Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

I think I summed it up in chat with RC-1991 better than I did here, which is that I'm part Greek so I have a darker complexion but I've always thought of myself as white, so when I saw Lanoree's picture or anyone with a darker complexion I guess I automatically think white, or at least self identify and so think white.

 

yeah i think that's the reasoning behind it pretty much, in the vein of hetero-/homosexual instead of normal/queer. or whatever. I'm pretty ambivalent about it though because I mean, being transsexual is pretty much as abnormal as you can get, so like... I dunno. having a word nobody's ever heard of to refer to people who weren't born with an unusual birth defect seems kinda unnecessary? but I guess there is precedent along the lines of like, blind/sighted or deaf/hearing or whatever.

 

Determining 'race' from visual cues alone can be very difficult. In the real world pedigree is far more important than outward appearance and to some degree ethnicity can actually be detected via genetic comparison, but in Star Wars that data is almost completely absent. Heck we often don't even know the lighting level in a single visual image, something that, especially in animated formats, can have substantial effect on skin tone. As I discovered when systematically mapping race in Star Wars the racial balance of the setting is incredibly dependent on how you chose to define the boundaries of the various races, in particular whiteness.

 

I think the issue is that it's not quite that simple...you can have someone with a genetic issue like AIS (if it's still in print you can find a story I wrote about AIS in MOTA 3 editing by Karen Joy Fowler! *ahem* humblebrag over) to things like a queer person who doesn't identify as male but doesn't want surgery to remove their penis to asexuals...(I know...)...and cross-dressers get labeled as trans as well. It's a bit weird that something that's argued (and I think proven) to not be binary felt they needed binary terms...except "trans" covers a MASSIVE amount of territory while cis covers completely heteronormative and birth gendered identifying.

As I said, it's really of most use when dealing with these issues in an academic setting because trust me, and I speak from experience, when you're writing a twenty page paper you really don't want to be writing heteronormative and birth gender identifying ever time and "normal" places a value judgement that you don't want in an academic paper. It's helpful on the internet for similar reasons, and it sets out your position plainly and clearly without having to explain anything.

If you see someone using the term in an insulting and negative way that person is an *******, no different than any other internet jackhole.

 

*enjoys learning from a civilized discussion*

I remember reading a book when I was twelve, called Leader. It was about an eleven-year-old boy who is permanently blinded by an exploding firework, and follows his perspective in learning how to adapt to his new disability, as well as his quest to get a guide dog. There is one exchange of dialogue that is particularly on-point, and indeed it is the only one that I still remember because it is so important. When at the guide dog school, the boy is posting a letter while a teacher is helping him. The teacher warns him that there is a sharp edge on the post, and that he needs to be careful.

"Why doesn't someone put a pad on it?" the boy asks.

"You can't expect everyone to pad their corners for you." the instructor replies.

 

DM: I think there's also something in the text but I can't remember it exactly, describing either Lanoree or Dalien's skin as brown. In conjunction with the pictures, I'd say it establishes that they're not supposed to be default white. Persian is probably a good approximation of what they're going for.

 

It's VERY hard getting racial clues across in text that's not set in something that at least is supposed to be a veiled approximation of the real world. Also, with SW calling so many races with non-white features "near-human" it's even harder. Even in graphic depictions it's hard, because racial subgroups tend to not to share a singular look unless there are strong stereotypical images (there's a reason people think Watto is a Jew...I mean, come ON), and the process of stopping a narrative to make it seem natural that you're suddenly describing a character in a way that seems natural is pretty hard. You have to do things like not dark skin against snow of something to make it not sound at least somewhat natural.

 

Having brought up the #CancelColbert "issue" in previous posts, this video takes a detailed look into this latest fake controversy, in addition to the professional victim movement as a whole.

 

Okay, I suspect this is going to come across wrong, but still: can you give it a rest with "professional victicm" stuff? The conversation is about something completely different now. I've been trying to engage sympathetically with your position, but when you just keep pushing your rants about "professional victims" and telling people to suck it up when it comes to normativity - especially when most other people have moved to a new topic - it doesn't make you look very good.

Frankly, even if there are veritable hordes of people claiming discrimination where none exists as a cover for their own failings, I think that's several orders of magnitude less of a problem then actual discrimination - which does exist.

 

The video lost me after he tried to make out that something was wrong with the statement that cisgendered people shouldn't try and impose an identity onto transgendered people.

 

Vthuil You're right. I'll drop it.

 

So...... Invincible #110 is going to, or probably already has, set the Internet aflame. Due to? See here:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/04/09/rape-and-the-modern-superhero-comic-invincible-110/

I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable as others, but I'm not sure there are other examples in this way as such, or certainly not very many.

Should Kirkman have done it? Here I'm ambivalent. If there are serious repercussions and they are handled seriously, it could be a very smart arc indeed but superhero comics of any type don't have a good record on rape and its effect. At the same time, it could be argued that rape, as a term, has become devalued by the ignorant invoking it frequently as a form of trash-talk. Thus a story that shoves the reality in the face of the readers.....

(As I buy the story in OHCs, which is not yet up to #100, there's time to see exactly how this plays out.)

 

My personal feeling is that if some topic is both a serious real-world problem and something that's been widely mishandled in your genre's recent past, then you probably shouldn't use it for the immediate future even if your idea about it is actually good.

 

I just read the issue this moment, so I think I'll have to let it stew for a while, but at the very least I respect Kirkman's proclivity for subversion of expectations--both in a gender sense and in the sense that everyone was worried about Eve instead. If it'd happened to her I would be much less okay with it, but he at least knows better than to do that.

 

Uh, this isn't the first time that Kirkman has dealt with sexual assault in comics. Has anyone here read his Walking Dead series? What's more is that I believe that he depicted that crime to be something truly terrible and dealt with the outcome responsibly and provided closure for the readers and the character within the story. I can think of at least five examples from mainstream comics (mainly DC) where they use sexual assault for far more questionable and potentially offensive reasons.

It seems strange that the article would make such a big point of the nature of the assault and how it wouldn't be acceptable if they reversed the situation. Almost as if the author is kind of complaining.

 

I'd suggest there's at least a few reasons windu:

1. Walking Dead #33 was a few years back, although the rape of Michonne by the Governor was before #33, #33 was her torture and revenge upon him.

2. Invincible is aimed at a different audience, it is, just by being in the superhero genre, more 'mainstream' than Walking Dead in comics terms.

3. The gender aspect also will get it more attention.

Sales gimmick? Oh, that accusation can be made, justified? To be fair, the next issues are needed to decide that. Could go either way and yeah, with the likes of Identity Crisis, DC can't cry foul.

 

Kirkman makes me cringe sometimes. It's like he's just good enough to take some things on but the executions always leave me feeling iffy. The "Fat Eve" and that other thing that happened while Mark was in space for a year make me cautious of him taking on sensitive subjects.

 

Yeah can be difficult without using real world ethnicities or obvious expys as a descriptor.

 

On a slightly relevant note to the whole Wookieepedia mess: does anyone in this thread frequent the Doctor Who Wiki, and if so, do you know whether this disclaimer has always been there?

I don't remember ever seeing it before, and if it's just been added the timing is kind of an interesting coincidence.

PS: Let's not turn this into a digression about Doctor Who in general, mmkay?

 

This may be of some interest
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4634784.html
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4656976.html
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4680284.html

 

I do enjoy Astro City. Its a fresh take on the superhero dynamic

 

I'm not going to comment on a story I haven't read (excerpts - even big ones - don't count), but in my past experience Astro City is one of the bright spots of superhero comics. I'm inclined to agree with the commenter on one of those pages who says it can occasionally get too meta, but really that's part of the point, so it's an irrelevant criticism.

 

Going to be ordering the trade with that arc very soon, it's due Sept.

Astro City has been one of my favourite books for years, since the start, not least as it has a deftness to it that a whole swath of books do not have. Going to be interesting to read the Victory arc as that was something Busiek was going to have to get to at some point.

 

I believe it's always been there. They've got lots of articles related to Torchwood and the old adult novels, and there's plenty of stuff in there that parents might not want children who're looking up Sarah Jane Adventures episodes, or even kids watching Who itself, to happen upon, and the wiki knows that. They've had a page on that for a while, in fact.

 

Sure the AFD joke was tasteless (or at least that part was), but tasteless isn't the same as sexist. Just adding in my two kopecks since I missed out on the main discussion.