Ah, I get it all the time--I figure it's our turn to take a little heat. after all that's gone on recently
What I want to understand is, why do so many people think they can discount my entire argument just because I used a "bad word"? I'm a New Yorker. It's how I talk. You don't have to like it, but I won't apologize for it when I used it on my own blog.
There has been research showing that extreme homophobes are often repressing same sex desires, but sometimes, it's just that some people like to have a minority group that they can look down on and oppress to make themselves feel better. Jews, gays, Irish, racial minorities, women....all number of minorities have been persecuted. It's not always about the homophobe being a repressed homosexual, some people hate other people as a way of trying to lift themselves up. I don't think that works very well, but it's a habit for some people.
Also, there are lots of political demagogues who stir people up by giving them someone to be afraid of. Convince people that there's a group that threatens their way of life and only you have a plan to stop them, and you can win their allegiance, if they're gullible enough to fall for it. That's why you hear some politicians today claiming that illegal immigrants are bringing ebola into the country, even though it makes no medical or scientific sense. It's not that they're stupid enough to believe that (although some may be), but that they hope their listeners will be stupid enough to fall for it and that they can mobilize their political base by stirring up fear. It's in the interests of people like that to convince their followers that the gays will tear down marriage and morality or that the immigrants will steal jobs and bring disease or the Muslims will this or the blacks will that or the Jews will the other thing. It's a sadly familiar pattern.
Not to pick on you or anything, but to pick on you for a moment.... Your complaint about Dave's use of the word "fuck" is exactly the same as the original e-mailer's complaint about the use of homosexuality in Star Trek fiction. You're using the same argument: I don't want icky cooties in my fiction, whether it's those yucky gay people or those vulgar words. They're both nonsense.
I'm not the least bit offended by the casual profanity, but I do object to comparing someone objecting to profanity being "the same argument" as someone objecting to homosexuality. I don't think any offense is meant, but they're really different issues.
I am all about people getting the fuck over and fucking dealing with words like "fuck" instead of fucking complaining about them every fucking time.
Buggers. It's nice to think Card was nicer then, when he was writing about an alien species known by a word associated with homosexuality being completely annihilated, in a novel that had subtexts of pedophilia, child abuse, and incest. I don't think he's changed much, beyond foregrounding what used to be backgrounded.
^That's a British slang term that I doubt an American like Card would've known. I'd certainly never heard it when I first read the book. And this requires spoilers for the book and film: Spoiler: Ender's Game The Formics, aka "Buggers," turn out not to be evil. The whole war was a misunderstanding; as a collective mind, they were horrified when they realized they'd been destroying individual sentiences, and immediately halted further attacks, by which point Earth's retaliatory invasion was well underway. The whole message of the book was that the human military was wrong to condemn them as evil for being different, that their all-or-nothing intolerance of the other was what had led to an unnecessary tragedy. So if you're trying to suggest that Card approved of the destruction of the Formics, then you need to read the damn book because you have no bloody clue what you're talking about. And condemning something you don't understand makes you no better than the behavior you're criticizing. I also didn't note any pedophilic subtext when I recently reread the book just before seeing the movie. And it's contradictory to say that on the one hand Card was equating the Formics with homosexuals yet simultaneously equating the human military bent on their destruction with child abusers. You can't have it both ways.
I was reading the comments on TrekToday and was frankly laughing at the buffoons there (eg. you must be gay if you write about gay people). But didn't think it was even worthy of comment. But the stuff on the BLASTR site has really disappointed me. I personally believe you have the right to be against homosexuality or interracial marriages because of your religion or whatever if you keep it to yourself or peers and just act accordingly to your own beliefs. But the moment you write an email telling someone how wrong it is for them to have different opinions from you then you deserve some response. And if David Mack has a bigger audience than you, then bad luck. Look I don't personally ship nuKirk/nuMcCoy but if anyone does they're welcome to read the fan fiction. I can live in the same universe with it as long as long as I don't have to read it. The aggrieved reader also doesn't have to read David Mack's books. The reader went out of his way to protest or try to attempt David Mack to change his ways. So what sort of response does he/she expect?
I don't think someone condemning a book they don't understand (if in fact that is the case) makes someone "no better" than a homophobe. I don't think any offense was meant, but still, there's a big difference there.
But it's the same kind of rhetoric and reasoning used by people like that, cherry-picking a few random factoids out of context and twisting them to fit their preconceptions and their desire to paint the opposition negatively, rather than approaching a thing with an open mind and learning what it really is and what it isn't. What we're getting into here is the principle that a book is not its author, that the two deserve to be judged separately. One of the essays I linked to earlier (or maybe one I came upon in the search for those and didn't link to) observed that sometimes a great work can be better than its author. I have no sympathy for what Orson Scott Card believes today; I think he's gone to a very dark place and lost touch with reality. But I do not see a trace of that man when I read Ender's Game. I see a book that clearly and eloquently condemns the exact kind of thinking that Card now embraces, a book that celebrates empathy for the different as perhaps the most valuable human trait there is. Whatever part of Mr. Card made him write this book is not the same part that controls him now. It's a part he's forgotten how to listen to.
I had a much longer response, but it doesn't matter. There were people noticing creepy and disturbing elements in Ender's Game long before Card outed himself as a hatemonger. It's not just a case of people deciding oh, he's a homophobe now, what can I find in his old stuff that could be incriminating. And that's without going into how suspension of disbelief-stretching the plot (only this little kid can save us, once we've abused him long enough) and characters (especially Ender's siblings) are. Anyway. Sure is cool seeing David Mack's comments getting distributed far outside the usual Treklit circles. Here's hoping whoever does the next Trek TV series reads it.
I could cherry-pick evidence that would make Aquaman look like a loser superhero. That wouldn't make me no better than a homophobe, even if I employed the same tactics. What these tactics are used in aid of matters.
The only creepy elements I see in the book are those that are supposed to be creepy -- the behavior of the dystopian police state and other bullies that we're intended to disapprove of. It's set in a harsh world, but it's ultimately the empathic characters that carry the moral standard. Spoiler: Ender's Game Ender uncovers the truth about the Formics and saves them from extinction by rejecting kneejerk fear of their alienness and understanding that their differences from us do not make them evil. Valentine and Peter achieve success by arguing for each other's political positions rather than their own, so that they temper and moderate each other's views rather than descending into growing extremism. That in itself could not be more completely opposed to the kind of ideological-bubble punditry that Card and so many others have descended to today. In any case, whatever one might feel about the book, the movie is a different work. It's faithful to the book overall, but it's still Gavin Hood's interpretation of the book, which entails some filtering and selection. Books, like people, are complex things that can have positive and negative aspects coexisting. And the people doing adaptations can filter out what they see as the negatives while keeping the positives; for instance, it's a safe bet that the Tintin movies (assuming the sequels ever get made) are never going to adapt that infamously racist Tintin in the Congo book, but they are adapting the parts that they think are worth keeping. I think that if one came upon this movie with no knowledge of its origins and history, one would find it to be a solid, effective science fiction film with a very positive message about empathy and tolerance, and would never suspect that anyone involved in its creation was a homophobe, Islamophobe, etc. I mean, you know my own views from my writing. You know I'd never be an apologist for Card's current beliefs. I was actually very wary about seeing the movie at first, and wasn't sure I even wanted to keep the Ender books I have. But then I read those essays I talked about earlier, about how Ender's Game can actually be read as a very potent counterargument to Card's current views and how a great work can transcend its creator, so I decided to give the book and the movie another chance. And I've told you what I see in them that I think is positive and worth listening to. I don't think it's wrong to point out when a person's own writings contain positive messages that counteract the negative things he says, to show that there are inconsistencies in his own position, if nothing else. The best way to counter negative messages like Card's are with positive messages rather than equal negativity. And so much the better if the positive messages can be derived from his own work. I agree with that, but it seems irrelevant to the aspect of the book we're discussing. It also has no bearing whatsoever on the movie, because the movie ages up the children to a more plausible adolescence and eliminates the entire Locke-Demosthenes subplot with Ender's siblings. That's a fair point. But it doesn't change the fact that the tactic itself is dishonest. If your case has merits, you shouldn't have to twist or ignore facts in order to make it. So I'm opposed to the use of such tactics to support any argument, because they only undermine a legitimate position.