Before I say more -- if you're the kind of person who, when given some pieces of evidence which will lead to a meaningless piece of gossip, the repetition of which can only cause distress, can't resist putting those pieces together (even though there is nothing of any real significance to be gained other than the satisfaction of your curiosity about a total stranger...) PLEASE DO NOT READ ON.
And yes, I do expect people to have a modicum of self-restraint and common decency. Same way I expect people not to steal, rape, or murder -- up until they prove themselves to be the kind of people who don't put any effort into refraining from theft, rape, or murder.
And at this point I have to say that to me being willing to give character testimony when you believe a friend has been maligned or falsely accused is not, in my book, a bad thing to do. I will always reserve some respect for those who speak truth to power, and a little more when they have nothing to gain but could get away with staying silent with no one considering them to be cowards.
I'm pretty sure you can skip this explanation and go straight to the fianl bit about what disturbed me and still make sense of it, but this is how I got there so I'm leaving a trail of large sandwich loaves --
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=2787
Scott Bakker wrote a post (and follow-ups) about ... well it's not a review of his book, although some commenters have tried to call it a review (so as to dismiss both men under the 'real professional writers wouldn't respond to a negative review' rule) -- but if you claim not to have read the book beyond five pages you can't write a review about it and ACM doesn't. The entire piece is about the writer and uses a small section of this interview as a... prompt --
http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-r-scott-bakker-interview-part-1.html
Scroll down to where the interviwer asks "In a Q&A you did five years ago, you brought up the issue of exploring sexism in the guise of what if religious tracts were correct about the "inferiority" of women. Despite this, you've received some flak for the lack of female characters that aren't variations of the "crone, whore, or saint." Has this affected your portrayals of some of the female characters?
-- ."
If you decide to evaluate the posts for yourself, I'd suggest reading this single answer section *before* -- or at the very least in tandem with -- reading the ACM 'review' at --
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/r-scott-bakker-prince-of-misogyny/
I think it's worth noting that ACM introduces the source material as "A lot of people complained about this. Bakker fired back with this:" Which might be why some commenters have thought Bakker's words were in a reply to a critical review or particularly directed at those criticising his work.
Now, I'm not going to pretend I haven't taken a person's own words and commented on them until they probably wished they hadn't phrased them that way, but... Oh boy.
ACM and others make much of SB still thinking about her review months later. Oddly enough I can understand wanting to comment on an issue, especially one like this, many months after it came up -- with me it's not only stories that brew over months but ideas about what I'm witnessing and why-this-shit-happens. That occurs even when people have not made nasty personal comments. I'm fairly surprised at people who support the 'OMG I'm destroyed for life by the use of an inappropriate word' crowd being amazed that words that are *meant* to wound do indeed stay with one.
Whatever... that's the background to the Watts post in a nutshell.
So we get to the Rifters post, where Watts does his little bit of character testimony, and then gets to
"Also, there is at least one rabid animal who hates it [the book*] , someone who goes by the monicker “acrackedmoon”. Notice what I did there: I reduced a fellow human being to the status of a mentally-diseased animal. I thought long and hard about doing that. It surprises me a little that I’m willing to sink so low, so early in the discussion (maybe I won’t; maybe I’ll have second thoughts and edit it out before I post.) (Guess not.) I’d generally show more restraint, but for the fact that acm has beaten me to that particular punch by referring to Scott Bakker as “a self-important little roach”. She calls him a number of other things, too, but I figure that particular shot justifies my own epithet (which at least accords acm the dignity of remaining a mammal**)."
[Commenters have highlighted Watts calling ACM a rabid animal as being dehumanising. It does not, apparantly, matter that ACM uses dehumanising terms (roach, maggot, excrement etc) for people herself. She did it first -- is not considered a defence. Even when it is made quite clear that Watts is making a couple of points about the use of dehumanising insults rather than one about who started it. THIS IS NOT A BTW.]
I am aware that there was a deal of tweeting happening. But, in case you were under the impression that this is a post about Scott Bakker and ACM and Peter Watts... it isn't. Let's move to the comments... and the usual smear attempts (OMG you insulted mentally ill people!***) and people excusing her nastiness because she's entertaining**** and people warning about engaging with trolls/attentionwhores -- scroll scroll and...
Peter Watts : "As for my attitudes (and presumed implicit approval towards) sexual violence (at least, the nonconsensual kind), I’m painfully aware that I can’t speak to what that experience means to anyone who suffers it. However, the protagonist of my first novel was based upon a woman I was involved with [edit to further obscure the ref -- this does not remove any name or identifying feature that could be *easily* traced back to a particular person] who’d been victimized. I’ve since had a variety of friends and lovers who’ve had various forms of abuse in their past. On a more dispassionate note, I was involved for a while with the manager of the domestic violence lab at UBC, and got a whole whack of horrific data via that avenue. I know that in all likelihood, I’ll never know first-hand what any of that is like, and I don’t pretend to: but before you show the temerity to suggest that I take a light view of sexual abuse, you might want to learn what the fuck you’re talking about first.
ACM: I hope you, like, asked and got her permission to do that. You did, right? [plus some other digging]
[Some commenters have tried to avoid that ACM is implying that a writer has to ask permission to use his knowledge of other people's experiences to inform his characters. Imagination is a fine thing, knowing yourself well enough to draw characterisation from self-knowledge likewise, but without some knowledge of other people...]
Peter Watts: [9.34 am] I thought she was dead; I only found out this year that she isn’t. But it’s nothing anyone would recognize. I didn’t tuckerise the name or anything, and when your character is a genetically tweaked surgically-altered deep-sea diver circa 2050 there’s not much that survives in the way of telltale biography. I [Ed. (by Watts) redaction after the horse has fled the barn]. I’m told she’s flattered.
[The information given was not a name, or partial name, but did make it possible to discover the name if one were that flawed a kind of person.]
Peter Watts: [10.34 am] ACM just posted the above tweet to her elite corps of 88 followers. -- requireshate: So Peter Watts didn’t actually ask/get permission before basing a character on an abuse survivor [edited by me, for clarity -- the tweet was originally first] Knowing that I thought the woman in question had been dead for decades. Knowing that even though it turns out that she’s still alive, she is, according to my best information, flattered by [Ed. (by Watts) redaction after the horse has fled the barn]. Knowing nothing about character or the person, beyond the fact that the former is an undersea cyborg with no significant biographical details in common with the latter. Knowing, in fact, nothing at all. Nothing about the woman I knew, or my relationship with her. Nothing about the circumstances under which we separated, or how I came to my conclusions about her fate; nothing about how either of us felt about the other. She posts this.
[Again, what ACM is initially protesting is not the outing but Watts basing a character on someone without asking their permission to do so... I have questions for any writer who agrees that this is wrong. And yes, it's another "u'r evul me 4 teh win!" slamdunk attempt]
[There some further comments about the need or not to get permission to use what another person has told you, or you have observed about them, to write fictional characters -- no one says anything about 'outing' until]
Kalon: [4.01pm] Just curious, Peter – do you seriously see nothing wrong with telling the world that a character in your books was modeled after a real life person who was a victim of abuse and that you [Ed.(by Watts) redaction after the horse has fled the barn], all without requesting or receiving her permission? Does she know you’ve done this? That you connected ‘abuse victim’ with [Ed. (by Watts) redaction after the horse has fled the barn]? Because that seems to be a lot worse than not asking her permission to model a character after her; that’s basically telling the world that this specific person was abused or victimized without their consent. If she did tell you that it was fine to connect the dots to your audience, that’s another thing. I hope that’s the case; many people do not want that kind of publicity or discussion about their abuse or surviving it to the general populace, much less from a third party – and from my completely uninformed position that’s exactly what it looks like happened, albeit inadvertently.
Peter Watts: [4.53pm] Check and mate. I was careful not to name names in the thread, but if anyone cares enough to [edited by me to further obscure the path to useless gossip] they can connect the dots. I feel sick about that. You’re right that it was completely inadvertent; it wasn’t even insensitive, insofar as I’d been careful to protect the memory of an absent-presumed-dead ex-partner in both separate instances. But it was deeply stupid. I was angry because someone had accused me of trivializing sexual violence; I was trying to show that I didn’t do that, and I fell for the feint. I should have put more thought into it.
So immediately he knew there was a possibility of the connection being made Peter Watts did his best to make it harder for people to put the pieces together.
Still over on ROH, ACM's reaction to the outing accusation is -- http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/intermission-white-mens-tears-and-the-insecurity-of-the-privileged/#comments
ACM: Addendum: Through a combination of dropping certain information, Peter Watts has outed an abuse survivor to total strangers on a non-private, non-confidential channel. There is not enough “lord cocks this is so so so repulsive.” What the fuck was he thinking. Oh, that’s right. Railing against an imaginary accusation that he condones rape and using another person to bolster his "I'm not sexist cred". Yes, this was done witbhout obtaining express consent."
[The mind boggles. The mind especially boggles as to how any commenter can come away from this thinking ACM is... a person who cares. Actually I think what ACM does is appropriation. She rails and rants but she's appropriating the real hurts and suffering of others for the purposes of self-aggrandizement. She doesn't care, she just plays someone who cares on TV. Does she also damage the causes she pretends to be championing? Maybe. She certainly doesn't appear to have the slightest concern that she may have contributed to an unpleasant experience for a particular individual (she claims to care about) except where it gives her the chance to rage some more. It's all about her. And yes, it is so very very repulsive.]
The accusation of outing an abuse survivor travelled places and linkaged was created.
[Little birds are saying that ACM is the infamous Winterfox... So, synchronistically, the rabid animal ref was rather apt]
...
Now, for the bit that stuck in my brain from this, and it's a long post for a tiny bit...
[I commented elsewhere that I was a little uncertain about the way the accidental disclosure was treated as though it was about some dark and secret shame -- because I think treating a piece of information as shameful has the tendancy to make it so. (Yes, this person may not have wanted others to know, especially not the kind of random strangers who'd bother to 'put the pieces together' and discover her name. BUT, as far as this experience is concerned, treating the revelation as if it were by default something she needs to hide... No I'm not saying outing is good, but I am saying that reacting to this as if it were a special criminal act is maybe sending a weird vibe to abuse survivors.)]
No one I saw comment actually cared about the woman concerned. They appeared to feel that for someone to use the few innocently dropped clues to identify her was not a matter of purient curiosity but perfectly normal. Not really a matter of choice at all, because Peter Watts had outed her. They were just... compelled to put the pieces together. Compelled also to try and make those pieces available to others, so as to prove Peter Watts was the scum of the earth.
Remember this? -- She did it first -- is not considered a defence. Even when it is made quite clear that Watts is making a couple of points about the use of dehumanising insults rather than one about who started it. THIS IS NOT A BTW. --
Even when challenged on the unfortunate circumstances that meant the information which identified the woman in question was made more widely available, there was no regret, no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility... only the steadfast certainty that Peter Watts was the villian of the piece.
His was the mistake. He said it first. He is the most to blame.
...
Forget religion, or humanism, or whatever -- inner peace and certainty, never having to say you're sorry, requires only that you hate.
That's disturbed me.
* although again -- from her post -- I see very little book hate but a lot of author hate.
** animals, as a biology teacher of mine once observed with glee (because I'd also equated animals with mammals) are a kingdom while mammals are only one class in that kingdom, so the term animal encompasses animals which are not mammals.
*** - yup had similar crap turn up in my own comments -- the u'r evul me 4 teh win! ploy)
**** I'm not personally entertained by performance rage but whatever lights your candle... so long as you know it's bad and don't try to pretend it's good just because you enjoy it.
[And to the person who visited from Thailand the day I was making those comments elsewhere... Hi!]