The Nice Guy Defense
Announcement 1: I’ve posted the first two chapters of Red Hood’s Revenge. Enjoy!
Announcement 2: Congratulations to Theresa Ryder, who wins a copy of STRIP MAULED on the Facebook Fan Page.
ETA — Announcement 3: Doc has offered an explanation in the comments on my previous post.
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Doctor Pus at Library of the Living Dead Press put out a statement regarding the cancellation of their LGBT-themed zombie anthology. I appreciate that he takes responsibility for the decision, and that he offers a kill fee to the authors, but nothing in his statement changes my initial anger and disappointment.
Most people in the LLD comments jumped to Doc’s defense. (As did some on my own blog.) The editor of the cancelled anthology started his own thread to defend Doc. They talk about how LLD has published gay writers and gay-themed stories before, and that he’s a good person who’s always been supportive of LGBT people and issues.
To those commenters, I want to say this: I believe you. When I read Doc’s statement, I don’t get the sense that he’s an evil, hateful man. I believe he’s published LGBT works before — after all, he initially accepted a gay-themed zombie anthology. A raging homophobe never would have allowed the project to get to that point.
My anger is not because I believe Doc to be an evil, homophobic, hateful man. My anger is due to his actions in this situation. Based on his words and the editor’s first statement, this anthology was pulled for fear of people’s reaction.[1. The editor now says there were concerns the anthology would be seen as a gimmick, and that it wouldn’t have good stories.] For fear of what the bigots might say. Whatever his personal views on homosexuality, I find that disappointing in the extreme.
I don’t want to just pick on Doc here, so let’s make me the target. I consider myself to be supportive of LGBT issues. Heck, I’m the one who made both Sleeping Beauty and Smudge the fire-spider gay! That doesn’t give me a free pass. I still screw up sometimes, and when it happens, I deserve to be called on it. If I say or do something hurtful, the fact that I’m a nice guy doesn’t change the fact that I’m hurting people. Nor does it excuse that fact.
I’ve seen this defense many times. “But he’s a good guy, and you have no right to be angry!” or “He marched for civil rights — how dare you accuse him of racism!” or “He was the first to publish [female author]. It’s ridiculous to call him sexist!”
The nice guy defense misses the point. Say I edit and publish another anthology and end up with a ToC of white male authors. That’s likely to cause some (justified) anger. So my friends jump to my defense, pointing out that I’m a wonderful guy. So what? The conversation was about my actions in choosing an all white, all male contributor list, not over whether or not I’m a nice guy. By focusing on the latter, you ignore and derail other people’s legitimate concerns and complaints.
Discussion is welcome as always, but I’m not really interested in another round of criticizing Doc or LDP. I think that point was made pretty well yesterday.
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Rena
February 12, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
I don’t get the initial statement, though. Why even mention homophobia coming from authors contributing to LLD? That’s what got me. My understanding is that a number of homophobic writers who work with LLD raised a stink and got their way, never about the concerns voiced by members of the GLBT community. My beef lies mostly with those homophobic writers.
So what’s the real story then?
Jim C. Hines
February 12, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
I’m baffled as well. It sounds like a colossal miscommunication over there between publisher and editor, or in the editor’s initial (now deleted) statement.
The “real” story, or at least as real as I’ve seen, is linked at the top of this post in Announcement 3. I don’t agree with the publisher’s choice, but I guess it’s a step up from bowing down to homophobia.
Lynda
February 12, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
Actually I think the nice guy defense in and of itself can be offensive. It’s almost like it questions our intelligence. For example the t.v. show Heroes, it can’t possibly be racist because one of it’s main characters is a POC (Hiro) never mind the fact that it’s traded almost all it’s original poc characters for white ones, that’s not racist at all. It seems kind of manipulative and I understand that people may genuinely mess up. I do all the time but just like Jim said when some one messes up and they really care about whatever issue it is that they say they care about not only would they own up but they wouldn’t but the blame back on the group they’re suppose to be allies of. This is the same crap that came up awhile back with the all male author list that was the best of the year. How dare you call us sexist, write better novels!
Jim C. Hines
February 12, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
It also sets you up as the villain if you dare to complain. “He’s a nice guy. Therefore you’re an a**hole for daring to suggest that he was being sexist by saying all the best stories are written by dudes.”
It’s one thing to be supportive of your friends. It’s another to cling to that support as an excuse to ignore or attack those who dare to disagree or criticize.
I agree with you on the offensiveness. It gets used as a way to tell you that your opinion doesn’t count … which so often plays right back into power and privilege.
KatG
February 12, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
A gay zombie anthology seen as a gimmick? Why, that would never have occurred to me!
Seriously, all themed anthologies are gimmicks and this one was a good one. It’s not like an anthology sets out to get every possible reader. So obviously something more complicated was going on, and maybe with financial issues at this press. But the way it’s been handled has caused pain, and that’s regretful. It seems like this sort of thing is happening more and more often in SFF publishing and that saddens me.
Jim C. Hines
February 14, 2010 @ 2:41 pm
Do you think it’s happening more, or is it that people are challenging and talking about it more?
Jon Rock
February 14, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
I think the nice guy defense comes in because humans don’t like to admit that we all harbor bigotry to some degree in our hearts. We equate having a bigoted action pointed out to us as an ultimate vilification in the extreme and the final word on our value as a person. If what I just did/said/thought was prejudiced/racist/bigotry then everybody has a free pass to dismiss me as an evil worthless rednecked idiot and disregard any point I can make from here on out.
So instead of reacting to the one horrible decision we react to the indictment of our person as a whole.
I wonder if this would go down better or not if we just apologized for those moments?
“I’m sorry for that. It was very culturally insensitive. I have to constantly let go of my unacknowledged bigotry as I become aware of it. I’m working on that. Please forgive me.”
Would that be a satisfactory answer? Or would we be demonized anyway?
Jim C. Hines
February 14, 2010 @ 7:24 pm
I agree with you, to an extent. I think even when someone says “Hey, you said something racist,” for example, what we tend to hear is “OMG you’re an awful, racist, evil human being and should be banned from civilized society.” Which leads to two problems — first off, we immediately jump into trying to defend ourselves and prove we’re not horribly evil, and secondly, it means we’re not actually hearing the complaint, which means the actual behavior that caused offense goes unchecked.
Having been on the receiving side of such criticism, I’ve found that listening and acknowledging what’s being said without immediately arguing/defending or trying to explain/excuse it goes a long way toward keeping the situation from getting worse.