Writing this makes my stomach hurt but I feel obligated to say it

[kate_nepveu]

Laura J. Mixon is the only person on the Best Fan Writer ballot for this year's Hugos who wasn't on the Sad/Rabid Puppy Slate. I want to urge people not to reflexively vote for her, that is, to consider no-awarding the entire category.

I assume that she is nominated on the basis of her lengthy post about Benjanun Sriduangkaew / Requires Hate / Winterfox / etc. I did not discuss this at the time—I found the entire topic disproportionately upsetting because RaceFail [*] (speaking of which, do NOT!!! read the comments)—but that post has serious issues. Yes, it managed to get widespread attention to genuine instances of threats; but it also places people on the "target" list for being called "misogynist" ("Anon, MOC Writer") or for criticizing their writing only (Kress, Adrienne; Lord, Karen). There might be more, because I haven't been able to make myself closely read the accompanying text, I just looked at the Appendices; I recall from back in November seeing criticisms of the framing of the post, but I went back through my reading list of the time and couldn't turn up anything linkable.

(ETA 2: I have now read all the text, see comments for a little more discussion.)

As a result, I have serious doubts whether this post ought to garner its author a Hugo. I encourage those voting to carefully consider the question.

(Anon comments are screened; be polite and sign your comment with a handle for continuity of discussion and I'll unscreen you. If you're new here, note that I moderate comments for gross incivility, anon or not.)

[*] ETA: It has come to my attention, in a genuinely friendly and caring way, that this could use unpacking for people not on my access list. I was upset because I believed, and continue to believe, a number of the first-person accounts of Sriduangkaew's harassment and threats, and because I believed Sriduangkaew's apologies—lousy though they were—were going to work, she was going to get a pass: every time I see, for instance, Elizabeth Bear or Teresa Nielsen Hayden lauded as being especially clueful on questions of oppression, or put on a con panel about codes of conduct (for fuck's sake!), it's like being poked in a bruise, and they never made even lousy apologies for their behavior during RaceFail. My opinion of any of the people who came forward has not changed from what it was, I do not put credit in Sriduangkaew's statements, I do not believe we interacted before her identities were revealed, and I have not interacted with her since.

Comments

[fridgepunk]

The key criticism to be lain at Mixon's feet is that the conclusions and summaries of Mixon's report aren't actually supported by the data presented in the report - the most egregious being the claim that RH "disproportionately targeted WoC for abuse" that I see doing the rounds, in large part because despite Mixon expanding the realm of "people RH abused" to include "people she gave a negative review", she still ended up with a brightly coloured pie chart that showed she mainly "targeted" white women.

This is then followed up by a second attempt to prove that point, involving another pie chart, in which the proportion of WoC "targeted" by RH is inexplicably compared to the number of WoC in some Children's Fiction Writer's Organisation despite that not being how comparisons work generally, and the pie chart still doesn't quite manage to support Mixon's conclusion.

Having said that though, I think the way the Hugo's work means that if you put No Award and then put Mixon below that you cover your bases on the off chance that the category comes down to a run off between Mixon and one of the puppy's candidates, while primarily voting for No Award.

But obviously I begrudge no one for just straight voting "No Award" in that category anyway.

[kate_nepveu]

Have looked. The use of the children's publication stats lends a false precision, but if she'd left it at "it helps to look at the racial breakdown for targeted writers only. Between 26 and 30% in the sample are POC," and maybe referenced Strange Horizons' survey work, I don't think the inference of disproportion would be unsupportable, though some acknowledgment of sample sizes would have been good and, as we both said, the samples themselves seemed high.

Also: yes to how No Award works.

http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/1440530.html

[kaberett]

I note that the other thing that bothers me about that assertion is it's assuming the wrong population, which is just bad statistics. I read more books by women and PoC than by white dudes as a deliberate choice; any comments I make about books I've read will therefore be disproportionately about WoC authors relative to the demographics of new publications. I continue frustrated that the report makes no mention of this; misleading use of stats weakens it.

[kate_nepveu]

Right, I meant to mention that and it was four in the morning or whatever. Also it wasn't mentioned that there might be more POC readers, especially, in particular communities like 50books_poc.

[hebethen]

It's a bit difficult, I think, because from what I can tell the blog's purpose was mostly to give negative reviews (although I do remember reading a positive review on there about the work/s of one of the beloved-authors on whom I keep tabs). So there isn't a "total books the blogger read" or "total books the blogger value-neutrally reviewed" list to compare against, or a much of a "positive/neutral reviews of __ authors" percentage to put against the "negative reviews" one/s.

Though this makes me curious about my own percentages -- I'm not a reviewer by any means, but many of my DW posts are casual bookthoughts, see. And thinking about this also makes me tangent into the recent Strange Horizons count of published SFF and reviews thereof by gender and racial minorities and how much more enormous the gap is for POC as a whole than for women as a whole, and now I am blah for other reasons. Oh well! Bookstore this weekend for KL's debut novel, hopefully!