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The Fail That Wouldn't Die
Mar. 4th, 2009 09:20 pmI am so very pissed at how badly certain professional SF/F people are behaving lately - why does the list keep GROWING? (Explanation at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink's journal here, and also at spiralsheep's journal here.) Connecting someone's legal name to their LJ pseud is not trivial, and having a pseud does not automatically mean the person is "hiding" to conduct nefarious activities. Which anyone who knows anything about the internet ought to know. I mean, if you have the same username for years, and people connect everything you say under that name to a single identity, you're obviously not escaping consequences. (And while I can see outing someone who is actually harassing and threatening in a seriously harmful way (ie not just a momentary irritation kind of way), that is not what happened here. Far from it.)
And as for why have a pseud, then... well, everyone else has already reeled off the "A Lady George Eliot Currier Acton and Ellis Bell Andre Norton James Tiptree Jr." list and pointed out that duh, most of them had good reason for using pseuds, like, oh, BEING WOMEN AUTHORS. (Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll may have had good reasons as well, or maybe it was just the thing to do, I don't know.) Publius was writing scary controversial political stuff and they (since it was they, not he) probably had good reason for remaining pseudonymous - not the same as anonymous - which involved, you know, safety. Because that was an issue before the internet too. So duh, being PoC authors, and female PoC authors, and female sf/f fans, and PoC sf/f fans, and... well, many issues overlap, duh. Plus there's extras.
And safety. HELLO, THIS IS THE INTERNET. And to combine all those concerns, two words: Kathy Sierra. And more atyeloson's journal here. And oh, millions of more reasons.
As usual,rydra_wong has links to all sorts of excellent posts.
To avoid ending on a downer note, though, some FoC have gotten together to form![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
verb_noireVerb Noire, a small press focusing on genre fiction with characters of color. I can't wait to see it grow! It looks like Chromatic Realities Press won't be happening anytime soon, except maybe as a community over at Dreamwidth when that opens up, but I still love the description.
coffeeandink's journal here, and also at spiralsheep's journal here.) Connecting someone's legal name to their LJ pseud is not trivial, and having a pseud does not automatically mean the person is "hiding" to conduct nefarious activities. Which anyone who knows anything about the internet ought to know. I mean, if you have the same username for years, and people connect everything you say under that name to a single identity, you're obviously not escaping consequences. (And while I can see outing someone who is actually harassing and threatening in a seriously harmful way (ie not just a momentary irritation kind of way), that is not what happened here. Far from it.)And as for why have a pseud, then... well, everyone else has already reeled off the "A Lady George Eliot Currier Acton and Ellis Bell Andre Norton James Tiptree Jr." list and pointed out that duh, most of them had good reason for using pseuds, like, oh, BEING WOMEN AUTHORS. (Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll may have had good reasons as well, or maybe it was just the thing to do, I don't know.) Publius was writing scary controversial political stuff and they (since it was they, not he) probably had good reason for remaining pseudonymous - not the same as anonymous - which involved, you know, safety. Because that was an issue before the internet too. So duh, being PoC authors, and female PoC authors, and female sf/f fans, and PoC sf/f fans, and... well, many issues overlap, duh. Plus there's extras.
And safety. HELLO, THIS IS THE INTERNET. And to combine all those concerns, two words: Kathy Sierra. And more at
yeloson's journal here. And oh, millions of more reasons. As usual,
rydra_wong has links to all sorts of excellent posts.To avoid ending on a downer note, though, some FoC have gotten together to form
verb_noireVerb Noire, a small press focusing on genre fiction with characters of color. I can't wait to see it grow! It looks like Chromatic Realities Press won't be happening anytime soon, except maybe as a community over at Dreamwidth when that opens up, but I still love the description.