Hugo Odds and Sods ... and Casual Homophobia

A coupe of additional pieces of information have to come to light about Sasquan and the Hugo Awards.

First, on the Political Correctness Police at Sasquan removing material from the freebie table deemed offensive. The poster Captain Comic has related how he approached the convention workers about the removal of the material:

Okay…

As I said, I don’t twerk (?), but I finally ran down the two OUTRAGE twoot lines and someone over at MHN pointed out Jim Hines wanting me found out and the official Sasquan tweent account responding…

Sooo…I wandered down to the wrong room and introduced myself and they sent me to a different office and I walked some more and introduced myself again and showed them my tablet and asked ‘sup?

None of those present knew who used the account for this issue. Had a pleasant enough chat with a con worker who said they basically OK’d the removal because some were “offended” and this year is already tensioned up enough. They also asked if I could stop putting the ribbons out so they wouldn’t have to keep picking them up or accepting them from folks who have.

They also offered to bring all the gathered ribbons they have collected down tomorrow and return them to me.

They seemed more tired than offended themselves.

and how the Sasquan people justified the removal of the ribbons

I can sorta see the point on the puppy ribbon. If I squint. And tilt my head a bit.

But the Larry ribbon? The ConOpsEr said they were told it seemed an attack on a person.

I pointed out it was an issue about strawman arguments against Larry Correia who HIMSELF says this. Got a civil shrug and as I said I wasn’t going to escalate.

But I’ll repeat it one more time:

How did all this little bit of off-handedness become ALL OF THIS?

This makes the Sasquan people come off a little better, although it is still upsetting that they felt the need to respond to the whiney people shouting "I am offended" at the slightest provocation.

Sarah Hoyt then responded with a little homophobic rant:

There is no defense for pulling the ribbons. None. These socialist-cock sucking whores who get their good feelings from being lickspittles to totalitarians and suppressing “unapproved” speech are going to be the death of civilization if we don’t stop their insane stunts.

They should indulge their need for submission in private and leave the rest of us alone.

While I agree with Sarah's basic point, and while I concede that calling people "cock-sucking whores" is a relatively mild form of homophobia and one that Sarah is perhaps not even aware of consciously, it still has homophobic connotations. As the proud son of a proud gay man, this form of casual homophobia pisses me off.  I have tried really hard to keep an open mind about the whole Hugo affair, and to do justice to the arguments of the other side. But there is no justifying this, or the other casual (and sometimes also explicitly vitriolic) homophobia emanating from the Puppy camp.

Second, George R. R. Martin has weighed in with the first of two posts about Sasquan and the Hugo Awards. Like me, he was pretty upset by the results in the two editor categories and by the general cheering of the "No Award" results:

I had picked Mike Resnick in Short Form and Toni Weisskopf in Long Form, and indeed, each of them finished above all the other nominees in the first round of voting... but well behind No Award. This was a crushing defeat for the slates, and a big victory for the Puppy-Free ballot of Deirdre Moen. Honestly? I hated this. In my judgment the voters threw the babies out with bathwater in these two categories. Long Form had three nominees who are more than worthy of a Hugo (and one, Jim Minz, who will be in a few more years), and Short Form had some good candidates too. They were on the slates, yes, but some of them were put on there without their knowledge and consent. A victory by Resnick, Sowards, Gilbert, or Weisskopf would have done credit to the rocket, regardless of how they got on the ballot. (All four of these editors would almost certainly have been nominated anyway, even if there had been no slates).

((Some are saying that voting No Award over these editors was an insult to them. Maybe so, I can't argue with that. But it should be added that there was a far far worse insult in putting them on the ballot with Vox Day, who was the fifth nominee in both categories. Even putting aside his bigotry and racism, Beale's credential as an editor are laughable. Yet hundreds of Puppies chose to nominate him rather than, oh, Liz Gorinsky or Anne Lesley Groell or Beth Meacham (in Long Form) or Gardner Dozois or Ellen Datlow or John Joseph Adams (in Short Form). To pass over actual working editors of considerable accomplishment in order to nominate someone purely to 'stick it to the SJWs' strikes me as proof positive that the Rabid Puppies at least were more interested in saying 'fuck you' to fandom than in rewarding good work)).

I also misliked the roar of approval that went up at the announcement of the first No Award. I understand it, yes... fandom as a whole is heartily sick of the Puppies and delighted to see them brought low... but No Award is an occasion for sadness, not celebration, especially in THESE two categories. For what its worth, neither Parris nor I participated in the cheering.

While I do not agree with everything George has written on the Awards, he has been, on-the-whole, one of the clearest voices of reason in this otherwise unreasonable mess.

Third, Lou Antonelli has chimed in with two reports from Sasquan. The first post displays a fair amount of bitterness about the way things went down. He also clarifies a little the letter he sent to the Spokane PD:

Oh, to set the record straight about that letter I wrote to the Spokane Police Chief:

It was a personal letter expressing fears I had. It was not a report, formal or otherwise; it was not a complaint. People who state I filed a false police report or complaint to the Spokane Police Department are lying.

This sounds better; I would still like to see exactly what he wrote. As I mentioned before, there is

a big difference between writing to say that David Gerrold is "insane and a public danger and needs to be watched" ... which is what he said on the podcast, and ... "expressing some concerns over potential security issues at the upcoming Sasquan" which is what he says he did in his apology.

His second post clarifies reports of a snub by David Gerrold:

Some people have said I'm mad because David Gerrold snubbed me at Sasquan. That's not true - I'm not mad that he snubbed me, because he didn't.

He did offer to buy me a beer, but that I guess was little more than a rhetorical flourish. I'm sure he was very busy. It think it would have made a great photo, the pair of us quaffing brews - it might have even helped show some kind of reconciliation was possible. A missed opportunity, perhaps?

Bumping into him in the hallway outside an elevator, I absent-mindedly and rather spontaneously went to shake his hand. He refused, saying "I may have accepted your apology, but I haven't forgiven you." Realizing my faux pas, I turned tail and took off.

That's not a snub, that's him exercising his personal rights. He doesn't have to be nice to me, and he wasn't rude, just firm. I may have other complaints about how some things were done, but a beer and handshake weren't two of them.

He has also made it clear that he regards Sad Puppies as a bad idea and will not participate in future. On the whole, these posts lead me to believe more firmly that his original apology was genuine.