The loudest sound in the world is a bigot screaming that he's being silenced

I didn't want to write this post.

Wait, that's not honest. I wanted to write this post with the burning fires of righteous rage, but I've held off for a long time because I didn't want to give these idiots any more of the attention they clearly require to continue existing. But then this happened, and I'm afraid my anger has finally overridden my common sense.

Warning: Rant Ahead

For those of you who don't want to read a whole OpEd of a middle-aged white man pining for the Good Old Days when SF fans were "real" and didn't get offended over every little sexist/racist thing (or at least didn't make a fuss about it where he could overhear), the general gist of the article is exactly what you'd imagine. "Oh woe! Science Fiction is under siege by whiny minorities and fun-killing feminists! It's a leftist conspiracy! The PC police are silencing our voices! Won't the Real Science Fiction fans stand up and take back our genre?!"

You get the idea.

Now, I could go in and rip this apart, but I'm not going to because 1) take downs aren't in the spirit of my blog, and 2) Foz Meadows already did a way better job. But I do want to take a moment and talk about idea of genre communities "silencing" writers.

Authorship is an opinionated business. The very act of writing puts your core values and world view front and center. Your characters, your plot, your moral conundrums, the way you build your world--these are all reflections of you, the writer behind the curtain. If you hold and put forth opinions in your writing that other people find repugnant or offensive, they're going to offended. And since you, the author, put those opinions in a public medium widely distributed and sold for money, otherwise known as bookselling, these offended people are going to criticize your work publicly. They're going to say that these stories don't deserve awards and/or public recognition because of the ideas espoused therein, they might even band together to get you booted out of your genre organizations, publications, and/or fan groups so they don't have to put up with your crap anymore.

I'm sure you think that sucks. I'm sure you think that the mob is turning against you, silencing your voice and robbing you of your right to free speech. And while that all sounds very dramatic, it's just not true. You're not being silenced. You're still yelling as loudly as ever, we're just choosing not to listen.

Genre is not a government. It's not even really an organization. It's just a bunch of people who like the same sort of things. Sometimes this means a rich community of fans and conventions and critique, other times it's as simple as knowing what part of the bookstore you like best. Personally, I think that's great, because it means genres like SFF belong to everyone and no one at the same time. The whole process of grouping creative works into categories is one we create as a culture. Genre is what we make of it, and that's why it's so important for those of us who want our genre to be bigger and better and more fun for everyone to speak out when we see other people messing it up--sort of like yelling at a drunk when you see him taking a shit on the slide in your community park.

Did you write a book where women are nothing but sex objects and rape victims? I'm going to call that shit out. I'm going to say you're sexist, and I think your book is sexist, and I don't care how good it is. I don't care if you wrote the freaking War and Peace of sexist rape books, I'm not going to read it, I'm not going to vote for it for awards, and I'm going to tell other people to stay away as well if they don't want to read sexist garbage.

Now, that might seem unfair. What about the story? What about the context?! But deciding I don't want to read yet another sexist book full of women being violently raped for plot is my right as a reader, as is calling those books out publicly for what they contain. The same goes for racist books or homophobic books or any other form of bigotry, because I don't want that poison in my genre. I don't want it in my world, period. I can't stop you from writing it or thinking it--that's your right, your free speech--but just because you wrote it doesn't mean we as readers and fans and members of the genre (which, by the way, belongs to all of us, not just those you anoint as "real fans") have to read it or take it seriously.

It is an author's right to set forward his or her opinions in their own works. If Orson Scott Card wants to be giant homophobe, that is his prerogative, but I am under no obligation to agree with him or buy tickets to his movie. That's not silencing his voice or even belittling his talent, that's simply choosing not to support what I consider a very hurtful, hateful, and backwards way of thinking. When SFWA ousted Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) for continuously posting sexist and racist messages, including a personal attack on fantasy author N.K. Jemisin, they were not silencing him. They were responding to the overwhelming outrage in their community and removing his ability to, if I may reuse a metaphor, shit on our slide.

If Vox Day wants to call a very successful black female SFF author a "half ignorant savage" or any of the other awful racist BS that I'm not going to repeat because just copy pasting it makes me want to Clorox my keyboard, he can (and has) post it on his own blog or twitter or any of the thousands of other places he can make his voice heard. He does not, however, have the right to force anyone else to give him a platform. That's what's really happening here. Racists and bigots and sexists are not being silenced, they're simply losing their megaphones. As SFF becomes more diverse and accepting and generally moves into the modern area, all of these bigoted voices are finally falling back down to the volume of everyone else's, and as such, they're finding themselves drowned out by the tide of people who want acceptance and inclusion and respect, and I think that's god damn beautiful.

What makes me the angriest in all this is the fact that SFF, at least in terms of its major publishing side, does have a history of systematically silencing voices. You don't have to look too far back to find a time when books were rejected for no other reason than the author's name was female, or the main character was of a race/sexual orientation other than white straight male.

This is entirely different than writers getting pushback for what they say. What I chose to put on a page or on my blog is my responsibility, my gender is not. That's actually one of the core values of feminism and all inclusive movements: that we are judged on the merit of what we say and do, not for our skin color or sex or orientation or anything else we can't control. What's really amazing, though, is that even under this enormous handicap, minority SFF authors still found ways to tell their stories, publishing through small presses and even independently despite the bigots (or as Mr. Wright calls them, "real" SF fans) trying their best to keep the the doors shut. But you can't fence in an idea, you can't close out a genre, because it doesn't belong to you. SFF belongs to all of us, and thanks to the internet and the tireless work of marginalized fans and creators who steadfastly refused to give up on the genre they loved just because some bigots didn't want to share, SFF is more diverse and open than ever. That's a pretty big change for small minded people who don't like that they're now having to defend their indefensible and terrible ideas, but just because you're no longer the loudest voice in the room doesn't mean you're being silenced.

Now, of course, all of this is just my opinion, and you are not obligated to listen to me any more than I'm obligated to listen to you. Still, I would encourage self proclaimed free thinkers and futurists like Mr. Wright who feel they are being silenced to consider the possibility that, if a vast majority of members in a large and respected group of professionals such as, say, SFWA, feel you're being such a giant jerk that they have no choice but to kick you out, then maybe, just maybe, you're actually being a giant jerk. If you post an impassioned article about how you and your fellow authors are being systematically silenced by the leftist boot of an overzealous liberal shadow organization that has infiltrated the highest levels of SFF like some kind of nerdy Hydra, and the internet explodes with otherwise mild mannered authors recklessly taking time out their busy writing schedules to compose giant posts about how you are wrong and all your examples are noted homophobs and racists, then maybe, just maybe, you're on the wrong side of things. Or maybe incurring such responses and the attention they bring was your entire plan right from the start, in which case, bravo, sir! Job well done! You're still wrong.

And thus concludes my rant budget for this month. Thank you all for putting up with my outrage. Normal writing posts will resume shortly. Until then, I remain yours always,

Rachel

ETA: I wrote a far more eloquent and less ranty post about almost this same topic over at the Book Smugglers for their Conversations in SFF series called Upsetting the Default. It probably has fewer rage induced typos as well, so if you skimmed this post, I recommend going over there for a more civilized and nuanced conversation.