On E. Moon and Wiscon

[netmouse]

The group that runs Wiscon has announced that they've rescinded their invitation to Elizabeth Moon to be a Guest of Honor next year.

For those who've missed it, a general outcry for the removal of Moon as guest arose among many Wiscon regulars after she made this post: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/335480.html and then failed to respond to most of the comments identifying inaccuracies and problematic implications in her statements about the Manhattan community center proposal, Islam, immigrants, and conformity. Many were willing to engage with her about it, however, until she deleted all the comments on her post and froze it with a disparaging coda (see discussion at http://community.livejournal.com/wiscon/284008.html for instance). Meantime, screen captures of many of the comments exist (see http://maevele.livejournal.com/335158.html) though many of the most poignant comments were made on the personal blogs of fans of color - DeepaD did a roundup of some of those at http://deepad.dreamwidth.org/57932.html.

The initial response of the conchairs, http://wiscon.info/downloads/W35eCube3.html, indicated they did not intended to rescind their invitation to Moon, but today a terse announcement indicated that "SF3, the parent organization of WisCon, has withdrawn the invitation to Elizabeth Moon to attend WisCon35 as a guest of honor".

I followed this some as it was happening, though I didn't find time right away to visit the comments thread on Moon's blog. I read Will Shetterly's collection of her responses to him at http://racefail.blogspot.com/2010/09/mixed-feelings-about-elizabeth-moons.html, appreciated Jim Hines' post at http://www.jimchines.com/2010/09/open-letter-to-elizabeth-moon/ and read N.K Jemisin's posts at http://nojojojo.livejournal.com/221241.html, http://nojojojo.livejournal.com/221476.html and http://nojojojo.livejournal.com/223115.html.

On the last post I linked to by Jemisin, vito_excalibur commented, "I am not hearing any real arguments for why to keep Moon as GoH, and so there's this weird effect where it seems like there's a consensus that the right thing to do is uninvite her...and that doesn't happen." That crystallized some thoughts of mine that I put in a comment, which triggered a discussion Nora and others pointed out was off-topic to her post, so I said I would try to post here about it soon. It took me a couple days (newborn baby keeps me off the computer, plus I wanted to catch up reading the captured screenshots), but this is that post - anyone who wants to respond to what I said, or to what others said in response to me, please do it here.

After further reading, I understand more about why Moon's mainly religiously bigoted post has strong racist tendencies - characterizing American Muslims as immigrants, and pushing for the "normalization" of the Different (which many argue could never go far enough, since skin color can not be erased, and Unreasonable people will still be Unreasonable and one should not kowtow to them) as a prudent path of action.

Jane Irwin has also made a good post, with more links, at http://www.vogelein.com/JanerBlog/racefail/
I've not yet found time to read all those links, but encourage those who would comment to go do so first.

Comments

[urban-exotic.livejournal.com]

I intensely admire that you willingly linked to a comment you made that a lot of people reacted quite poorly to in order to facilitate discussion on the subject. Not a lot of people would do that. Kudos to you.

Another example from another convention

[the-archfiend.livejournal.com]

I'll put it like this: I'm not sure how much post-controversy editing Moon may have engaged in, but considering that James P. Hogan was a GoH at Capricon despite his wacko beliefs (beliefs I only found out about after the con), I'll admit that I have somewhat mixed sentiments on this. Granted, what she wrote - and the way she responded - is suspect, but is it any *less* suspect than someone who trumpeted everything from the truth of Velikovsky's woo physics to the actual *lionization* of neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel as a "hero" on his web site?

WisCon had every right to make their decision, but I'll have to look at this more closely before I either agree or disagree with it.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Wow. Your comments to that thread are awesome.

There is much to disagree with in Ms. Moon's post, but the over-reaction is staggering. "Grieving"? This is a "wake"?

I suppose it is. Other cons are celebrations. Eery time I hear about Wiscon in the blogosphere it reinforces the impression I had from attending Wiscon, that it is for grieving.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

she has absorbed the bigotry and generalizations that prevailed in this country 25 years ago toward Muslims

Um. *What* bigotry and generalizations that prevailed in this country 25 years ago towards Muslims? Before 1985 (after 1960), anti-Muslim prejudice correlated with number of Muslim immigrants in your country. Since then, the western world has been beating the war drums, making a new enemy. After Sept 11, 2001, anti-Muslim prejudice shot up, and since then has grown in all eastern & western European countries, unrelated to population figures.

Our culture is changing fast, in ugly directions.

(Would you like some data to back that up? Cf., http://courses.washington.edu/pbafadv/muslim%20predjudice.pdf )