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Sigh, the thing that really gets me about the "Noelle Stevenson situation" is that, as I've mentioned, I have no personal investment in Noelle Stevenson.
in fact I believe I had her blocked at one point for reasons unrelated to her work, and I wouldn't have not believed she said something offensive. If I didn't have friends to whom She-Ra is very important it's possible I might even have been primed to believe such things.
I got, like, moderate happiness from the final season of She-Ra, watching the rest was just a chore I felt I had to do to support LGBT representation and not be a hypocrite. I would not choose Stevenson as a champion of my cause
But this attack is just so obscenely dishonorable,vapid, and relies so deeply on an accurate understanding of how the online social justice culture in which any queer person with an interest in their group's culture is automatically enmeshed, I cannot believe it is not engineered
That's not a typo, by the way, I said it relies on an *accurate* understanding of our social justice culture. The thing is most of us do not have that. Most of us just live our lives within that culture and operate on its assumptions.
Even those of us who, say, used to get paid to study that culture professionally have to play by its rules or face condemnation from within the culture. Even when the pretext is blatantly absurd.
You know who else studies queer nerds? Non-(openly)-queer bad actors on troll forums and ch*n boards. Who, let me remind you, were supposed to be planning a big anti-queer op that didn't visibly materialize over this summer
They know how to checkmate us and they did
They know how to checkmate us and they did
The attack against Stevenson followed what I've called a shotgun pattern based on the idea that it was hostile and meant to harm her - to get her "cancelled," which is in fact an injustice when it happens for absurd reasons - and that it was like shrapnel,firing multiple attacks>
> and waiting to see what stuck.
It was not something that would happen organically, even if we acknowledge that fandom is primed to be condemnatory and sensitive on its own. This goes beyond some things that are most likely organic disagreements driven by legit culture rifts.
It was not something that would happen organically, even if we acknowledge that fandom is primed to be condemnatory and sensitive on its own. This goes beyond some things that are most likely organic disagreements driven by legit culture rifts.
Every attack made against Stevenson and the other She-Ra creatives in the stream was rooted in an offense against a completely separate marginalized group, and it affected a different part of the stream.
There was no common ground between the allegation that ended up hitting/sticking and forcing Stevenson to specifically apologize (the "Sow" thing, which aimed to frame the creatives/Stevenson as racist) and the ableism allegation, which met pushback and found much less traction
There were four, according to my initial count, allegations made. Each one was grounded in an ostensible offense committed during the stream or revealed during it against a separate marginalized constituency that like the show
Frankly, creatives don't fck up like that
Frankly, creatives don't fck up like that
Wizard Book Lady didn't reveal she was a bigot against East Asian people, Native Americans, fat people, rape victims, AND transgender people in one interview. She IS - she's written terrible stuff about all of those groups. But that all came out over time
If I were a bad actor operating on a ch*n board working to destabilize the "SJW" community, specifically queer culture - which, I'll note, MANY of you were EXTREMELY CONCERNED ABOUT earlier this year, this isn't me being a conspiracy theorist with no backing - I'd do this exactly
I would frame three to five grievances that made sense on a very surface description to someone who didn't actually watch the stream, and disseminate them through multiple people, multiple accounts, convincing people who were legit part of the culture to participate and believe
Each one would be grounded in the alleged lived experience and knowledge of one specific group. No overlapping, you don't want a situation where the objection depends on having (as the ch*n troll[s] orchestrating this) a lived experience as multiple marginalized groups
Each grievance would say "as a member of [group] who was a fan of Stevenson and her team's work until now, I was horrified to discover her/the team's bigotry against [specific identity] on tonight's stream" and I would provide a logic for why there was in fact an offense
I would expect that there would be immediate confusion as the community, acting in good faith, took everything just fired from this metaphorical shotgun in good faith, and parsed out the issues. Because we may be oversensitive or whatever,but we are in fact legitimately concerned
We here being the actual community being trolled, not the people orchestrating this op. We care about people even if we are (as I'm trying to illustrate here) deeply vulnerable not just to eating our own on our own, but to being made to do so by outside actors.
Anyway, as this hypothetical ch*n operator, I would expect that the community would see through some of my bullsht, because if you're skilled enough to pull something like this off you know that the dreaded SJWs have our own logics for things, but we're not utterly credulous
So the accusations of homophobia are comfortably dismissed, it turns out - I'd have figured that was a long shot, because I was going up against a lesbian, and thus people can't call her out of her lane for dismissing allegations of homophobia.
The neurodivergence thing fell flat because it depended on the neurodivergence community agreeing that they didn't want to be represented by villains, and also on it actually being a thing the team said and not just a quotation from a fan (or agitator) in the stream
It turned out that wasn't the case and largely the neurodivergent fans of the show like at least Entrapta if not Hordak. Probably some disagree, but there was no critical mass and in any case at worst the team can say they neutrally platformed a particular comment from a fan
(note how bad faith whoever started this complaint was being - it was clearly not the team expressing their opinion, even leaving aside that it was a reasonable opinion)
And so we come to the piece of shrapnel that hit. My hypothetical chan operative whose perspective I'm writing in but who I think actually exists scored gold here. It's so transparently not a thing that makes any sense.
It's based on a really silly joke that isn't in my opinion funny, but not because it's offensive - rather, because it's the sort of thing that 100% would happen around the office when you inherited a character with a fundsmentally ridiculous premise whose name lampshades >
> how intensely nominative-determinism your toy-marketing source material is. In other words, "Bow" is a silly name for a character whose thing is that he has a bow, even in a show aimed primarily at children, they knew it, and they made fun of it
That legacy character, incidentally, I just looked up and he's white.
So, anyway, Stevenson chose to explain a part of the joke that, despite it being very silly and not particularly funny to anyone willing to buy into the show's premise, nonetheless was unclear. "Sow" written out looks like it could mean what was intended, or it could mean pig
Obviously the latter would be even easier to make sound racist. But in a stream where she's talking, Stevenson had to deflect both that possible meaning and "Sew," which this "Sow" sounds like out loud.
So she said he was a farmer. Who worked in fields.
So she said he was a farmer. Who worked in fields.
Now I am not Black. I cannot disclaim the notion that there are Black people who might be traumatized and offended by a white person referring to a Black person working "in the fields," or take it as an allusion to slavery. It's out of my lane. It's out of Stevenson's.
It is *not* reasonable to expect Stevenson to have known of such a collective trauma, because if this is actually a thing, then the many, many Black farmers who actually exist and work in fields every day must have some expected nomenclature.
And Stevenson isn't likely or obligated to learn that nomenclature to make a complicated and silly joke about the silly name of a character who was in fact white in the source material (and the joke may well have been originated before the creative decision to draw Bow as black)
But it's out of her lane, and so Stevenson felt she had to apologize. Moreover, she felt she had to tell her non-black fans not to argue the point. I want to note there's lots of cases where this would be a reasonable response. But this ain't one of them.
In any case, I'm not a fan, of Stevenson or or She-Ra, so I'm not obliged to collaborate in this or be a bad fan.
The ch*n trolls got EXACTLY what they wanted. They landed an identity based hit on Stevenson, on an angle unrelated to her being a lesbian. And she played along.
The ch*n trolls got EXACTLY what they wanted. They landed an identity based hit on Stevenson, on an angle unrelated to her being a lesbian. And she played along.
I want to be clear, she had almost no options here. None of her options were good. If she had not apologized and admonished her non-black fans not to defend her, she'd be being absolutely bombarded with racism accusations. It would probably balloon and do a lot more damage
But the fact is that this was not a good faith thing. I acknowledged there might be Black fans offended by her phrasing (my *very intense caveat* about Black farmers being an actual real thing notwithstanding), but the chances that this would come up alongside these other issues?
Every single attack against Stevenson and her team was tailored to see if it could hit, stick, dig in and do damage. This targeting is fundamentally based in homophobia and transphobia. It is especially pronounced because it's a lesbian being attacked. And it is manufactured.
With an apology from Stevenson, under the rules of the culture into which, again, all queer people of the Millenial generation are forcibly opted in, she is now an "admitted racist". The best she can ever be is "problematic" and her work is now tainted.
This is because the show has lesbians in it. The initial raising of this issue was not about racial justice, regardless of whether actual Black people were hurt after it was articulated. This is probably part of "Operation Pr*defall" or a related op, or to "support" <>
> Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe, which these bros think will unqueer the setting/IP.
This is not paranoia. That these ops were planned for this summer is documented fact many of you were concerned about.
This is not paranoia. That these ops were planned for this summer is documented fact many of you were concerned about.
the thing is, this is like a security exploit in infosec, but on a whole culture. We have the ability to "log in" with "credentials," metaphorically, and because of the very good historical reasons to not gatekeep identity, questioning if an Internet anon is REALLY x is verboten
We can't keep doing social justice culture like this though, not without a patch. And if we can't stop granting privileges (in the infosec sense) without any real authentication, even when we know we're being hacked, then we have to reduce the power of what's made hackable
In other words, we need to stop allowing these outrages to occur, even if the reasons are good. Because our enemies understand our culture, and they play it like a game. They are as Extremely Online as we are, but they treat it like a game, and shed identity like clothing.
We need to remember that the true bigots who make our culture are people like Wizard Book Lady and Joss Whedon, who make their bigotry evident and apparent and own it. Making a casual mistake - and I'm still skeptical one was even made here - should not carry costs like this.
More than anything we need to remember that there is a They and They are out to get us. Not just the celebrities, all of us. They compile dossiers on minor Twitter issues. They SWAT people. They run ops like this. All of this is documented fact.
So few of the right wing Internet disasters that have arisen have arisen without coaching and grooming by the ch*ns. G*mergate's inciting event would originally have just been a blog post no one noticed by Gjoni, but he was coached to make it have maximum impact.
We're starting to see evidence Q ties back to the *exact same people*.
Above all else,hating queer people and hating women is what these folks do. It is their modus operandi and it is their core ideology.This was an orchestrated attack on a gay woman(who I,again,am not a fan of)
Above all else,hating queer people and hating women is what these folks do. It is their modus operandi and it is their core ideology.This was an orchestrated attack on a gay woman(who I,again,am not a fan of)
I just blocked someone for coming at me with the "you have no right to speak on this, Stevenson WAS racist" thing, someone who followed me even.
Let me be clear: the argument that she was racist is something I want to hear a Black farmer actually articulate.
Let me be clear: the argument that she was racist is something I want to hear a Black farmer actually articulate.
Like if a farmer, who is Black - they are not uncommon - says their white friends shouldn't refer to them working in the fields, or even a Black culture scholar or ANYONE I can be sure isn't just repeating stuff they heard from the Discourse Mill, fine. I'll eat my words
But come on people. Look at this, on the surface. Think critically for one second. Does the concept that in referring to a Black farmer a white person should not refer to them being in the fields - a place which all farms have and where all farmers must go - make any sense?
I don't understand how people aren't transparently seeing that this is made up. Maybe it comes from not growing up on a farm? Because I did. And I heard a lot of racist jokes, slavery jokes, etc from my fellow white classmates who were farmers and I never even slightly got this
They look like us. they know our social conventions and taboos and lingo. They will not rest. They will not stop. They will not show mercy until we have been driven off the Internet. https://twitter.com/BootlegGirl/status/1299673292459122690?s=19
