Racefail 09
Mar. 6th, 2009 05:28 pmNOTE - Kathryn Cramer has been redirecting the pages where she outed coffeeandink to a spam/malware site. So please don't click on those links.
Rydra Wong has a detailed timeline of the events here (mind you, it's long): http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/146697.html
Read these links first to get a better idea of what's going on:
http://seeking-avalon.blogspot.com/2009/01/timeline.html
http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/155427.html
http://spiralsheep.livejournal.com/
http://kynn.livejournal.com/976706.html
Basically mattador sums it up best at http://mattador.livejournal.com/574525.html : RaceFail has been an ongoing, repeatedly-derailed discussion about race issues in science fiction and the science fiction fan community, in which a large number of white authors, editors, and publishers behave very badly.
I am seriously disturbed by Shetterly's wife Emma Bull saying that people should not judge Shetterly by his behaviour on the Internet. Re: Elizabeth Bear saying that Shetterly is a nice person offline - that is irrelevant. A person who behaves like a dick on the Internet and acts nice offline isn't a nice person. They're a dick, plain and simple.
Kathryn Cramer (an SF editor) and William Shetterly (an SF author) have both linked coffeeandink's LJ to her full name. Shetterly has outed coffeeandink repeatedly, even though she asked him not to do this many times. This is just made of massive fail. You should never, EVER out people's real names on the Internet when they ask you not to do this. Outing people's names can put them at risk of experiencing harassment, stalking and abuse offline and online.
William Shetterly has also posted false and offensive assumptions about vom_marlowe's and deepad's life situation. He has also posted false assumptions about , ithiliana, icecreamempress, and veejane. You can read more about this at the following links:
http://vom-marlowe.livejournal.com/315281.html
http://deepad.livejournal.com/33512.html
http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/901816.html
http://bossymarmalade.livejournal.com/483089.html
coffeeandink has listed some excellent reasons why people use pseudonyms on the Internet. The following text in italics is from her blog:
- Because it is a standard identity- and privacy-protection precaution
- Because they have experienced online or offline stalking, harassment, or political or domestic violence
- Because they wish to discuss sexual abuse, sexuality, domestic abuse, assault, politics, health, or mental illness, and do not wish some subset of family, friends, strangers, aquaintances, employers, or potential employers to know about it
- Because they wish to keep their private lives, activities, and tastes separate from their professional lives, employers, or potential employers
- Because they fear threats to their employment or the custody of their children
- Because it's the custom among their Internet cohort
- Because it's no one else's business