(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

Wherein I spend more time worrying about how a bunch of random people on the Internets are treating my favorite author than worrying about important things like Haiti, the possibly-imminent death of health care reform, or my degree project, because I'm shallow like that:

So Neil Gaiman said something that was offensive, and I agree that it was offensive, and he has since apologized for it and promised to do better in future. I'm just trying to figure out how much of my reaction to the "OMG I thought he was awesome but it turns out he's toooottally sexist!!!" crowd is my fondness for said offender and how much of it is actual irritation at something fairly trivial. I understand that battles in the fight against misogyny are waged on a macro and micro level, but it still feels like much ado over something trivial where people look for things to be offended by. And I realize by saying that I put myself into that no-win situation where I become one of Those Women who is insufficiently enlightened and thus complicit in her own oppression or something like that or align with the ninnies.

I don't know. It seems very silly to spend so much time thinking about this when I could be using my processing cycles for something more productive, but am I out of line here?

For those who don't give a flying crap about Neil Gaiman and the things he says, have a Smiths song, David Tennant, and some choreography obviously done for people who can't dance:

Comments

[sabeth]

No, man, no. I'm just so tired of this aggressive bullshit. People need to be allowed to make mistakes, especially when they have a history of trying to get it right. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be told if they say something stupid, but they should not be torn apart like this. It's just. It's so destructive, so unspeakably rude.

(And I'm not just saying this out of respect for Neil. I see it more and more in fandom (though more frequently in cultural appropriation debates) and it kills me. It's so, so harmful to the conversation.)

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Man, that feels like overreaching (the "bitch" issue).

But mostly, that video is awesome. I have no idea what's going on there, but it's making me laugh *and* cringe in an awesome way.

[sonatine.livejournal.com]

It's from Blackpool, which is some very strange mystery/drama/musical thing the BBC did in 2004. It's kind of not very good, but is amusing in that David Morrissey has the exact same haircut he has in The Next Doctor (and also wears a lot of bolo ties) and David Tennant is using his actual Scottish accent and spends a lot of time looking like a puppy with its heart broken.

[safti]

It does seem a little bit . . . much. I mean, people have the right to be offended, and it's not exactly an inoffensive thing to say, but isn't part of the whole point of social movements to do with addressing issues and learning from our (perhaps unsettling) mistakes? Each of us has our learned biases that (ideally) we're all trying to move away from.

I have never been sexually assaulted. Maybe I don't understand something major here. However, I'm not impressed that he said it. I am glad he addressed it, apologized, and will be watching his language more carefully. I think it's unreasonable to ask for more (what more could you ask for, anyway?), or to completely dismantle your thoughts about him.

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's offensive. But I have to be honest, I am making a conscious effort to remove 'bitch' from my vocabulary and it is not going well. It can slip out from people with good intentions; unconscious programming and all that.

[shaniofslut.livejournal.com]

If you're out of line, I'm not the one to see it. Probably because '(someone's) bitch' makes me think of a dog being called to heel. Whether that's me being low-class, or complicit in my own oppression ('cause that's always made so much sense anyway - ditch their restrictions, pick ours!), or just an uptight language nerd who doesn't want to see good profanities die ... eh.

I don't see how changing my mind/broadening my consciousness to get offended actually helps anybody, you know?

[cabell.livejournal.com]

I actually feel the original comment was fairly mild, but that his response falls into the "non-apology" category, and is therefore more disturbing than the original statement. He never actually takes responsibility for the utterance--"not the kind of thing people in my category say"? Is it the kind of thing that interviewers make up, then?

I just can't interpret what he said as honestly promising to "try to do better."

[aprilbegins.livejournal.com]

This is ridiculous. I'm not offended at all. And the context totally wasn't misogynistic. I was scrolling the comments to the first post and found this:

"Bitch" to me is sort of like the n-word.

Yeahhh, or not.

I'm far more offended by the embarrassing crap his fiancée is doing (http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/go_fug_yourself/2010/01/golden_globes_amandapalmer.html) and how he's clearly going along with it. As you know, I really adore Amanda's music but between meeting her, reading (and then no longer reading) her Twitter, and her Golden Globes actions and reactions, I'm so over her super self-absorbed and brash persona.