Quote:
Originally Posted by Geralt
I'm sorry for writing my personal history, but as I said it just amazes me that people are so obsessed by this. And on top of that this obsession is funneled into areas of life that are fantasy based (creative works).
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What is going on behind the posturing is an aging orthodoxy trying to institutionalize its ideas and its mores so that it will survive past their lifetime. This cannot be achieved without "cleansing" creative works of non-compliant thinking.
And since in the western world government's power to coerce through its monopoly of force is limited in those areas, especially in the US with its strong First Amendment protections, the orthodoxy gets pushback so the campaign gets noisy and contentious. The entrenched powers can't do as China and other repressive states do and send out troops to round up dissenters; they are limited to trying to shout them down or shut them out of influential positions.
Which only results in the dissenters getting louder and taking their message to other venues. Prime examples being the rise of FoxNews network as counterprogramming to CNN and the broadcast networks or the recent Hugo catfight over the declining tradpub share of the growing SF&F book world.
It is no accident that the vast majority of the anti-Indie tradpub message is coming from the avowed leftists like LeGuin because they are not only being hit in the pocketbook but also in their "legacy" if the marketplace of ideas (their own words) slips out of the control of tradpub.
The issue really boils down to the control of ideas more than the ideas themselves. Thus the promotion of tradpub gatekeeping and litmus tests; censorship of ideas can't begin until access to ideas is restricted and we are moving in the opposite direction, happily enough.
This mightily annoys the aspiring censors and encourages the anti-orthodoxy resistance. Historically, orthodoxies always overeach and plant the seeds of their own demise. In this case, by squeezing "offensive" ideas out of the traditional channels into the new unregulated ones.
Griping about the lack of sensitivity of old titles is too little, too late; half the market is already beyond their power to control at the source and more escapes every passing day. That only leaves them the thankless task of trying to convince readers not to buy stuff they like solely because it isn't being vetted and validated by the establishment. Good luck with that SJWs.
It makes the catfights, in SF at least, amusing but meaningless.
A lot of sound and fury signifying very little.