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The “Othering” of Conservatives in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
The new tactic by some on the left is to accuse people that they disagree with politically that they make them feel “unsafe.” The goal of this is to ensure that people that they disagree with are banned from social gatherings. Recently there have been three examples of this tactic being used with success.
First, author Jon Del Arroz was banned from attending WorldCon because he had received threats of mistreatment and wanted to wear a body cam to prevent others from claiming that he had attacked or insulted them. WorldCon claimed that wearing such a recording device violated their rules because bystanders would not be giving their consent to being recorded.
Next, one of the best selling authors in SciFi, John Ringo, was disinvited as the Guest of Honor for ConCarolinas because one of his characters in a series was into BDSM and someone accused Mr. Ringo of trying to solicit underage women to come to a BDSM party in his room with his wife. This was completely false and fabricated, of course, but that didn’t matter to those spreading the lies. In fact, the story around why the Con security was with Mr. Ringo all weekend was actually insanely sweet.
This week, Origins, one of the largest board gaming conventions had invited Larry Correia, another best-selling author, to be their Guest of Honor. Within a couple of hours of making this announcement, Origins had disinvited Mr. Correia because people had felt unsafe and that inviting him was encouraging various ills. The most direct accusation was made by a person who claimed that Mr. Correia had “attacked” her boyfriend. It turns out that in 2014, Larry, fisked an article her boyfriend had written at Tor.com that claimed that the largest gaming convention (GenCon) in specific and gaming in general. Larry’s takedown was hilarious to read and dissected his arguments point by point. Evidently, this is what constitutes as an “attack” to some on the left…disagreeing with their premise that every white person is racist…all the time. You can read Larry’s response here.
When I read Guy P. Benson and Mary Katherine Ham’s book End of Discussion, it was disturbing to see how far our political discussion has degraded to where people essentially just want to shut the opposition down. When I read The Intimidation Game by Kimberley Strassel, it was even scarier to see how the organs of government were used to shut down dissent. Now we see the next stage…the libelous exclusion of people from public events because of their views. The very accusation that they are “rape apologists” or homophobic/transphobic/etc. is enough for some to buckle to pressure from a small and very vocal minority.
A word of caution, this rabbit hole can go pretty deep. When you get into the Hugo Award situation that started the Sad Puppies campaigns, it’s amazing.
Published in Entertainment
a) There should be a 14th rule added to Alinsky’s ruled for radicals: “Any opponent that employs the preceding 13 rules in their own activism must be prioritized for neutralization.”
b) The word “pragmatic” can be defined as, “any tactic used by oneself that works”. The word “cynical” can be defined as, “any tactic used by one’s enemies that works”.
http://www.openculture.com/2017/02/13-rules-for-radicals.html
Given the last few years, I now expect those sorts of disinvitations at Sci Fi conventions, but I’m not surprised at all to see it at a board game convention. The left has been marching successfully through the various “geek/nerd” communities. I would hope that conservatives (or any variety of non-leftist) who were planning to attend as vendors or just guests backs out or cancels their plans. Origins is a business. They need to feel the consequences. Hopefully lower attendance or financial loss for pulling this crap will teach a lesson not to politicize a non-political event.
Perhaps more conservatives ought to volunteer to work in their local science fiction organizations. If all of the higher-ups in a convention’s committees are SJW’s, this is what you’re going to get. There’s no good reason that science fiction should be a left-wing interest.
Oooo! I hadn’t heard about the Correia affair. (On vacation — fewer checks of Monster Hunter Nation.)
I especially liked, “Real racists disappear into the tall grass of micro-aggresions and invisible privilege.”
One of my friends from college got caught up in the whole Sad Puppies thing. (He was nominated for an editing award that year.) The things “people” (and I use the word very loosely) said about him for daring to be a fairly moderate social conservative and speak out against the idea that the Hugos should be awarded based on identity politics were shameful, and it’s really turned him off to the whole SFF community. Which is a real shame, because as I said he was nominated for a Hugo, edited the book The Martian, and has worked with almost all the living luminaries in the field. Hell, his novelization of the new Predator movie just came out (I think…).
The “Othering” you describe has really gotten bad recently, but it soured me to modern SF a while ago, so much now that unless someone I trust implicitly recommends a novel or story, I choose to read (or reread) one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of “classic” novels and stories I already have on my Kindle, rather than subject myself to the nonsense that passes for “acclaimed” stuff these days.
</rant>
Conservatives have jobs and families and mortgages and taxes to pay. That’s why progressives dominate fields that rely on “volunteer” labour.
Easily resolved with a clause on the ticket purchase (assuming there are tickets) which states anyone attending gives their consent to be photographed or videotaped.
BTW, doesn’t the “owning one’s likeness for profit” body of law only apply to the rich and famous? People who are paid for their appearances? I’m curious, because I’m sure sure I want to own my appearance (and my wife would back me up on this).
“Fisked an article”
totally off topic and I don’t want to hijack the thread but very shortly after the term fisking began to be used I was traveling on business and the fellow I was traveling with pulled out a book by Robert Fisk. I began to laugh, he asked why and I explained the term. Don’t think we spoke again all the way to Singapore.
to this day I laugh when the word is used.
so, thanks.
Not just sci-fi. I almost completely stopped reading any “modern” fiction as soon as I discovered gutenberg.org. Who needs new books when you have 3000 years of literature to choose from?
The prior comment regards the Larry Correia fisking of a SJW.
George, the SJW in question was writing about the difficulties of being a minority gamer and how there aren’t enough of them and how there aren’t enough of them in leadership positions and not enough gaming systems that involve minority human races and not enough, not enough, and too much not enoughness.
This quote caught my eye: ‘Despite the apathy and dismissal, I know that there are people who want to work with the minority community to change these realities. I know there are allies and advocates who want to make gaming a different place, one that’s open in new ways to minorities and their communities.’
I would like to state for the record that I am not an ally nor an advocate of bringing more of X community into Y thing. Rather, I am positively disposed and accepting of X joining in as they choose and negatively disposed towards attempts to keep X away from Y thing. I’m not going to wear a rubber bracelet, march, speak truth to power otherwise enmountain these molehills.
Moreover, I find the SJW vocabulary to be pathetic and embarrassing; ally, advocate, X community, change realities…blechhh. These words come from a mirror dimension whose quasi-people seek to invade our own and make it theirs. These words give me the creeps.
What about minority nonhuman races?
#dwarflivesmatter.
The problem is most conservatives have lives. They do not have much spare time. SJWs do not have lives. That is why they are into SJW – to fill the vacant hole in their lives. Therefore they have time for organizations and use that to try to make everyone else as abjectly miserable as they are.
If anybody is thinking they’d like to go to a larger science fiction convention where there will be at least a few conservatives in attendance, how about we get together next year for WesterCon 72? There are already three Ricochet members signed up and I hope to recruit more. I haven’t written a post about it yet, but I will.
That’s true, but if there are to be conventions, someone has to run them. And they will be run by the people who volunteer.
@TBA, you just created a new word! “enmountain”?!
The only game like this that I’ve played is D&D. Human is one of many available races within the game, each of which has different advantages and disadvantages based on size and natural magic qualities.
The insidious aspect of that guy’s complaint, that there aren’t cataloged sub-races of human, is that the only reason to have those in the game is for there to be corresponding racial differences that matter to the game-playing. Any attempt to add skills or deficiencies according to real human races is a terrible idea, and not only wouldn’t make this guy happy, but would certainly be attacked for its racial assignment of qualities. There’s nothing stopped anyone from saying that their human character in D&D is black, asian, hispanic, etc., and the beauty of it is that it doesn’t matter: they are all able to pursue the different classes of their choice and achieve the same things.
Yeah. I don’t believe I’ve ever specified any ethnic background in any of the characters I ever made, with the exception of Gustav Chang, the German-Chinese mercenary in one cyberpunk game. Who hated French Canadians.
Progressives dominate the fields that are the middleware of civilization. This hyper concentration in the middle perverts our communication with each other. Its also a phenomenal lever of power. Conservatives do have a worrying tendency to not take the reality of the national information system seriously.
So, you are saying they belong on the “B” Ark.
I vaguely remember that the first edition of Shadowrun addressed this concern by pointing out that in a society where the guy across from you on the subway is 8 feet tall, has horns growing out of his skull, incisors the length of daggers, and might be able to incinerate you with his mind, people would probably stop worrying so much about skin color.
Why are these kinds of people in charge of so many guest lists for so many things? Where are our folks?
One could argue that a great fault of D&D is that the minority races are overrepresented among player characters. The non-human races are supposed to be (oppressed) minorities, and yet they really seem to thrive in the Adventuring industries. It’s amazing that racist villagers ever let groups of adventurers through the gates, considering that every group of adventurers has at least one Dwarf, one Elf, and often a Half-Orc!
(Imagine if The Fellowship had included a Half-Orc. D’you really think they’d have been allowed entry into Rivendell?)
I always objected to Adams including hairdressers on the B Ark. Everybody’s gotta get their hair cut!
In one Greyhawk campaign I based my warrior monk’s culture on Sikhism. His people were from way to the south-west of the Flanaess. I got some really dope Sikh Warrior miniatures too.
Ah, but a barber is not a hairdresser as such.
It’s a fact that Elrond hated miscegenation.
See Comment #7.
Screw that, let’s have a ConCon where we cosplay as Founding Fathers and conservative economists!
Well, when it means that one’s grandchildren won’t be immortal, one can kinda see his point.