So much fail

[kaberett]

• Lois McMaster Bujold: kind of racist
  
• Jared Diamond: kind of racist

Ugh. Things I am kicking myself for not having been aware of, and passing on for those of you as are also likely to care. :-(

Comments

[merryway]

Ugh seriously. I deeply dig the Vorkosiverse (despite it not being unproblematic in and of itself), but Bujold rode the failtrain from one end of the world to the other on that one.

[carthaginians]

LMB defended horror that was Thirteenth Child - put me off her completely. Has come to point where I auto-assume authors will/are fail unless explicit proof otherwise.

Is v. sad. but guessing I won't feel I've missed anything by notreading their books.

[sorrillia]

Interesting. I'd definitely been taught--possibly in high school, and certainly by PBS science shows--that the current theory for the extinction of the megafauna was over-hunting, because the dates for the arrival of the Clovis people and the extinctions seemed to line up really well. Possibly this is outdated, or possibly the sources being used were questionable. (Certainly, PBS has a history of occasionally becoming enamored with stupid things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies, though they usually are a bit more explicit that "This is a view that most people in the field think is rather off.")

(For the record, I've never read anything by Bujold, and know nothing about _The Thirteenth Child_ other than what was contained in that link, though it sounds rather horrifying, as does much of the review quoted.)

[sorrillia]

I am not qualified to have an opinion on what the common view in paleontology of what caused the Pleistocene extinctions, but the impression I got from a quick look for authoritative-sounding sources was "It's complicated, but it looks like there was reasonably good synchronization with humans showing up in places and a lot of people think there's a causal relationship there, but climate change was also likely involved."

http://exhibits.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/lp_extinction.html
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec04/b65lec04.htm

And a recent (2004) article in Science, which may not be readable without a university internet connection:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5693/70.full

From the conclusions of said article, for people who can't view it:


Data density and quality are still uneven. The Eurasian record is increasingly good and reveals that late Pleistocene climatic change contributed to extinction by driving range adjustments in large mammals. An idea that needs further testing is that the arrival and population expansion of Homo sapiens sapiens began to fragment megafaunal ranges by 30,000 years ago, ultimately restricting megafauna to inviable populations in far northern refugia by the end of the Pleistocene. Australian evidence suggests that megafaunal extinction followed human arrival, and that both probably preceded significant global or regional South Pacific climatic change, which is consistent with a role for humans. However, the timing of key events still cannot be bracketed within error bars less than ∼10,000 years, the youngest records of extinct megafauna are controversial, and local environmental changes may differ from the global or regional pattern (4, 5). In South America, published data on extinction chronology is accumulating but awaits critical analysis. In Africa, better temporal resolution is needed to assess how the timing of the few extinctions matches local environmental changes and human impacts.

In contrast, robust dating verifies simultaneous climatic change and first human contact in the conterminous United States, where extinctions were particularly rapid and pronounced. Support for human impacts includes (i) indisputable hunting of two extinct species, (ii) clustering of extinctions within 1,500 years (and perhaps less) of first contact with Clovis hunters, (iii) widespread distribution of Clovis hunters, (iv) simulations, and (v) more pronounced extinction than in mid-Pleistocene glacial-interglacial transitions. On a broader North American scale, the demise of megafaunal species without significant human presence in Alaska is consistent with some role for climate.


Anyway, I will shut up now, because I'm aware I'm sort of derailing the point here. I just was sort of surprised to hear that something I thought was well-established described as almost certainly false.

[naath]

I have essentially no formally acquired knowledge about this, but one thing I do find very weird is that it's apparently A-OK to assert that native American peoples lived "in harmony with nature" and thus 'clearly' couldn't have gone around hunting megafauna to extinction. Perhaps the harmony with nature followed from observing the consequences of lacking it; or perhaps it came about unrelated some time later; or perhaps they were in harmony with some-but-not-all of nature. To me it seems very, um, exoticising (is I think the word I'm after) to assume things like that about another culture's ancestor-culture based on my outsider-perspective view that the current culture is "in harmony with nature" whatever-I-think-that-means (a lot of the time I think it means "don't need to be provided with adequate plumbing"... having read about the conditions some native Americans are living in).

[ewx]

I have read Guns, Germs And Steel twice, and actually finished it both times, and I certainly did not come away with the impression either that the various historical advantages derived from living usefully-shaped continents, being surrounded by readily domesticable animals and plants, etc., made the modern outcomes “all right”.

[gerald_duck]

Mmm. I think the last two paragraphs of that article mis-represent the tone and thrust of the book. I can see how some of the less pleasant factions in US politics might take that message from the book, but I don't think it's actually there.

As I recall it, the question Diamond was answering was not why the European colonials behaved the way they did, but why they were in a position to. There have been plenty of bloodthirsty prejudiced ideologues throughout history who've not managed to project force throughout the world anything like that effectively.

I'm entirely willing to believe there are problems in Diamond's actual science, but how much do they matter? His objective was to demonstrate how anthropological history could have come to a point where Europeans were in a position to sail across the Atlantic and wreak havoc in the Americas not vice-versa without the Europeans being innately superior in some way. Even if he got some of the details wrong, even if he got a few big details wrong, his book still stands as a popular-science sketch of how such a thing could have happened.

[liv]

My big theory about Bujold is that she is very, very appealing as a writer to people whose biggest problem in life is being female. She's undoubtedly good at what she does. And certainly when she first started writing the Vorkosigan series, SF/F books with decent female characters that were actually aware of feminist issues without being scarily second-wave polemical were an amazing rarity. Since lots of my friends (and lots of geeky women talking about Bujold on the internet) are in fact intelligent, on the whole privileged women whose biggest problem is in fact sexism, they absolutely lap Bujold up. But she's honestly not very good at intersectionality, not in her books and not in her personal comments either.

I am kind of prepared to overlook her fail response to The Thirteenth Child controversy. I perhaps shouldn't say that, because it's not my ox being gored, but as I read it, what happened in 2009 was that Wrede published this utterly appalling book about how Native Americans were just annoying obstacles getting in the way of real people having awesome magical adventures (and making lots of American placenames hard to spell). And the internet got very very Angry, and Bujold was in a knee-jerk rush to defend her friend, while not being at all aware of the culture of the contemporary internet social justice crowd. Not hugely admirable, but not the worst offence ever either.

I also think that Bujold is sort of the Heinlein of women of our generation and a few years older. Because she was absolutely revolutionary in terms of understanding the problems of otherwise-privileged women, people kind of imprinted on her and can't bear any criticism of her work at all. Just like Heinlein was revolutionary in presenting the perspective of otherwise privileged geeks and nerds, so there's a generation of fans who basically think he's god in spite of his misogyny and racism and other general intersectionalism fail.

[kaberett]

For what it's worth, for me Bujold is (was?) much more than just the women thing: there's the non-binary genders represented (explicit discussion of preferred pronouns!), there's the disability stuff to some extent, there's the queer stuff, there's the accurate science in almost all cases as far as I can tell. Yes, bits of her portrayal of Betan herms and disabled characters are kind of bothersome to me, but they're still there and being treated broadly speaking as just another person, you know? And I know there are places where she fails in the books, but the book-fail I noticed (and I'm definitely not claiming to have noticed all of it), I felt that she tended to fix: the odious comment about "was bisexual" was explained further later in a plausible way, and so was the usage of "it" as a pronoun, both moments at which I felt like throwing the book across the room (and other examples too). And. And and and.

Media. Why so faily. :-(

I'm sorry that this is a very flaily and self-centred response to your (wonderful thoughtful clear!) comment; I will try to come back and engage more helpfully when I have got over my initial rush of BUT WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

long comment is long

[liv]

No, this doesn't seem flaily or unhelpful at all, it's a really interesting and thinky comment. Thank you!

Accurate science oh heavens yes! One of the things that really makes me furious is that Bujold is regularly dismissed as "just" writing space opera, even though plenty of male authors who take far less care about scientific accuracy are automatically classified as hard SF, and gah.

I definitely think it's a step forward that there are non-binary characters (plural, and so much love for that plural) and disabled characters at all, and they are so much less faily than they could be. To me the biggest intersectionality problem is the way that she does world-building based on fairly obvious ethnic stereotypes, some of which look a bit orientialist from here.

I am very ambivalent about Miles as a disabled character, but he is the protagonist and he does avoid the most obnoxious cliches and stereotypes, and that goes a long way. I also very much love the stuff she does with MH in the later books. But in both the physical and the mental cases I'm speaking as an abled reader, and my analysis is fairly superficial.

The thing about Bel is that, well, I actually like Bel very much as a character. Bel is in some ways more like me than pretty much any binary gendered fictional character, certainly more so than most women including the liberated sort, and more than unmarked default cis male characters. I don't like the term hermaphrodite, and I don't like the pronoun choice; sure, it's explained in-story, but Bujold still made the choice to make it Bel's preferred pronoun when she is writing in English in a real world where it has been used to oppress lots of gender variant people. The big thing that I don't like about Bel is the sudden appearance of stereotypical femininity when Bel is being sexual (eg trying to seduce Miles), even though the binary gendered women in the book aren't particularly stereotypical as sexual beings!

Also, Dono. I was going to comment on your post with brief notes about what you were reading last year, but this is a better place for it. I'm surprised you thought ACC handled trans issues ACTUALLY WELL! because I, as a cis woman, felt really uncomfortable about the whole Dono arc. As with Bel, it's nice to have a trans character at all, and it's nice that said trans character stays well away from some of the worst stereotypes (the fact that it's about a trans man is already a very good start). But to me it felt like appropriating / trivializing trans narratives in order to make a point about sexism in the binary gendered world. Again, it's appealing to its core audience of privileged cis women who might indeed fantasize about magically switching to male and not having to deal with bothersome sexism any more. This impression was reinforced when I read that that part of the story was based on the experiences of a cis female friend of Bujold's who went to a drag workshop and had an awesome time being treated respectfully when in male drag. I mean, that's cool and all, but it bothered me as a depiction of actually transitioning.

So, ok, I am very much the sort of "typical" Bujold reader I'm complaining about here: I am privileged to live in a situation where I have a vocabulary for noodling about not really having a very strong gender identity, and not get any real grief for that, but at the same time I'm pretty much content being socially and somatically female, so I am not at all in a good position to assess literary portrayals of non-binary, genderqueer and trans characters!

Re: long comment is long

[kaberett]

Oh good - I'm glad it was useful. (I'm currently wandering off from comments several times a sentence, so sorry if this one ends up a bit disjointed.)

I'm really, really hacked off about the lingering descriptions of Miles' body with which it's apparently necessary to start each book he features in.

[actually this tab has been open all day so have some bulletpoints]

- yes, very poor authorial choices about hermaphrodite, "it", etc, but I am still sufficiently starved for that kind of character that willing to forgive (hopefully in 10 years' time I'll look back & be appalled)
- Dono: yeah, not perfect, and yeah, I should maybe go back and reread (but not right now), and wow I hadn't come across that back story and it's really problematic... but honestly I felt it was a much better portrayal of trans* characters than we normally get in SFF, it was something I could in part relate to, it didn't seem TOTALLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG, which... yeah, better than expected. my notes in the spreadsheet were v much intended for self - when I started this off I didn't expect to share them - so they are rather more shorthandy and less elaborate than tehy would be otherwise. Also I suspect I am just really envious of Betan technology.

Might come back to all of this more later when I am less woefully attention-spanned and insomniac. Sorry for disjointedness, but didn't want to leave this awesome thought-provoking comment without any response :-(

[liv]

Thank you again for more thinky stuff. I'm really enjoying discussing this with you, and I hope we'll get to have a long relaxed chat about the series in person one day.

I hope this isn't coming across as one of those internet arguments where there's a competition to be more outraged than thou about some authorial imperfection. I don't at all think you're wrong to appreciate the good things about Miles, Bel and Dono being present; I likewise appreciate them being there at all, being characters in their own right and not just there to teach the normative majority a Special Life Lesson.

I got overexcited about the surgically created nutes in Ian McDonald's River of Gods, even though if I put my political analysis hat on, I think there's a lot wrong with the way that book handles gender variance (not to mention that it's yet another European writing about exotic India). So in some ways yes, I know how you feel about Bel. And envious of Betan technology, I can't even begin to emphasise sufficiently how much I agree with you there!

[jack]

Having read what both of you have written, I'm reminded of debates I've seen about novels which have famously been one of the first to feature a major female character, or a major black character, or a major gay character, or a major bisexual character, etc, etc.

It seems very often the case there is a novel is famous for writing a strong, sympathetic character from group X, which was an incredibly, incredibly positive role model compared to the majority of previous fiction, which tended to show people from group X as non-existant, as abberations, as inherently inferior and/or as villains.

But that at the same time, the portrayal of the character is actually offensively ignorant compared to the modern standards.

I think people often go through the same sort of revelation as they get older: a story they loved when they were younger for doing P, Q and R well they now are revolted by by how badly it handled X, Y and Z, which they'd never thought about when they were younger. (As in "this story has been visited by the 'suck fairy' or 'racism fairy' who added racism to the story since I last read it.)

It's difficult to deal with because we automatically want to say "this does this well" or "this does this badly", and so you have people getting polarised: people who happened to be exposed to the positive aspects first get more and more defensive about how it's good, and people who happen to be exposed to the negative aspects first get more and more critical. (Congratulations to Alex and Liv for NOT doing this, not that I'd expect it.)

And it can be very controvertial to consider whether the author "should" have been able to do better.

It seems likely this is the case with Dono. It's incredibly, incredibly uplifting to see a trans character who is, well, awesome (and there are practically none other AT ALL) and Bujold does very well by not shying away from it. But (although I don't know enough to speak authoritatively) it seems likely that several things about him (the assumption that it's possible to choose a gender? the assumption that she/he remains attracted to the opposite sex?) while possible, are sort of ignorant of real-life transsexuality, and (I guess) some people may find very offensive, even though I don't _want_ to dwell on the ways an awesome character may fall short..?

[kaberett]

From my own perspective, with what was in the text I was able to interpret Dono as having been trans throughout his life but only getting the impetus to transition under the circumstances under which, well, he did transition - it takes a lot to be willing to face up to the social disapprobation.

As for changes in sexuality... no, that's pretty common (on the other hand, so is sexuality remaining static!). My experience is very much that my sexuality is fluid depending on what I'm doing with HRT at the time (I thus far have asexual, pansexual and MAAAAAAAAAAAANLY MEN covered), and I know other trans* people with the same experience, so I was actually totally fine with that.

[kaberett]

No, it's totally fine, I have been really enjoying this conversation and not feeling attacked/got at at all. The lack of spoons is completely unrelated, and actually talking to people is really good for me, even if I'm having more difficulty stringing together coherent thought than normal. (In "why I shouldn't be trying to do a master's right now" shockers...)

[damerell]

Or perhaps Wrede wrote a perfectly unexceptional piece of alternative history which was not, in fact, appalling at all.

I do like how the author of that attack on Bujold manages to simultaneously complain about a lack of rigour and slip in the fatuous notion that native Americans lived "in harmony with nature".

[liv]

Meh, I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the Thirteenth Child issues 2-3 years ago, and I don't want to rehash all that now with you, certainly not in kaberett's journal. I know what I think about the choice to write AH where there were no Native Americans, and I don't particularly think that everyone who disagrees with my conclusion (eg Bujold, you) or enjoys Wrede's book is evil. My problem with Bujold here is the way she chose to argue her case, implying that all possible criticisms of the book, and all the hurt and anger, were necessarily illegitimate. Absolutely, some people who disapproved of the book also used rhetoric I have a problem with. I still agree with that group, as it happens.