Watching Our Words

By Sandra Ruttan

Believe it or not, there was a point in my life when I didn't swear much. One of the hardest adjustments was understanding for myself that if certain words came from a character's mouth in a story I wrote, they still weren't my words.

I got over the swearing. 

It's been much harder dealing with other language.

Remarks made against women or racist comments are the hardest thing to put in a character's mouth. You'd think I might be used to it because The Spying Moon has a lot of it, but making Moreau be female and half Native were deliberate choices to multiply the number of ways she's alienated in the story. 

I still find myself worrying. Worrying someone will take a character's remark personally or think their sentiments are my own. When I wrote it initially that wasn't something I thought about as much, but so much has changed in the last two years that it's clear we aren't moving past racism as a society. Discrimination, on multiple levels, seems to be more rampant than ever. And in some circles it's even acceptable, if not encouraged.

Having a character tell a woman to get in the kitchen or make an assumption about someone based on their race while the POV character and others recognize that as wrong is different from writing something based on your experiences, with a POV character who shares your name and expresses racist sentiments. 

In the wake of the ALA decision to rename an award there's been good reason to think about our racial language in what we write. I think that first, the ALA can call their award whatever they want. Second, no books are being banned. They changed an award's name to make it more inclusive and in line with their mission as an organization.

The fall-out was far and wide, with uproars on Twitter and Facebook, and in organizations like Sisters in Crime. 

Backlash over the name change shows that people can be reactive. Some may be racist and others may just be insensitive.

It has heightened my awareness. My friend count recently went down on Facebook when I asked people who support putting babies in cages to unfriend me. I consider that the best kind of housecleaning possible. I don't need to engage with blatant racists to know how they think.

But what it shows is that this type of thinking is far more prevalent than some of us realized. And that, for me, is the definition of white privilege. I don't always think about how people are treated based on race because I am white.

In order to address prejudices we have to acknowledge they exist and that will come into what we write sometimes. I trust readers to see that treating a person differently based on gender or skin color or sexual orientation or anything else is wrong. 

But I will still think carefully about racial language in every work I produce. We send messages with our words. The subtext of any work worth reading shouldn't be that it was just an excuse to make crude or derogatory remarks.

The ALA's decision, particularly given the current climate, has heightened our awareness of how far there is to go to really change attitudes and embrace equality. I'm thinking about the nuances of language more than ever and, while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, the reason for it is. Hopefully the future will see a more inclusive writing community, as well as a more inclusive world.

Lessons I've Learned About Publishing

(The writing advice comes at the end.)

I grew up knowing there were things girls couldn't do, because they were girls.

I really wanted to take karate. The parental veto quashed that. Karate, I was told, wasn't for girls.

It's forgivable. It was a different time, and changing people's perspectives wasn't quite as easy. Small town people like us could live small town lives, surrounded by neighbors with the same skin color and back then, you kept your nose out of other people's business. Nobody told anyone how to raise their child. You could see a crying kid dragged down the road, being told to just wait until they got home, and people wouldn't interfere. It was nothing to spank a child in public.

It was nothing to rape a wife. I suppose legally it likely wasn't even possible to be charged with such an offense.

For all our alleged progress, sometimes it seems little has changed. Oh, laws have impacted the way kids are disciplined, but it comes to gender issues, one doesn't have to go far to see that women are still treated as inferior; consider the fact that women are more likely to be killed by a partner than men are, and that 1/3 of murdered women in the U.S. are killed by a current or former partner.

Overt and subtle sexism exists within the world of entertainment as well. A few years ago, it was gamergate:

Gamergate started with a man lashing out at his game developer ex-girlfriend through a blog post crafted to incite the Internet against her. The maelstrom of subsequent accusations and threats sent Zoe Quinn into hiding. The furor soon sucked in anyone associated with her and those who sought to defend her. Targets were barraged with hatred via email and social media. Their employers were pressured to fire them. Sometimes their home addresses were publicly disseminated. Harassers made fake 911 calls to dispatch SWAT teams to their targets’ houses. (Link)

Over the weekend, an editor was attacked for posting a selfie.

As my own Facebook friends are aware, I had an issue last week with someone who had submitted a story to Spinetingler Magazine. Despite the fact that our submission guidelines are clearly posted, this person sent an incomplete submission.

Now, our system is set up to send an automatic reply, and that automatic reply reiterates how important it is that story submissions be complete. It actually states that incomplete submissions may be deleted without notification and that they will not be considered for publication.

I thought I'd be nice and take a minute and email the writer to let them know that unfortunately, we couldn't consider the submission as it was and it had to be deleted, and advised them to refer to our submission guidelines. I mean, all they had to do was complete the submission and resend it.

Instead, I received this:

I took the rare move of sharing it on Facebook because I have privacy settings in place, and because the name was so generic that it didn't paint a target on anyone's back. After being told to shove Spinetingler up my ass, I wrote back and informed the individual that further correspondence from them would not be read. They have also been informed that they are banned from submitting to the magazine.

The response?

I have not written back to this individual since; however, they have continued to email Spinetingler. When they did not receive a personal reply, they changed their email address and emailed again.

And again.

I haven't read them in full, although while filing all the documents in case of pursuing legal harassment charges, I did notice I'd been called shit-for-brains.

Such a way with words. I mean, I must seriously regret not fawning all over this individual the minute they graced our inbox with their so-called writing.

In this midst of this, some possible blame was thrown my way on Facebook by someone who seemed to think that the person's behavior could potentially be excused if I hadn't expressed myself clearly.

Why should anyone ever have to open email that is this abusive? This person initiated contact with us. This person even admitted that they knew the submission guidelines and ignored them.

But it's my fault they started swearing at me?

Others speculated that the reason this person was acting that way was because I'm a woman. When I go online and see a Marvel comics editor being harassed for being a woman, it's hard not to think that's a reasonable conclusion.


Lawmakers don't seem to treat this issue seriously.

When discussion of online harassment exploded into the mainstream a few years ago after Gamergate, I thought it would mean change was on the horizon. Today, I can see these years have been an utter waste. A federal bill to punish “swatting” sits in limbo. Reddit is still convulsed in the same battle with itself that it’s been fighting since 2014. A handful of bad actors are permanently banned from Twitter (though white nationalist Richard Spencer was un-banned this week). (Link)

Where does that leave us? Well, Spinetingler has always been a labor of love. The odd bit of money generated hasn't come close to covering costs of investment over the years.

And let's be real; nobody wants to pay for these things. We talk about artists being expected to give their work away for exposure, and I've experienced that as a writer as well. However, with Spinetingler, there are people reaching into their pockets and others banking off hours upon hours of time to keep things going.

We've watched ezines and magazines fold one by one, and from the glory days of online ezines promoting crime fiction, few of us are left.

We can celebrate being the first venue to publish a number of writers who've gone on to great success. James Oswald is one; Mindy Tarquini is another.

But the inference from someone that there was any justification at all for this person's continued harassment had me start thinking it was time to pull the plug after 12 years. I have my 9-5 responsibilities. I have a family. I have my own writing, and that's the main thing that gives out when I work on Spinetingler. While I'm certainly sad to see places shut down and don't want to pull the plug, there's an issue with how professional women are treated, and the backlash over a Marvel comics editor's selfie is proof of that.

If anyone's looking for a woman who may be occasionally seen but not heard, they've got the wrong woman here.

I don't want to believe that in 2017, women still need to have a platform extended to them because they're less than equal, but a lot of things lately have demonstrated that's the reality of the world we live in.

Do I ban books by male authors from being reviewed?

Do I prepare a female-only issue of Spinetingler?

This issue that I'm working on is a tester. If it can't generate ad or sales revenue to break even on the costs of paying writers and artists involved (no pay to editors, no contribution to website costs) then it may be the last we ever do. We've been toying with an option to put it into print, but I'm reluctant to do that because I'm not sure we'll be continuing next year.

Working as an editor has schooled me as a writer in ways I never could have imagined when I started out. What I learned that every writer should know before they submit material anywhere:

1. ALWAYS follow the submission guidelines.

2. You are not the exception to the rules.

3. Editors are very busy. Don't email them every few weeks to check on the status of your submission. (I have writing I submitted to publishers six months ago that I still haven't followed up on.)

4. Professionalism and courtesy will go a long, long way in the publishing business.

5. Editors will reject stories because a writer is difficult to work with.

6. Writers unwilling to make corrections to their work or consider developmental editing suggestions earn a reputation of being difficult to work with. (See #5.)

7. The publishing world is small. Chances are, if you've make a horrible impression on one editor, they've told at least three others.

I referenced this writer being banned. Spinetingler has a shitlist. I'd bet cold, hard cash that other publications do as well.

Editors don't put rules and guidelines in place because they're anal or because they enjoy tormenting writers. They do it to ensure that writers have the best chance of success with their submission. I learned years ago to include strict formatting guidelines because I accepted a story that wasn't properly formatted. The writer had used a hard return at the end of each line like a typewriter, and that meant that all of those hard returns had to be extracted... Only they refused to do it.

I gave up hours of my time to do it, and in the end, after talking to some other editors, I realized I had made a mistake by coddling this writer and wasting my own time. Any writer who won't correct their material will be unaccepted.

I hold firm on that to this day. Occasionally, I still get to read a story that blows me away and I instantly love it, but within what we accept there are a number of stories that went through a period of time where they were simply under consideration. They may have been similar to another story in terms of theme. There may be technical writing issues that need to be corrected. Error-free and original stories will always rise to the top, but many stories simply just edge another story that's comparable out because we have to make decisions.

That's taught me that for every piece of writing I send out, there are a hundred others who've submitted and are fighting for the same slot. The odds are against even those of us who've been traditionally published. Nothing is guaranteed to anyone in this industry.

Whether you're a man or a woman, you have to work for what you get.

And if you really are a sexist asshole, you'd best keep that on lockdown while dealing with professionals in the industry.

Is crime fiction socially aware?

By Steve Weddle

Dave White likes for us to wait a week before we weigh in on the latest internet kerfuffle.

But, as Cheech said, Dave's not here.

The HUGO award nominees were announced and some people weren't happy with the list of names. Too mainstream. Too white. Too manny.

Then there was the April Fool's post from LOCUS, which said that participants at some sci-fi convention would have to wear burqas in order to be politically correct.

LOCUS Magazine came under fire and pulled the post.

An Apology— posted Monday 1 April 2013  We would like to offer our apology for the offensive April Fool’s post that was published on the site today. The April Fool’s pieces were not seen by the Locus HQ staff before being posted — it was an ugly moment this morning when we saw the post already online, and we immediately took steps to remove it. Of course, being after the fact, it was too late, and the offense had already happened.

...

The author of that post, Lawrence Person, posted the original with some commentary at his own blog.

Folks got to commenting about free speech and being offended.

Others mentioned how this post last year questioning whether Game of Thrones is "too white" was also offensive. And this response. And this.

Which brought us to this post about whether the Hunger Games movie is too not-white.

Which reminded me of posts we've had here about Patrick Rothfuss's calendar being sexist  Also that he hugged a fan.

The sci-fi and fantasy communities (or community, with overlap) seem to have these discussions/kerfuffles rather often.

I mean, I notice them and I tend to not pay too much attention to things that aren't about me.

The crime fiction community has not had the same discussions -- or so it seems.

Of course, we've had our sock puppets and our talks about dirty words in novels. We've had some discussions here and there and sexism and racism and violence.

And while this isn't a competition with the nerds over in that other genre, I wonder if the nerds in the crime fiction community are embracing the conflicts in the same way other genres do.

Occasionally, of course, you'll see an isolated blog post about why crime fiction is so focused on alcoholic men saving kidnapped strippers. In much crime fiction, these women do seem to get into trouble that only a man with a dark secret can solve.

But is the crime fiction community tackling race and misogyny -- and other social problems -- with as much effort as our cousins in the sci-fi and fantasy world?

Has anyone complained that the Edgars or the Anthonys or the Dashiells or the Agathas or the Hitchcocks are too white? Too manny?

Are the swords and lasers crew fighting this for all of us?

Cry Wolf, And Unleash A Load Of Crap

By Steve Weddle

Many human beings are complete assholes. They're self-centered and vain, vile, mean, and brutish.

They do terrible, horrible things, offering no consideration at all for anyone else. They're assholes.

They clog up your day, throwing off what might otherwise have been a good morning.

The asshole who cut you off while you were at the middle school dropping off your kids.

The asshole who woke you at 7 a.m. because he needed to get his grass cut before he left later that morning for the beach.

The asshole who was supposed to help you finish the quarterly report, but decided to take two days off this week instead.

There's so much crap floating around, you can have no doubt that the world is full of assholes.

But targeting someone for being an asshole just because you have A Cause and something to prove isn't fair to that person and makes you an asshole. Worse than that. It wrongs the other person and hurts your cause.

I don't know whether I want to call this "A Cause," because it isn't exactly what I mean. But, let's be honest, there are some creepy, weird, rapey dudes out there. And more and more we're hearing about them at writer conventions.

This summer, there was considerable nastiness at Readercon. Genevieve Valentine blogged about it.

Because seriously, let's review. My boundaries were violated physically, verbally, and in terms of my right to feel personally secure. In addition, within minutes of meeting him, I was told to stop saying things, because it made him somehow unable to control his thoughts, which is bog-standard thought policing. And I was subjected to not one, not two, but THREE instances of the man in question hovering near me because he wanted to apologize, and he wasn't going to stop until he had had his say. (If this sounds like stalking, I want you to think about that.)

There was considerable discussion, responses from con organizers that proved inadequate, follow-up responses, a post from Mr. Scalzi, and more and more attention. You can read about reaction and responses here.

I am not a woman. I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to be cornered by a man at a bar or convention conference room or the local supermarket.

This harassment happens. Stalking happens. Sexist behavior, online and in-person, happens. It's terrible, horrible, and folks need to stand the hell up and fix it when it happens. And make sure it doesn't happen. When this happens, it isn't just women who need to stand up. We guys need to publicize and prevent. We need to make sure that people -- men, women, children -- are safe, especially at a damn convention where you're supposed to be talking about books. C'mon.

So it's completely stupid as hell to go after sci-fi author Patrick Rothfuss for a blog post he wrote about The Hobbit movie. In the post, Rothfuss uses an old crush to stand in for the boyish love he had when he read The Hobbit and contrasts that with the dolled-up movie version that he compares to a stripper. It's kind of like that J. Giles Band song "Centerfold." (Kids, ask your parents.)

Rothfuss is also taken to task for promoting a calendar of some dude's artwork "which turns female literary characters from Twain and Dickens novels into 'Sexy but not smutty' literary pin-ups." (Here's his post about the calendar, with images.)

Then he's condemned for hugging a fan at a convention.

So we're going to equate stalking women, cornering them, and threatening their safety with hugging a fan WHO ASKED FOR A HUG? That's "semi-creepy" behavior? Hugging a fan who asked for a hug? Or deciding that a hug from a fan bodes well for the week? Or is that he describes her appearance and "pretty"? YOU SHALL NOT CALL WOMEN PRETTY!! Or maybe because he uses the word "cocks"?

Why is the blogger attacking Rothfuss? I dunno.

Can you imagine the discussion of this article?

-Did you hear about the author at the sci-fi convention?
-No, tell me.
-This fan asked for a hug.
-OMG. What happened?
-He hugged her.
-He didn't.
-He totes did.

As one commenter said of the attack post, "I've been thinking about this for a whopping... five minutes or so...My panties remain un-bunched. Am I alone in this?"

No. You're not alone. Most of the comments I've read agree with that comment.

This next comment, though, pretty much covers the awfulness: "I haven't read any of his work, but I'd be shocked if this guy is even capable of writing a remotely well-developed, nuanced, believable, human-resembling female character. Shocked. Honestly though, I don't know what to do with these guys--they may mean well but they seem like they've never once thought about what it might be like to be female in the real world. Make them take a seminar led by Joss Whedon and Wil Wheaton? Make them read a bunch of sci-fi/fantasy works written by women?"

The comments that start "I haven't read any of his work, but..." are always the best, aren't they?

I haven't been to the moon, but I bet it's made of feta.

I haven't seen the new movie, but I heard it's full of misogyny.

I haven't had my head out of my own ass in years. Butt.

So, this commenter has devised a 12-Step program to fix Mr. Rothfuss. How delightful. Yes, read a book by a woman. That's clever. Also, take a class from Wil Wheaton. Wil Wheaton, by the way, is a guy. So, uh, I dunno. Um, commenter, maybe you were being facetious and clever, but probably not. You know, I haven't read any of your other comments, but . . . .

Rothfuss, from the evidence that has been presented to the court, is Not Guilty of being a sexist asshole, despite the claim of the Jezebel blog that he writes "icky sexist" posts.

We've had a number of so-called "witch hunts" in the writing community. From sock puppets to sexism, if you're going to attack someone, you damn sure better be fair to that person.

The victims of the real and actual assaults deserve that. Someone (GValentine, for example) who was threatened by a man at a sci-fi convention had A Real Thing happen to her. Making up offenses -- like this "fan hug" or an author's suspected inability to create a "human-resembling female character"-- is terrible.

If you fly off attacking people just to draw attention to your cause, you're not only unfairly hurting them, you're doing a great disservice to your cause.

People will think, "Well, there they go again, Calling someone else sexist. Must be a Thursday."

And you don't want that. Because there are real, honest-to-goodness assholes out there making people feel uncomfortable, threatening their safety, doing terrible things to people. And this needs to stop. And your wild, link-bait attacks have to stop.

If you want to stop the stalky, awful behavior of men cornering women, of men belittling women online, of men touching and threatening women, then you have to be clear and precise. Thorough, but fair. You have to call out the real nastiness and spread the word so that the rest of us can join the fight to stop this. But if you are going to attack people for doing something wrong, you have to be right.

You can't go around shitting on everyone. That makes you an asshole.