Quote:
Originally Posted by pegasi&prefects
Yeah. Vox Day isn't just some misunderstood conservative. Leaving aside all the purely sexualised hatred he and his friends spew, I'm not inclined to give my reading dollars to anyone who describes my beautiful, loving, gifted son as "less homo sapiens" than he is.
I don't require that my reading fully matches my principles. I mean, I'm a Quaker, and if I demanded that my reading reflects my beliefs in pacifism and equality... Well, I wouldn't be reading a lot of epic fantasy.  But there ARE limits.
Thing is, I read books by white cishet men regularly, if they appeal to me. otoh, you read the comments on Sad Puppy posts, and they are rejoicing at keeping lesbians and trans people off their list, and swapping hints on avoiding accidentally reading something by a woman (beware those sneaky initials!)
It may have started as a mildly laudable attempt to widen the scope of nominated books, but Day's involvement and the agenda of the people who became involved made it clear that it's a politically motivated attempt to vote as a bloc to keep minorities and allies in their place. |
You may be right about Sad Puppies and some of those involved. It could be that there was a hijacking of what you term "a mildly laudable attempt" for purposes of ultimately excluding minorities. But this accepts the existence of an initially laudable goal. So how, then, do we judge whether the hijacking succeeded? The only way I can think of is to compare the Sad Puppies List with the Hugo list, assuming that the Sad Puppy block did not succeed in altering the latter.
I am not in any sense seeking to defend Vox Day. Some of his views are abhorent and indefensible. I simply don't accept that everything he touches is automatically tainted with the same evil. In this case we are dealing with what books are nominated for an award.