Social Justice in SF&F

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Until we live in a world where no one EVER behaves abominably, or performs deplorable acts, or dishes out slurs, or acts insensitively, I will take no issue with fiction that includes those kinds of characters and portrays them accurately.

Me neither.
As long as it is in service to the character definition and story. I had no problem with Thomas Covenant or any other of the stories deemed offensive.
I may or not enjoy the story but I don't dismiss them over "offensive" material that annoys me. And I've run into some doozies...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As long as it is in service to the character definition and story.

Granted.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I may or not enjoy the story but I don't dismiss them over "offensive" material that annoys me. And I've run into some doozies...

Exactly.
I may even decide I don't want to read them, but I wouldn't fool myself into believing that my reasons for not doing so should be universally shared by all "right-thinking people of conscience."

I freely admit that I occasionally like to see how the black hat fits via fictional surrogates. And I quite frankly don't believe anyone who says they never do.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Because we had this conversation a while back over a certain author maligned by others and we were on opposite sides on that one.

The objections were about the use of the term "raghead".

Just checking to see if that one book/author was representative or an exception.
Cheers.

Oh, the John Ringo thing, right? In that case, I found the depiction of overt racism in the modern US army extremely offensive. If that's an accurate portrayal of the way that US soldiers really behave (which I honestly don't believe), it's disturbing; if it's inaccurate, why put it in? Either way, I found the book unpleasant. There are very few books that I abandon, but that was one, and I'm certainly not a "sensitive" reader.

Of course the attitudes depicted in a book aren't a reflection of the attitudes of the author (most writers of murder mysteries are not murderers), but I've disliked a lot of Ringo's recent books because of the xenophobic plot-lines. Presumably there are people who like them, or they wouldn't sell, but they're not for me, and that's a great pity, because I really enjoyed much of his earlier work.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh, the John Ringo thing, right? In that case, I found the depiction of overt racism in the modern US army extremely offensive. If that's an accurate portrayal of the way that US soldiers really behave (which I honestly don't believe), it's disturbing; if it's inaccurate, why put it in? Either way, I found the book unpleasant. There are very few books that I abandon, but that was one, and I'm certainly not a "sensitive" reader.

I was just checking because there are two principles at work here; old titles that simply reflect the changes in culture over time, and newer works where the author, relying on artistic license, chooses to go against the prevailing culture.

It would be (theoretically) possible for a reader to accept the former but refuse the latter, hence my questions.

I see nothing inherently wrong in either but the author of the trigger article in the OP does and finds fault with readers who don't. Which is really more a reflection of that person's mindset than anything wrong with readers, whose "job" is merely to judge the story within its own context. Faulting people, as she does, for doing that is pretty intolerant, really.

Now, as to the military mindset you found shocking, it is pretty much universal that when soldiers fight, they learn to hate the enemy. The longer the fight, the deeper the hatred. Heat of combat and all that.
In every documented war, derrogatory terms for the enemy become part of the lexicon, whether it be Huns, ratzis, nips, chinks, or, yes, ragheads.

It isn't necessarily racism, it is simply a result of the us vs them culture of the military. Most soldiers will slowly revert to normal attitudes in civilian society but it takes time and veterans of intense or prolonged combat take longer. The brain may tell them one thing but the heart and their conditioned experience another, often more strongly. Some WWII veterans never did get past their exoeriences; to their dying day, the Japanese were "backstabbing nips" or worse.

Time does not erase all wounds.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I was just checking because there are two principles at work here; old titles that simply reflect the changes in culture over time, and newer works where the author, relying on artistic license, chooses to go against the prevailing culture.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for an instant suggesting that an author doesn't have the absolute right to put anything they want in a book; just that I personally found this particular book distasteful and didn't wish to read it. Ringo is a successful author, so there would appear to be a market for the stuff he writes, but I'm not it .

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Rizla, I do think you're being a little over-sensitive, but obviously the choice is entirely yours to make. Animals at the time were treated as "resources" and nothing more. You can't judge a novel written 130 years ago by the standards of today's society.

We are in the middle of one of the biggest extinction events in history of Earth. Yeah, I'm over-sensitive

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for an instant suggesting that an author doesn't have the absolute right to put anything they want in a book; just that I personally found this particular book distasteful and didn't wish to read it.

Understood. Been there, done that.

But, as an aside, if you had (ahem) soldiered on you would've found the character has major psychological issues and Ringo is, apparently, satirizing the stereotypical loner action heroes of modern bestsellers. Because the protagonist's superhuman combat prowess comes from repressing his (decidedly unacceptable) sexual urges into a talent for violence.

A common feature of Ringo's latter (non-aldenata) stories is that while they can be read as straight dead serious action stories, they can also be read as sly spoofs in the "you do realize this isn't totally serious" vein. It applies to his Paladin of Shadows series, as well as the Troy Rising, Special Circumstances, and Black Tide Rising series. That it doesn't apply to the ALDENATA books is why I dropped that series after the third volume. And he himself admits he got tired of trying to keep it going; there are only so many ways to kill mindless alien hordes, after all.

In general, I've found that most competent writers have a reason for focusing on challenging ideas in their stories. Sometimes it doesn't work but more often than not it pays to hang around to see where they're headed if you're curious enough and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Which, come to think of it, may be harder to do in these KINDLE UNLIMITED days... After all, in earlier times, by the time you found out just how sick Thomas Covenant (for one) truly is, you'd already bought the book and had an incentive to wait for a payoff. In KU it may be easier to ditch the book at the first rough patch...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

We are in the middle of one of the biggest extinction events in history of Earth. Yeah, I'm over-sensitive

40,000 years deep, as a matter of fact.
Turns out it is part and parcel of being human.
And omnivorous.

It's probably why the flying saucer aliens want nothing to do with us.
Not to worry, though, the coming asteroid impact will fix everything.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

We are in the middle of one of the biggest extinction events in history of Earth. Yeah, I'm over-sensitive

We are, but Rider Haggard 130 years ago, was not.

[GERGE]

I believe artistic license only extents so far. Sexism, racism, rape... they are all okay in fiction unless they start to enter to the realm of propaganda. Let me explain with a example.

Moorcock's Pyat Quartet is a gem, for example, but Pyat himself is someone very unpleasant. The books are written from his perspective, and full of racism. But it is clear to the reader that those are Pyat's views and he is a very disturbed person. That is what is important. On contrast, think about The Birth of a Nation. If Griffith directed that movie last year, what would you have said? When racism is presented as an unshakable truth?

Fiction lies, that is its most inherent feature. The problems begins when that lies are presented as truth, propaganda. I don't think there is any trouble about where Lord Foul's Bane or the other 99 books are placed. It is SJWs that have serious troubles unstanding that.

[MikeB1972]

As an aside I had a ... err ... discussion with an SJW type that, as they are trying to be inclusive of all viewpoints then they have to accept racism as a valid viewpoint and, infact, a cultural point of view with longstanding traditions.

They starting shouting abuse at me quite quickly, even with me arguing against racism, some people are never happy

I sometimes suspect I may have a slight masochistic streak in me somewhere.

More on topic, the SJW types talking about how Sci-Fi should be including more diversity of writers and characters do seem to be missing the point that it always has, and one of the consequences of speculating about future/alternate worlds is that some of them are going to be far less diverse than now.

If anyone mentions Leckie's Ancillary Trilogy as an example of diversity, flip it around on them and ask them why they support slavery, a totalitarian regime and a very rigid class structure

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We are, but Rider Haggard 130 years ago, was not.

Why have twice downgraded the severity of the passage I am referring to?

First, you described it as big-game hunting. It clearly is not, and my initial post made it clear it was not. Big-game hunting does not involve the mass and needless slaughter of a herd. It is the tracking of a single animal.

Second, you liken it to warfare, which, as I stated in my response, is clearly not the same thing at all.

Why have twice tried to describe the scene I am referring to as something other and more palatable than what it actually is? As I said, my initial post was quite clear, but you appear to have chosen to ignore or attempt to distort it into something else.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

As an aside I had a ... err ... discussion with an SJW type that, as they are trying to be inclusive of all viewpoints then they have to accept racism as a valid viewpoint and, infact, a cultural point of view with longstanding traditions.

They starting shouting abuse at me quite quickly, even with me arguing against racism, some people are never happy

I sometimes suspect I may have a slight masochistic streak in me somewhere.

More on topic, the SJW types talking about how Sci-Fi should be including more diversity of writers and characters do seem to be missing the point that it always has, and one of the consequences of speculating about future/alternate worlds is that some of them are going to be far less diverse than now.

If anyone mentions Leckie's Ancillary Trilogy as an example of diversity, flip it around on them and ask them why they support slavery, a totalitarian regime and a very rigid class structure

To many people today, tolerance is only for certain ideas and religions.
More annoying, though, is that it isn't just ideas and viewpoints they want to eliminate, but also actual verifiable facts.

At core it's not about ideas but about power: their power to enforce their orthodoxy by defining what is open to debate or even consideration. Best solution is to deny them the power to define the terms of debate. Refusing to submit to their bullying.

SF&F is about exploring other worlds and times; allowing it to be constrained by the PC mundane world kinda defeats the whole purpose.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Why have twice downgraded the severity of the passage I am referring to?

First, you described it as big-game hunting. It clearly is not, and my initial post made it clear it was not. Big-game hunting does not involve the mass and needless slaughter of a herd. It is the tracking of a single animal.

Because I'm afraid you're wrong, plain and simple. In the context of about what we're talking about here, which is the book "King Solomon's Mines", the protagonist of the book, Alan Quartermain, was a professional hunter who made money from killing as many elephants as possible, for their tusks. Big-game hunting at that time very much involved "mass slaughter", not killing single animals. Believe me, I've read all 60+ of Rider Haggard's novels (and collected them into a 16-volume omnibus edition for the MR library) and there are innumerable examples in them of the slaughter of immense numbers of animals. There are similar accounts in contemporary books by other authors. That really is what happened then, and it was considered to be absolutely normal.

African hunting by English Gentlemen in those days did not consist of stalking an animal. The Gentleman, accompanied by a professional hunter, would be comfortably ensconced in a shooting position, while a large number of natives went out to frighten herds of animals and drive them towards said Gentleman, who would then blaze away at them as they ran past him and attempt to kill as many as possible. There are numerous accounts of people killing 20, 30, or more elephants in a single day. The tusks would be cut out and the bodies just lot to rot.

Second, you liken it to warfare, which, as I stated in my response, is clearly not the same thing at all.

I find your sense of morals peculiar, in that you are disturbed by the depiction of the killing of animals, but not by the killing of human beings, which is surely a much worse act, is it not?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Why have twice downgraded the severity of the passage I am referring to?

There was no severity to downgrade.

First, you described it as big-game hunting. It clearly is not, and my initial post made it clear it was not. Big-game hunting does not involve the mass and needless slaughter of a herd. It is the tracking of a single animal.

Maybe they were hunting lots of animals.

Second, you liken it to warfare, which, as I stated in my response, is clearly not the same thing at all.

Back then, it wasn't the same thing either, but that was because animals were even more socially acceptable to kill than humans... not because it was socially unacceptable to kill humans in war back then.

Why have twice tried to describe the scene I am referring to as something other and more palatable than what it actually is? As I said, my initial post was quite clear, but you appear to have chosen to ignore or attempt to distort it into something else.

No, HarryT was comparing the two.

Killing lots of animals for a meal is no worse than big game hunting -- same waste. Back then, talking about the concept of "wasting animals" and "killing animals for no reason" would get you laughed at with derision -- they'd think you insane. Doesn't matter why you were killing them.