Entry tags:

author entitlement, awards, books/authors, person: john ringo, person: john scalzi

A Wank of Two Authors
A wank that is somewhat pan-fandom - Science Fiction in general!

First piece of background: John Scalzi is an author and, ~~at present,~~ he was until recently (thanks, sgaana!) the president of the SFWA. In the past few months, he has been a very vocal supporter of anti-harassment policies at SFF conventions, and in general has been a supporter of having women and minorities represented in SFF. This annoys some people. (Warning: this wank, while it has not in itself veered into unfunny territory, is between two authors - and to some extent their fanbases - who stand on very different sides of the "what (if anything) should be done to ensure equality for people of different genders/sexual orientations/races/creeds." While going over facebook and twitter to research this particular kerfluffle, I encountered some of that in other posts. None of it is linked here, but it is in this general section of the blaggertubes.)

As a second piece of background, the Hugo Awards celebrate the best of Science Fiction, and are widely considered one of the most prestigious awards an SFF author can win. While highly prestigious, however, the awards are not immune from the general principle of award-giving, which is that first someone wins, and then someone else bitches about it.

All caught up? Good.

On Sunday, the winners of the 2013 Hugo Awards were announced. John Scalzi won the award for best novel with Redshirts, a comedic novel about the unusually high mortality rates of starship employees wearing crimson attire. As usual, the win touched off some debate around the quality of the various nominees. Some people enjoyed Redshirts, others did not like it so well. Fairly standard. The Guardian has covered some of the differing points of view here, most of which are centered around the merits of the books and the voting system.

John Ringo, on the other hand, posted the following:

If anyone has been wondering why Scalzi has been picking the rather stupid fights he's been picking lately:

[link to Hugo Awards announcement]

Scalzi, either directly in response to Ringo, in response to some other criticism, or just as a general response to the world in general, posts on his blog about the award, and includes the following:

* Likewise, as is also tradition whenever a new winner of a Best Novel Hugo is announced, there are people who are heralding Redshirts as evidence that the Hugo voting process is corrupt/confused/irrelevant/a sign of the impending apocalypse. I don’t take this personally because a) I am well aware that not everyone is going to like everything I write, and that this goes double for Redshirts, which seems to have the greatest range of responses to it of any book I’ve written, b) someone would complain no matter what and who won, because the Internet is vasty and noisy, and for some people, something they don’t like winning an award is clearly evidence of systematic problems and/or conspiracy, rather than simply a popular vote of a particular group of voters not reflecting their own personal preferences.

My response to this is, as always: That’s fine. And in a larger sense, a vote no one complains about correlates very highly with a vote no one cares about. I’m happy to see people care about the Hugos, even if it’s to be annoyed with my book as a winner. With that said, the fact is this year I won the award, now it’s mine, and I’m not giving it back. So they’ll just have to deal.

(Now, there are people who are angry I won because they don’t like me personally. To them I say: Ha! Ha! Ha! Sucks to be you, dude.)

This touches off a debate on twitter, including (but certainly not limited to) the following. Feel free to add to these highlights, as my twitter-fu is by no means expert. (Which is why a majority come from Scalzi himself.) Scalzi is accused of pandering, Ringo is accused of pandering, Chris Kluwe makes an appearance.

Just because John Ringo is being a total ass to me doesn't mean you might not like his books. Some to try for free: [link to free books]
@Scalzi: Reading your post that was referenced, never going to buy any of YOUR books again. You're a deluded hypocritical racist little shit.
From Scalzi: "Highlight of the day so far: Dude with Hitler Emoji Twitter icon telling me I was racist and he would never read my books. I thought: Good"
Also from Scalzi: Seriously, though. Poor spelling does not make you wrong, but consistently poor spelling does undermine rhetorical credibility. Spellcheck!
The problem is, the Internet makes it seem like you SHOULD read the comments. But then you do, and you say, "YEAH, I forgot. Dammit."

HTML has totally failed me, so here are a few good links for twitter: Scalzi, Chris Kluwe and, courtesy of </b></a>duraniedrama, John Ringo's page. (There's some potential for unfunny there.) You can find more tweets under the hashtag #womendestroySF. (Lightspeed has announced a "Women Destroying SF" special edition.)

The wank builds up, with Ringo declaring that his wife is hotter and his hair is better than Scalzi's, until at some point in this mess, Ringo posts to his facebook page again.

Scalzi was pissing me off even before getting a Hugo for a novel so remarkably unremarkable it would barely have made it to paperback in the 1970s. Nothing against it, it's a fun, simple, mindless, read from all I've gathered. But it's not exactly Stranger in a Strange Land or Nightfall.
[....]
Which is where we start to see the issues with Scalzi suddenly not so much 'coming out of the closet' but making a splash on a variety of hot-button issues that really don't sit well with his RETAIL market. The people who actually BUY the books over the counter as opposed to market, sell and even buy them for distribution. The more books you can get a bookstore to buy, the more likely you are to sell them. So being the poster child for your commercial people is a good thing.

Orson Scott Card is brought up in the comments, but less than you might suspect.

John Ringo's politics get further attention when Scalzi links us to a review of one of Ringo's books. The review can simply be referred to as OH JOHN RINGO NO, which proceeds to become a catchphrase in the ensuing twitter comments.

This wank, it must be said, is far from over, as no one has yet flounced. Twitter continues to explode, and Scalzi continues to post to twitter, and all in all, the wank has continued merrily on for the span of a few days. Enjoy!

EDIT THE FIRST: Courtesy of tunxeh (thanks!), we have Scalzi's latest blog post. It is, as noted, worth it even if all you look at is his U MAD BRO? macro. Since I can't seem to embed, here: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/09/06/some-final-hugo-related-thoughts/

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esclaramonde
2013-09-09 05:56 pm UTC (link)

I personally love his insistence that the only reason women have any rights at all is because of chivalry, Before the present there were barely any societies where women had the least amount of say in what happened to them, and when they did, it was just because of chivalry. Yep. What a master of history!

Also, in the 1950s people turned a blind eye to spousal abuse and date rape, but it's okay because there was a cultural understanding that it was wrong.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	talkingtoaster 2013-09-09 06:45 pm UTC (link)
	His attitude to domestic violence is essentially the same way you would look at someone who litters, or gets a speeding ticket. Stay classy, Ringo. (Reply to this)(Parent)

ekaterinv
2013-09-09 07:45 pm UTC (link)

*flails*

What is this insistence on people of whatever time thinking that women in the previous time were completely and utterly oppressed in every conceivable way? They did it in the 1950s. They did it in the Edwardian Era. In the Victorian Era. And so on back to the High Middle Ages at least, and probably before that. Is it a way of telling women "it could be worse, you could have been born 100 years ago, now shut up"? Is it a way of having their Grimdark fantasies about women being raped all over the place while still tsk-ing at how backward those people were back then? WHHYYYYYY.

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	beccastareyes 2013-09-09 11:27 pm UTC (link)
	I suspect it's a way of making themselves look better by pointing to a place or time where things are worse and saying 'look, we're not that bad' instead of looking at the situation and saying 'we could be better'. Because 'not that bad!' means you don't have to do anything to change. (Reply to this)(Parent)

esclaramonde
2013-09-10 12:38 am UTC (link)

With some people I just toss it up to "well, that's what pop culture and even some historians teach us," but someone like John Ringo? I'm going to go with "it reinforces their idea that the 'natural way' is violent and lets them feel complacent and smug that even giving women the slightest bit of equality makes them better than 95% of humanity through history." So yes, in his case, I'll go with both of your answers!

It's a pretty good indicator of someone who's not as clever and well-read as they think they are, too.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ekaterinv 2013-09-10 02:12 am UTC (link)
	People who simply don't know any better are happy to be corrected on it, too. Somehow I doubt John Ringo would say, "really? Wow, I was wrong, can you recommend any books I should read?" in response to someone telling him that his conception about women in history is incorrect. (Reply to this)(Parent)

the_sun_is_up
2013-09-12 07:05 am UTC (link)

Is it a way of having their Grimdark fantasies about women being raped all over the place

Lol Gor.

But yeah, I'd say it's a combo of "the modern world is way better than the old world so be grateful" and "the old world was AWESOME and way better than our PC castrated ruined-by-feminists modern world," with a nice helping of "European culture is the only culture that exists."

(Reply to this)(Parent)

tw: rape, rape psychology

franzen
2013-09-09 10:36 pm UTC (link)

"(And for any woman who has been raped, you KNOW what lamentation actually means.) "

There is so much wrong with that sentence that my brain attempted to reboot, broke again, and entered safe mode. Subsequent paragraph is written clinically to keep from losing my mind.

I'm sure my abusers got off regardless of whether or not I fought, cried, etc. (To make a very dark joke: "I know because I was there.") Playing dead, dissociating, and all but ignoring them once the attack began conserved energy for subsequent fleeing (not to mention saved my psyche), but their enjoyment was rooted in the fact that they were gratified by non-consensual sex. As Evil Liberal Science (and the Reddit rape confessions) have shown, rapists are incapable of achieving satisfactory orgasm via consensual sex.

Looking at Groth's typology: there's one variant of rapists that is not excited by, and is in fact confused by, a violent response from the victim. (Anecdata: I know of one in my area.) Sadistic rapists are the most organized and advanced, and, yes, they fit Ringo's argument. They are, however, not the majority of the offender pool, which is noted constantly in the literature.

Gjhvghufghjhjfg my brain just... I don't know why I'm trying to correct this. As for his '50s comment: I should introduce him to my relatives. They were all instructed to cover up or deny abuse as kids, even after witnessing it, because that was, actually, how it worked in the '50s. Which is why, as adults, they needed to know if I was "rape-raped or just date-raped" and made no mention of the fact that I was coming home bruised.

NORMS, HOW DO THEY WORK.

This reminds me of a response I saw to the latest PA Dickwolves dust up: "One in three college women are sexually assaulted, so you can't say rape has life-long consequences. Otherwise, you're telling a huge population that they'll never get better! That's sexist!"

Maybe Ringo wrote that comment. I wouldn't be surprised.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cinnamonical 2013-09-09 10:50 pm UTC (link)
	"One in three college women are sexually assaulted, so you can't say rape has life-long consequences. Otherwise, you're telling a huge population that they'll never get better! That's sexist!" ...THE ACTUAL FUCK?! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

franzen
2013-09-10 02:01 am UTC (link)

You can't make that shit up. Guy was arguing that rape couldn't be as traumatic and life-altering as another poster said (the poster rightly noted that "rape is a crime that has lifelong consequences," not "being raped = the worst thing that can happen to a woman, social eligibility ruined forever"), then took the college assault statistic and used it to say women need to calm the hell down. After all, if so many women have been assaulted and raped, it's obviously something you can get over, and PA has made jokes about genocide and murder and no one cared and those crimes are worse.

This also featured men saying they'd rather be raped than [something else from PA], because rape isn't fatal. Sexually motivated homicide? Must not exist.

I was using Kotaku's guide to playing Japanese PSN demos, saw the PA post about an "apology" and thought I'd check it, and then I made the fatal mistake of scrolling too far down.

My hatred of PA and anyone who defends those two assholes continues to grow.

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	ekaterinv 2013-09-10 02:15 am UTC (link)
	I suppose that guy wouldn't particularly mind if I set his face on fire. Seeing as how that probably wouldn't kill him and all. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cinnamonical 2013-09-10 03:40 am UTC (link)
	Can I kick him in the nuts while his face is aflame? I'm sure that'll be just fine with him too. After all, it won't kill him. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cyndra_falin 2013-09-10 04:23 am UTC (link)
	Only if I can peel his toenails off and pour salt over the exposed flesh. He won't die! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sadisticferret 2013-09-11 03:38 am UTC (link)
	No, douse the wounds in lemon juice first, then salt them. Gotta make sure the area is nice and wet so that the salt has a better chance of staying in place and can work its healing magic. Because we're warm and kind-hearted like that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cyndra_falin 2013-09-10 04:27 am UTC (link)
	John Ringo can GTFO of Humanity, please. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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