Stop the GR Bullies: Defending the Indefensible "Save the Pearls"

We have spoken about Stop the GR Bullies and their awful site before. As can be clear, we not only think this site is highly reprehensible, we think the people behind it are pretty damn awful as well. But, perhaps from some shred of naivety, we kind of thought they would have some limits. Then we found the latest author they are protecting from the legions of us nasty nasty reviewers. Yes, it’s Victoria Foyt’s racist Save the Pearls. She is being bullied by being called a racist, according to STGRB

Yes, we were naive. They have no limits.

Save the Pearls (read: save the poor oppressed White people from the beast like Black people) flew under the radar for quite sometime, until Foyt paid for and received the Eric Hoffer award.  Suddenly, people who never would have heard of her racist novel were forced to pay attention.  I watched with pleasure as reader after reader took to Goodreads to register their dissent.  Some were angry and some were thoughtful, but what they all had in common is a righteous reason to declare Foyt’s work racist.  This must having been shocking because prior to the revelation of the award, most of the reviews on Save the Pearls were positive.

Some took their criticism a step further and not only declared Save the Pearls racist but the author as well.  Of course Stop the GR Bullies could not let it stand.  To be clear this is a woman who  proudly claims to live in a colorblind world, erased the comments from POC on Facebook who challenged her, and she questioned whether or not an African-American community exists.  Even before reading her racist novel, her statements alone would be enough to understand that White sheets are one of Foyt’s favourite items.  Establishing the degree to which Foyt is absolutely drowning in her privilege, to the point where her work is blatantly racist is not difficult.

Let us be clear here, we reviewed Save the Pearls after we read it. All of it, all the way through - and I apologise right now to all of our DNFs because, while we didn’t like any of you, at least you weren't this offensively racist. STGRB loves to push the idea that most of the people criticising this book haven’t actually read it, because that’s such an easy way to dismiss them (and STGRB seems very eager to dismiss POC). No, we read it and we hated it.

And we have to remember that Victoria Foyt, with her blackface promotion videos and her racist blog posts means that people don’t have to have read the book to know to avoid it - and to spread the word warning for others to avoid it. Victoria Foyt, with her own words, already made it clear what kind of book it was and her own racism. Foyt said on Facebook, “Judging A Book By Its Cover Gives Birth To Racism,” this highlights the fact that not only does Foyt have no idea what racism really means, but after all of the criticism her book has received, she still cannot understand why having a White woman in Blackface on the cover is problematic.  At this point, choosing not to read Save the Pearls absolutely comes down to an act of self care.

STGRB has also pushed the idea that people should avoid labelling someone a racist because it is supposedly “slander” (note: it can’t be slander because it’s written) and “libelous” (note: it’s an opinion and you can say anything as an opinion as long as you are not asserting a fact.  An opinion cannot be untrue)  More importantly, it is not liable if what you’re saying is true, and judging from the promotional video, and Foyt’s various responses, Foyt is unequivocally a racist. Stop the GR Bullies seem to feel  a book review is not the place for this sort of accusation, and to that I say that there always seems to be some reason why White people should not be held accountable for their language/actions. No one forced Foyt to pen such a racist tome and no one forced her to engage in further racism to defend it. Contrary to popular opinion, living with racism is much harder than being called a racist.  In fact, being called a racist is something that is easily avoidable, whereas living without being affected by racism is absolutely impossible if you are a POC.  For a website so determined to hold reviewers accountable, it is absolute hypocrisy on the part of Stop the Goodreads Bullies to fail to hold an author publicly responsible for the hatred that they knowingly and willingly put in this world.

Stop the GR Bullies: Stalking, Tantrums and Bullying

It seems a new site has been started called Stop the GR Bullies, aimed at book reviewers at Goodreads. It seems to be author driven in response to the many many trainwrecks we have see all too often; you know the kind, an author sees a less-than-shining review and unwisely decides to respond - frequently leading to cringeworthy temper tantrums and shocking behaviour.

There is a lesson these authors seem to be sorely missing. They are producing a product and they are producing a work of art. The first means that people will review and critique the product they bought (as is their right), the second means that, given the subjective nature of artwork, some people will not like it - in fact some will loathe it and they will say so. They will never please everyone all of the time and it is no-one’s duty to lavish praise when it is not deserved. The book is not their baby, it is not something precious and special that needs to be treated gently - it is a product that is being sold and, like any other product we buy, if it’s awful - be that new furniture or a takeaway pizza - then we will say so, quite possibly in intemperate and scathing terms. Books are not a special category that makes them somehow untouchable.

That is not bullying. This is critiquing. This is reviewing. This has been going on, not just with artwork, but with every and all products since the beginning of time. It is actually insulting and offensive to call this bullying, especially at a time when we are seeing so much more attention to the bullying rates among schools and the horrendous rate of teen suicide it causes. To try and invoke this imagery because people are criticising your book? No, really, that’s not on.

On to the drama reports - which is one of the things they’ve accused Cuddlebuggery of. Now, I actually read Cuddlebuggery, partly because it’s amusing, partly to keep my eye out for decent books and, yes, partly because I want to have a heads up if an author is going to explode into chunks of messy outrage should I review one of their books and find it less than utterly perfect. And, yes, I will be avoiding that author, why would I seek them out? And I will say that, yes, they’re snarky, yes they can be (justly) harsh but they are never anything but honest - and every single one of those drama posts they’ve written have been a direct, honest report of actual poor author behaviour (which is considerably more honest than the highly skewed and dubious accounts Stop the GR Bullies has written, to be honest) and they include links back for you to see the authors in all their failing glory.

You are not being bullied if someone honestly reports your actions. If you show your arse to the world and people point out that your butt cheeks are on display, it’s not their fault that everyone is commenting on it, criticising it and disapprove of your arse bare to the wind. You are facing the consequences of your actions and your utter lack of professionalism; not being bullied.

Also, let us add that you’re not being “driven off goodreads” by these mean critics. If someone criticises your book, even harshly, that is not driving you off. If you respond to a negative review (which is already foolish) and people continue to criticise and, yes, even mock, that is not driving you off. If your dubious, unprofessional and unacceptable behaviour is reported and people mock you for it, that is not driving you off. If you leave in these conditions you are not being driven off - you are flouncing.

But, you know what? Even if these reviewers were tearing up your precious, even if they said some truly hurtful, mean and even personal things. Even then this site would still be beyond the pale. At Stop the GR Bulllies, they go to extreme lengths to attack their critics. I actually would run out of space trying to list their terrible behaviour - and I am in two minds of linking to their site because of what they’ve written there:

They post the real name (and if they don’t have it, they keep looking), home city and, if they can find one, photograph (again, if they can’t find one, they keep looking) of the people they’re attacking. This is already frightening and, frankly, dangerous; but they then compound that by listing their place of work and their schedule.

Self-Publishing: Sometimes the only Gate that's Open

The review blog All Things Urban Fantasy recently published a piece regarding their refusal to do reviews of self published books.  The author of the post said that she has had negative experiences with authors who have reacted unprofessionally to critique.  She further went on to cite amateurish covers, as well as grammatical and spelling mistakes in the books. Obviously, we believe that the owner of each blog should have autonomy over their own spaces, and so we respect the right of the owners of All Things Urban Fantasy to place limitations on which books they will cover however, in our space, our policy is quite different.

At Fangs for the Fantasy, we accept all books with the only requirement being that they fit our specified genre (and we have been known to bend that - albeit not often).  If the book has a protagonist of colour, a GLBT protagonist, a disabled protagonist or a strong female character, it is more likely to end up on the top of our to read list.  Together, we negotiate a number of marginalisations and as such we want to see ourselves reflected in what we read.  We further recognise how important it is to children who come from historically marginalised communities to see positive representations of themselves.

Publishing companies, just like any social organisations, have inbuilt biases. This means that privileged people are far more likely to get publishing deals and books that support a narrative in which historically marginalised people are either erased, or subject to negative portrayals are more likely to be published. The idea that traditionally published books are simply a marker of professionalism is missing the fact that agents and publishers act as gate keepers and, like all gate keepers, their role is to support the active oppression and silencing of historically marginalised people. As reviewers, contributing to the attention a book receives, our reviewing policy can risk enabling the gate keepers or becoming gate keepers ourselves if we ignore the built in biases.



Rachel Manija Brown, author of All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, and Sherwood Smith, author of Crown Duel and a great many other novels for adults and young adults published a piece Publisher’s Weekly this past September about the suggestion that they should remove a gay character from a book that they had written.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”

The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series. (source)

This is an example of gatekeeping in action. You’ll note that the agent's issue was not with elements of the story, but simply the fact that the authors dared to have a gay teen and one whose relationships matched that of their heterosexual counterparts. I know that there are those who will argue that there is already some gay representation in the genre (though erasure is far more likely to be the norm), but to that I must point out that the addition of a gay character, does not necessarily mean that the role is affirmative in any way.  What we tend to see are the gay best friends, or gay uncles, who are usually celibate and fulfill every trope associated with gay men.  These men love to shop, they sashay, are limp wristed  and catty, all while practically farting unicorns and fairy dust.

The closer the representation comes to being affirming, the less likely publishers will want to publish it. There is a very solid belief that books that involve gay characters belong in the m/m genre where they can be appropriately fetishised by straight women. Mainstream representations of gay characters is few and far between and in the urban fantasy genre trans people are downright invisible.  

The GLBT community is not the only historically marginalized people that are subjected to erasure within the urban fantasy genre. I cannot tell you how many books I have read that have been set in major urban areas only to find that there isn’t a single person of colour in the story. Let’s consider for the moment the struggle that Australian author Justine Larbalestier had when Bloomsbury Children's Books decided to publish the American release of her book Liar with a young White girl with long hair on the cover of her book, despite the fact that the protagonist, Micah, is a Black girl with short hair. After much online discussion, Larbalestier took to her blog to write the following:

Liar is a book about a compulsive (possibly pathological) liar who is determined to stop lying but finds it much harder than she supposed. I worked very hard to make sure that the fundamentals of who Micah is were believable: that she’s a girl, that she’s a teenager, that she’s black, that she’s USian. One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true. At which point the entire book, and all my hard work, crumbles.

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. (source)

As with erasure in books with GLBT characters, white washing characters is hardly an isolated experience.

In short, marginalised work faces constant suppression. From Amazon delisting, to book shop shelving in the “niche” section, to publishers, agents and editors demanding protagonists, covers, even significant bit characters be as privileged as possible so as not to “alienate” readers. There is a constant battle from mainstream publishing - and beyond - to push marginalised characters out of our books and marginalised authors off our shelves.

It is an effort to avoid the gatekeeping activities of traditional publishing houses that minority authors have taken to independent publication. It has meant a lack of support in terms of editing, book covers and publicity; however, the flip side is real characters that accurately reflect the experiences of historically marginalised people. The very idea that authors resort to self publishing because they lack skill, ignores the very real roadblocks that marginalised people face.

To be honest, it smacks of snobbery. You’re  self-pubbed? Oh you’re not a REAL author. Your work is lesser and not worth my time. Now go find this publishing house full of cis, straight, white, able-bodied men to tell you you’re a real author and your work is worth my attention, then get back to me. In other words, books are only considered books once they’ve passed through a filter controlled by the privileged.

To refuse to review these works is to participate in the maintenance of a system that has proven itself repeatedly to be biased. Of course, such a decision is always backed up with the claim that self published books aren’t polished or that the authors are not professional, but I can tell you that after reading countless books in this genre, there are plenty of books which are filled with spelling and grammar mistakes - to say nothing of dubious stories, weak characterisations and plot holes you could sail a tanker through. And we have had run ins with authors who are displeased with the reviews that we have posted in this space, who have made us aware in no uncertain terms that our decision to consider the role of isms in their work is unfair. No one wants to be called a bigot, however, because we live in a White supremacist, ableist, sexist, homophobic state, the very idea that any work can be free of isms is ridiculous. We don’t live in a Utopia but somehow recognition of one's failure is supposedly more difficult to deal with than the historically marginalised people who have to live with consequences of having this bigotry become the ground work of our discourse. Traditional publishers are certainly no guarantee of quality or professionalism.

Whether or not reviewers are consciously aware or not, a refusal to branch out and consider the work of independently published books is based in a desire to conform and maintain a status quo that in some way benefits them. I think it would be fair to say that as marginalised reviewers, we have a responsibility to consider the work of self pubs, simply because they are some of the best opportunities to see good positive representation, without the influence of those who seek to erase us from an entire genre, furthermore our support evidences that there is a market for the work of marginalised people despite claims to the contrary.

If it’s drek, we may snark it - but never for just being a self-pub.

Thoughts on Season 6 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

 

When I first started watching Buffy, fans promised me that I would adore the series given my love for urban fantasy.  The first five seasons were hard for me to watch and quite honestly if I didn't have a project which required me to watch Buffy, I would have stopped.  Season 6 however was a game changer.  Buffy left behind much of the teen angst with the exception of Dawn (can we drop a house on her?) and was much darker and far more adult.

Since season five, I desperately wanted Spike and Buffy to get together and that desire was met by an abusive relationship that culminated in rape. I know that some fans don't see the abuse in the relationship prior to the rape, and that is why I think a discussion is absolutely necessary.  Even though Buffy was more than capable of defending herself against Spike's physical assaults against her, he continually hit her to provoke sex.  He prayed upon her vulnerabilities using shame, and then systematically attempted to isolate her from her friends.  These are the hallmarks of abuse and should never be seen as some sort of romantic interlude. 

As much as season six was adult, it was also more problematic.  After waiting for Tara and Willow to finally kiss and share the same sort of romantic screen time as heterosexual couples, viewers were rewarded with watching them break up due to Willow's abuse of magic (more on that later) and finally Tara's death.  Really Whedon?  It's bad enough that Tara died, but to kill her after she and Willow had sex, makes it seem as though death is the penalty for same sex love. How many times have we seen this trope carried out in the media?  After witnessing Tara's death, I don't understand how this show could be seen in any way as a positive representation of the GLBT community.  I know that some will defend Tara's death behind Whedon's nasty habit of breaking up couples, but when it comes to gay/lesbian relationships, the fact remains that violent death is often how they are ended in the media. Tara's death is an absolute reflection of lesbophobia and can be seen as nothing else.