Re the Elizabeth Moon thing

[sqbr]

Does anyone have a link to a nice clear straightforward post which goes through point-by-point why what she said was bad? I'm having a discussion on twitter and most of what I can find is either more broad or just people bolding the relevant sections (which was enough for me, but hey) EDIT: An open Letter to Elizabeth Moon is pretty good, as are the comments in the various screncaps of the original post. EDIT: Elf has also very nobly written exactly the sort of post I was looking for.

For more see elf's linkspam.

And of course since she got disinvited from being GOH (which does not mean she's been banned from the con) people are trotting out all sorts of racist and Islamophobic crap. There's this huge assumption that "muslim" is somehow a distinct category from American and feminist and nerd. That because in their minds Islam is a sexist/violent religion overall (and I don't think it is anyway(*)) any muslim who might be interested in going to a feminist science fiction con is going to be sexist and violent too. Bah.

And now people who would never go to Wiscon and don't care about feminism are getting involved and causing more drama. If you think all feminism is overly sensitive and PC then obviously the standards expected at a feminist con are going to seem overly sensitive and PC to you. If the basic premise of the con has no value in your eyes, what is she losing by being no longer honoured by it? Bah!

(*)I suppose it's possible that if you took all the members of all the religious belief systems in the world and took a measure of their average violence/sexism then Islam would win. Or maybe atheists would win, or Chistians or Buddhists or Jains (ok, probably not Jains) Who knows! Who cares! There's nothing in Islam that forces any individual muslim to be sexist or violent, as should be obvious to anyone who's actually met any muslims.

Comments

[ex_gretel640]

I don't have a link, but I did have serious headdesking urges when I saw the 'I don't see anything bad' lines.

[keeva]

There were plenty of point-by-point refutations of Moon in the comments she deleted. :)

[sqbr]

Oh, you're right, links to comments that we now cannot see was the other sort of post. *shakes fist at Elizabeth Moon*

[ex_pippin880]

iirc there are caps of (some of?) the deleted comments in the sf_d or unfunnybusiness write up

[ex_pippin880]

http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/3052731.html
http://pics.livejournal.com/bloodparade/pic/0000dp2c
http://pics.livejournal.com/bloodparade/pic/0000cadx

http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunnybusiness/286927.html
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IkYLm6LAMLsJ:e-moon60.livejournal.com/335480.html%3Fformat%3Dlight
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/1442/emooncap2.jpg
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5820/emooncap3.jpg

[sqbr]

Thankyou!

[cryptolect]

Collection of screencaps here: http://maevele.dreamwidth.org/357675.html#comments

And yes some of the refutations in comments were really elegant.

[sqbr]

Thanks!

[trinker]

Do any of those screencaps contain the first page, expanded?

[cryptolect]

I have not yet seen any single screencap which shows the whole of any of the pages with all comments unfurled. I'm not sure that would even have been possible. All of the pages were continuing to grow at a rate up until they were deleted, I believe. Perhaps someone with great collage skills could step in.

[leecetheartist]

http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/335480.html

[sanguinity]

...um, I'm going to get all math-nerd here, but when you said "average" I of course wondered if average is the right measure (as, you know, I do). And I am now toying with the idea that a lot of people making these arguments are probably comparing the average Muslim to the median Christian. I.e., with Muslims, the skew produced by extreme outliers totally totally counts, while with Christians, that skew is an error that should be overlooked/managed/compensated for in one's choice of statistic.

But as you said, even if you could calculate these statistics (and do so without observer bias, blah blah), it still wouldn't matter. You wouldn't have shown causality, and you'd be discriminating against individuals based on your perception of the group.

[sqbr]

Oh no, anything but maths nerdery :D

a lot of people making these arguments are probably comparing the average Muslim to the median Christian. I.e., with Muslims, the skew produced by extreme outliers totally totally counts, while with Christians

Worse, I think they're comparing the median North American Christian to their (inaccurate) perception of the average Middle Eastern muslim. I live near some of the most populous muslim countries in the world and they never seem to come up in this sort of analysis from people in the US (they do in Australia, and it changes the Islamophobic rhetoric slightly).

[sanguinity]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.


And back to the original purpose of your post, you caught elf's line-by-line analysis of the original post, yes?

[sqbr]

Yes! But I don't think I remembered to add a link in this post, which was silly.

[furikku]

My favorite part is how WisCon is now apparently being fascist and/or cowardly because they disinvited Moon. -_-

[bunny_m]

*rolls eyes exasperatedly*

[sqbr]

Yes! They're wishy washy cowardly fascists, sharia-law-following woman hating PC feminists and uppity over-critical stiflers of open debate!

[furikku]

And all at once, too! Truly, WisCon is the con for everyone (to hate)!

[djkittycat]

<3 for you, really. That's I have to say.

I meant what I said about Perth being on the list if I ever get to Oz.

[sqbr]

Aw shucks :)

[elf]

Does anyone have a link to a nice clear straightforward post which goes through point-by-point why what she said was bad?

I couldn't find one, so I wrote one. It's long.

[sqbr]

Wow! Thanks! (I have been trying to reply to you for like two days, thus you get a short answer while I can still get dw to load...)