Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Is this really a case of some one being outed in the internet way though? She put her name out there when she started publishing. If the timeline had been reversed here she would have just been accused of using sock puppets. Tl:dr you all are hypocrites Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 So when this started up about a week ago I went "hrm. I liked some stuff about RH's reviews, but they did disturb and upset me sometimes; I did find them occasionally abusive above and beyond the call of necessarily mean criticism. But I've been interested in trying Benjanun Sriduangkaew's fiction. I must go forth and educate myself, to make sure I'm not supporting the career of someone who has done things that I find totally unacceptable." And so I went forth, and I dove deep into the internet's turgid waters, and I spent far too much of my time looking at records of terrible things people had said to each other. And I have come to the conclusion that Sriduangkaew has done and said terrible things online, things that are absolutely not okay, *but also* that I can't agree with the sentiment that her career should be torpedoed. Watching this hideousness play out over the past week has allowed me to clarify my own response to RH's writing: Speaking as a straight white male, RH's reviews taught me stuff, fairly regularly. They pointed out things I had not noticed, and things of which I was ignorant. It was not incumbent upon RH's writing to teach me stuff, but it did, and I was grateful. However, I often found the ways she went about making her points unproductively vicious and, in some select cases*, genuinely troubling. I've had several conversations in which I've been told, directly or by implication, that abusive language and intimidating discourse is tactically appropriate when the person using it is "punching up," and that RH was therefore cool, and also that RH wasn't trying to engage in conversation and so the inflammatory nature of her reviews didn't matter as related to ongoing discussion. I wanted to buy these points. I think it is far more important that disadvantaged, often-voiceless and under-represented groups be spoken for and represented in the sf and fantasy community than that the language used in a review while laying truth down hurts some feelings, so I really, really wanted to buy these points. But watching all this nastiness splash everywhere has solidified my belief that while much of RH's analysis was good and helpful the ways she expressed it did often overstep into diminishing and abusing others, that they did in fact negatively effect discourse, and that death threats suck no matter who is using them. This kind of bile, as we're seeing now, only leads to more bile. *I was not around for any of her apparent trolling and harassing under other online handles and am not talking about those instances of bullshit. What applying this recognition means, though, is that I find the prospect of a hate-thread devoted to RH not just ironic, as someone said above, but pretty fucking depressing. Tacit gloating on behalf of authors whose work she reviewed negatively? Also a bit depressing. What can responding to RH's outing with bile possibly accomplish? When this train started rolling I went and read some of Sriduangkaew's short fiction. It's pretty damn good. So those apologies on RH's blog and Sriduangkaew's own site are conveniently timed? Well, yeah, maybe they are. So maybe she doesn't mean them? Well, yeah, maybe not, but who knows when anybody means anything? They're pretty solid apologies; they don't evade; they say "I did wrong, and I am sorry." If she wants to do better now, to contribute to the community by writing awesome stories that broaden the genres' horizons and introduce new perspectives instead of ripping into other people's stories and making folks on the internet feel like shit for liking those stories, I don't see why that should be anything other than welcome. I hope the community gives her another shot. I wanna read more of her fiction. I won't read her work for the same reasons I won't buy anything by OSC. i don't agree the idea of separating the artist from the art, and that artist was pretty fucking shitty. Does that depress you? If so, i'm sorry, but sometimes an apology just isn't enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Is this really a case of some one being outed in the internet way though? She put her name out there when she started publishing. If the timeline had been reversed here she would have just been accused of using sock puppets.Tl:dr you all are hypocrites Also, reverse this and apply her standards pre exposure to her actions. If this had been some other artist doing the same thing she pulled, she would have eating that motherfucker alive. Selling out and apologizing to accommodate the racist, bourgeoisie, female hating corporate system, or some such nonsense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Boston bombing tweets? O.o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Boston bombing tweets? O.o Something about it being a response to Western imperialism. I think it was the last conversation I ever had with her. I'm kind of amazed she ever confessed her real identity to anyone. She seemed determined to alienate anyone who had sympathy for her. I figured it was performance art that didn't know when to stop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Huh. Someone linked a few of her ... performance art pieces a few years back here and I flipped though them briefly. This is no loss to anyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Huh. Someone linked a few of her ... performance art pieces a few years back here and I flipped though them briefly. This is no loss to anyone. The thing about Bakker (Prince of Misogyny) was pretty hilarious. As were the reviews of the Kovacs novels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 The thing about Bakker (Prince of Misogyny) was pretty hilarious. As were the reviews of the Kovacs novels. Doubtful. Nothing I saw of hers before seemed funny. Looking for reasons to be aggressively negative? Yeah. Hilarious? Not that I saw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Doubtful. Nothing I saw of hers before seemed funny. Looking for reasons to be aggressively negative? Yeah. Hilarious? Not that I saw. Really? There was one part which she quotes Bakker explaining how his novels are just so good and avant garde, and then she asks if Bakker pisses into his cereal instead of using milk...Still one of my favorite comedic lines in anything I've read. Sadly she took it down b/c she's a sellout aspiring author rather than a stick-to-her-guns critic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Honestly, her reviews aren't what bothered me the most. Authors put that shit out there, they are going to get shit. But she was personally abusive to many, many people, and apparently took that shit on the offensive and attempted to ruin people's lives. Threw out death threats, contacted people IRL, and other seriously abusive shit. That's beyond the fucking pale, and not something anyone on here should endorse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 What Peter said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Really? There was one part which she quotes Bakker explaining how his novels are just so good and avant garde, and then she asks if Bakker pisses into his cereal instead of using milk...Still one of my favorite comedic lines in anything I've read. Sadly she took it down b/c she's a sellout aspiring author rather than a stick-to-her-guns critic. I know you are better read then this. Cause you've read a book. Any book. Hell, you can read the ingredients to an off-brand toaster pastry and find something funnier then what you just mentioned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Is this really a case of some one being outed in the internet way though? She put her name out there when she started publishing. If the timeline had been reversed here she would have just been accused of using sock puppets.Tl:dr you all are hypocrites But the reversal of the timeline makes all the difference. Even then, I don't think authors should be hunted down and exposed for having anonymous accounts online anymore than the rest of us should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Honestly, her reviews aren't what bothered me the most. Authors put that shit out there, they are going to get shit. But she was personally abusive to many, many people, and apparently took that shit on the offensive and attempted to ruin people's lives. Threw out death threats, contacted people IRL, and other seriously abusive shit. That's beyond the fucking pale, and not something anyone on here should endorse. Yeah, reading about that was ... wow. I thought she was just your average attention seeking internet blogger with a schtick she hammered on like the world was made of nails. Instead it turns out she's just a terrible person. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 What Peter said. But hey, what the fuck do I know? I'm just a middle class white dude. Maybe I'm the problem here, and have no right to have an opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshkin Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 But the reversal of the timeline makes all the difference. Even then, I don't think authors should be hunted down and exposed for having anonymous accounts online anymore than the rest of us should be. I'm still not convinced she was "hunted down and exposed". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I'm still not convinced she was "hunted down and exposed". I was thinking more generally, not about ACM in particular with that line. The exposed part still fits though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Llama Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 When I said above that the idea of turning RH's hate around on Sriduangkaew depressed me, I think I conflated what we're talking about in this thread with some other stuff I've seen other places suggesting that some of the commenters in this broader shitstorm in the community feel she should now not publish fiction. That individual readers aren't willing / able to read her shit because of this information about her online crazy does not depress me. Them's just consequences. She said fucking terrible shit on the internet, and now people get to make their own decisions about whether or not they can read / buy fiction written by someone who does and says such things, irrespective of how good the writing might or might not be. I completely understand why someone might decide they cannot read her, believe me; I've decided that I can, for now, because I see, or want to see, at least some degree of genuineness in these apologies, even if some of that is probably career-motivated, but I was very grossed out by what I found when I went looking for records of her exploits and I almost made a different choice. Now, if down the road there was hypothetically to be more trolling and abuse that might be where I get off permanently -- authors have assholed their way off my to-read list before, and will again [Card, Goodkind, Simmons]. So I get why some of us are choosing not to read her. The only thing that depresses me is the suggestion, not voiced by anyone here, that she shouldn't publish because of this. She has the right to get her stuff published, if she can, and we have the right to read or not read it, and to factor her actions as RH into that decision or not, as we individually choose. Sorry for the confusion; I've been looking at stuff to do with this madness for so long in the course of coming to my own decision that I conflated calls for her to not be published I've seen in comment threads elsewhere with the conversation we're having here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Publish away, just don't expect me to buy it. Also, break that paragraph up. That shit was a pain in the ass to read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 authors have assholed their way off my to-read list before, and will again [Card, Goodkind, Simmons]. Did any of these people tell someone to kill themselves because they were white on the inside? (Or whatever it is that Rotyh did) If not, this is an odd position you're taking compared to Card/Goodkind/Simmons versus Benjanun. Unless apologies from these people would also suffice? I don't plan on reading anything by Benjanun that would put money in her pocket - that'd be too hypocritical for me after the stance I took against Card and Naipul. I still enjoyed a lot of the reviews of the Requires Hate site though. (Admittedly, I buy philosophy books from people whose politics I despise, but AFAIK you aren't going to find Christian Apologia written by liberals.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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