Re: The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM

[pegkerr]

This may clinch your impression that I'm clueless white girl much of the time, and I know that it's really hard to believe (especially since so many on my friends list were involved), but I really did totally miss this. I spent much of the past month not really reading my friends list but instead trying not to get depressed/reading mind-numbing junk/coping with my injury/running the girls to karate/hpalternity/thinking about decreasing worldsuck. But a couple innocent questions to people I know along the lines of "What is it everyone's talking about?" led to me spending a couple of hours surfing the link list over at rydra_wong's journal, and . . . OMG.

I'm not going to even comment. I'd probably have things to say about writing about the Other, if I wanted to wade into the discussion, given that I wrote The Wild Swans, but . . . no. Call me coward, and if you think me one, sorry, but I'm backing away slowly, making no sudden moves and not venturing any opinions. I have fought too hard for my own mental equilibrium over the past year to get sucked into something that seems to have scarred so many people so badly. Yeah, that may be selfish of me, but right now, it's truly the best I can do.

Maybe it's today's contribution to, well, not decreasing worldsuck, but at least not increasing it. Because honestly, from what I've read in the various posts and comments, I seriously doubt that I could say anything at all without managing to enrage someone, somewhere, even if I were desperately trying not to do so. For all I know, some of you might even get mad at my saying I'm not going to talk about it at all.

Comments

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Peg--It's your journal and totally your right to decide what you want to talk about in it. Anyone who doesn't like that can just lump it. (g)

Sorry to hear there's so much turmoil, though.

Chantal

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I understand perfectly, and share your feelings.

I don't feel I have anything constructive to add. And I don't have enough spoons to get into a heated discussion.

I've been avoiding reading the comment threads, too. Maybe when I have more spoons I can go back and read them, but not now.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I didn't read even a fraction of it, though I have commented on some things I did read.

I might think you were a coward if it were patently obvious that if you just spoke up, wrongs would be righted and everyone would come to mutual understanding. But...yeah, you saw those flying pigs, didn't you? Because all the zillions of words so far don't seem to have accomplished much.

[pameladean]

Actually, they've taught me a lot. Mind you, I doubt that my morsel of enlightenment is worth the enormous pain caused on all sides, but I do have the enlightenment.

That said, Peg, you have plenty on your plate already and if you do feel at some future date like writing about your experiences, there will, I guarantee it, be another such conversation -- only maybe a little less fraught, if all goes exceedingly well and we are all very lucky -- to do it in. This is a very live issue indeed.

P.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree that a person who is willing can learn from the discussions, but I don't think that the addition of any one person, no matter how witty and wise, is going to right the wrongs and bring everyone to mutual understanding.

[pameladean]

Well, no indeed.

But I do think the discussion has accomplished some things; just not universal peace and understanding.

P.

[sraun]

I've been hearing fringes of it since it started. From what I can understand, it started on elizabethbear's LJ, and she's on my friends list. So I at least saw her postings on it. It rang my alarms for 'this is going to be people shouting at each other, a lot of 'not listening', and arguments back and forth with no resolution'. Kind of like the stuff that led to the ab*rti*n ban in Minneapa lo, these many years ago.

And I so I stayed very far away. And I do not blame you at all for not getting involved.

[kathrync.livejournal.com]

I keep circling around the edges of it all, reading little bits, looking for a way that it isn't just the Internet social disaster it appears to be, for something redeeming. Haven't found it yet. Partly this may be the difficulty of untangling personalities.

I am bad at matching people to LJ handles, especially people I don't know in real life. I've never quite understood why people are cognitively comfortable with the LJ way of doing things, all the aliases to keep track of.

And so the mass of pseudonymous people just seems like a mass. Unless they are under their real name and I can check who is speaking and what their context is, it's really hard to judge whether what an upset LJ writer say is reasonable, rational, sincere, sensible, etc. (I do, habitually, try to check who people are when trying to parse a flamewar or other Internet discussion.)

The default Internet flamewar combatant is an unpleasant young white male, so adding to the parsing problem is the problem of parsing ethnicity, gender, etc. When someone appears to be trolling, do you believe then when they give the impression that they are black? I have believed people in the past about such things in other contexts and found out later that the troll in question was assuming many personae just to get my goat.

Do other people have an easier time with this kind of parsing, cognitively?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Hmm...LJ ate my first response. Possibly for the best, that.

I don't understand your question.

Someone's nom.de.net is just another name. You can check their context by looking at their lj (or other-net) presence.

Knowing my offline name (as some people do) doesn't tell you much about the validity of my online presence. I have 16 years of accumulated net.presence to be judged against, though - all under the name "trinker".

I also don't follow your assertion about the default net.flamewar.combatant. Net.trolls come in all sorts of flavors, and assigning a race/gender stereotype (especially in regard to *that* discussion) seems misguided to me. Whether someone's a potential troll has less to do with what they look like, and much more with their track record on the 'net (or lack thereof).

something redeeming

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

Shweta wrote a good poem:

http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/15792.html

Deepad's post she links to is good too.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

You're not a coward. You're being smart and picking your battles. That whole thing looks to me like a classic clusterfuck.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Total freaking icon adoration.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I've seen so many Aretha Hat Icons (have you seen the one with Voldemort?) but this one was by far my fave. Thank you!

[chelsearoad.livejournal.com]

You're wonderful and wise.

I ventured on to some of those links and it was amazing how much ill-will and self-righteousness there seemed to be. It was ugly.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"Third rail."

[perimyndith.livejournal.com]

I think that's a smart decision. I read one post about it back when it started and made the decision right then and there to stay away from the whole discussion. I just don't need any more hang-ups about my writing, thankyouvermuch.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I missed it, too. I haven't been on LJ much, and now I am very, very grateful.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

This is a well with no bottom, and everyone will come out of it with blood poisoning.

[redbird]

You don't owe the world comments on this.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, yeah, I've been skimming over it thinking "...but don't you see that you're both basically saying that you're tired of putting effort into playing a game where your answers are guaranteed to be Wrong to somebody?" and knowing that I've seen enough of these internet firefights by now to realize that it's pointless to try to say that in a way anyone could hear in the heat of battle. The fine art of Sitting On The Hands Before You Speak is a skill that apparently has to be relearned by each successive net generation, IE about every 20 minutes or so... {sigh}

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

You're not alone. I'm obviously also totally clueless, because I have NO clue what this is all about. It hasn't touched my flist at all - that I've seen.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Lucky you. It was really incredibly ugly. To get an idea, take a look at some of the links at the journal I pointed to and see from about January 14 to the present. The comments will make your head explode. You probably won't read them all because 1) the vitriol would nauseate you and 2) it would take you days.

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

I read Avalon's time-line, and have to admit I don't really get what people were so up in arms about - but perhaps that's because I'm a "privileged white" and therefore don't see it the same way.

But yeah, it's typically only fandom wank that gets THAT ugly.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Peg, I only know about the brouhaha because it started on a journal I have on my always-read list. Not dogpiling seems like an utterly reasonable response to me, especially given how polarized this discussion became.

Thank you for taking care of you.