Global Diversity SFF Thread

[Grack21]

That's just your privilege talking artmail!

[Sci-2]

arthmail...aren't we agreeing w/ each other?

[Grack21]

You can't agree with the white man. You're not white and he is.

[Spoony]

I read the clockwork girl and I hated it, mostly because I thought the characterization was poor and that it really didn't help develop the plot to an appreciable level.

The author created characters who were meant to be representative of their nationality/race rather than as people themselves -- and I thought that was a mistake, and also somewhat lazy.

I like diversity, but I think all too often sci-fi fantasy isn't made to be cogent towards these issues, mostly because it so easily trends towards an orientalist framework of foreignality for the sake of foreignality.

I am not really offended by these things, but then again -- my expectations and standards are never high enough to be wounded in that way.

oh well.

[Arthmail]

arthmail...aren't we agreeing w/ each other?

Yea, pretty much. I'm just replying in broad terms. Sorry for the confusion.

[Kalbear]

I find this notion intellectually repugnant. Thought, for good or ill, should be unrestrained by race or nation. Noam Chomsky is just another white dude, but his understanding of US foreign policy in regards to the ME is fairly involved.

That's perfectly fine to say - and as a white guy, that's a pretty typical value to expect. However, from a purely pragmatic point of view it's exceedingly flawed. A British guy from upper royalty stating to a bunch of Indian nationals that the British were the best thing to ever happen to India may not be as well received as you might think, and you'll run the risk of alienating a whole lot of people despite whatever convincing argument you might have. A South African White male telling everyone in South Africa that they were better off as a nation and even individual people under apartheid isn't going to be taken with the degree of rigor that one of Mandela's family stating it would.

It matters who says it. It might not matter to you, but it does matter to many others. It also matters how well it jives with what has happened before; if Noam Chomsky was recommending that France and the UK take over most of the ME, well, that probably wouldn't go over as well as what he actually is saying.

Now, you can say that it shouldn't matter, and we should all be totally fine with whatever - and again, as a white guy that's a pretty common thing to say. But hopefully you can understand that there are plenty of other folks who don't see it that way, and aren't going to be fine with whatever is stated just because it's stated in a rational way.

[Arthmail]

That's perfectly fine to say - and as a white guy, that's a pretty typical value to expect. However, from a purely pragmatic point of view it's exceedingly flawed. A British guy from upper royalty stating to a bunch of Indian nationals that the British were the best thing to ever happen to India may not be as well received as you might think, and you'll run the risk of alienating a whole lot of people despite whatever convincing argument you might have. A South African White male telling everyone in South Africa that they were better off as a nation and even individual people under apartheid isn't going to be taken with the degree of rigor that one of Mandela's family stating it would.

It matters who says it. It might not matter to you, but it does matter to many others. It also matters how well it jives with what has happened before; if Noam Chomsky was recommending that France and the UK take over most of the ME, well, that probably wouldn't go over as well as what he actually is saying.

Now, you can say that it shouldn't matter, and we should all be totally fine with whatever - and again, as a white guy that's a pretty common thing to say. But hopefully you can understand that there are plenty of other folks who don't see it that way, and aren't going to be fine with whatever is stated just because it's stated in a rational way.

I can understand that there are people that don't see it that way. I expect that, to be honest. And, depending on the circumstances, i may or may not care what they think. Your first example, of the British Royalty, is of course going to sound wrong to many people. Including me. But i was talking more generally.

[Datepalm]

Well, what about class? That's what Arthmail (or someone) tiptoed around a bit earlier. Theres an argument to be made that an upper middle class person with internet access and a college education - in New York or New Delhi - probably has more in common with most other such persons, than they do to the homeless guy or the rural poor at this point. I don't think it's entirely persuasive, but I also find class and poverty a more complicated gap to cross when it comes to representation than I do culture, for example.

[Sci-2]

I actually made a similar argument [about class] when Scalzi posted his "difficulty settings" thing. I felt like he was bowing before the current liberal trend which raises a certain set of issues over others. Like, if you're a straight white male your experiences are obviously not as harrowing as that of any other group....which IMO is laughable.

It's also why I, despite going back to it several times, can't seem to wrap my head around I didn't dream of dragons. I mean, I'm Indian as well, and if anything living in America it seems my imagination should be gutted by all this Western fantasy...but no, I read a lot of global mythology. I never felt like I was restricted to Western fantasy tropes, and I think Deepa's point is...well, sort of nonsensical.

The biggest flaw to me is when she seems to cover her caste/class privilege in a single sentence but then goes on and on about something was stolen from her. To me, it seems pretty crass to gloss over class/caste to rail about how your reading of fantasy novels prevented you from writing a fantasy based in India.

Heck, when I was a kid I made an Indian god of magic, called him Agastu, had him riding an owl. I made another character, an ancient African sorcerer named Demar who had a Korean ghost woman for company. I had team ups with pantheons of gods from all over the world, added in monsters from all sorts of places.

So her argument, to me anyway, felt like reach. And that's coming from someone who does believe that cultural hegemony and the general lack of historically marginalized voices [are a huge problem].

[Galleymac]

Scalzi wasn't saying that straight white men obviously have an easier time of it than everyone else in the West. He was saying that given a situation in which all other circumstances are the same, whiteness, straightness and maleness are a bonus. Whiteness, maleness and straightness aren't the only privileges. I'm able bodied and middle class -- I'm going to be able to do certain things, obtain certain things, and be treated in ways I approve of, far more easily than a white male who is below the poverty line and needs special education and/or tools that his income and lack of social safety net will deny him. If we started out on the exact same playing field -- same skills, same education, same access to snazzy threads, etc, however, he'd be more likely to be listened to in more sorts of conversations, more likely to get raises, more likely to be raised in such a way that he would learn to feel that it was right and natural that he should ask for raises, less likely to be killed by a spouse, less likely to be imprisoned for a significant other's possession of weed, and so on.

These are hypotheticals. I am not complaining about my life, which is lovely and drug-free.

The Dreaming of Dragons thing always bugged me, but for different reasons. Being part of the unwilling segment of the African Diaspora, from which culture, language, and history was purposefully stripped in order to make rebellion less likely, I kind of feel like I should be compensated with some dragons. It's not impossible to find out about stolen belief systems and mythologies, but I feel I have a right to claim the Western ones too.

Another friend of mine, who is Indian, pointed out that if she were Irish, no one would question why she choose to act and direct Shakespeare, even though the Empire pulled pretty much the same shtick in Ireland as in India. (Not the identical shtick. But the same pattern.) But she is Indian, i.e. visibly non-white, and so people question why she likes Shakespeare, why she likes a variety of things, (why she wants to write about dragons), wouldn't she prefer to confine herself to Indian woman topics all the time ad infinitum? Or doesn't she feel obligated to do so?

I don't equate the Dragons essay with Scalzi's at all.

[Sci-2]

I don't equate the Dragons essay with Scalzi's at all.

Remember, my delusions of grandeur ensures things turn toward me regardless of relevancy.

eta: Your post was awesome by the way. Good food for thought.

[Datepalm]

I don't like "Life is a video game" AND I don't like "I didn't dream of dragons," for everything mentioned. It seems to me that this entire pattern of discourse is constantly treading a very tricky line between personal and collective, and not in a good way.

Obviously, I just don't do identity politics, but I also loathe, despise, abhor, etc the tone this stuff uses. Yes, THE FUCKING TONE. Theres a whole coded vocabulary that is becoming so layered and coded it sounds as smarmily artificial as business-talk, but worse, it's all in this kind of twee, sweet self congratulatory way that also strikes me, for some reason, very distinctly and affectedly feminine, and in a very limiting way.

You know what i'm talking about - "allies", "privilege", "safe spaces". Threads and threads of comments after some milquetoast weepy post going "You speak truth, sister" and "thank you for sharing your pain from your unique perspective." Franz Fanon would be turning in his grave, only he doesn't give a fuck. I came across the term QUILTBAG someplace a while back. As far as I can tell, it's an expansion of LGBT. Queer, Intersex? Asexual? I don't even have a guess about the U. Quiltbag. If I ever catch anyone giving a name so odiously, toothgrindingly saccharinely hipstery for any issue that affects me, I will fucking punch them in the face. It's like everyone got lost on the way to go levitate the pentagon and wound up on the internet in 2012. Theres this vast concern for seeming just right, some endless recursive game of trying to please a hypothetical fractally picky Goldilocks, in which genuine opinion often gets stifled. Yes, even if it's offensive opinion.

[Arthmail]

Part of my problem could probably be directly related to my whiteness - and my staggering good looks (lets be honest here). When i was in grade 1, back in the eighties (im only 33), i was friends with two East Indian kids that lived in our small town of Moosemin Saskatchewan (which when i think about it was pretty huge). In my current life, probably half of my friends are East Indian, and i've lived in an East Indian house for months while i started a business with one of my friends (we actually had our business blessed by a priest, and we walked around a fire seven times, which i think means my friend Amish and I are married). By relating this bit about me, i'm just trying to explain why i don't care about alot of this shit. When i relate to my friends, i accept their thoughts on any point as long as they are thought out and considered.

I know that there a myriad of assholes in the world that are totally fucked up and have no understanding or care for those born differently. I mean, they don't care on a basic fundamental level.

As for class, that is a difficult situation. It is a broader gap than culture, at least in my opinion. For instance, i have two fellows that work for me. They are a step-father and son. They are lower class, and i know for a time when i was young when my father got sick, we could not have been doing any better than they were doing. Intellectually i can understand their situation, to some extent, but there is still a huge gap of understanding in terms of education and world view. Their notion of a good life is so different from mine as to be alien.

[Sci-2]

@Dateplam: I don't 100% agree with what you said, but that hasn't stopped me from thinking that might rank in "best posts on the 'net ever."

(also, i ran out of likes...i gotta quit liking things in the spam threads.)

@Arthmail: When I come back to Calgary, we'll definitely have to sit down. I have a strong feeling you may know people I know.

[Arthmail]

@Dateplam: I don't 100% agree with what you said, but that hasn't stopped me from thinking that might rank in "best posts on the 'net ever."

(also, i ran out of likes...i gotta quit liking things in the spam threads.)

@Arthmail: When I come back to Calgary, we'll definitely have to sit down. I have a strong feeling you may know people I know.

Sounds good, but you do realize that there are a fuck ton of brown people in this city, right?

[Sci-2]

Sounds good, but you do realize that there are a fuck ton of brown people in this city, right?

I figure all Indian people know each other. In fact, I know this to be true, though we don't talk about the Lamb Kabob Samosa Protocols in public.

[Arthmail]

I knew it! I've been telling Amish for years there is a brown conspiracy to take over the world. You all know each other because you are all part of one giant motherfucking sleeper cell.

[Sci-2]

I knew it! I've been telling Amish for years there is a brown conspiracy to take over the world. You all know each other because you are all part of one giant motherfucking sleeper cell.

I actually have a, IMO, hilarious (and obviously non-serious) theory on this, but with all the loons like Bachman in the world today I'm gonna refrain from going into detail on the Samosa Protocols.

[Datepalm]

I met someone from the forum at a wedding once. Randomly. Everyone everywhere knows each other.

[Sci-2]

That reminds me, you call Lavie yet? ;-P