which means you are saying that I support systemically disadvantage of people. That's a horrible thing to say. Oppression is horrible, it's not something I support, I, believe it or not (and I suspect you won't) I have been on the receiving end enough times to know how it feels.

21 hours ago, neongrey said:

Frankly, that's up to her and not you.

Do you need to fight me on everything? You're picking a fight with something you don't need to.

I said ' I'm not sure kaisa likes the mess we've made of her feedback forum'. The fact that I think kaisa doesn't like a shouting match in a feedback forum which does not discuss any themes in the submission is for kaisa to decide. So, you want to decide how I think, and, not only that, you want someone else to decide how I think.

Edited March 2, 2017 by aeromancer