5 ms·

If you talk to someone who works/worked in publishing or the creative arts scenes (MFA programs, etc.), you'll see that KI is likely specifically addressing tha

If you talk to someone who works/worked in publishing or the creative arts scenes (MFA programs, etc.), you'll see that KI is likely specifically addressing that crowd - his industry. I think a lot of the general populace is aware of the dynamics that he's talking about, but in publishing it's another world/level. Interesting example that's the norm in the space: the story "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall. Bear with me as I likely butcher the pronouns/terms etc, but my intent is earnest and well meaning here... Isabel is a trans woman author. She/they weren't out when that story was published in a scifi mag. The story makes some pretty obvious references to sexual/gender identity, and the writing has very specific commentary and sometimes mockery. Isabel, not known to be trans at the time, faced a torrent of online abuse for ~appropriating/joking about/exploring concepts about gender identity. The motivation was pretty clear: Isabel wasn't trans (as far as the public knew). The story had passed some "sensitivity readings" too (yes, sensitivity readers are another interesting area to explore), but the online reception was still awful. There's also a difference between criticism vs. outright internet abuse. Isabel's experiences were pretty firmly in the latter. The author took down the story, I believe came out or the news outed her/they, and the details go on (finger pointing, revisions of criticism about the story given light of the author's gender, etc.). The point of all this is that's an insane dynamic to create in, and that's the tip of the iceberg really with what Publishing is going through. Young Adult fiction is apparently one of the ground zeros for this dynamic.

heterodoxxed 6y ago
| that's an insane dynamic to create in What do you think Twitter would have looked like in 1956 when James Baldwin published Giovanni's Room? Is the problem "cancel culture" (a nebulous term which means little) or simply the result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain?
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Cancel culture is a direct result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - heterodoxxed 6y ago
    That seems to be an entirely different issue than how the term "cancel culture" is used politically.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  The problem is giving everyone a place to complain AND assuming their complaints are all valid just because they genuinely feel aggrieved. The people who care about pronouns are less than 5% of American society. They are far wealthier, more educated, and more privileged than the rest of Americans, and there's no reason everyone else should have to tiptoe around in fear of them.
- dogman144 6y ago
  I don't think it's cancel culture in the way normal folks are tuned into it, but it's pretty similar. Writers aren't homogeneous in their beliefs, but a lot of writers and a lot of publishing/news industry folks all went the same schools for university, MFAs, writer-in-residences, and so on. The dynamic at those shared spaces is source code of wokeness. If you read that NYT article on Smith recently, that's the vibe and also the tip of the iceberg. What goes on is well meaning but emotionally immature adults hyper-policing each other. As they all sort of believe the same stuff anyway (vaguely left/progressive), there's an odd aspect of one-upsmanship to it. If you add in the stress of a career in the arts, I think power-seeking/insecurity is heavily involved as well: I'm going to make no money unless I really luck out, I'm going to go face a 0.01% chance of getting published, I won't have much medical or retirement savings, but I can control this aspect of my life and my community, so I'll do that. The end result is this wild form of cultural policing that has all the hallmarks of bullying. As it's a very tight network of a few undergrads and a few MFAs which produce a lot of the artists and folks working in publishing and journalism, you see it spilling out of their dorms and into corporations and profit spaces. The mainstream workforce gets a little bit of this through their HR departments now, but it's a different level in publishing. It's hard to describe without talking to someone that's done an MFA or similar, but hopefully that helps. Testimonies of professors who finally lost their s*t with their universities over this same stuff are also accurate, but because it's often an old white dude who's a comp sci professor doing the public pushback, they'll never be the right advocate to turn things around. That's what makes the Smith admin employee who's finally speaking out so interesting, as that's "one of their own."
KittenInABox 6y ago
Some of the things to point out about Isabel Fall: 1. Isabel Fall was a pseudonym, with no other works attached to this pseudonym. 2. Isabel Fall only states in the bio having been born in 1988. (88 is a dogwhistle for nazi). 3. The piece itself was military science fiction, which already has a bad reputation among progressive circles (case in point: a prominent military scifi publisher's forum just got closed down after it was reported their mods were literally calling for violence against the cops protecting the white house at the 1/6 riot). 4. The work was describing gender in a way that itself has some controversy, commentating on the physical/body expression of gender as well as the nonphysical/performance expression of gender. All these together created a powder keg where people literally believed that somehow Isabel Fall was a nazi who had pulled the wool over the eyes of one of the most prominent science fiction and fantasy magazines in the industry to get paid professional rate work and platform transphobia. The actual truth was extremely messy, Isabel Fall herself reportedly was hospitalized for suicide, and people are still talking about it year+ later.
- dogman144 6y ago
  It seems Isabel was "verified trans," and had sensitivity reading done. As lived experience is the metric that matters here, and then she/they got the additional verification done, that's the full stop here. She/they lived it, she/they got sensitivity readings done, and QED she/they can write about it... at least as the current rules go. All your points largely summarize to there being some suspicious aspects to her/their identity, and because of that, shoot first and ask questions later was apparently ok. "Because we as an industry are hyper tuned to any slip up on these key metrics, let's verbally slaughter whoever has some oddities to their author profile regarding these metrics." Given that Isabel ended up in a hospital, as you said, the lack of introspection from the publishing community once the facts of the matter came out is ugly and why many authors are terrified for their careers.

heterodoxxed 6y ago

| that's an insane dynamic to create in What do you think Twitter would have looked like in 1956 when James Baldwin published Giovanni's Room? Is the problem "cancel culture" (a nebulous term which means little) or simply the result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain?

jimbokun 6y ago
Cancel culture is a direct result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- heterodoxxed 6y ago
  That seems to be an entirely different issue than how the term "cancel culture" is used politically.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
The problem is giving everyone a place to complain AND assuming their complaints are all valid just because they genuinely feel aggrieved. The people who care about pronouns are less than 5% of American society. They are far wealthier, more educated, and more privileged than the rest of Americans, and there's no reason everyone else should have to tiptoe around in fear of them.
dogman144 6y ago
I don't think it's cancel culture in the way normal folks are tuned into it, but it's pretty similar. Writers aren't homogeneous in their beliefs, but a lot of writers and a lot of publishing/news industry folks all went the same schools for university, MFAs, writer-in-residences, and so on. The dynamic at those shared spaces is source code of wokeness. If you read that NYT article on Smith recently, that's the vibe and also the tip of the iceberg. What goes on is well meaning but emotionally immature adults hyper-policing each other. As they all sort of believe the same stuff anyway (vaguely left/progressive), there's an odd aspect of one-upsmanship to it. If you add in the stress of a career in the arts, I think power-seeking/insecurity is heavily involved as well: I'm going to make no money unless I really luck out, I'm going to go face a 0.01% chance of getting published, I won't have much medical or retirement savings, but I can control this aspect of my life and my community, so I'll do that. The end result is this wild form of cultural policing that has all the hallmarks of bullying. As it's a very tight network of a few undergrads and a few MFAs which produce a lot of the artists and folks working in publishing and journalism, you see it spilling out of their dorms and into corporations and profit spaces. The mainstream workforce gets a little bit of this through their HR departments now, but it's a different level in publishing. It's hard to describe without talking to someone that's done an MFA or similar, but hopefully that helps. Testimonies of professors who finally lost their s*t with their universities over this same stuff are also accurate, but because it's often an old white dude who's a comp sci professor doing the public pushback, they'll never be the right advocate to turn things around. That's what makes the Smith admin employee who's finally speaking out so interesting, as that's "one of their own."

KittenInABox 6y ago

Some of the things to point out about Isabel Fall: 1. Isabel Fall was a pseudonym, with no other works attached to this pseudonym. 2. Isabel Fall only states in the bio having been born in 1988. (88 is a dogwhistle for nazi). 3. The piece itself was military science fiction, which already has a bad reputation among progressive circles (case in point: a prominent military scifi publisher's forum just got closed down after it was reported their mods were literally calling for violence against the cops protecting the white house at the 1/6 riot). 4. The work was describing gender in a way that itself has some controversy, commentating on the physical/body expression of gender as well as the nonphysical/performance expression of gender. All these together created a powder keg where people literally believed that somehow Isabel Fall was a nazi who had pulled the wool over the eyes of one of the most prominent science fiction and fantasy magazines in the industry to get paid professional rate work and platform transphobia. The actual truth was extremely messy, Isabel Fall herself reportedly was hospitalized for suicide, and people are still talking about it year+ later.

dogman144 6y ago
It seems Isabel was "verified trans," and had sensitivity reading done. As lived experience is the metric that matters here, and then she/they got the additional verification done, that's the full stop here. She/they lived it, she/they got sensitivity readings done, and QED she/they can write about it... at least as the current rules go. All your points largely summarize to there being some suspicious aspects to her/their identity, and because of that, shoot first and ask questions later was apparently ok. "Because we as an industry are hyper tuned to any slip up on these key metrics, let's verbally slaughter whoever has some oddities to their author profile regarding these metrics." Given that Isabel ended up in a hospital, as you said, the lack of introspection from the publishing community once the facts of the matter came out is ugly and why many authors are terrified for their careers.