Author: skzb

I play the drum.

All Of My Hate Is Not Equally Divided: #Gamergate Again

Let’s start with some Aristotelian categories (recognizing that such categories are more fluid and contradictory than Aristotle thought):  There are those who push agendas that are reactionary, wrong-headed, morally bankrupt; and there are those who are misguided supporters of such agendas.  There are agendas based on middle-class politics; and agendas based on blatantly anti-working class, right-wing positions.

Social justice activists are, in my opinion, wrong.  Very wrong.  Scarily wrong.  By either not seeing class distinctions, or by seeing them as merely another in a list of causes of oppression, they (in my opinion) dangerously misinterpret the world, and leave us open to attacks by reaction, and actively interfere with the effort to unite the working class and prepare it to do battle with our enemies.  We saw in the cases of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Julian Assange how they gave aid and comfort to the most repulsive right wing elements.

Overt racists and male chauvinists, on the other hand,  are actively and consciously supporting our enemies.  That is an important distinction.  I don’t waste time talking to them.  We will have things out with the Beales of the world at the barricades, not in the parlor.  Any innocently misguided individuals among them are not going to have their minds changed by argument, but by the developing class struggle.

Certainly, some social justice activists are not worth talking to–many of the theorists consciously obscure the class issues while cynically solidifying their upper-middle class positions and comfortable lives by talking about how others need to recognize their “privilege.”  But many, many, many social justice activists are people who see the same problems I do.  They are honestly and legitimately outraged by  oppression of working people, of minorities, of women, of homosexuals, of those with disabilities.  We differ strongly on what to do about it, and often about the causes, but we agree about the problems.

So I’ll talk to them, and I’ll be as polite as I can manage and do my best to make convincing arguments.

And when there is a conflict between social justice activists and right-wing assholes, there is a time for saying, “This whole dispute is crap, the fundamental issues are the things none of you are talking about. A plague on both your houses.”  And then there is a time for saying, “Yeah, we disagree, but I have to take a position with you anyway,  always maintaining my right to express my differences as I do so.”  I never agreed with the non-violence of Martin Luther King, or with protest politics in general; but when his supporters were being beaten and shot, our first step was to make it clear that we were on their side against the cops–only then could we fight within that movement for a turn toward revolutionary politics and class unity.

In the case of #Gamergate, I was pulled into it by something intensely personal that happened, the details of which are unimportant.  But having been pulled in, it is obvious which side I’m on.  I do not blame or criticize anyone without a direct stake in the matter for staying out of this: on many levels, the whole controversy is trivial (of course, on other levels it is not).  But if you do take a stand on it, I believe that any decent human being, regardless of any disagreement he or she may have with the policies of social justice activists, needs to recognize misguided friend from foe.

 

Oh, Jesus Fuck, Now I Have To Talk About #Gamergate

One reason I’ve wanted to stay out of the #GamerGate controversy was because I have no skin in the game; I’m not much of a gamer and I don’t read game reviews. For another, I dislike most “feminist criticism” for many reasons; for one, I believe it reinforces categories that we ought to be working to eliminate or reduce. And the controversy ties in with identity politics and social justice activism; my disagreements with these are well known.  On the whole I believe noticing things like dehumanizing treatment of women or offensive stereotypes of minorities in media doesn’t require feminist criticism; it just requires noticing when human beings are oversimplified, stereotyped, treated shabbily in art.

But now someone tried to start a campaign to get people to boycott Tor books because a particular Tor author has been vocal in his opposition to #GamerGate.

Okay, fuck that noise.

Gamergaters are trying to narrow discourse. This is wrong.

Gamergaters are using threats and intimidation to narrow discourse.  This is profoundly wrong.

And, moreover, the ones who aren’t idiots are assholes, except for those who are both.

There.  Is my position sufficiently clear?

I’m a Tor author. If you are keeping a list of those to boycott for being vocal in opposition to #GamerGate, please add me to it.

 

 

(If you’re not up to speed on this, you could check here and here. It isn’t pretty.)

Viable Paradise 18 Report

Dreading the one-on-one about the story I couldn’t get into: Check

Being the only one in the small group who thought a story was wonderful: Check

That helpless feeling when I couldn’t fix a story: Check

That triumphant feeling when I could: Check

Too much alcohol and too little sleep: Check

Getting pissed off at fellow instructor only to realize it was caused by the above conditions: Check

Saved by the staff: Check

Fleeting unreasonable crush on student: Check

Seeing a student bounce about how TNH had fixed the whole story with just a couple of tweaks: Check

Absurd amounts of fun playing music: Check

Feeling unreasonably stupid: Check

Feeling unreasonably  smart: Check

Intense writing discussions where I learned more than I taught: Check

Being close to tears realizing that none of these wonderful new people would be back next year: Check

Yep, VP is over and I has a sad.  It was wonderful.  Thank you all.

 

Hitting the Road, Yo

Tomorrow morning Jen and I take off for the East Coast, and Viable Paradise.  So very, very much fun.  For those who don’t know VP, it’s like Fourth Street, but lasts a week.  For those who don’t know Fourth Street, it’s like VP packed into a weekend.  And those are horribly inaccurate comparisons, except for the total immersion in writing that makes me feel I’m bouncing through the entire event. I am looking forward to meeting the new class of students.

Meanwhile, we’re working on a kickstarter for a Cats Laughing reunion concert at Minicon 50.  We’re hoping and expecting to launch the Kickstarter by the end of this week.  More details later, but for now I’ll just say Fucking Meow.

Oh, and Hawk comes out tomorrow.  There are a couple of reports that it has been spotted in the wild. Check your local bookstore?

And speaking of Hawk, there is a video of me reading the section immediately following the one posted here.

After VP, Jen and I are heading to Texas to hang out with Skyler White and family and finish up the 2nd Incrementalists novel.

Oh, there’s this interesting Agyar thing we’ve been kicking around. No, it isn’t a film. But if you love cool book artifacts and liked that book, it may be time to start getting excited.  Details, as always, when we know more.

Where Would We Be Without Denial, or, Embracing the Contradiction

Or: Do NOT come to me for advice on publishing.

I get email, facebook comments, and tweets from time to time where I am asked questions about marketing, publicity, and the publishing business in general.  I hate these questions a lot more than I ought–enough, in fact, that I’ve been forced to ask myself why.

I’ve spoken before of how important it is for a writer to figure out what sort of lies are required to produce his or her best work.  Do you have to tell yourself that you’re “just writing for yourself” to keep from freezing up?  Do you need to convince yourself that you’re writing to change the world in order to focus properly?  I have a bunch of lies I tell myself, and they’ve been very good to me.  It’s the worst sort of pragmatism, and I hate pragmatism; this contradiction, I’m sure, has an effect on my work.  I hope generally a positive one.

But one of the related things is my belief that the business of publishing–the way I need to produce work that will sell to a market in order to keep a roof over my head, food in my mouth, and nicotine in my bloodstream–has no effect on the words that end up on the page.  On the face of it, this is absurd.  Publishers sell a commodity–books–and will continue to pay me only as long as I provide something that they can use to secure a profit; and to say that this process has no effect on the work is to deny that I am a part of the same world as the publisher, the readers, and all the vagaries of an anarchic social system.  To believe that, I’d have to be very good at denial.  I am very good at denial.  Significantly, it is only the fact that I have been very, very lucky, extraordinarily lucky, in that I have been able to live as a writer for so many years, that has permitted me to continue this denial.

Thirty years ago, this fiction was much easier to maintain.  Things like publicity and market awareness were much more the responsibility of the publisher, not the writer; it was easy to be contemptuous of “hacks” who wrote to a market–one could pretend, in other words, to be above all the “base material considerations.”  I still mostly believe this about my own work, because I am convinced that, if I don’t believe it, my work will suffer.  Deliberately writing to please the reader will, I am convinced, result in work I’m unhappy with, and, almost certainly, be disappointing to those who have stayed with me over the years as I’ve pushed and explored and challenged myself as much as I can in order to keep myself entertained.  How much am I really, in a part of my backbrain I’m not comfortable acknowledging, “playing for the crowd” in order to keep myself afloat?  I don’t know, and I don’t want to.

The trouble with this self-deception mostly comes up when people ask me for advice about publishing, self-promotion, and what sort of stuff will sell.  Not only do I not know the answer, but, because of how my own process works, I have to tell them that they ought not to be even thinking about that.  It’s a very strange and contradictory position to be in, because I believe what I’m telling them all the way down to my toes, and I simultaneously know it’s wrong.  I mean, John Scalzi, if no one else, provides proof that consciously writing to a market is no hindrance to producing high-quality, entertaining work.  Neil Gaiman has no trouble promoting his work, and it has clearly not diminished his ability to produce wonderful and amazing stories.  A good illustration of how things have changed is provided by Cecelia Tan’s career: she started her own publishing company in order to get her work out there–and this in spite of having had a solid fan base for many years (of course, erotica publishing has its own problems and peculiarities, but I think the point is still valid).

Honesty is important to me.  I believe that honesty–in fiction and non-fiction–is a process and a struggle, not a yes-or-no thing.  It begins with the decision not to lie, and then becomes difficult.  To tell the truth, you must know the truth, and if the truth you’re looking for is easily plucked from the ground, it’s not worth the bother of bending over.  But in order to concentrate on that little piece of whatever part of reality has taken my interest, I have to wrap myself in deceit.  And when someone puts a question to me that involves those areas where I’m lying to myself, I have the choice of lying to that person, or admitting the truth to myself, and I’m certainly not going to do the latter, because I love doing my work too much to do anything that will threaten my ability to continue.

So if you have questions about marketing, promotion, or making a living as a writer, do us both a favor and ask someone else.