Follow-up on Dennis Upkins’ Guest Blog Post
Well, this has been quite the week.
On Wednesday, I posted an essay from Dennis Upkins titled “The Double Standards of Diversity,” as part of my guest blog series on representation in SF/F. Shortly thereafter, I began receiving comments and emails from people who were uncomfortable with Upkins’ history of violent rhetoric, particularly against women.
I haven’t made a habit of doing background checks on potential contributors. But as the complaints, links, and screenshots came out, I started looking into them. I also emailed Mr. Upkins about the concerns and asked him for his thoughts. He posted a response on his own blog yesterday.
For myself, there were several things I needed to sort out.
1. Complaints about Upkins’ tone. Some individuals were upset about the angry, aggressive tone of Upkins’ post. I’ve received similar comments on a few other posts. This isn’t a concern I’m worried about. Sometimes people get angry. Get over it. People have every right to be angry, resentful, bitter, and so on, especially when they’re dealing with systemic imbalances and prejudices.
2. Violent threats/rhetoric. Where’s the line between the tone argument and harassment/threats/abusiveness? That’s something people have been struggling with for a long time. Is a comment about visiting heterosexist women “with a lead pipe in tow” an actual threat or just blowing off steam? What about choking female slash authors with piano wire? Forcing birth control down a woman’s throat? In this case, the comments I was seeing from Upkins definitely crossed the line.
That said, while there was a pattern of this sort of comment, most of the links and screenshots were from 3-4 years ago. Upkins said he’d apologized, though I haven’t seen that link. He also said two friends pulled him aside and explained why that sort of comment was f**ked up. His New Year’s resolution of 2011 was to be more thoughtful and do better.
I think it’s important to be open to the possibility of growth and change. We all screw up sometimes. Some of us worse than others. Recognizing mistakes and trying to do better is both difficult and important.
3. Personal issues with Steve Berman. Part of Upkins’ post involved criticism of Lethe Press/Steve Berman as homophobic and bigoted, based on an interaction over a story Upkins submitted to a Civil War anthology Berman was editing for Prime Books. I don’t know what actually happened here, and I think it’s totally valid to complain about being asked to “remove the gay” from a story. At the same time, multiple others who were involved with the same project have said what happened was more along the lines of the publisher deciding they already had several stories with gay protagonists, and didn’t want to add more. While I think that’s still worth discussing, that expectation came from the publisher–Prime Books, not Lethe Press–and Berman was simply working within the publisher’s guidelines. It also sounds like there are personal issues between Berman and Upkins that go beyond this anthology.
4. Upkins’ response to these concerns. When Upkins blogged about these things, he said, “It’s one thing to dislike someone. It’s one thing to have issues or concerns with an individual. It is more than fair to voice said concerns. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.” So far, so good. But he also characterized complaints as coming from white trolls who were afraid of the Big Scary Black Man. He referred to them as losers, sociopaths, and thugs.
The people voicing their concerns and discomfort are not all white, as it turns out. Nor is it just a handful of “stalkers” following Upkins around to harass him.
I get that it’s hard when you’ve got a lot of people posting negative comments calling you out for your behavior. It’s not fun. In fact, it sucks. If people have, as he claims, stalked his blog looking for dirt on his loved ones, then yeah, those people have crossed the line. But while Upkins did seem willing to listen to his friends and change his behavior at least somewhat back in 2011, he seems unwilling to acknowledge that there could be any validity or anything worth listening to from these comments.
#
I emailed Upkins to say that while I didn’t plan to pull his guest blog post, I wasn’t comfortable including it in Invisible 2. (I had held off sending a contract to him while I tried to sort through this mess.) In response, he asked me to immediately remove his post from my site, which I’ve done.
I’m disappointed in all of this, to say the least. I still believe Upkins brought up some excellent points about double-standards, and the expectations more marginalized writers are held to compared to their less marginalized peers. However, at least part of that essay seemed motivated by personal vendetta, and others with first-hand experience with the same project contradicted Upkins’ account. To my mind, that–combined with a tendency toward derogatory dismissal of criticism–significantly weakens the essay as a whole.
I’m sure I’ve made mistakes in my handling of all this. I’m still working to figure out where those mistakes were, and how to best avoid them in the future. I apologize to everyone who got hurt with all of this, including both Mr. Upkins and Mr. Berman.
I do have one more guest post coming, after which I’ll turn to putting Invisible 2 together, hopefully for a mid-May release. In the meantime, however, I think I’m gonna walk away from the internet for a little while and go play some Mario Kart.
My thanks to everyone for their patience while I worked through this.
Muccamukk
April 4, 2015 @ 1:01 pm
I’m sorry this ended up with taking the essay down, which I mostly liked, and made a point other essays hadn’t made, at least this year (even if I argued about specifics in comments).
However, I’ve been pretty uneasy about Upkins for a number of years now, and would have had mixed feelings at best about buying an anthology that included his work.
Meh.
Akaria
April 4, 2015 @ 1:44 pm
I agree the essay made some important points. I’m sorry it had to be pulled. I’m also sorry Upkins does not seem to have grown up since 2011 and still thinks anyone who criticizes him is white, female and a hater.
Thanks to Hines for working through this minefield in a considerate manner. It could’ve gotten a lot messier.
Muccamukk
April 4, 2015 @ 1:51 pm
Pretty much this.
Plus, I don’t want to get into Oppression Olympics, but being white and female doesn’t mean… etc.
Astraea
April 4, 2015 @ 1:51 pm
I’m very glad to see the post won’t be in the anthology. Personally, I think this post is way too fair to Upkins. He straight out lied in his response, claiming that the WordPress blog he got shut down published libel and an entire copy of Hollowstone, which it did not. She published excerpts and did a review, quoting Upkins himself. It’s not libel when it’s true. Unfortunately, unless there are screenshots out there it can’t be proven.
I don’t begrudge anyone their anger, but smearing critics by grouping them all in the category of “white fauxminists” and “sociopaths” isn’t the kind of anger that the “tone argument” defense should be meant for.
Jim, I appreciate that when you took the post down you left the comments and discussion!
Nenya
April 4, 2015 @ 3:30 pm
Thank you, Jim. I would not have asked for the post to be taken down, but I hoped you would address the problems people were having. If it had been included in the anthology I would have felt it a very sour note (especially if it’d been at the end, as it’s near the end of the blog series) knowing that it comes from neo_prodigy. Especially given your history of work against violence towards women.
I’m glad you left the comments up–MT’s comments in the later threads especially, and some of the other commentary on reading choices and what works for some but not others, were especially thoughtful, I felt.
The people voicing their concerns and discomfort are not all white
Not all white, not all straight, and in some cases neither. It’s easy for Upkins to write off his critics as just white women nagging, but it’s disingenuous as all hell.
Muccamukk
April 4, 2015 @ 5:46 pm
Well, and I find it interesting that it’s always white WOMEN who are on his case.
I get that there is a history of violence perpetuated by white women against people of colour (of any gender), and that it takes distinct forms from the kind of violence perpetuated by white men, and when n_p was in fandom spaces, he was mostly interacting with women because it’s a largely female space, but it still, at the end of it seemed an awful lot like he was saying it was always women out to get him, and dudes were totally not a problem. I guess it’s possible? But given the state of Sad Puppyland, it seems unlikely.
Sally
April 4, 2015 @ 9:40 pm
When it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault… well, maybe it isn’t.
Also, intersectionality, yo.
I think Jim’s been more than fair; anyone who advocates garroting authors of books he doesn’t like really shouldn’t be in an anthology about inclusion.
Nenya
April 4, 2015 @ 9:53 pm
Hell, it wasn’t even other published authors. It was, specifically, fan-writers writing gay relationships in ways he didn’t approve of.
(Never mind that a number of m/m slash writers are gay and bi women who have gone on record as saying that slash was their first exposure to non-stigmatized, non-tragic queer relationships; or that even those straight female slash writers he so hates are often doing it as an end-run around societal misogyny and repression of female desire. No, they weren’t writing it how he would have done it, which made them irredeemable and worthy of being assaulted. Which makes it interesting that his post here was largely about people having opinions on how he did or didn’t write gay people.)
Sally
April 4, 2015 @ 9:54 pm
Also, I apologize to everyone I offended in those comments. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I will think about it carefully and do my best not to make that mistake again. (There are so many other ones for me to make. :/) I meant well, but fell short of that. Sorry.
Nenya
April 4, 2015 @ 9:55 pm
Yeah. Women always being the bugbear ends up being an unfortunate trend in the long run. It’s easier to yell at fangirls than at male-dominated showrunners, for example.
Sally
April 4, 2015 @ 10:06 pm
I guess he wants to be the Czar of Acceptable Queerness. Thus even women (straight and/or white, unless not) who write for personal satisfaction must answer to Czar Dennis’ standards, lest violence be perpetrated upon them.
There’s some hugely staggering irony in his choice of topic, then.
I don’t know… last I looked, Samuel R. Delany was black and queer, and yet he’s never felt the need to threaten violence to the white women. Heck, he married a white lesbian. (It was complicated.)
Maybe Dennis just isn’t a very good writer?
Sally
April 4, 2015 @ 10:11 pm
Oh, those pesky wimmenz. Always raining on the parades of SWM showrunners, the Unhappy Juvenile Canines… and Dennis.
Interesting company he’s keeping.
Muccamukk
April 4, 2015 @ 11:51 pm
You’d think! Though I was yelling at male show runners just the other day! It was pretty easy, and also satisfying.
They, however, were not listening, I don’t think. Whereas yelling at fellow fans, you’re more likely to get a direct response. However, it seems like there’s male fans that might also be yelled at?
Anyway, it’s Easter here, and I’m tired of dealing with Upkins’ BS, or my feelings about it, so I’m going to peace out of these conversations.
SorchaRei
April 5, 2015 @ 8:15 pm
Jim, I appreciate this even-handed account.
It is a difficult situation, because Upkins did make a great point about the double standard and I have no argument with his anger at the treatment he describes. At the same time, his approach to white women, his apparent propensity for assuming everyone who disagrees with him is a straight, white woman, and the violent language he uses towards these women are really distressing.
I think Upkins punches down on the axis where he has privilege and then hides behind his lack of privilege on other axes.
Finally, his friends may have explained THAT what he said wasn’t okay, but he doesn’t seem to have managed to understand WHY it wasn’t okay. There’s a difference. My mother essentially blackmailed my grandmother into not using words like nigger spic and chink by threatening her with lack of access to her grandchildren. For the last thirty years of her life, I didn’t hear my grandmother use any of those kinds of words, but it was only because of the threat. She never, for one second, stopped thinking in those terms, or understood why there was a problem with her doing so.
G
April 5, 2015 @ 10:41 pm
“I think Upkins punches down on the axis where he has privilege and then hides behind his lack of privilege on other axes.”
That.
Honestly? Sometimes Upkins makes good points. Sometimes he’s clever about it. However, he’s so problematical. His misogyny and femme-phobia are blatant and frequently threatening. He refuses to defend his points — if you present a counter-argument to something he has said, he, as SorchaRei describes, hides behind his lack of privilege by accusing you of ‘whitesplaining’ or the like. While he is offended if anybody outside his demographic remarks upon the experiences of those in his demographic (a non-gay person talking about the experiences of gay men, a non-black person talking about the experiences of black people) YET he seems to consider himself to be the mouthpiece for all marginalized people, and chooses to speak for American Indian people, women, and trans folks. And accuses them of being bigoted against him when they disagree with is assessment or point out that it’s not his place to make it. He has called people of colour who disagree with him ‘house slaves’ or the like, misgendered trans people who disagree with him, accused women who disagree with him of using weaponized ‘white wimmenz tears’ and so forth. People who try more than once to engage him in ways he doesn’t like are ‘stalking’ him. And he has the odd and bigoted habit of assuming that everybody is white, non-disabled, cis and straight when he responds to folks who haven’t identified themselves otherwise.
This seems to be just the same as it was in 2011, I’m sorry to say.
Also, the slander. As I said elsewhere, he quite recently accused me, publicly and using my legal name, of being a white supremacist when I disagreed with him. He also implied that my commenting on a single additional post of his after that encounter was me ‘stalking’ him and thinking I had the ‘right to harass people of color.’ It’s slander, it could be professionally and personally damaging to me. It is false. Now, I missed the original post, but from the discussion it sounds to me as if he has slandered another person, this editor Mr. Berman who declined to publish his piece. Upkins is assuming, as he is wont to do, that anybody who doesn’t want or like his work hates it because he or she is a bigot who does not want black or gay authors to succeed. Never mind that in this case the man in question has a well-documented history of doing just the opposite.
He cannot be trusted to accurately represent the truth in his non-fiction pieces, and his novels are misogynistic. They also need more proofreading and editing than they’re worth, though I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.
bluestgirl
April 6, 2015 @ 12:40 pm
Jim,
There is a story I tell myself. It goes like this:
Once upon a time, before I recognized your name, a friend told me about this guy who has a cover poses project where he tries to emulate female poses on SFF covers. I was delighted. So true! So funny! Boo sexist marketing! And then she told me that there was concern that some of the humor came from “dude in a dress LOL,” style transphobia.
I immediately went into defensive mode, trying to find a reason why this thing I liked couldn’t possibly have problems, after all I liked it, right?
On the other hand, the guy’s response was to say, “Oh, yeah. I can see that. I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry, and I will see what I can do to avoid that in the future.”
I tell myself this story to remind myself to take some time between my first reaction and my second, because I want to be more like the guy in the story. I want to be able to see past “criticism of me,” and get to “how I can do better.”
Since then, I’ve become a reader of your blog, and I am consistently impressed by your ability to listen, reflect, and change. I think, even in your mistakes, you set a really good example. Thank you.
Laura
April 6, 2015 @ 2:41 pm
“accused women who disagree with him of using weaponized ‘white wimmenz tears’”
Ironically, this is a fairly common theme among misogynists, no? Women are out to trick you by using their feminine wiles and by crying to manipulate you into doing what they want. He’s just tacked “white” onto the front to make it look like he’s punching up instead of down.
Jim C. Hines
April 6, 2015 @ 3:34 pm
Thank you. I very much appreciate that story 🙂
G
April 6, 2015 @ 8:09 pm
An aside: I’m pretty sure that the occasions when it’s appropriate for somebody to feel hard-done-by by a person who is crying can be counted on unicorn penises.
The whole “women’s tears” complaint is misogynistic in itself. Some people manipulate others with tears. Some people manipulate others with threats, veiled or otherwise. Both behaviors are nasty, but you don’t hear a lot about “men’s glares.”
chamblee54
April 10, 2015 @ 11:27 am
You should never wrestle with a hog. You will get dirty, and the pig will have a good time.
VP
May 16, 2015 @ 8:03 am
On April 8, Dennis R. Upkins posted on his wordpress blog “Beware The White Savior”, in which he claimed that he requested his piece pulled not because of the “trolls”, but actually due to Jim Hine’s “racism” and “homophobia”.
https://dennisupkins.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/beware-the-white-savior/
Sorry if I’m just beating a dead horse. I ran into Dennis’s blog by accident while googling the other day.
Jim C. Hines
May 16, 2015 @ 10:15 am
Yep, I know. I saw that a few days after he posted it, considered responding, and decided it wasn’t worth my time or energy.