@Ganymede said in Separating Art From Artist:
@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:
This is a freedom to be an arsehole issue.
In the United States, this is a freedom of speech issue.
So in the US, you can say whatever you want around your colleagues, behave unprofessionally, prove yourself unsuitable for the job you were hired for and not get fired?
Hmm. I like our laws better.
I really don't see what the Forstater case has to do with freedom of speech.
If she works at a thinktank, being evaluated on how she thinks is pretty important.
If that thinktank's mission statement is ending inequality on a global scale, having thinkers who actually understand inequality and support marginalised people is, again, pretty important.
Maya Forstater wasn't prosecuted for misgendering transpeople. She sued the company she worked for because they just didn't want to renew her contract after she'd repeatedly insisted on her right to misgender people, including via work emails, and she lost that case.
This is a freedom to be an arsehole issue.
I just want to clarify: @mietze and @surreality's stories both horrify me and I don't believe anything anyone does, on any level, means they deserve that kind of harassment. I'm particularly saddened by the one about the trans kids because I think being ostracised from your own community like that when you're already a member of a marginalised group must be devastating. Marginalised groups above all, I feel, have a duty to support each other and not let purity testing get in the way of that. This is especially true for trans & queer people because they ought to realise better than anyone what a difficult journey that can be, and that it takes time for a transperson to fully embrace and become themselves.
I suppose perhaps given context it is worth adding stipulations to what constitutes acceptable action against someone whose views you disagree with, and why.
Seems fair?
I would never advocate that anyone personally beat themselves up for the actions of their ancestors, but what I inferred from @JinShei is a sense of shame as the result of a loss of national pride. I imagine it's a lot like finding out your childhood hero isn't as great as you thought they were.
And I think, personally, it's good for people to let go of national pride, at least in the sense where it becomes tribal and creates a feeling of righteousness in viewing their nation against the world, or sees their history and culture as superior to others. When school systems don't teach the honest truth about their country's history — and every country has done bad things — this becomes easy to believe because we want to believe good, pure, moral things about ourselves and our surrounding foundation. And that can easily plant the seeds for enabling imperialism, or even internally, the existing systems of class conflict that you haven't been taught to recognise.
Gonna take a break from yelling at people on the internet just to say I have loads of respect for loads of you.
@Staricide I found that video helpful.
@surreality that ectopic pregnancy pro-life scare story, wow and ugh.
@JinShei thanks for campaigning on a really important issue.
@JinShei said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:
@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:
I'm going to put my hand up and say I don't know much of anything about Hirohito, nor the IJA. I feel very embarrassed reading this thread because it's obviously something that had serious consequences on human history and that I should have been educated about it in school, though I wasn't. ... It's evident to me that Eurocentric bias has serious impacts on our education system and cataclysmically, our ability to empathise with and connect with other human beings who have a family history tied to the era.
I have to second this - my education was lacking generally because Steiner (whose own behaviour was very questionable when it came to race, gender and being in touch with any form of reality) education didn't seem to cover much history. But particularly outside of the Eurocentric view, there was nothing.
As an aside, when we moved to Australia and I went to the museum there on the history of the country, I came out entirely horrified and ashamed to be British.
I have the minor benefit of having grown up between two countries, one of which used to be a British colonial territory but is also somewhere up there in the top 5 most hated countries at the moment, at least in Britain. I'm totally used to answering for each of my countries' crimes whenever I'm in the other one. 
@faraday said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:
The leader-admiring thing? That's a subtlety and I can see both sides. Personally I would not be bothered by a character who had been convinced by propaganda that their country's leader was a good guy, even if that leader were Stalin or Hirohito. Especially if it were coming from a place of wanting to explore that character learning the truth and coming to grips with the reality that their beloved leader was partaking in war crimes. Admittedly, though, that might be too subtle for most MU stories and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to nope out of it on principle.
I would personally feel immensely disgusted interacting with any character who tried saying Hitler wasn't so bad, even if they didn't know the facts, even though the Holocaust hadn't properly started in the alternate timeline. (Per official dates; though a sense of fear/unease should have certainly started setting in.)
Like, upfront, just gonna say, I don't want to do it and will probably leave a scene if that happens. That kind of thing happens today and is used to justify modern antisemitism. Even an imagined world with an alternate timeline can't alter the real world context it's being played in.
As a note, I may feel differently about this if the Savage Skies hadn't been intentionally revised to put everyone on the side of relative good. I maintain there could be value in stories that feature even PC-controlled fascists, but these would have to be played in such a way that I understand the player's intentions are specifically to ridicule and criticise, not exonerate fascism. The Savage Skies doesn't allow for such ambiguity, so I'd prefer to see only characters that are unambiguously sympathetic — and I have no interest in reading any attempts to cast any Hitler fanboys as such.
I'm going to put my hand up and say I don't know much of anything about Hirohito, nor the IJA. I feel very embarrassed reading this thread because it's obviously something that had serious consequences on human history and that I should have been educated about it in school, though I wasn't. I instead learned more about lines of Royal Birtish succession than just about any other historical topic, which I must say was a profound waste of my time. It's evident to me that Eurocentric bias has serious impacts on our education system and cataclysmically, our ability to empathise with and connect with other human beings who have a family history tied to the era.
I know that as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I feel upset when I encounter people who don't know the facts about it, most especially if they actively dismiss, minimise or deny it. And I feel sympathy for the people on this thread who feel gaslighted by the treatment of a similar atrocity against their own people.
I'm going to make it a point to go and educate myself about this and then, hopefully, pass it on. I was vaguely aware of a history of fascism in Japan, but not the details of what occurred. I don't know if @marsmrsmars and @juneko play this game, and can't fault them if this has left a bad taste in their mouths, but if you do, I play this guy and would be interested in learning more about this through your characters' perspectives.
My sleep is funny so I just woke up, gonna respond to some comments one by one:
@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:
That argument easily reduces to 'don't become an activist if you're concerned about having a livelihood.' Is that really the stance you want to take? Like... do you not get that you're basically arguing for your own suppression? I don't get it. Most of these things (like the employment contract issue that you didn't respond on) are far more effective as tools of oppression than they are as tools of activism.
I oppose Capitalism. In my ideal world, no one's livelihood would depend on corporate mercy, and anyone who wanted to become an activist could do so without fear of, 'How am I going to feed my kids?'
However.
I also live in the real world, and I am at corporate mercy. We all are. This doesn't just mean I depend on the good opinion of superiors and consumers I come into contact with to put food on my table; it also means I depend on them to protect me from other corporate entities.
As a simple illustrative example (made up): I'm a woman at the workplace. My colleague/superior is a misogynist who likes to tweet about how women suck dick to get ahead at work, that Men should Go Their Own Way, that someone at his work has poppin' tits, or he posts an upskirt picture of a woman he rode the subway with this morning.
Any number of these things is going to make me feel incredibly unsafe at work. Whether I want to be or not, I'm both at his mercy and the mercy of my employer to decide if they'd rather protect his job, or my job, where I'm likely not to be safe near him.
I really, really hope he gets fired for this. I hope their burning question isn't, 'How is Creeper McCreeperson going to feed his kids?' And instead, 'Oh God, if Creeper McCreeperson has such a backwards view of women, how is he treating our female employees? How do they feel having to share a workspace with him?'
I do not feel oppressed as an activist. It's a choice I actively make each and every time I either take to the streets or volunteer some of my time for a cause I care about. Is it always easy? No. It has pros and cons that go beyond simply time management; it can be emotionally draining, though it can also be wonderfully empowering and a great way to connect with like-minded people. When the cons start to outweigh the pros, I take a break to focus on other aspects of my life. This would be true regardless of corporate influence. I wouldn't do this if I wasn't incredibly passionate, but it remains 100% a choice, never a necessity.
You know what isn't a choice? Being a woman, or coming from any kind of socially or economically underprivileged or marginalised background. These aren't things anyone can just take a break from. These are things I feel oppressed by, or by proxy, sympathy for other people who are oppressed by them.
I have the world's tiniest violin for those who feel oppressed by their need to express hatred and/or antisocial behaviour. Doubly so if this happens to include espousing genocide. Ultradoubly so if we're talking about rich and famous people losing positions of influence to abuse. I care a lot more about their victims. While I firmly believe in forgiveness and rehabilitation, that takes time and work, and I will not be making it my personal responsibility to provide them with it.
For me, one of the most compelling arguments on cancel culture made on this thread so far is @surreality's fear (or fear by proxy) that one stupid tweet or something similar made by a person years and years ago can damage their career far into the future. And in these cases I think there should still be consequences and accountability; you might want to post another, updated tweet, apologising years later and explaining you have learned and grown since then and no longer stand by the views you once professed. Depending on the severity, you might want to do more than that to demonstrate reparative intent and action. If it seems you're still the same shitbag? I don't really care how long ago it was, it remains relevant today. And where we're talking about people being actively racist/sexist or whatever losing opportunities, I just don't care at all.
@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:
I think I'm going to join in with the whole, 'this isn't worth engaging with the insisted narrow focus on the KKK' because, yeah, the inherent Godwin kind of makes it pointless.
It's not Godwin's Law, A) because the thread started out specifically about racism and someone who very literally endorsed Hitler in his own words not anyone else's; no one put that in Lovecraft's mouth and being cancelled for fascism is totally relevant here; and B) because while @GreenFlashlight hasn't specified their stance on this count, both myself and @insomniac7809 at least have specified that we stand by the universal principle that if you take a public stand for something, even something like gay rights or feminism, you should be willing to be held accountable for that stand.
@surreality said in Separating Art From Artist:
'Sins of the father' is a problem not to be ignored.
I don't think this is a real issue. Is Ronan Farrow suffering from lost opportunities because his father Woody Allen has been outed (in part by Ronan Farrow) as a creep? If there's a lynchmob coming for Allen — and in both my opinion and the Farrows' he hasn't suffered near enough consequences for his actions — it looks like his son's right there on the front lines bearing the biggest torch next to his sister.
It seems to me that if your heart's in the right place, though I respect and honour that it can be much more difficult to condemn a parent, being the offspring of a disgraced individual can spur, not bar you, from being an ally to whatever movement they were disgraced by.
See also: Meghan Phelps-Roper who was raised by and then left the Westboro Baptist Church and now uses the weight of her family ties to condemn them; Rachel Jeffs, daughter of the polygamous Mormon cult leader Warren Jeffs, who wrote an entire book exposing and condemning his crimes.
@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:
@Kestrel Maybe you want to eat and you don't have ready access to other employment options?
Then don't become an activist. Prioritise your need to eat and not your need to espouse controversial opinions.
No one is forcing anyone to join the KKK, Extinction Rebellion, nor to insist on misgendering transpeople. These are choices.
Choices have consequences. Don't want consequences? Choose differently.
Twitter is a place people go to build up their brand. You get hearts and retweets when you post things your target audience likes. You may lose that target audience if you post things they don't. Public adoration is a fickle thing, but gambling for it is also a choice.
I'm not interested in marketing myself for public approval, and therefore I don't have a twitter account. I both avoid the risk of losing out on the grounds of stupid tweets, and the potential benefit of gaining influence as a likeable tweeter. I also don't have a job that requires me to be at the mercy of the public eye because I know full well that I'd find that soul-sucking. If I did, I'd have the good sense to curate better.
The Maya Forstater controversy is relevant to the topic of people being fired for expressing political opinions which are at odds with their company's ethos.
I may be biased as an activist, but I think that if you care enough about a political issue to take to the streets or any public forum and rally for it, you're also the kind of person who wouldn't be happy in a work environment where your views are at odds with the existing work culture. Certainly I wouldn't want to work for Tyson Foods, and I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't want to hire me either. It would make no sense for them to. They'd be right to be very suspicious about allowing me anywhere near their facilities.
Related to the JK Rowling controversy, Maya Forstater was "forced out of her job" (in reality, they just didn't renew her contract) for being a TERF "saying sex is real". Though when you put it into context: she was working for a NGO thinktank built to fight inequality while also insisting on misgendering transpeople. The thinktank decided they didn't like her thinking. It was clearly not conducive to their brand image nor goals of fighting inequality. This seems so beyond reasonable to me I'm just baffled as to why it's controversial at all.
I believe a company is entitled to have an ethos and hire people who share that ethos. I may not agree with Tyson Foods' ethos, but I understand it. They think battery farming chickens is fine. I think those cages should be broken.
Taking a stand isn't something anyone has to do. I volunteer with Extinction Rebellion at the moment and we insist on making anyone who signs up abundantly aware of the potential consequences of their involvement. We ask new volunteers to practice "radical consent" when carefully choosing which, if any, risks they're willing to take, and offer lower-risk roles for the passionate yet cautious. For example, I have opted not to undertake any roles that could risk me getting arrested, because I can't afford a criminal record at present.
But if you choose to take a stand of your own free volition, I think it's the height of chutzpah to expect there to be no repercussions for doing so.
@Derp the difference between being a Klansman and being a Muslim is a Muslim wants to exist, and a Klansman wants other people not to exist.
Please none of this "both sides" rhetoric.
I don't think "Muslim" belongs in your list of examples. A Muslim is, a Klansman does.
If we exclude false equivalence, however, and substitute Klansman for literally any other political / religious / belief-based organization — i.e., any other kind of activist (Klansmen are activists, after all, just for a very different ideology than mine) ...
I still 100% stand behind a company's right to hire and fire in accordance with their company ethos, so long as that entails judging people for what they do, not who they are.
Companies shouldn't be allowed to fire people for being Christian. They absolutely should, however, be allowed to fire people for being Christians publicly protesting gay rights, especially if their role entails working with or having the approval of gay clients/consumers, or representing a progressive company image in the public eye.
@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:
But then again, this might also affect, say, one's college-aged activist-minded but still immature child getting spotted at a left leaning rally and losing out on future job opportunities when their would-be employer googles them.
It always cuts both ways.
Although this sucks, wouldn't the child in question be happier, in the long run?
My facebook profile is pretty clear on where I stand on political issues. I'm aware potential employers (or realistically these days, clients) google that stuff, but that doesn't actually bother me.
I was much shier about my political beliefs when I was younger and felt it was much more important to keep the peace, not rock the boat, accommodate everybody. I wanted to be nice and likeable.
You know what, though, I ended up in a job I hated, with sexist, fat-shaming employers and colleagues who would roll their eyes and shut the conversation down any time someone even dared utter the accursed word "feminism". Mind you my job had physical demands, but the fact that myself and my female colleagues were sexually harassed at work, regularly, and food-shamed at meal-times (I was stationed at a remote location for a field research job) was awful. I had just gone vegan at the time and I was not a preachy vegan. I wasn't even a strict vegan. I was a "minding my own business just eating what I want to eat" vegan yet people at my job regularly felt it was their business to tell me why I needed bacon and butter and bullied me for my choices. At a review of my leadership skills I was told off for being bossy.
This job made me beyond depressed. Also, they broke several laws concerning employee rights, which I now actively campaign for.
If someone scours for information about me on the interwebs and discovers that I'm a loud-mouthed vegan feminist and doesn't want to hire me because that? Good. I don't want to work for them, either. I want to work for and with people who think I'm fucking awesome and will treat me with respect. I want to work with men who aren't intimidated by feminism, because those are men who want license to be abusive towards their female colleagues and employees.
Really, I think a lot of this boils down to a person's willingness to accept consequences for their actions.
I am a loud-mouthed, preachy feminist & environmental advocate and I gladly accept the consequences for that.
Fascists and misogynists can do the same.
@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:
My phone auto corrected manager to master. Fuck you, phone.
BITCH WELCOME TO CAPITALISM.
@Auspice said in Separating Art From Artist:
What about the authors who can't find a publisher because something is considered 'risky' (we listed a few authors earlier in the thread whose work got pulled and was only later found to not be remotely what the naysayers said it was)?
I have 0 sympathy for this.
Don't want the hassle of struggling to get your risky material published? Don't write risky material.
Or do, and own it; that's the price of taking a stand. See: Neil Gaiman, Phillip Pullman, Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, all of whom have had books banned and I doubt they give a shit.
I look forward to one day having my books banned by the kinds of people I'm expressly trying to annoy.
@Auspice said in Separating Art From Artist:
But.
He's an example of 'cancel culture' actively hurting someone. Like I said: I've seen people be pissy about people still liking his works, refusing to reject him, etc.
Believe me or don't, but like I said to @Pandora up there, I don't practice cancel culture.
I do believe in having candid and productive conversations about it, though, and that there's value in acknowledging that pop culture is more than just face-value.
Sometimes, based on my opinions on a creator, I might not want to engage with their work anymore, which is a choice I think I'm entitled to make, just as everyone is entitled to make for themselves. I won't watch Tarantino movies anymore but I don't fault anyone else who does. They were really, really good. I just literally can't, because it gives me a visceral sense of unease which detracts from my ability to kick back and enjoy them. They're supposed to be cathartic, and at least for me, they're not anymore.
I think "cancel culture", on both sides, is much ado about nothing. (Heh for the hardcore Whedon fans out there.)
We can accept something is imperfect and criticise it without demanding the creator's head on a platter.
But also, the people actually doing that? Tiny tiny tiny minority of people on Twitter. And where anonymity is concerned, I'm not all that trusting these days of faceless mobs on the internet who could just as easily be trolls and bots.
Powerful white men aren't having their careers ended because a few woke snowflakes on Twitter feel comfortable expressing their opinions even in the most visceral ways.
Dave Chapelle's hilariously offensive show (allegedly; I haven't watched it) which brazenly stood up to PC culture? Bitch plz. There were way more articles harping on about how ballsy he was for mad owning the libs and how people are tired of being told what they can like than anyone actually complaining about it or demanding he be "cancelled".
So on both sides, maybe we should cool our jets. Nuance isn't a bad thing.
You know, the Joss Whedon thing annoys me because I don't think cheating on your wife makes you a misogynist. It makes you a piece of shit for sure, but a misogynist? Eh. There are women who cheat on their husbands, are they misandrists? I think they're just selfish.
I have not cancelled Joss Whedon and I will not cancel Joss Whedon. Sorry not sorry. I will, however, hold him accountable for his embarrassingly bad Wonder Woman script. I do think the quality of his work has deteriorated somewhat over time. I'm in the minority but I liked his early original work, and though I think he's a great script doctor, I'm significantly less interested in his adaptations and comic book movies. He's still one of my favourite creators of all time. Buffy was brilliant.
I wish Buffy had more people of colour and showcased some women of different shapes and sizes — he seems to only like casting one kind of woman and that's "thin enough to be anorexic". I get that it was the 90s and heroin chic was all the rage, but eh. Even back then as someone who was never thin enough to be anorexic (yet sometimes, problematically, wanted to be), it bugged me.
These criticisms, at least for me, however, don't overwhelm the good of the whole. People laugh when I tell them that Buffy was the show that turned me into a feminist, but it's completely, 100% true. I hadn't even heard of the word in any positive light until one day I watched an interview where Whedon called himself that, which I thought was weird, because why would a guy want to call himself feminine? As someone who was raised only on Disney princess prior to that, falling in love with this show and having this hero on my screen completely changed who I am as a person and who I believed I could be or look up to. Oh. And I was incredibly queerphobic at the time. It helped seeing queer romance on screen while grappling with internalised disgust long before I was ready to myself come out. There really wasn't a lot of representation at the time.
Buffy's getting a reboot now with a woman of colour at the helm and Joss Whedon's stamp of approval. I think this is a welcome change, and I wouldn't trust it unless everyone else who worked on the original was on board. It'll be nice to see the show become more intersectional for the next generation of confused teenagers grappling with their identity. There's power in that.
So, while I'm not cancelling Joss Whedon, I'm also OK with moving on from works of his that shaped me in the late-90s/early-00s, because people are supposed to grow and it'd be sort of weird to stay stagnant like that. I'm also OK with acknowledging that he's fallible, human, and his works were never perfect. Hopefully, he's also grown, but I don't know his life.
@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:
@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:
Bowlderizing the language isn't any different from editing the text to clarify the characters' heavy dialects, which I've also seen done in several contexts.
I will pay money for a MU client that does that.
I'm going to cop up to being in favour of censoring phonetic accent styling.
I'ma reply with two semi-contradictory hot takes on this topic.
It's an emotive topic, but I actually don't think the whether or not it's OK to play a sexy 5 year old is totally irrelevant to the topic at hand, to be honest. And when initially replying I felt on the defensive because I assumed this was going to turn into a game of gotcha. 'So you think it's OK to burn books do you, but where were you when people were playing lolis???'
So if people are still down for playing ball on this thread, let me steer it away, perhaps, from the subject of paedophilia and religious sensibilities, which is always going to result in needless aggression.
In terms of a RPer (and we're being pretentious here and referring to ourselves as artists) playing a character (and we're calling that art, too), at what point do you separate the person behind the keyboard from the character they're playing?
Tamer examples:
(to hopefully result in more productive discussion)
Basically, how relevant is what you know about me, the player — or conversely, how you feel about my character — to your willingness engage with the other side?