Oh, I know I’ve been absent from the blog. It’s not just the blog. I’ve been absent from everything. There was the school year, all that grading to be done, and then WisCon, and then I went to Colorado to grade AP exams, and then the end of the school year, including even more grading, and then graduation, and then I think I slept for about a week.
One nice thing about summer vacation, so far, is that I’m rediscovering my neighborhood. It’s a great time of year to do that–on Saturdays, Bedford is closed to cars, as part of the Williamsburg Walks program. We’ve been getting visits from the fancy ice cream truck, too, and there’s finally something other than root vegetables at the McCarren Park Greenmarket.
Even better, last weekend was the Northside Festival. Four days of music, art, and related events, all within about a mile of my apartment. The furthest we had to travel was up to Greenpoint for a Bishop Allen show, but most of what we saw was within just a few blocks. (Including the Hold Steady! Who put on a fabulous show, despite the audience’s inexplicable tendency to throw half-full cups of beer around!) The best surprise of the weekend, though, was the benefit for the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. I think we were expecting, I don’t know, performances by alumne or supporters. What we were definitely not expecting to see were a bunch of ten-year-old girls totally rocking out in the back room of the Lovin’ Cup Cafe. I’m completely serious about this–we saw one group of pre-teen girls who were better performers (in terms of both stage presence and musical skill) than at least one or two of the other bands we saw during the Northside Festival.
Music festivals and gourmet ice cream aside, though, I’m just enjoying the day-to-day of my neighborhood. It’s almost a full year since we moved, and I feel at home here. So that’s something.
For what it’s worth, I don’t actually think that it’s fair to characterize this whole “RaceFail” situation as a fight. It has aspects that contain fighting, this is undoubtedly true. But I think that pleas for people to just stop fighting, or dismissals of the whole thing as a crazy internet mess, are missing something important. To try and clarify, I’m going to try and draw a parallel to another situation in the SF community: the Harlan Ellison thing.
Calling it “the Harlan Ellison thing” is unfortunate, for reasons that I hope will soon become clear, but that’s what we’re stuck with. The Harlan Ellison thing started at the 2006 WorldCon, when Ellison “jokingly” assaulted Connie Willis during the Hugo Award ceremony. As news of the event filtered out into the webjournals and weblogs and message boards, it led to a huge outpouring of anger and frustration and ranting, largely from the women in the science fiction community. This was, as far as I can tell, baffling and a little frightening to a largish part of the old guard. “That’s Harlan, what can you expect?” some of them said. Or, “That’s just Harlan being Harlan.” As the days went on and the outflow of anger and frustration and ranting seemed to have no end, you started to see people asking a different question: “Isn’t this reaction a little out of proportion? It’s not like Harlan is the devil, you know. One guy did one dumb thing, can everyone calm the hell down already?”
That was the point where I wanted to start shouting at people, because whatever was going on, it wasn’t actually about Harlan. Or, more precisely, it wasn’t only about Harlan, not by a long shot. If what you thought you were seeing was a whole bunch of people flipping out because one guy did one dumb thing, then yeah, the reaction was out of proportion and everyone should have just taken a deep breath and calmed the hell down. But that wasn’t what was going on. Here’s what was going on: the women in the SF world had been putting up with a lot of unacceptable nonsense for a really long time. Each of our individual stories, each small stupid thing, didn’t seem worth making a fuss over. Who wants to be the one who makes a fuss, right? So some well-respected pro author grabbed your butt at a party, is that really serious enough to complain about? Do you really want to cause a big scene just because some guy in your writing workshop said that women don’t write hard SF even though you know he just finished reading your story about quantum computing? You do realize, don’t you, that people will think you’re difficult if you complain just because some guy at a convention told you that you’re too pretty to be a science fiction fan. And so we’d all been keeping our damn mouths shut for years, while the anger and irritation and frustration just simmered away beneath the surface. What Harlan did when he treated Connie that way, on stage in front of hundreds of people? He didn’t just insult her and upset a lot of people. He unlocked the door to that hidden storage closet where we’d all been keeping our outrage. That’s why it wasn’t about Harlan–it was about the whole community. It was about the fact that so many women felt that the SF world was hostile territory, and finally we were all talking about it openly.
I don’t know that there’s actually a clear parallel between that situation and the current one, but I think there probably is. From what I can tell, this whole “RaceFail” situation isn’t really (or only) about any specific incident. It’s about the fact that so many people of color feel that the SF world is hostile territory. They’re trying to talk about this, openly and honestly, and too many people are interrupting or not listening or otherwise behaving poorly. And that’s what I mean when I say it’s not a fight, at least not anymore–it’s a complicated conversation that was maybe started as a fight and has certainly contained some fights, but by this point it’s a lot more than a fight.
The people who are actually having this conversation are, undoubtedly, getting a lot of different things out of it, and I don’t presume to make broad statements on behalf of a group that I haven’t even managed to be a part of. All I’m saying is, everyone who’s tempted to dismiss this as a witch-hunt or a mob (or another stupid blogfight), I would just ask you to try thinking of it as a messy and difficult conversation instead. (Messy and difficult, but also useful and productive for a lot of the people involved.) People are talking about things they’ve been needing to talk about, and when you ask them to take a deep breath or take a step back or take it down a notch, you’re telling them to go back to being quiet. And that’s not acceptable.
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been trying to put “the Harlan thing” into a kind of historical context. I don’t know if it changed anything signficant or tangible. I do know that it was really valuable for me, in a personal and perhaps intangible way, to get a lot of that out in the open. I think a lot of other people found it valuable in the same way. The science fiction community as a whole might not be any better on gender stuff than it used to be, but I feel like it’s no longer acceptable to claim that there aren’t any problems. I think RaceFail ‘09 has already accomplished at least that much, and people aren’t even done talking yet.
I first started working with Strange Horizons in the fall of 2000, not long after I moved to California and started graduate school. Working with the magazine has changed a lot of things in my life, but the change that was the hardest to come to terms with was the change in the way I relate to the rest of the science fiction community. It’s been eight and a half years, and it’s still weird to me that strangers try to schmooze me at conventions, but that’s actually the least part of it.
Sometime in that first year that I was with SH, I got into an argument with someone. It was one of those weird petty little blogfights–I made a post about a book that I loved, the other person made a post about the same book, saying that it was terrible, and we said a few snippy things back and forth at each other about what makes for a good or bad book, in the context of this particular book. At the time it was happening, I don’t think I would even have called it a fight, it was more like some irritated bickering. Totally not a big deal.
Except. Except that this person’s spouse emailed the fiction department at Strange Horizons, withdrawing a submitted story, saying that I had created an environment that made it uncomfortable to have fiction under consideration. The person and their spouse then started posting on various writers-resource websites, warning writers not to submit to Strange Horizons because of the risk that I would use my position as an editor to attack them. A whole series of emails were sent back and forth, mostly “what the eff?” on my side and “how dare you” on theirs.
I was stunned by the whole thing–these weren’t strangers I knew only online, these were people I considered friends, people I’d spent time with socially. We’d exchanged birthday presents, I’d been over to their house for dinner, we’d lent each other books. But it was explained to me, in great detail and at extraordinary length, that the fact that I was an editor at a professional magazine meant that everything I said had to be placed in a professional context. The idea that my “editor” identity overrode any other identity I might have seemed frankly bizarre and more than a little troubling–had their friendship with me also just been about my editor status? Were they really saying that I couldn’t ever have non-professional relationships with other people in the field?
Even years later, I think they were wrong. They were wrong, they were acting crazy, and they were acting inappropriately. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. Even if I had done absolutely nothing wrong, it wouldn’t matter. What mattered was that I put the name and reputation of the magazine at risk. What mattered was that my public statements and actions were going to be framed by other people in the context of my position at the magazine. Strange Horizons is, and always has been, dependent on the goodwill of the community–not just financially, although obviously our ability to be donor-supported depends on the goodwill of the community. If we really want to be a magazine that showcases new voices in the field, if we want to be a welcoming and encouraging home for underrepresented viewpoints in speculative fiction, if we want to live up to our potential as a fabulous, vital, important, and relevant force in science fiction publishing, then we have to be very careful about our public image and public presentation.
People who knew me in college knew me as someone who was always willing, often too willing, to get into a fight. That’s not true anymore. Part of it is the normal process of becoming a grown-up, right? But part of it is the realization that my involvement with Strange Horizons means that I do not have the freedom I used to have. Any stupid fight I might get involved with — and let’s all be very honest about this, the science fiction community is packed full of people who have a hair-trigger for starting stupid fights — carries with it the very real possibility of reflecting back on the magazine, and that’s a risk I’m no longer willing to take. (This feeling has only intensified as a result of my new job, by the way. I don’t want anything reflecting back on my school or my professional integrity as a teacher, either.)
Over time, this has extended beyond the threat of stupid fights, to the threat of any fights at all. Whatever is going on, anywhere in the community, I don’t want to get involved. Whatever “it” is, it isn’t my business, you know? This position has become such second nature, so ingrained in my behavior that I don’t even really think about it anymore. I’m thinking about it now, though, and I’m becoming kind of disturbed, because this extreme non-involvement feels more than a little bit like cowardice. Over the last few years, I have bit my tongue and smiled politely when crazy old men said patronizing and sexist things to me. I have waited for someone else to deal with it while friends of mine were insulted and had their professional integrity challenged. (And, while we’re being honest, I’ve also let friends of mine get away with sloppy reasoning and bad behavior, because it was too much hassle to call them on it, which makes me a bad friend, I think.) I don’t know that these were all wrong decisions. I do know that the overall pattern isn’t one I’m comfortable with anymore.
*
This whole journey of introspection started, for me, with this post. I’ve been following the whole RaceFail imbroglio from the beginning, with the same mixture of horror (for the stupidness and lack of awareness of some of my colleagues in the SF world) and admiration (for the eloquence and bravery of so many participants) that I think a lot of other people are feeling as well. There are a lot of reasons why I haven’t gotten involved–I didn’t think that another voice of white privilege would contribute very much, I didn’t think I had anything as smart to say as what other people were already saying, and, of course, I didn’t want to get involved. But Mely’s closing sentences there felt like a physical blow, and at first I couldn’t understand why. And then Nora’s post made me actually ashamed of myself, and I started to understand.
Staying out of some fights, the stupid petty ego-driven fights, is just basic common sense. Staying out of other fights, though, is an act of cowardice. And so I want to apologize to writers and readers and fans of color, and to all of the other people who’ve been fighting this fight rather than sitting on the sidelines, because in my attempt to just stay out of this, I’ve contributed to an environment that makes you feel silenced and marginalized. This isn’t a stupid fight. This is a huge and difficult and layered and fraught conversation about things that actually matter, a conversation that’s been punctuated with outbursts of shameful and embarrassing behavior on the part of people who really ought to know better but inexplicably don’t.
Anyway. My point is, brilliant and articulate and fabulous people have been made to feel alone and under siege, and that’s not right. My silence has been a kind of complicity, and that’s also not right.
This recent post from Ben made me laugh, partly because it’s a conversation I need to have with myself! So here’s to turning off the internal editor and actually having some conversation. A few points of interest, to start it off:
- I recently had the pleasure of participating in a discussion on the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” blog. The topic was asteroids, “The Lure of Rocks From Outer Space.” I didn’t realize until after it went live that I was going to be sharing discussion space with Neil deGrasse Tyson! How cool!
- Thank you all for the mystery series suggestions! I’ve been reading a lot of the suggested authors, and while I’m enjoying all of them, I’m totally loving Linda Barnes. (Except for the bit where one character, noticing that another character has nothing in her kitchen that can be used to cook breakfast, suggests that they go out to Charlie’s Kitchen for breakfast. But that’s a tiny thing in the middle of a string of really enjoyable books.)
- Random bullet of consumerism: there’s this new(ish) store in my neighborhood that sells (among other things) Betsey Johnson and Jessica McClintock cocktail dresses for $40-$60. It’s called Peachfrog, it’s on North 10th between Bedford and Berry. (I don’t know why I suddenly decided that readers of this blog could use a dress-shopping PSA, but there you have it.)
- The sun is out, it’s around sixty degrees, and I’m heading out to see Watchmen. Good weekend so far.
Looking out the window, Manhattan is gone–the whole rest of the world is gone, covered in a blanket of snow clouds and fog, and we’re floating on a little island, here in Brooklyn.
Today was a quiet day, mixed between working and taking care of myself. Spent the morning grading while watching Battlestar Galactica, a combination more pleasant than efficient. Spent the afternoon cooking, making a beef stew that’s still cooking. We cook pretty often, but usually weeknight-style cooking, toss a spice rub on some chicken breasts and whip up a spicy garlic sauce for some sauteed broccoli, that kind of thing. The beef stew is a little more time-consuming, the kind of cooking I save for long afternoons like this one. Meditative cooking.
I have three sources for the recipe. It’s a blend of Mark Bittman’s basic beef stew and my ex-boyfriend’s mother’s recipe, which I think originally sourced from Sunset Magazine anyway. I also kept the guide to stews that Cooks Illustrated ran a year or so ago, which isn’t a recipe so much as a guide to techniques and equipment. I prefer the ingredient ratio in Dr. Miller’s recipe–way more carrots and parsnips than Bittman calls for, relative to the amount of beef–but take the cooking process from Bittman, which is mostly validated by Cooks Illustrated. This is one of those things I find fascinating, the trends in cooking processes. Who ever thought of brining turkeys ten or fifteen years ago? That kind of thing. I’m taking the more modern process, I guess.
It starts with the beef, as I suppose beef stew usually does. Chuck roast, trimmed of fat and cut into cubes, and I was struck as I cut it by how beautiful it seemed. I usually don’t like dealing with meat when cooking, but FreshDirect sent us some nice chuck, very little fat and a gorgeous deep-ruby color. Three-and-a-half or four pounds, cut into inch cubes, more or less, and then tossed with some salt and pepper and put back in the refrigerator under plastic wrap while I prep the aromatics. (Aromatics! I first saw this term, applied to a category of cooking ingredients, in my favorite Chinese cookbook, bought just after college. It makes so much sense.) Three big onions, diced, a few cloves of garlic, a few stalks of celery. I don’t know if celery properly belongs with the aromatics, but I didn’t want to put it with the vegetables, and I’m resigned to having to include it.
Aromatics prepped, the beef comes out of the refrigerator, and browned. Dr. Miller’s recipe says to toss the beef with flour and spices before browning, but CI says that coating the beef in flour, while traditional, is actually a problem, because it masks uneven browning. Bittman says you can skip browning altogether, but I like it–I feel like browned beef can get more tender on the inside without falling apart. The beef gets browned in three batches, each batch removed to a plate to wait once it’s cooked, and then the onion mix goes into the leftover beef fat and sauteed. And this is where the technique or process question comes into play–Dr. Miller’s recipe says to just drop everything into the pot at this point, onion and vegetables and broth, all together with the browned beef, and cook the whole mess together for three hours. I think this is typical, or traditional, stewing behavior. But CI says to saute the aromatics separately, in order to better develop their flavors, and Bittman says the same. So the onions and garlic and celery go into the pot alone and cook for ten minutes or so, until softened. Then I add a few tablespoons of flour, at Bittman’s advice, and the onion mix froths up while I stir. Pop back in the beef, add three cups of wine–red wine is common to both recipes, and at CI’s suggestion I’ve gone with a Cote du Rhone, eleven dollars at the shop on the first floor. Three cups into the stew means there’s just one glass left in the bottle, so I take that glass for myself.
Stir (with the sturdy maple-wood spoon, part of a set I bought for my first kitchen in Oakland), bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to low. The pot needs to sit, undisturbed and simmering, for about forty minutes, so I set to chopping the vegetables. The radio is on, first “Fresh Air” and then “All Things Considered,” both of them celebrating today’s holiday and preparing for tomorrow’s. Congressman John Lewis, on “Fresh Air”, has an amazing story to tell, and by the time he starts talking about how he sees marriage equality as just another branch of the fight against discrimination he’s been fighting his whole life, I find that I’m grinning as I work. All the stories of people travelling to Washington, too, make me happy. Matt and I were there Friday night (long story) and it looks like a town gearing up for both a big party and a lot of hard work. I peel and chop my vegetables, four or five potatoes, four or five parsnips, a big handful of carrots. By the time I’m done, there’s still another twenty minutes before they can go in the stew, so I sit down with my glass of wine and a mystery novel, and I watch the snow fall for a while longer.
I’d like to take less blurry pictures. Working on it.
For the last couple of months, I haven’t been able to find the cable for my digital camera. I found it recently, in a very obvious place, and no I don’t want to talk about how I could lose an item that was in a very obvious place. The point is, I found it, and as a result I’ve rediscovered a bunch of pictures I took over the summer.
This picture was taken at the East River State Park, just a few blocks from my house, in August. We had a friend visiting from out of town, and we found the park while we were showing him around the neighborhood. It was a perfect afternoon for sitting around in the sun and looking at the Manhattan skyline. Looking at these pictures now, it’s like a window on a different world. It’s cold here, and grey, and we haven’t seen much sun recently. I’m not complaining, not really, because it hasn’t been all that cold most of the time and it’s pretty when it snows and anyway I knew what I was getting into. But that bright green-and-gold blue-skies summer day was a little startling nonetheless.
The annual meeting of the AHA was, as I’d suspected it might be, much more pleasant for me this year than previous years. I spent a lot of time in the book room, saw a lot of grad school friends (most of whom had interviews! hooray!), and got some grading done. (Most of the grading happened in a solitary interlude on Sunday afternoon, after the hotel Starbucks had officially closed but before they started kicking people out. Semi-abandoned coffeeshops turn out to be surprisingly effective workplaces.)
Frohe Tötentannenbäumenabfallentsorgungtag 2009! (cf. Jackie M.)
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