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The most important part of that article is this quotequote:Yet I’m emailing with a ghost who exists only in this one email chain. The person who might have been Isabel has given up on actually building a life and career as Isabel Fall. And that is a kind of death. Because it directly questions (not really, it's completely by implication) the idea that we are any one identity, or person, or victimhood, or thought, that must be fought for and defended, and must hold power over the the identities and persons we're not. Does Isabel Warner still exist? No, not in a specific way. Does the trans person who wrote that article still exist? Maybe, she still talks about living her life and allows other people to categorize her "gender-sphere" as they wish. Does the person, twisting through identities, experience the feelings and tumult brought about by the article and public reaction exist? Definitely. There's far too much debate (as the article goes into, tangentially) about "who" we are. What boxes we exist in. And there's far less concern over leaving people exist as they wish to exist. Isabel Warner may be "a ghost" but any aspect of our "identity" is similarly a ghost. A temporary thing people (and ourselves) claim to see but there's no real evidence for.
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Jun 30, 2021 21:23
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ShutteredIn posted:Kind of incredible that N.K. Jemisin isn't mentioned by name in that article. The article author mentioned on her Twitter post about the article that one of the reasons she didn't include Jemisin was that Fall was already in the hospital by the time she chimed in, so Fall never saw it. (Also that she wanted to center Fall and not the people who harassed her.)
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Jun 30, 2021 21:57
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Ccs posted:Well, I hope the outrage brigade on twitter feels proud of themselves. This story asked too much of the reader. Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation. And that means that it must be from a member of the community. And that is assuming reclaiming bigoted memes is a worthwhile use of time --- I'm sympathetic to people who find the goal of repurposing toxic internet trash to be a joke. Yet at the same time you cannot ask someone to out themselves, its morally bankrupt. You can't demand that the author put on a show of their identity, especially an identity that can get you killed all over the globe. So you're asking the reader for an assumption of good faith and sympathy going in to a story entitled I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter. A title that is at least intentionally provocative and essentially a slur. What merits this assumption of good faith? None of us have bottomless wells of reserve of good faith available for stuff on the internet, and especially so for Ben Shapiro trash. I don't think the 'just read the story' answer is automatic, either. Does that legitimize the meme? The correct response to Ben Shapiro saying it is 'gently caress off Ben Shapiro', not engaging like there's some debate going on. How is the reader supposed to know this is a different situation? Every day we see lovely clickbait headlines designed to whip up internet traffic. The correct response is to not click the headline. How is the reader supposed to distinguish this from that? Its just too easy to say that in restrospect everyone should have reacted with measured and considered critiques, now that we know everything about Isabel Fall and the story's background. How can anyone be surprised when THAT TITLE leads to upset, emotional responses? The real fault here imo is the editor, who pushed all this into the burning heat of the culture wars with apparently no thought at all.
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Jun 30, 2021 22:16
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Copernic posted:This story asked too much of the reader. Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation. And that means that it must be from a member of the community. And that is assuming reclaiming bigoted memes is a worthwhile use of time --- I'm sympathetic to people who find the goal of repurposing toxic internet trash to be a joke. I dunno they could have read the story to see what it's actually about or just not launched off on one based off of zero information, good satire is challenging and plays a little with the fire. I don't think culture should have to be produced around the whims of twitter people who have eroded their higher brain functions whipping themselves up in rages over twitter links they don't read
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Jun 30, 2021 22:25
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Copernic posted:This story asked too much of the reader. Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation. I'm just going to deal with your first two sentences. "This story asked too much of the reader." Yes, by being published in Clarkesworld that is absolutely incapable of asking much of its readers. "Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation." Which might have happened if there wasn't an entire loving war online about it, with people who haven't read the story (I haven't.) More, reclamation and transformation aren't the only two options. The perspective of a trans person is not the only perspective. To claim only trans people can advocate for trans people is bullshit and exclusionary. To claim the trans view is the only view, and thus all views are predicated on being trans is also bullshit. What if "I" a "trans person" don't "identify" as a trans person in this story. What if I write it using the faculties and identity of my drunk persona, or my schizophrenic persona, or my depressed persona, or my really high on cocaine while smoking a Dunhill persona. The idea that all things are informed by one inviable aspect of a person is total horseshite. Why must I advocate for my life instead of living my life?
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Jun 30, 2021 22:37
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Copernic posted:This story asked too much of the reader. Indeed, it's the victim at fault here.
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Jun 30, 2021 22:54
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Ben Nevis posted:Indeed, it's the victim at fault here. The victim was literature. *Strokes moustache Belgianlumly* The murderer? Is in this room.
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Jun 30, 2021 23:00
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Ben Nevis posted:Indeed, it's the victim at fault here. I think its possible to be sympathetic both to Fall and to readers who have a negative, visceral reaction to slurs they may well have encountered in their own lives. Does anyone really support the title? Fall changed the title!
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Jun 30, 2021 23:09
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I completely avoided the subject when it was a raging twitter debate because what the gently caress do I know. Is there some place I can/should buy IIaaAH/Helicopter Story or is it all samizdat these days?
Zoracle Zed fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2021 23:36
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multijoe posted:I dunno they could have read the story to see what it's actually about or just not launched off on one based off of zero information, good satire is challenging and plays a little with the fire. I don't think culture should have to be produced around the whims of twitter people who have eroded their higher brain functions whipping themselves up in rages over twitter links they don't read loving cheers. It just takes one idiot to start an outrage fire. This whole thing is new to me, how was Jemisin involved?
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Jun 30, 2021 23:47
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BurningBeard posted:This whole thing is new to me, how was Jemisin involved?
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Jun 30, 2021 23:56
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Zoracle Zed posted:I completely avoided the subject when it was a raging twitter debate because what the gently caress do I know. Is there some place I can/should buy IIaaAH/Helicopter Story or is it all samizdat these days? That's a complicated question. It was taken down at Fall's request, so there's an argument to be made that the author doesn't want people to read it anymore, or at least didn't at the time. But it's in the Hugo packet (like most of the other nominees). I don't know if that means that Fall's position changed in the meantime, or what. You could get it and the rest of the packet by purchasing a supporting Worldcon membership - good value for the amount of stuff you get, btw. I also found it on the Clarkesworld page saved on archive.is before it was taken down. That's not a paid access magazine, so I don't think it's a question of piracy, but it feels... murky to me.
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Jul 1, 2021 00:11
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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance #1) by NK Jemisin https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDJZO2/
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Jul 1, 2021 00:12
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pradmer posted:The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance #1) by NK Jemisin Awks
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Jul 1, 2021 00:28
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I think if we have to worry about what twitter will say when publishing satire that’s not good. In the case of really biting satire though it probably helps to publish anonymously, as Jonathan Swift did, in order to gauge reaction instead of risking getting pilloried. Although this author wasn’t well represented online so it was similar to being anonymous. But not the same if they planned to live and publish under than name in the future. I guess they never expected the reaction to be so vehement.
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Jul 1, 2021 00:51
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Copernic posted:This story asked too much of the reader. Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation. And that means that it must be from a member of the community. And that is assuming reclaiming bigoted memes is a worthwhile use of time --- I'm sympathetic to people who find the goal of repurposing toxic internet trash to be a joke. If "reading the story" is asking too much of you, then you are by definition not a reader
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Jul 1, 2021 00:51
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Copernic posted:I think its possible to be sympathetic both to Fall and to readers who have a negative, visceral reaction to slurs they may well have encountered in their own lives. Does anyone really support the title? Fall changed the title! Like, half of all queer fiction/poetry/biographies have some slur in the title. "Queer" itself is a slur. What is this argument? A trans person playing with a right-wing meme is not particularly surprising, a bit of controversy was probably the point, but the reaction was out of proportion.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:07
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"you should read every story with a grossly offensive title in case it is brilliant satire" is an odd take
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Jul 1, 2021 01:19
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Llamadeus posted:Not direct involvement, but screencaps of her tweets in this other article about the thing: https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism Yeah I’d say that’s about on brand. That’s a great article too. The Article posted:Stories like “Attack Helicopter” are vital to unpacking the webs of intersecting forces which make up every human consciousness. They constitute an outlet for the suffering of marginalized artists raised in bigoted, imperialist cultures, a way to process the poison we’re spoon-fed from birth into something that awakens and lays bare. Calls for the destruction or censorship of such stories constitute a rejection of life’s intrinsic complexity, a retreat into the black and white moral absolutism of adolescence, or theocracy. These rigid moral strictures strip marginalized communities of their full humanity and of their history as makers of painful, difficult art stemming from their experiences as outsiders. They rob audiences of the space and tools necessary to engage art thoughtfully and in good faith. They make our world a poorer, harsher place, clannish and merciless, and smother beauty in its cradle. As a marginalized person that very much cares about making quality art, it’s kind of scary to think the frothing mob might be so loud as to shut me up for talking about my lived experiences in a way they deem insufficient. People would rather perform their rightness than actually care about marginalized people. It’s loving wild. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 01:24
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Harold Fjord posted:"you should read every story with a grossly offensive title in case it is brilliant satire" is an odd take
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Jul 1, 2021 01:25
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Clarkesworld was not going to publish some weird right-wing redditor joke and the people leading the brigade knew that.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:31
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Llamadeus posted:On the other hand "you should read a work before publically denouncing it" seems like a reasonable take I don't even know if I'd go this far, but it's complicated. If everyone I trust us telling me a book or story with a grotesque title is full of offensive garbage, I'd probably trust them.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:31
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't even know if I'd go this far, but it's complicated. If everyone I trust us telling me a book or story with a grotesque title is full of offensive garbage, I'd probably trust them. Dunno if you read the article but that's sort of the central point it's making -- Twitter drives eyeballs and attention to "takes" that are divisive/incendiary and then promotes them, so what happened with this story was a feedback loop of people climbing over one another to denounce the story on the basis of, well, not much of anything at all. So you probably saw a lot of people you trust telling you the story was garbage, even though that really wasn't the case.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:35
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't even know if I'd go this far, but it's complicated. If everyone I trust us telling me a book or story with a grotesque title is full of offensive garbage, I'd probably trust them. I mean I think trusting your own critical faculties over the spew of an irrational mob is probably the better call here. This is why SA is good poo poo. I know that at least here, someone is going to critically dissect, or if they didn't, someone else will call it out. Like if you're gonna rely on word of mouth, at least pick good sources. Twitter at large is definitely not one of those.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:38
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Llamadeus posted:On the other hand "you should read a work before publically denouncing it" seems like a reasonable take I think this title was uniquely bad for what it got itself into. I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter is pretty much the emblem of Ben Shapiro / Stephen Crowder bad faith alt-right bullshit. The entire shtick is that once he gets someone to engage with him, or god forbid debate him, he has already won. Its that Sartre quote. ISIAAH is the very essence of internet bad faith and weaponized discourse. I think its pretty easy to see why people assumed a story with that title was just as bad, or at least was some edgy smug thing. That being said this isn't the first time Jemisin, who certainly should've known better, recklessly sicced her audience on someone.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:42
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Copernic posted:I think its possible to be sympathetic both to Fall and to readers who have a negative, visceral reaction to slurs they may well have encountered in their own lives. Does anyone really support the title? Fall changed the title! I'm a trans woman who thinks the title was actually perfectly chosen, and I found the story perfectly reflected my own experiences with gender back at me like little else has as far as fiction goes. I don't think the fact that Fall changed the title after getting harassed over it so badly that she had a mental health crisis and subsequently detransitioned is a ringing endorsement of the idea that the title was inherently immoral. Seriously, gently caress everyone in that mob who attacked her, even the trans people who should've known better.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:46
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Llamadeus posted:Not direct involvement, but screencaps of her tweets in this other article about the thing: https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism This article is also well worth reading as a commentary on what happened: quote:The violent and oftentimes ironically ignorant backlash against Fall’s story sheds light on a troublingly regressive, entitled, and puritanical trend in the relationship between artists and their audiences, particularly when it comes to genre fiction. Readers appear to feel a need to cast their objections to fiction in moral terms, positioning themselves as protectors of the downtrodden. Trans writer Phoebe Barton went so far as to compare Fall’s story to a “gun” which could be used only to inflict harm, though in a later tweet she, like Jemisin, admitted she hadn’t read it and had based her reaction solely on its title. ShutteredIn posted:Clarkesworld was not going to publish some weird right-wing redditor joke and the people leading the brigade knew that. Once it spun out of control on Twitter I very much doubt some of the louder voices had even heard of Clarkesworld beforehand.
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Jul 1, 2021 02:01
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Copernic posted:I think its pretty easy to see why people assumed a story with that title was just as bad, or at least was some edgy smug thing. You're downplaying what happened here. It wasn't that the commentators in question saw the title and went, "Hm, must be alt-right trash," and moved on. It was that they then took this discomfort to Twitter and made up a slew of biographical details, political stances, and beliefs and attributed them to the author (or implicitly attributed them to the author), then declared persona non grata anyone who spoke up to say what they were doing was wrong, or even that the story (which most of them had not read) had merit. They could have ignored it and moved on, as they do with Shapiro's stuff or all the other edgy, smug sff that gets published every year. Or they could have investigated further. They didn't. They made a weapon of their hurt and nearly clubbed someone to death with it.
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Jul 1, 2021 02:02
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can't blame them. no one has ever done anything like this before.
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Jul 1, 2021 02:03
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Copernic posted:This story asked too much of the reader. Using a lovely, transphobic meme as the title can only be justified by reclamation and transformation. And that means that it must be from a member of the community. And that is assuming reclaiming bigoted memes is a worthwhile use of time --- I'm sympathetic to people who find the goal of repurposing toxic internet trash to be a joke. im almost 100% positive you didnt read the article
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Jul 1, 2021 02:33
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Comparing a story to a weapon and acting like it can cause physical harm is weird to me. At the same time, all the attacks in response to the story are also just words and that caused demonstrable harm so... But it doesn’t seem like something explicitly marketed as fiction should be able to be compared to an actual weapon. A writer I follow on twitter has been getting into it about this issue in respect to a different situation, with people review bombing her book because it contains upsetting content. https://mobile.twitter.com/scumbelievable/status/1410308626670141442 https://mobile.twitter.com/scumbelievable/status/1410281862451314690 Ccs fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 02:42
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Ccs posted:Comparing a story to a weapon and acting like it can cause physical harm is weird to me. At the same time, all the attacks in response to the story are also just words and that caused demonstrable harm so... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries
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Jul 1, 2021 02:49
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Ccs posted:Comparing a story to a weapon and acting like it can cause physical harm is weird to me. At the same time, all the attacks in response to the story are also just words and that caused demonstrable harm so... Very worth noting that Manhunt doesn't even come out until October or something, so none of the people review bombing it have read it either. It's also really tiring to see people conflating being personally upset with something you read in a book with stories that are supportive/symptomatic of systemic bigotries on the macro level. (They're not the same thing!) https://twitter.com/leemandelo/status/1218534299173105664?s=19 Anyway, I really like this thread that Lee Mandelo (who was quoted in the Vox article about reparative vs paranoid readings) posted today about all this.
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Jul 1, 2021 02:58
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I posted before I saw this link. You're not wrong that Turner Diaries is awful and has been read by people who've done atrocious things, but a white supremacist writing racist propaganda isn't anywhere near the same thing as a trans person writing a personal story exploring concepts of gender in a way that might not resonate with everyone the way it was intended.
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Jul 1, 2021 03:03
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If I'm a reader for any magazine except for Ben Shapiros Really Tall Magazine (where this title comes up every hour) I'm going to look at a piece of fiction titled "I Identify as an Attack Helicopter" with at least a little more interest than the one called "I Am A powerful and Hurt woman." I'm going to read the first few sentences. Holy poo poo they're not horrific! Then I'm going to get through a few paragraphs and it's kind of making some sense. Am I paying attention? I get to the end and think, "This might be politically interesting." I kick it up to my editor and say, "The Attack Helicopter title does it justice!" Everyone is yearning to make this good story into something (it might not be a good story) because it's not as poo poo as all the rest. We struggle with the title, but we've all read it. We've all seen its value. It's published. Twitter reads it. The embedded link in tweets gets shared. Few people give a gently caress. Someone reads it! This is good! Someone reads it, this is bad! It gets shared more. Suddenly the one thing that got it through the slush pile is the exact reason everyone loving screams about it. "What do you mean I'm a fat bald fraud reading poo poo fiction for no purpose. I create societal reactions!" The editor says. And he does. The one time his interest was piqued, but with one trans author trying to get through the slush pile, the publication made a name for itself. "It's relevant!" the editor says. "It's who I am," the author says. The debate is vociferous and angry. All around success. But if it didn't have that name/title no-one would give a flying poo poo. And still, no-one gives a poo poo about being trans, and no-one gives a poo poo about what identity means. Because none of you cunts are discussing what it means to be any identity, or author, or publisher. Just debating the loving outrage.
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Jul 1, 2021 03:09
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DurianGray posted:I posted before I saw this link. You're not wrong that Turner Diaries is awful and has been read by people who've done atrocious things, but a white supremacist writing racist propaganda isn't anywhere near the same thing as a trans person writing a personal story exploring concepts of gender in a way that might not resonate with everyone the way it was intended.  I was disagreeing with the idiotic idea that fiction can't be used as a weapon.
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Jul 1, 2021 03:11
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Mrenda posted:And still, no-one gives a poo poo about being trans, and no-one gives a poo poo about what identity means. Because none of you cunts are discussing what it means to be any identity, or author, or publisher. Just debating the loving outrage. this is the SFF thread so it's probably best suited to discussing how identity is expressed in that story...i would be interested in hearing what anyone who actually read it thought about it!
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Jul 1, 2021 03:13
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yeah it's a shame the reaction to the story is overwhelming the story itself, because the discourse is very bad and the story is very good
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Jul 1, 2021 03:13
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Copernic posted:ISIAAH is the very essence of internet bad faith and weaponized discourse. Maybe a lot of trans/marginalised people are invisible and we'll attract ire just so, for one loving time, people will pay attention to what we/you/I have to say.
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Jul 1, 2021 03:14
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Ccs posted:But it doesn’t seem like something explicitly marketed as fiction should be able to be compared to an actual weapon. A writer I follow on twitter has been getting into it about this issue in respect to a different situation, with people review bombing her book because it contains upsetting content. Felker-Martin is actually the author of the Outline piece posted above
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Jul 1, 2021 03:15
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