Thoughts from a PC Parrot

[jimhines]

I told myself I wasn’t going to respond to the Apex blog post Plucking the PC Parrots in the Genre World.  Apparently I lied.

I’m not going to rehash a conversation I’ve already had with the author, but a few points kept bugging me and demanding blog time.

Bondoni opens with an anecdote about an American Fortune 50 executive who smugly described hiring an unqualified black woman to meet their quota.

The veracity of this story was challenged in the comments.  Personally, I don’t care.  Anecdote =/= data.  But Bondoni uses this as a lead-in to what he calls ToC Fail, “the PC crowd’s latest insanity,” where people complained about “The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF” having only white male contributors.

I’m  missing the connection to his anecdote, since not one person in that 200+ comment thread suggested quotas.  Nobody in any of the responses I read was advocating for quotas.

My Recommendation: Read what people are actually asking for, and stop derailing discussion by complaining about imaginary quotas.

“Of course, maybe [the editor] was a chauvinist pig. Maybe he went through the stories and systematically removed all of those with a female byline, and anything by Tiptree as well. But … I believe the editor simply chose the best stories he could.  And this is exactly the way it should be. The best stories and ONLY the best stories should be included.”

Underlying Assumption: If discrimination isn’t conscious and deliberate, it doesn’t count.

Bonus Assumption: This all-white-male ToC actually represents the best stories.

“It seems to me that we’re still trying to fight a battle that was won years ago.”  Bondoni states this more explicitly in the comments: “There is no misogyny in SF/F/H, and no racism, other than that nebulous ‘implied’ mysogyny and racism that we’re all so angsty about.”

Methinks that last sentence should read, “I’ve chosen not to see/acknowledge misogyny in SF/F/H, or racism…”  Off the top of my head, without even touching things like Moon v. Wiscon or Racefail:

• Bloomsbury whitewashes the cover for Magic Under Glass.
• Justine Larbalestier on the whitewashing of Liar.
• Visual aid on the casting of The Last Airbender.
• Various defenses of the use of “Sheet head” from the Asimov Forums.
• Harlan Ellison gropes Connie Willis on-stage at the Hugos, because he apparently thought it would be funny.
• Comics are SF/F, right?  Check out Women in Refrigerators.
• Or see this lovely licensed Marvel figurine of Mary Jane, from Spider Man.
• Baen’s cover art for their Young Flandry books.
• Nnedi Okorafor discusses the difficulties in getting black characters properly represented on her covers.
• A few first-hand examples of sexual harassment and assault at cons.
• EA encourages congoers to “commit acts of lust” with their booth babes.
• GenCon fails its save vs. misogyny.

Bonus Data Point:Bondoni refers to this article, which found that 85% of publishing employees (with 3 years experience or less) were female.  I clicked through to the posted data, which also looked at executive information/salaries.  In this “female-dominated” industry, 12 of the 14 publishing executives listed (that would be roughly 85%, right?) appear to be men.  But women own the bottom of the totem pole, so it’s all good.

I’m not interested in arguing with Bondoni or in bashing him.  I’ve done the former, and I suspect the latter would only reinforce his belief that the “PC Zombies” are out to have dissenters “crucified, tarred, feathered and, if possible, impaled.”

Bored now, and done.  This zombie parrot has a goblin story to finish…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Comments

[cofax7]

Bravo, you. Thank you for fighting the good fight, although it hasn't passed me by that you, as a white man, do not get accused of "orcing" or hysteria the way that so many women and POC do when we engage with the bigots.

And some particular individuals (who shall remain unnamed) are notably more polite and inoffensive when they speak in spaces moderated by men. I'm sure you won't be stalked, slandered, and abused in email and in public for over a year because of your principled stance.

[jimhines]

You see, when *I* say these things, I'm being a reasonable, thoughtful, intellectual and proper white man.

It's *completely* different than if one of those hysterical women or angry minorities said the same thing, you know?

Sigh. Yeah, I've noticed the difference in people's reactions. It does not make me happy.

[cofax7]

*completely* different than if one of those hysterical women or angry minorities said the same thing, you know?

Oh, yes, completely different.

I sometimes consider changing my default icon to something that less clearly signals my gender, since my username is ungendered. But then I think, NO. Because that's me, and I've had this icon for nearly a decade. And if someone wants to discount what I say because I'm female, that's their loss.

But man, it pisses me off.

[muccamukk]

Thank you for posting this. It's really nice to see someone speak out on this kind of discrimination when they're not the target.

By which I mean that it's not as though non-targeted people are not poorer for the the lack of diversity caused by the discrimination, or that it's not incredibly inspiring to see the targeted people call down the wrath of god on the people targeting them, but it still feels nice to get this kind of support.

[bodlon]

I'm disappointed that my Google image search for "PC Parrot" didn't turn up a photo of an exotic bird dressed as a UK police constable.

On the other hand, really excited about the mention of MOAR GOBLINS.

I wonder often how much of this continuing argument can be attributed to people failing to read beyond the first paragraph, or to really hear what is being said, and so on. Also, it chafes that someone crying "quotas!" has the gall to toss the parrot label out, but there you go.

Funnily enough, I'm writing this from a diversity summit where one of the sessions I attended was all about asking questions about promoting diversity in terms of recruitment and retention. It's amazing how "seek people out"/targeted advertising and recruitment just doesn't occur to people. Even beyond unconscious (or deliberate) bias, there's always that problem of individuals feeling they have a place somewhere, or the right to participate. That's as much an issue in SF/F as it is anywhere else, I think.

[jimhines]

I wanted to include a zombie parrot pic, but that's beyond my stick-figure abilities, I'm afraid.

And yes, I'm midway through my second attempt at a goblin short story. More details forthcoming when and if the thing actually sells :-)

"I wonder often how much of this continuing argument can be attributed to people failing to read beyond the first paragraph, or to really hear what is being said, and so on."

A lot, I suspect. I know it's a conversation I've had with Gustavo before, and reading his post, I felt like I might as well have talked to a rock. The rock wouldn't acknowledge me either, but at least it wouldn't go off to repeat the exact same mischaracterizations and straw men...

[meigui]

I hate these arguments so much. You know what? I don't like affirmative action and its ilk either! It's an administratively top-down solution to something that is very much a cultural bottom-up problem; it's treating the symptoms rather than the disease; it's fighting a monsoon with a newspaper over the head. But I support it because it's the least untenable treatment for something that most decidedly is a problem. One can speak as one pleases of quotas and such bullshittery; the fact remains that things like pay, power, and representation are still indisputably correlated with race and gender. With regards to TOCs, the question is the directionality of the causation: does it start from the production end, or the selection end? "Both" might be a defensible stance, but one really can't say "neither" in this case, because those are the only two gross processes that are happening at all.