My heart bleeded, girl

...only in this case, that is wrong-headed advice.

Okay, I've spent yesterday and today immersed in Racefail again, and a lot of people have said a lot of things way more eloquently than I'm sure I can. But a couple of things have really leaped out at me that I want to comment on.

Post after post, comment after comment, I'm seeing a lot of I have no idea what happened and I don't want to know and I haven't really been following this, but... and I'm staying as far aways from this as I can... and I just...

Okay, there are very few things I'm less interested in than SF/F. But this isn't just a "flamewar" in a fandom that's not mine, or a fight among a bunch of fantasy writers and readers. There's, like, really important things being said and while it's nice to be able to say "not interested, doesn't affect me," it really does. Every time people are hurt and devalued and dismissed and rendered invisible, it affects me, or at least it certainly should.

So rydra_wong has been doing a heroic job of collecting links here. The sheer amount of links is intimidating at this point, but there are summaries and timelines in there, and really, just click one link and chances are it will take you to more and more amazing and infuriating places.

Now, I know that Elizabeth Bear has since apologized for this post, but she still made it in the first place, and in all that verbiage, a couple of things struck me.

I don't get how people who make their living writing, for crying out loud, can have such a hard time making themselves understood. EBear's Post of Condescension and Martyrdom is just ridiculous in its over the top pontificating. Like, there was droning on and on and soon the reader is all, wait, are you still talking? I guess it serves its purpose, though, in making it easier for the writer to say That's not what I meant! when someone objects.

Also, in her earlier Post of Toxicity, tnh used prose that one normally doesn't see outside of a bad Regency romance novel. I wanted to laugh at all her blather, except the content was of course, not particularly amusing. I'm not linking to that post, partly because it really is toxic, and partly because I can't keep up with whether it's locked or not, and I don't really care.

Edited to lose the word "hysteria."

Anyway, that wasn't my real point. I was just indulging myself in a little snark there. My real point is that matociquala said that in discussions of race, PoC have the privilege. And besides being a self-pitying kind of thing to say, it's wrong. In discussions of race, PoC have authority. That's very different from privilege.

Okay, my really real point here is to tell you to read bossymarmalade's answer to matociquala's whiny ramble about how everyone should shut up now. It's as beautiful as Maggie is.