Not Your Shield

By Rhiain

K. Tempest Bradford of “The Social Justice Warrior Racist Reading Challenge” fame is at it again. On her Facebook wall, she posted the following a couple days ago (no, you don’t have to follow the link). Her original words are in italics, and my responses are in bold.

Here’s a thing: I need people to stop responding to this Sad Puppies/Hugo thing with “well, if you want to change things, you should have voted.”

Because complaints that the Hugos were dominated and manipulated by a small clique of people are exactly why campaigns like Sad Puppies were born. It’s called a “taste of your own medicine.”

First: F*** you.

You’re not my type.

Second: Has you’re a** been paying attention to the conversations in this community for the past 5, 10, 20, 30 years on this topic? because, if you haven’t, I invite you to shut your d*** mouth.

No and no. Invitation declined. Make me – perhaps by learning to build an argument on something other than victimhood.

And in the past few years more and more people who care about diversity in SFF have been making an effort to join the WorldCon voting ranks.

Your voting numbers laugh at your own efforts, then.

THIS IS WHY SAD PUPPIES EXISTS. Not because some people just happened to decide, but because the mostly white mostly male contingent of whiny a**holes saw that there was a shift happening toward a more diverse Hugo slate and away from their ilk and decided to work against it. And bring in people fro outside of the community to help them.

If you don’t f***ing know this then you should keep your opinions in your head.

I don’t f-ing know this, and again, I can be as publicly opinionated as you seem to enjoy being.

But again, the mostly white mostly men who are involved in Sad Puppies and the mostly white, mostly men brought in from gamer gate have money to spare (this is often a result of said whiteness and maleness). For them $50 is no big deal. For others it is not.

A) Nobody involved in GamerGate really knew about SP3…until you opened your mouth about it.

B) I thought a supporting membership cost $40? And this non-white chica was happy to shell out moulah for one. So all this ranting just to say you can’t afford to pay for one?

So f***ing cut it out acting like ‘Oh, you can just vote’. It’s not that simple.”

Yes, it is that simple. This non-white chica will be happy to rub that in your face for as long as it takes. Your multicultural diversity schtick bores me, is completely without reason, and is annoying the hell out of me with all the overemotional and oversentimental tripe thrown in. You call this a justification for the current status quo of the Hugos as recently as last year? The more you whine about your lack of privilege in this arena, the more other non-white people who refuse to be classified as such are going to start speaking up to make you look like an utter fool.

This is a class issue, a race issue, a gender issue.

This middle-class, Samoan female says this is only in your imagination, and only because you keep hammering on this point like there’s no tomorrow. You know what’s interesting about a hammer? It’s actually two tools in one – one to put the nail in, and one to take the nail out. You’re just pissed because other people are able to take that hammer away from you and use it to remove the nails you keep trying to put in. I’m a patient woman, and I’m willing to learn how to use tools for everything they’re intended for .

And I know some of you have a hard time with that concept. I don’t care. You’ve had plenty of time to figure it out. I’m real tired of your inability to understand these things.

Oh, I understand these things perfectly, but I refuse your attempts to maintain this as the overall narrative. No. You have not yet begun to see pushback on your lazy, self-absorbed whining.

Do you hear me, Tempest?

YOUR. NARRATIVE. IS. BROKEN.

And so help me God, people like me are going to break it into irrecoverable pieces.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I want to add something: I despise the hypocrisy on full display in this post. Here’s a non-white woman who grew up with more privilege than I did complaining about the lack of diversity in the Hugo Award nominations, and trying her best to persuade fellow scifi fans that promoting a more diverse platform in the name of equality should be done by excluding certain people because of their skin color and sex.

I’ve been more vocal about this nonsense in recent weeks because I’m non-white, female, and technically speaking, someone whom Ms. Bradford would count on as an ally based on appearance alone. But you’re not going to find me whining about what I haven’t yet earned. I don’t disparage or belittle the contributions of white guys to society based on their looks. The qualities of a person aren’t just skin deep, and I will say that to anyone who keeps repeating this tripe and make him or her eat his or her words.

This is not going to be first or last time that I repeat this, but be warned, SJWs: I’m not staying quiet on this any longer. And you sure as hell don’t speak for me.