Props to Apex

[yendi]

Nothing screams "inclusiveness" like providing a platform for ignorant douchebaggery.

(And if the post isn't douchetastic -- as well as factually dubious -- enough, check out the comment threads, where Bondoni shows his ass at every opportunity in attempting to respond to nihilistic_kid and others.)

ETA: As of comment #72, he appears to have achieved Flounce.

ETA2: From reading his previous posts, it's pretty clear that he's from the passive-aggressive troll mentality, posting obnoxious things and then taking pride in how much he gets flamed. Probably should be considered a "do not engage" type of person unless you've got a lot of patience.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

What is Apex, anyway? I'm not up on the genre publishing scene anymore, and I can't figure out if they're a publisher, reviewer, someblog... Are they associated with some pro/trad magazine?

[yendi]

I still think of them first and foremost as a fiction and poetry magazine (with dark sci-fi as a theme), but they've also broken into book publishing in recent years. They are SFWA-qualifying as a magazine.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Oh! Okay. Interesting. Amazing how out of touch you can get in just five years. :P

[yendi]

In that time, they started publishing the physical magazine, nearly went out of business, went all-electronic, and went to a hybrid electronic/POD model.

About standard for this industry. :-)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I skimmed the article, which seemed about right for the opposite side of the table-of-contents debate, and I am fascinated by how the unexamined premise that drives both halves of the argument remains just that: unexamined. Which is that, of course there's a way to judge whether a piece of art is mind-blowing or not by some objective standard. Whether you're arguing that it is (and therefore someone is justified in listing only the "most qualified" authors in the table of contents regardless of gender) or you're arguing that not all mind-blowing fiction is written by men, you're still agreeing on the premise that art can be judged by an objective standard.

This is the underpinning of a lot of the prejudices and behaviors associated with traditional publishing, so when I see it, I am moved to wonder about its validity.

[yendi]

I'm pretty sure that got brought up at some point during the original debate over this topic (which was so long ago, I'm kind of shocked this post took so long to get created), but I can't remember where I saw those discussions. I'll try to track some of them down tonight.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Excellent, I'm glad it's been seen. :)

Still, talk about another form of unexamined privilege, eh?

[yendi]

True.

BTW, the same writer believes that self-published writers hurt "real" writers.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Huh. That post was very close to incoherent.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Because sometimes we actually end up reading self-published books out of some kind of feeling of sympathy and pity and it BURNS. IT BURNS!!!!

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Remember that they also stole a lot of money for subscriptions before going all-electronic.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

Though I do so love to see just-so stories wilt in the face of any scrutiny at all.

[yendi]

Yeah, that's the silver lining here.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I LOVE how in the comments to Nick he used "guess which one is the most evil and PC" as if Evil rides tandem with political activism.

Also using the term PC at all, really. I've mostly stopped using it because it almost always comes freighted with baggage from the less-progressive side of the spectrum. (And I say this as a girl who got an A at her religious college for a paper on politically correct language. I can now say I did not deserve that A, that my sources were bullshit, that my citations were weak, but I conformed exactly to what my professor wanted to hear because my views on PC language were congruent with his. I now kinda wince whenever I uncover that piece of crap in my old belongings.)

[yendi]

Heh. Yeah, I've got a bit of academic pandering or two in my closet, too.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

+1 on slipping failure passed professors. They're just as human as the rest of us.

For my own part, I am so used to the term being used as a fair warning that the user is about to let something on the ignorant to hateful end of the spectrum out that I immediately stop listening to that person.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Additionally, let's just posit that SOME of these stories about people being pushed into position were true. Let's say Black Lady from Des Moines suddenly found herself catapulted into middle management because upper management wanted to look progressive. But cultural biases being what they are, and the way the meme itself reads, Black Lady from Des Moines could still be TOTALLY qualified, since the main qualities everybody seems to be focusing on is her skin colour and gender. It's always taken for granted in those stories that the promoting officer is just soooo excited to have found a Real Live Black Lady that he overlooks qualified candidates. But the story itself shows that he (and it's almost always a He in these stories) is equally blind to her abilities. She could be just as good as the guys he says were more qualified, but how could you tell? The story already posits him as willing to overlook actual qualifications, and the whole point of the argument is that people's societally ingrained prejudices are really really strong. In other words, nobody in this story is operating from an unbiased viewpoint, and all of them have a preconceived notion about the Black Lady's inferiority for anything other than quota filling. All the story does is reinforce that prejudice: we're fucking swimming in it.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

And finally, why does this anecdote about the Black Lady who fills two quotas get so much gratuitous and easy belief from the power structure, when anecdotes from the OTHER side--not getting promoted, being asked covertly about your plans for parenthood, having men's suggestions being taken more seriously, not getting credit for projects, and so on, are all immediately discounted.

(Sorry, I just keep thinking up issues with this whole line of thinking. It drives me beserk.)

[yendi]

(Sorry, I just keep thinking up issues with this whole line of thinking. It drives me beserk.)

Calling it "thinking' is probably being generous. But yeah, I feel that same stress when reading it. There are just so many flaws there, it's hard to keep track of them all.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

"Flounce"?

[yendi]

Yup. Although I meant comment #72.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

icon love.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

It's a cool one; unfortunately, it's not one of the ones I use that I can take credit for. (The creator is unknown.)