Hollywood

Pop Culture Link Round Up 10.25.14

Tony Thompson, , , ,

Craft Brewer Admits He’s The Guy Responsible For Town’s Mysterious Count Chocula Shortage

Just in time for the spooky season, the city of Fort Collins, CO had a crunchy mystery on its hands: Someone had bought up all the boxes of Count Chocula cereal from two local grocery stores, prompting confusion and hunger in at least a few shoppers. Enough of a mystery to make the news, at least.

A puzzled shopper who says she usually eats vegetarian and organic food for most of the year wrote to The Coloradoan saying she splurges around Halloween on her favorite cereal.

“Every year I greatly look forward to the month of October when I can purchase a few boxes of this delicious chococlatey (sic) goodness,” she wrote, an effort that was stymied when both Albertson’s stores she went to were completely out of the stuff.

As it turns out, the general manager of Black Bottle, a craft brewing company, had plundered shelves in order to brew beer for the brewery’s Cerealiously beer series. Previous variations include Golden Grahams, Reese’s Puffs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch moonlighting as milk stouts, and this time it’s the Count’s turn.

* * * *

Hoverboard soars close to Kickstarter goal in just two days

As of Wednesday, Arx Pax — the start-up that says it has made the “world’s first real hoverboard” — has raised nearly all of its $250,000 goal on Kickstarter. It’s raised more than $225,000 in barely two days of listing the Hendo Hoverboard on the crowdfunding site, well ahead of the Dec. 15 closing date.

The company has a patent on a technology that creates a magnetic field beneath the board that pushes against itself, creating lift — similar to the system used inMaglev trains. It claims that compared with those other magnetic-levitation systems, its technology is “inexpensive” and “sustainable”. But there’s a hitch: The board will only hover over a surface made of a non-ferromagnetic conductor.

* * * *

Warner Brothers seeking female director for live-action Wonder Woman movie

Warner Bros. is seeking a female director for “Wonder Woman,”The Hollywood Reporter contends, meaning not one but two milestones for the film: It stands to be the first solo feature of the current wave of superhero films to star a woman, and only the second ever to be directed by one.

Lexi Alexander (“Green Street Hooligans”) was the first, with the relatively low-budget 2008 reboot “Punisher: War Zone,” an experience she talked about earlier this year withSPINOFF ONLINE. Patty Jenkins (“Monster”) was poised to be the second, when she was hired in 2011 by Marvel Studios to helm “Thor: The Dark World.” However, she left the sequel within two months, citing creative differences, to be replaced by “Game of Thrones” director Alan Taylor

* * * *

‘Organic genderless gingerbread figures’ might be the most politically correct cookies ever – Your Community

It might not have much of a ring to it, but the name of a new cookie being sold by Melbourne, Australia’s Organic Food & Wine Deli is pure gold in terms of its ability to go viral — for whatever that’s worth.

The following image of the Aussie bakery’s “Organic genderless gingerbread figures” (which just so also happen to be vegan) has been circulating the web since Tuesday when it was posted to Reddit with the caption “So this is what the world is coming to…“

* * * *

What do your favorite Hollywood stars (and agents, directors, CEOs, stuntpeople etc) make a year?

We tend to think that Hollywood stars make the mondo $$.  While we’re right in many cases, things apparently aren’t the way they used to be in the industry.

FILM STAR

How bad is the decline in actor salaries over the past decade? Despite the huge sums still being raked in by such superstars as Robert Downey Jr. (his $75 million comes from his 7 percent, first-dollar slice of Iron Man 3, as well as his $12 million HTC endorsement deal) and Sandra Bullock (a 15 percent, first-dollar deal onGravity and about $10 million more for her summer hit The Heat), most actors are feeling a definite squeeze, especially those in the middle.

“If you’re [a big star], you’re getting well paid,” says one top agent, “but the middle level has been cut out.” Sometimes with a hacksaw. Leonardo DiCaprio made $25 million (including bonuses) for The Wolf of Wall Street, while co-star Jonah Hill got paid $60,000. Granted, that’s an extreme example — Hill offered to do the part for scale (and got an Oscar nomination for his trouble).

But studio cost-cutting has meant that mid-level stars are being nickel-and-dimed in ways that would have been unheard of in the gilded ’90s (i.e., Marvel Studios’ reportedly offering Mickey Rourke a mere $250,000 to star opposite Downey inIron Man 2). Before breaking out the violins, though, remember that even mid-level stars are far better off than most other actors. According to the most recent SAG statistics, the average member earns $52,000 a year, while the vast majority take home less than $1,000 a year from acting jobs.

AGENT $200K-$10M
Like everyone in Hollywood, the talent agencies have been tightening their belts. “Your biggest concern used to be, ‘Would I get a $100,000 bonus or a $200,000 bonus?’ ” recalls one veteran agent wistfully. “Ha! Things have changed.” Those bonuses still happen, they just require a hot client (or five). CAA generally pays more than WME, UTA, Gersh, ICM and Paradigm, yet salaries increasingly are tied to what an agent brings in. And an agency will overpay to lure a top agent (and his clients). Generally speaking, though, starting agents can expect to earn $50,000 to $65,000; more senior agents make around $200,000; partners make $400,000 to $700,000; and board members — like CAA’s Bryan Lourd and WME’s Patrick Whitesell and Ari Emanuel — can earn as much as $10 million. In rare circumstances, bonuses based on client earnings can turn mid-level agents into $1 million-a-year employees. In short, top talent breeds top salaries. Tracey Jacobs at UTA is said to be earning upward of $9 million — and she reps Johnny Depp.

Click the link to learn the salaries of tv stars, stuntpeople, and more.  Prepare to be depressed by the massive sums of money these people make.  Even those who don’t make the millions of dollars still do damn well.

Pop Culture Link Round Up 10.25.14
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Pop Culture Link Roundup: Sexism Edition

Tony Thompson, , 4 Comments

You asked for it.

You demanded it.

Now you’re getting it.

TWILIGHT. IS. BACK.

I’m not a fan of Twilight.  I haven’t read the books, nor do I have any intention of doing so.  If I want to be tortured, I’ll have someone pull out my finger- and toe- nails with pliers (and no anesthetic).  No need to read Stephanie Meyer’s stalker laden, anti-abortion, pro-abusive relationship, misogynistic faux-romance (fauxmance?) by way of Mormon porn (plus I’ve seen several of the movies, which contain the same thematic elements). But if you’re one of the countless millions of people drawn to that tripe (can you tell how much disdain I hold for the Twilight?), you may like this (hat tip to The Mary Sue). Deadline has the details:

Five features wasn’t enough. Lionsgate said today that it is partnering with author Stephenie Meyer, Facebook, Women in Film and Tongal to launch a social media campaign to develop and produce short films by female filmmakers based on the characters in The Twilight Saga. The venture, called The Storytellers – New Creative Voices of The Twilight Saga, will include films based on a broad spectrum of characters from the Twilight universe, with guidance provided by Meyer’s encyclopedic The Twilight Saga: Official Illustrated Guide. Entries will be judged by Meyer, Kristen Stewart, Kate Winslet, Octavia Spencer, Jennifer Lee, Catherine Hardwicke, Julie Bowen and Women In Film President Cathy Schulman.

The five winning shorts will be financed through production advances, and fans will help select a grand prize-winning filmmaker who will receive a cash prize and career opportunities. “The female voice is something that has become more and more important to me as I’ve worked in the film industry,” said Meyer. “I’m honored to be working with Women In Film, Lionsgate, and Facebook on a project dedicated to giving more women a chance to be heard creatively.”

The only good thing about this is that it will highlight female directors, of which Hollywood doesn’t have enough (though apparently, Indie films have a better representation of female directors, which kinda puts the lie to any claims that there are fewer female directors because women don’t want to direct movies).

* * * *

The truth is out there.

And we already know what it is.  There is a gender based pay disparity in Hollywood (just like the rest of the US).  In an interview with Red magazine, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame talks about how much less she was paid than David Duchovny (hat tip to The Mary Sue):

It seems incredible now to think Anderson was just 24 when she was offered the part of Scully on The X Files, quickly establishing herself as an international star – although Duchovny was originally paid significantly more. It was three years before Anderson made a stand and was finally awarded the same salary.

‘At the beginning, the pay disparity was massive. But that happens all the time in Hollywood. It’s, “Do this for me, I’ll get you a job.” All the stuff in the papers today about people in entertainment who have abused their position…’

Anderson is clearly not one of those women who might shy away from referring to herself as a feminist, and she’s on a roll: ‘It’s built into our society. It’s easy to miss and it’s easy to get used to it. There are things that are intolerable in today’s world, in terms of the perception of women. Whether they’re vamps or vixens… the expectation that, if a woman is wearing a short skirt, she’s “asking for it”.’

Sexism.

It’s everywhere.

* * * *

It’s even on Jeopardy!

Monday night’s Jeopardy! had a “What Women Want” category, but instead of featuring things women actually want—paid maternity leave, to finally adopt the ERA—it had herbal tea and good-fitting jeans. (It wasn’t even a celebrity edition.)

I like some of the Twitter responses to Jeopardy’s sexism.  Instead of this:

Women want this:

Rather than this:

Women want this:

For a show that is based around knowledge, they have much to learn.

Pop Culture Link Roundup: Sexism Edition

The battle for diversity is ongoing and it's everywhere

Tony Thompson, , , , , , 1 Comment

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Movies.

Television.

Comic Books.

Video Games.

For all of these and more, the word diversity has grown in importance.  Viewer, readers, and players are speaking up and demanding more and better representation-for women, LGBT people, People of Color, and other oppressed groups.

Laurie Penny writes about a culture war going on:

There’s a culture war happening right now. It’s happening in games, in film, in journalism, in television, in fiction, in fandom. It’s happening online, everywhere. And everywhere, sexists, recreational misogynists and bigots are losing.

They are losing, and they don’t know why.

I’ve been thinking a lot, this week and last week, about what it is that’s changing in culture, about what women are doing, and what is being done to us in revenge. I’ve been thinking about what happened to Jennifer Lawrence; about what happened to Zoe Quinn; about what happened to Anita Sarkeesian; about what’s been happening to every games and culture writer with the gall to be female or to defend feminism; and I’ve been thinking, unavoidably, about what’s happened to me, over the course of three years of harassment and abuse.

This a song we know by now. It starts and ends, almost always, with attacks on our sexuality, on our bodies as meat and function: our sexual and relationship history is broadcast everywhere, which is what happened to games developer Quinn, after an ex-boyfriend posted a disturbed, disturbing novella-length attack on everything she is and everything she stands for. The gamersphere then collectively wet its knickers over not being allowed to mercilessly slut-shame their chosen target without being called out, because freedom of speech.

The routine, the arguments, have become far too familiar. A woman or a handful of women are selected for destruction; our ‘credibility’ and ‘professionalism’ are attacked in the same breath as we are called ugly, slut-shamed for dismissed either as stupid little girls or bitter old women or, in some cases, both. The medium is modern, but the logic is Victorian, and make no mistake, the problem is not what we do and say and build and create.

The problem is that women are doing it. That’s why the naked selfies, the slut-shaming, is not just incidental to the argument – it is the argument. Underneath it all, you’re just a woman, just a body. You can be reduced to flesh. You are less. You are an object. You are other. LOL, boobs.

The problem is that women are creating culture, changing culture, redefining culture, and those cunts, those poisonous cunts, those disgusting, uppity cunts must be stopped.

She’s angry and she has every right to be.

****

Unacceptable.  That’s what Dana Hunter says about the ongoing battle against sexism and misogyny:

Now. This is going to be quite the nasty shock to some people who didn’t have any idea one of their heroes was an alleged sexual predator. And it’s going to be a nasty shock to people who heard the initial accusations, but figured it was all some big mistake, or hysterical Michael Shermer haters, and would all blow over. It must be horrible for them to realize it’s not blowing over, but blowing up. Well, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention, and don’t listen to the people telling you there’s a problem, for years.

You’re going to want to duck and hide from the blast. But you need to steel yourself and face this squarely. Michael Shermer has had not one, not two, but three named women accuse him of inappropriate sexual behavior. Three women willing to face a shitstorm of abuse and possible legal threats in order to tell a reporter that Shermer did not-right things to them is not a minor matter. If you’re having that knee-jerk “this can’t be happening and Michael would never” reaction, you need to bite your tongue as hard as is necessary to stop it, and read that article thoroughly. Read it multiple times. Let it sink in.

Don’t say anything yet.

Read the timeline, wherein now-named people shared their stories, and still-anonymous people also have said Shermer victimized them, and named people not in the article have said Shermer harassed or assaulted them. Granted, these are not allegations that have been proved in a court of law. Shermer is stilllegally innocent, and will remain so unless he is convicted in a courtroom. But there comes a time when you need to take into account the fact that multiple people are saying similar things, and recognize that this is information you need to take into account before you spring to his defense. We do not need evidence beyond reasonable doubt when we’re considering whether to keep extending our respect to a person, and when we’re deciding whether to continue inviting him to speak, and whether he’s still welcome in our spaces.

As she says, we know more than enough information to be concerned about Michael Shermer’s predatory actions.  He is deserving of neither respect nor invitations to conventions.

****

Over at Gamasutra Leigh Alexander argues that traditional gaming culture and gamers as we know them are over:

Yet in 2014, the industry has changed. We still think angry young men are the primary demographic for commercial video games — yet average software revenues from the commercial space have contracted massively year on year, with only a few sterling brands enjoying predictable success.

It’s clear that most of the people who drove those revenues in the past have grown up — either out of games, or into more fertile spaces, where small and diverse titles can flourish, where communities can quickly spring up around creativity, self-expression and mutual support, rather than consumerism. There are new audiences and new creators alike there. Traditional “gaming” is sloughing off, culturally and economically, like the carapace of a bug.

This is hard for people who’ve drank the kool aid about how their identity depends on the aging cultural signposts of a rapidly-evolving, increasingly broad and complex medium. It’s hard for them to hear they don’t own anything, anymore, that they aren’t the world’s most special-est consumer demographic, that they have to share.

We also have to scrutinize, closely, the baffling, stubborn silence of many content creators amid these scandals, or the fact lots of stubborn, myopic internet comments happen on business and industry sites. This is hard for old-school developers who are being made redundant, both culturally and literally, in their unwillingness to address new audiences or reference points outside of blockbuster movies and comic books as their traditional domain falls into the sea around them. Of course it’s hard. It’s probably intense, painful stuff for some young kids, some older men.

But it’s unstoppable. A new generation of fans and creators is finally aiming to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary, a language of community that was missing in the days of “gamer pride” and special interest groups led by a product-guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic.

Traditional gaming culture is dying a slow death. Let’s work on accelerating that.

****

In the wake of Janelle Asselin receiving rape threats for criticizing the cover to Teen Titans #1, Andy Khouri over at Comics Alliance sends a message to her harassers:

You see, each of these women — and they’ve been echoed by others including Kate Leth and Heidi MacDonald — explained something to the Seattle crowd that I thought I knew but never truly understood before:

This isn’t their problem, guys. It’s ours. We have to solve it.

Sexual harassment isn’t an occupational hazard. It’s not a glitch in the complex matrix of modern life. It’s not something that just “happens.” It’s something men do. It’s a choice men make. It’s a problem men enable. It’s sometimes a crime men commit. And it is not in the power nor the responsibility of women to wage war on this crime.

It’s on us.

How do we fight this war? We stop enabling. We check ourselves and, when necessary, wreck ourselves. Do you know a guy who’s hate-following women on Twitter just to troll them? You check him. Do you know a guy who’s writing disgusting screeds to women journalists because they don’t like the same things he likes? You check him. Do you know a professional whose discourse with women in his field is loaded with gender-specific language and condescension that could enable further abuse? You check him. Are your Twitter followers identifying you as a sympathetic ear for their sexist views? You check yourself. Is your website’s message board a cesspool of ignorance and hate? You check it like you actually give a damn. Do you know a guy who’s sending rape threats to women for any reason? Oh, you report that guy.

Let me make it plain:

A woman objecting to the content of a comic book — even if you think she’s dead wrong — does not rise to the occasion of vicious name calling and rape threats.

Nothing does.

That guy I quoted above, the one who wrote Janelle that loathsome communiqué? He was right about one thing. Men are the cure — but we are the cancer too. It is wholly and rightfully and crucially up to men in this society and especially in this subculture to speak out and watch out. To end the cycle of bullying, harassment and violence. To recognize the grotesque irony of degrading women over matters of heroic fictions whose lessons about fairness and decency we’ve supposedly been studying since we were just little boys, and to start putting those ideas into practice as grown-ass men.

That’s what these characters are meant to have taught us, and yet the frequency with which women in our industry and fandom are abused and threatened demonstrates that as men we’ve forgotten that very first lesson of the very first superhero.

Remember what we were taught. Remember what we’re supposed to believe in. How can we love these stories and characters so much as to make them a part of ourselves, a piece of our identities as boys and now as men, and behave any differently? Doing otherwise is doing it wrong.

Sexism. Harassment. Misogyny. Not with my superheroes. No, that’s some fake geek guy bullsh*t right there.

A-fucking-men.  I am not going to give up comics and leave them to the misogynistic asspimples and I’m not going to throw my hands up and concede the fight to them either.  I’m going to continue to do what I can to fight back against the hateful bigots (like blog about it, which, contrary to what some people think, is one way to fight back against the tide of hate).

****

Over at her blog,  N. K. Jemisin discusses confirmation bias and bigotry in the Science Fiction & Fantasy culture:

And here’s the thing: us fantasy readers are particularly susceptible to confirmation bias because we tend to be binary thinkers. Just look at the works that have become bestsellers in our genre: how many of them contain a force of good and a force of evil? A Dark Lord versus warriors of light? A Shadow in the East versus the good Men of the West? This is comfort food for most of us — yeah, me included. Binary thought was our formative meat and milk. And even though a lot of us have moved on to accept shades of gray since — as GRRM fans can attest — there will still come a point where we’re faced with facts that threaten us on some level of privilege. When that happens, a lot of us default back to these formative modes. We react to the ego-threat with confirmation bias and other cognitive defense mechanisms; we double down and raise shields and prepare to defend our psychological selves to the death. Us vs Them. We stop thinking, in other words, and lose our goddamned minds.

So if you catch yourself getting upset when someone puts something in a fantasy that “doesn’t belong” — women in positions of power who aren’t sexualized, for example, or people of color in a part of the world where you think they never “existed”*, or a trans woman in a patriarchial society, or an important disabled person in (this! is!) Sparta, or whatever… Take a breath. Calm down. Do some research. Don’t immediately reject the contradictory information, and don’t assume that the person giving it to you is trying to hurt you. Ask yourself why you feel hurt, if you do. Why is this making you so mad? Why is it so important to you that Things Were Just Like That Back Then? Why does it bother you so much to realize things weren’t like that? We can’t always control our reactions to psychological threats, but sometimes understanding why those reactions happen can help us at least short-circuit them before they really blow up. It takes work, but you can shake it off.

And if you’re a writer, and you catch yourself getting defensive when someone suggests you add something to your fantasy novel that “doesn’t belong”… again, take a breath. Do some research — beyond the basic stuff you got in high school history class, that is. (You should be doing that anyway. It’ll improve your worldbuilding.) Write whatever you want, of course; handwave the historical evidence if you feel like it. But own your decisions, if you do so. Recognize that the Things Were Just Like That excuse is just that — an excuse. Existential angst manifesting as unjustified certainty. You wrote what you wrote because you wanted to write it that way. And if you don’t like what these choices imply about you… well. Then you’ve got some work to do, too, haven’t you?

Neither women nor People of Color need an excuse to be present in SF&F books.  They are part of reality as much as white men are, and moreso that aliens and otherworldly creatures.

****

In the UK, broadcasters are facing a bit of pressure.  People want diversity.  Actors, writers, and directors want to see quotas introduced as a way to increase diversity on-screen:

The Act for Change Project has been launched by performer Danny Lee Wynter and Sheffield Theatres’ artistic director Daniel Evans, with the goal of getting broadcasters to better reflect the UK’s diverse population, taking into account gender, disability and those from a black, Asian or ethnic minority [BAME] background.

It was triggered by a trailer for ITV’s drama output, entitled Where Drama Lives, which failed to include any BAME actors.

This week, a conference was held at the Young Vic in London, which offered an opportunity for the industry to share ideas on how best to tackle the lack of diversity on UK television.

One of the measures put forward – which attracted overwhelming support from attendees – was to have quotas that would force broadcasters to ensure a percentage of their output features performers from diverse backgrounds.

The conference heard how representation of BAME people on television had fallen from 31% in 2006 to 5.4% today.

Speaking at the event, Syal said that attitudes within the TV sector were not changing, and that performers looked to the US for work because of measures in place there which ensure programmes feature actors from a BAME background.

“We have all been talking about America and how we look to America because they seem to be doing it properly,” she said, adding: “America did the enforced quota and I’m sure people didn’t like it at first. But I just think that sometimes, if attitudes aren’t changing, you’ve go to lead people that way.”

****

Yes, there’s pushback.  The racists. The misogynists. The homophobes. The transphobes.  These are the people decrying a black Human Torch. They’re the ones calling for Anita Sarkeesian to be raped. They’re the ones in Hollywood who continue to create a toxic culture for LGBT people.  These are just the vocal opponents. The loudest ones.  The ones we see.  There is another group opposed to change: the enablers.  The people who by not opposing the bigots, support the way things are.  These are the people who make excuses for how things are. The people who argue that “both sides are unreasonable”.  The people who just want it all to go away. The people who are fine with the status quo.

My message to all of them: we aren’t going away.  We deserve to have our voices heard and we will continue to demand that you hear us.  You can work with us to help create a world where we are all represented, or you can continue to stand in our way.

But we will not back down.  

The battle for diversity is ongoing and it's everywhere

The battle for diversity is ongoing and it’s everywhere

Tony Thompson, , , , , , 1 Comment

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Movies.

Television.

Comic Books.

Video Games.

For all of these and more, the word diversity has grown in importance.  Viewer, readers, and players are speaking up and demanding more and better representation-for women, LGBT people, People of Color, and other oppressed groups.

Laurie Penny writes about a culture war going on:

There’s a culture war happening right now. It’s happening in games, in film, in journalism, in television, in fiction, in fandom. It’s happening online, everywhere. And everywhere, sexists, recreational misogynists and bigots are losing.

They are losing, and they don’t know why.

I’ve been thinking a lot, this week and last week, about what it is that’s changing in culture, about what women are doing, and what is being done to us in revenge. I’ve been thinking about what happened to Jennifer Lawrence; about what happened to Zoe Quinn; about what happened to Anita Sarkeesian; about what’s been happening to every games and culture writer with the gall to be female or to defend feminism; and I’ve been thinking, unavoidably, about what’s happened to me, over the course of three years of harassment and abuse.

This a song we know by now. It starts and ends, almost always, with attacks on our sexuality, on our bodies as meat and function: our sexual and relationship history is broadcast everywhere, which is what happened to games developer Quinn, after an ex-boyfriend posted a disturbed, disturbing novella-length attack on everything she is and everything she stands for. The gamersphere then collectively wet its knickers over not being allowed to mercilessly slut-shame their chosen target without being called out, because freedom of speech.

The routine, the arguments, have become far too familiar. A woman or a handful of women are selected for destruction; our ‘credibility’ and ‘professionalism’ are attacked in the same breath as we are called ugly, slut-shamed for dismissed either as stupid little girls or bitter old women or, in some cases, both. The medium is modern, but the logic is Victorian, and make no mistake, the problem is not what we do and say and build and create.

The problem is that women are doing it. That’s why the naked selfies, the slut-shaming, is not just incidental to the argument – it is the argument. Underneath it all, you’re just a woman, just a body. You can be reduced to flesh. You are less. You are an object. You are other. LOL, boobs.

The problem is that women are creating culture, changing culture, redefining culture, and those cunts, those poisonous cunts, those disgusting, uppity cunts must be stopped.

She’s angry and she has every right to be.

****

Unacceptable.  That’s what Dana Hunter says about the ongoing battle against sexism and misogyny:

Now. This is going to be quite the nasty shock to some people who didn’t have any idea one of their heroes was an alleged sexual predator. And it’s going to be a nasty shock to people who heard the initial accusations, but figured it was all some big mistake, or hysterical Michael Shermer haters, and would all blow over. It must be horrible for them to realize it’s not blowing over, but blowing up. Well, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention, and don’t listen to the people telling you there’s a problem, for years.

You’re going to want to duck and hide from the blast. But you need to steel yourself and face this squarely. Michael Shermer has had not one, not two, but three named women accuse him of inappropriate sexual behavior. Three women willing to face a shitstorm of abuse and possible legal threats in order to tell a reporter that Shermer did not-right things to them is not a minor matter. If you’re having that knee-jerk “this can’t be happening and Michael would never” reaction, you need to bite your tongue as hard as is necessary to stop it, and read that article thoroughly. Read it multiple times. Let it sink in.

Don’t say anything yet.

Read the timeline, wherein now-named people shared their stories, and still-anonymous people also have said Shermer victimized them, and named people not in the article have said Shermer harassed or assaulted them. Granted, these are not allegations that have been proved in a court of law. Shermer is stilllegally innocent, and will remain so unless he is convicted in a courtroom. But there comes a time when you need to take into account the fact that multiple people are saying similar things, and recognize that this is information you need to take into account before you spring to his defense. We do not need evidence beyond reasonable doubt when we’re considering whether to keep extending our respect to a person, and when we’re deciding whether to continue inviting him to speak, and whether he’s still welcome in our spaces.

As she says, we know more than enough information to be concerned about Michael Shermer’s predatory actions.  He is deserving of neither respect nor invitations to conventions.

****

Over at Gamasutra Leigh Alexander argues that traditional gaming culture and gamers as we know them are over:

Yet in 2014, the industry has changed. We still think angry young men are the primary demographic for commercial video games — yet average software revenues from the commercial space have contracted massively year on year, with only a few sterling brands enjoying predictable success.

It’s clear that most of the people who drove those revenues in the past have grown up — either out of games, or into more fertile spaces, where small and diverse titles can flourish, where communities can quickly spring up around creativity, self-expression and mutual support, rather than consumerism. There are new audiences and new creators alike there. Traditional “gaming” is sloughing off, culturally and economically, like the carapace of a bug.

This is hard for people who’ve drank the kool aid about how their identity depends on the aging cultural signposts of a rapidly-evolving, increasingly broad and complex medium. It’s hard for them to hear they don’t own anything, anymore, that they aren’t the world’s most special-est consumer demographic, that they have to share.

We also have to scrutinize, closely, the baffling, stubborn silence of many content creators amid these scandals, or the fact lots of stubborn, myopic internet comments happen on business and industry sites. This is hard for old-school developers who are being made redundant, both culturally and literally, in their unwillingness to address new audiences or reference points outside of blockbuster movies and comic books as their traditional domain falls into the sea around them. Of course it’s hard. It’s probably intense, painful stuff for some young kids, some older men.

But it’s unstoppable. A new generation of fans and creators is finally aiming to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary, a language of community that was missing in the days of “gamer pride” and special interest groups led by a product-guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic.

Traditional gaming culture is dying a slow death. Let’s work on accelerating that.

****

In the wake of Janelle Asselin receiving rape threats for criticizing the cover to Teen Titans #1, Andy Khouri over at Comics Alliance sends a message to her harassers:

You see, each of these women — and they’ve been echoed by others including Kate Leth and Heidi MacDonald — explained something to the Seattle crowd that I thought I knew but never truly understood before:

This isn’t their problem, guys. It’s ours. We have to solve it.

Sexual harassment isn’t an occupational hazard. It’s not a glitch in the complex matrix of modern life. It’s not something that just “happens.” It’s something men do. It’s a choice men make. It’s a problem men enable. It’s sometimes a crime men commit. And it is not in the power nor the responsibility of women to wage war on this crime.

It’s on us.

How do we fight this war? We stop enabling. We check ourselves and, when necessary, wreck ourselves. Do you know a guy who’s hate-following women on Twitter just to troll them? You check him. Do you know a guy who’s writing disgusting screeds to women journalists because they don’t like the same things he likes? You check him. Do you know a professional whose discourse with women in his field is loaded with gender-specific language and condescension that could enable further abuse? You check him. Are your Twitter followers identifying you as a sympathetic ear for their sexist views? You check yourself. Is your website’s message board a cesspool of ignorance and hate? You check it like you actually give a damn. Do you know a guy who’s sending rape threats to women for any reason? Oh, you report that guy.

Let me make it plain:

A woman objecting to the content of a comic book — even if you think she’s dead wrong — does not rise to the occasion of vicious name calling and rape threats.

Nothing does.

That guy I quoted above, the one who wrote Janelle that loathsome communiqué? He was right about one thing. Men are the cure — but we are the cancer too. It is wholly and rightfully and crucially up to men in this society and especially in this subculture to speak out and watch out. To end the cycle of bullying, harassment and violence. To recognize the grotesque irony of degrading women over matters of heroic fictions whose lessons about fairness and decency we’ve supposedly been studying since we were just little boys, and to start putting those ideas into practice as grown-ass men.

That’s what these characters are meant to have taught us, and yet the frequency with which women in our industry and fandom are abused and threatened demonstrates that as men we’ve forgotten that very first lesson of the very first superhero.

Remember what we were taught. Remember what we’re supposed to believe in. How can we love these stories and characters so much as to make them a part of ourselves, a piece of our identities as boys and now as men, and behave any differently? Doing otherwise is doing it wrong.

Sexism. Harassment. Misogyny. Not with my superheroes. No, that’s some fake geek guy bullsh*t right there.

A-fucking-men.  I am not going to give up comics and leave them to the misogynistic asspimples and I’m not going to throw my hands up and concede the fight to them either.  I’m going to continue to do what I can to fight back against the hateful bigots (like blog about it, which, contrary to what some people think, is one way to fight back against the tide of hate).

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Over at her blog,  N. K. Jemisin discusses confirmation bias and bigotry in the Science Fiction & Fantasy culture:

And here’s the thing: us fantasy readers are particularly susceptible to confirmation bias because we tend to be binary thinkers. Just look at the works that have become bestsellers in our genre: how many of them contain a force of good and a force of evil? A Dark Lord versus warriors of light? A Shadow in the East versus the good Men of the West? This is comfort food for most of us — yeah, me included. Binary thought was our formative meat and milk. And even though a lot of us have moved on to accept shades of gray since — as GRRM fans can attest — there will still come a point where we’re faced with facts that threaten us on some level of privilege. When that happens, a lot of us default back to these formative modes. We react to the ego-threat with confirmation bias and other cognitive defense mechanisms; we double down and raise shields and prepare to defend our psychological selves to the death. Us vs Them. We stop thinking, in other words, and lose our goddamned minds.

So if you catch yourself getting upset when someone puts something in a fantasy that “doesn’t belong” — women in positions of power who aren’t sexualized, for example, or people of color in a part of the world where you think they never “existed”*, or a trans woman in a patriarchial society, or an important disabled person in (this! is!) Sparta, or whatever… Take a breath. Calm down. Do some research. Don’t immediately reject the contradictory information, and don’t assume that the person giving it to you is trying to hurt you. Ask yourself why you feel hurt, if you do. Why is this making you so mad? Why is it so important to you that Things Were Just Like That Back Then? Why does it bother you so much to realize things weren’t like that? We can’t always control our reactions to psychological threats, but sometimes understanding why those reactions happen can help us at least short-circuit them before they really blow up. It takes work, but you can shake it off.

And if you’re a writer, and you catch yourself getting defensive when someone suggests you add something to your fantasy novel that “doesn’t belong”… again, take a breath. Do some research — beyond the basic stuff you got in high school history class, that is. (You should be doing that anyway. It’ll improve your worldbuilding.) Write whatever you want, of course; handwave the historical evidence if you feel like it. But own your decisions, if you do so. Recognize that the Things Were Just Like That excuse is just that — an excuse. Existential angst manifesting as unjustified certainty. You wrote what you wrote because you wanted to write it that way. And if you don’t like what these choices imply about you… well. Then you’ve got some work to do, too, haven’t you?

Neither women nor People of Color need an excuse to be present in SF&F books.  They are part of reality as much as white men are, and moreso that aliens and otherworldly creatures.

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In the UK, broadcasters are facing a bit of pressure.  People want diversity.  Actors, writers, and directors want to see quotas introduced as a way to increase diversity on-screen:

The Act for Change Project has been launched by performer Danny Lee Wynter and Sheffield Theatres’ artistic director Daniel Evans, with the goal of getting broadcasters to better reflect the UK’s diverse population, taking into account gender, disability and those from a black, Asian or ethnic minority [BAME] background.

It was triggered by a trailer for ITV’s drama output, entitled Where Drama Lives, which failed to include any BAME actors.

This week, a conference was held at the Young Vic in London, which offered an opportunity for the industry to share ideas on how best to tackle the lack of diversity on UK television.

One of the measures put forward – which attracted overwhelming support from attendees – was to have quotas that would force broadcasters to ensure a percentage of their output features performers from diverse backgrounds.

The conference heard how representation of BAME people on television had fallen from 31% in 2006 to 5.4% today.

Speaking at the event, Syal said that attitudes within the TV sector were not changing, and that performers looked to the US for work because of measures in place there which ensure programmes feature actors from a BAME background.

“We have all been talking about America and how we look to America because they seem to be doing it properly,” she said, adding: “America did the enforced quota and I’m sure people didn’t like it at first. But I just think that sometimes, if attitudes aren’t changing, you’ve go to lead people that way.”

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Yes, there’s pushback.  The racists. The misogynists. The homophobes. The transphobes.  These are the people decrying a black Human Torch. They’re the ones calling for Anita Sarkeesian to be raped. They’re the ones in Hollywood who continue to create a toxic culture for LGBT people.  These are just the vocal opponents. The loudest ones.  The ones we see.  There is another group opposed to change: the enablers.  The people who by not opposing the bigots, support the way things are.  These are the people who make excuses for how things are. The people who argue that “both sides are unreasonable”.  The people who just want it all to go away. The people who are fine with the status quo.

My message to all of them: we aren’t going away.  We deserve to have our voices heard and we will continue to demand that you hear us.  You can work with us to help create a world where we are all represented, or you can continue to stand in our way.

But we will not back down.  

The battle for diversity is ongoing and it’s everywhere