It's like the shambling zombified corpse of fail!

[dragojustine]

I got to bed just before 5 am last night. I needed to be up at 1, so it wasn't as irresponsible as all that, except then, at 6am, a car alarm went off three feet from my bed. That three feet is an exaggeration, admittedly; I just went out and paced it off, and it's actually eight feet. Not "from my bedroom," but eight feet "from my bed." And that car alarm kept sounding, off and on, until noon. By the time I got up at 1 I already had the Headache Of Doom, and by the time I got home from work at 7, it had reached the "lay very very still in a very very quiet very very dark place and pray for death" level.

I'm better, now, after a nap. But I just looked outside, and the same car is parked there again. If that damn car doesn't stop screaming, Imma put a rock through its windshield. Give it something to scream about.

It is truly astonishing that the Great Fail of '09 is still going on. I haven't said anything for a variety of reasons (I'm a clueless white girl; I don't personally know anybody so I'd be just another voice going "me too"; I'm just damn well embarrassed on the part of the SFF establishment at this point; yadda). But, seriously. So, a bullety of links and things that I would think would be so obvious as to be utterly non-controversial:

1. Outing people is bad.
2. Pseudonymous != anonymous (REALLY. When pseudonyms are stable and long-lasting and serve as a person's unique identifier in a community, and when community standards demand that a person take responsibility for things said and done under that pseudonym, that is not anonymity by any reasonable definition)
3. Before this became the Great Outing Soap Opera, let's not forget that there sure was a lot of fail on the race and cultural appropriation front. deepad's Reappropriating my man remains my favorite post from this phase of the Fail.
4. Elizabeth Bear's behavior (especially this post) is like a master class in How To Fuck Up An Apology. (Wait, you apologized because you wanted to seem non-racist, rather than actually being one, but if anyone implies that you were actually in the wrong rather than showering you with cookies, screw them? And it seemed like a good idea to you to admit this on your lj?)
5. cofax7's post On the Sudden Onset of Pantslessness is probably the post I most needed to read here. By which I mean it's the one that made me feel the urge to get defensive, which, in discussions like this, is a pretty good sign that you (meaning me) need to think hard. I link to it in that spirit.
6. That said, after watching all this unfold, I will never again say "I just don't have an embarrassment squick."

Comments

[jenrose]

I'd been blissfully unaware. A brief perusal of the vast amounts of blarg leaves me saying, "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK PEOPLE!"

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's... well, pretty accurate, really.

[atuinsails.livejournal.com]

I don't think Ms. Bear meant that post as an apology for her writing, but for her inaction. Personally, I feel she has no need to apologize for anything, but I haven't been keeping up with the "Great Fail of '09" as you call it, so I don't know all the details.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

well, the post I linked to (if you get all the way through- it is pretty long) is actually a *retraction* of an apology. Which, in my book, is never classy, even before looking at the rather belittling undertones. (Seriously, retracting an apology. Who does that?)

But, yes- I wasn't keeping up on it so carefully either, at least not until it became the Fail That Would Not Die.

[ariadne83]

I haven't really posted anything either (for pretty much the same reasons), though I've been following the whole debacle and cringing at the white people making the same damn arguments over and over. I can't help but think that if it's been pinging me that hard, when I've only recently had a crash course in racism bingo, it must be driving FOC up the freaking wall.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

*nods* no kidding