Dear SFWA Writers: Let’s Chat About Censorship & Bullying by Kameron Hurley
May 31, 2013
So. I get it. The world used to agree with you.
You used to be able to say things like, “I really like those lady
writers in this industry, especially in swimsuits!” and your fellow
writers, editors, agents, and other assorted colleagues would all wink
and grin and agree with you, and Asimov would go around pinching women’s
asses, and it was so cool! So cool that he could just sexually assault
women all the time! You used to be able to say, “Black people are fine.
As long as they are clean and don’t live in my neighborhood,” and your
friends and colleagues would wink and grin and agree with you. You’d
say, “Gay men are gay because they were abused, and all lesbians are
really bisexual and just need the love of a good man,” and hey, it was
Ok, because no one disagreed with you.
You came to believe that what you believed, and what you said, was
true. It was the narrative. You felt happy and self-important about it,
because you got it. Sure, you were tolerant. You accepted everyone! You
just told it like it was. You stated your opinion. Maybe sometimes
people said stuff like, “Well, maybe that’s kind of racist” but you just
waved your hand and bellowed, “I’m not a racist!” and then stopped
inviting them to parties. Problem solved.
In fact, everyone you knew agreed with you when you said these
things, or, if they didn’t agree, they grinned and winked and gritted
their teeth instead. In fact, a lot more of them likely gritted their
teeth and bore it than you could ever imagine. But by stating your
opinion without getting disagreement or pushback, a funny thing
happened. You started to believe that your narrative was the only
narrative. That your opinion was the sound one. The only one. Absolute,
untouchable truth.
Well, welcome to 2013. And the world wide web, where everybody, even
those underprivileged nobodies you never had to listen to before, has a
chance to be heard.
Surprise. Not everybody agrees with you. In fact, many have not
agreed with you for a long, long time and because you lived such an
insulated life, only talking on forums with the same old people, about
the same old things, you started to believe that nobody disagreed with
you. You’d never even experienced what it was like to have the very
people you were denigrating say to you, out loud, “You’ve gravely
disrespected me.” And if they did, they were just humorless bitches, and
nobody wanted to work with them anyway, and they weren’t in any power
to impact your career, being little bitches and all, so you didn’t pay
any real attention.
That was your privilege.
Worse, because you likely occupied a place of power in the hierarchy
of the publishing industry, having a lot of books under your belt and a
lot of contacts, nobody publicly disagreed with you. They feared the
repercussions. They knew that you and your little groups of established
pros could ruin their careers. They knew you’d call them mad, humorless,
and not somebody fun to be around or do business with. So they sucked
it up. They smiled. They played along. They drank whiskey and made fun
of other women with you. You may not even have realized it. Because that
was your privilege.
In order to do business in a biased, sexist, racist, fucked up
industry, you have to plaster on your smile and nod when people say the
most outrageously disrespectful, fucked-up things about you and people
like you. When these dudes tell you it’s nice that you write novels but
it sure would be nice if you had better tits so they could put you in
bikini armor and slap you on the cover of their industry magazine for
their buddies to leer at, you just smile, ha-ha isn’t that funny and get
them another beer because you’re desperate to be in their upcoming
anthology. Yes, I have a sense of humor! Please don’t boot me from this
organization! I want to make this my career, so I will smile at every
disrespectful sexist thing you say and pretend it’s totally hilarious!
Because this is what I’ve been trained to do. It’s how I get ahead. It’s
the only way.
I know this from experience. This blog has a lot more fucking teeth before I started publishing books.
And while these women or people of color are smiling at you they’re
actively writing their own stories, and growing their own audiences, and
hoping for the day when everybody finally stands up and says, “You
know, actually, disrespecting half your colleagues and reducing them to a
pair of tits or collection of bigoted stereotypes isn’t OK.”
But why? You might ask. Why’d people grin and bear it?
Folks, we have
to grin and bear it in an organization where 48 people voted for an
organizational president who wanted to disenfranchise half the electorate.
Women’s right to vote. In my own industry. In the one that pays me to
write books. 48 people who were happy to publicly endorse turning me
into a non-human. How many more were sympathetic to this? How many that I
don’t know about?
I’m not immune to criticism on the internet. I’m from a privileged
population, too. I’m white, and American, and middle class. I am adept
at getting yelled at from all sorts of people. I’ve had people angry
with me about racist and homophobic tropes they identified in my books,
people brave enough to stand up and say, “You know what? This thing you
did here? Did you see that? It’s not OK. It hurt.”
And you know what? That is not censorship. That is brave.
Let me tell you something about censorship and bullying. Because I’ve
experienced that – what that REALLY is, too. Bullying censorship is
death threats and sexual threats. Endless ones. Endless on a scale you cannot even imagine.
It’s coordinated attacks from people who really would rather you were
dead than keep talking on the internet. Dead and raped, preferably.
People get angry. Nobody has to agree with you anymore. Nobody is
afraid of you anymore. I know this may come as a massive shock to folks
used to a position of power, insulated by groups of people who are happy
to stroke their egos and soothe their souls. Truth be told, many of
these people don’t even *feel* like they’re in power. I know I never do.
But it’s time to face the fact that people disagree with you, and
that’s their right.
I have dealt with people actually trying to silence me from the
moment I posted my first blog post in 2004. And because of that, I find
myself deeply offended to hear you equating some folks saying, “You
know, maybe my industry magazine should be a little more respectful of
all of its members, not just the dudes,” that you say you’re targeted by
some massive witchhunt meant to emasculate a bunch of dudes who are
used to everyone agreeing with them in every way imaginable. Your
insistence that your’e being bullied by Nazis trivializes the actual
bullying, death threats, and sexual threats people get in this industry
simply for asking to be treated like human beings.
Here are some tips on how to take criticism, real criticism, on the
internet, from somebody who has been dealing with both sides of this for
a decade:
Start actually listening. For once in your privileged life, listen.
Listen. Because if I punched you, and you said “Gosh, that really hurt”
and I said, “YOU ARE FUCKING CENSORING ME YOU FUCKING COMMUNIST” you’d
think I was insane.
Listen. Do better. Understand privilege and power. Understand why
people didn’t speak up before. Why you didn’t hear it before. If you hit
somebody, and you really didn’t mean to would you say, “Well, it’s your
fault for having tits?” or would you say “I’m so sorry I hit you. That
wasn’t my intention. I will actively work to not hit you in the future.”
I know what somebody who was genuinely interested in open, honest,
respectful dialogue with people they considered humans and colleagues
would do.
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