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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Thanks to @TheBookOfAllan, I decided maybe Twitter slapfights about fantasy authors might not be Too Online to talk about here. I mean, let's face it, the nerd quotient here is pretty damn high. On the rare occasions I write a top-level post, it's usually about the intersection of Culture War squabbles and hobby drama. So -

First They Came for the Fantasy Authors

Brandon Sanderson, in case you don't recognize the name, is a best-selling fantasy author. In impact on the genre today, he's probably second only to George R. R. Martin. He famously finished Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and he churns out new books at a rate that makes Stephen King look lazy.

(I have read quite a few of his books, and find them reliably entertaining, but Sanderson is a mediocre writer whose schtick is rigorously-defined magic systems and world-building, to the point that his books sometimes read like LitRPGs, and a big overarching cosmology called the "Cosmere" that unites every one of his series into his own personal MCU.)

Sanderson is also a Mormon. If you've noticed we're in the Culture War thread, you might have an inkling where this is going.

From time to time over the years, some LGBT folks have taken a run at Sanderson over his religion. In 2007 or so, he wrote a blog post offering a sort of milquetoast apologetic, basically saying he was totally cool with The Gays but he also believed in the divine revelations of his church so gay marriage is still a no-go, mmkay? He's been under continual pressure by fans to "update" his views, and he kind of has, saying he continues to "learn and grow." He's tossed a few gay and trans characters into his stories, and he's even written a FAQ: How Do You Feel About Gay Characters?. However, he remains a practicing Mormon, continues to tithe to the LDS, and has very carefully never actually walked back the belief that homosexuality is a sin.

So how has he avoided getting the Orson Scott Card/JK Rowling treatment? Well, for one thing, Sanderson is a genuinely nice guy who is affable with everyone, loves his fans, is very encouraging of new authors, and most importantly, generally avoids any kind of culture war and does not get into Twitter fights. He's got legions of defenders, and most of them accept his bland statements of tolerance and acceptance. It's pretty obvious that he does not personally dislike gay people, and I'm sure he would be thrilled if the LDS elders announced tomorrow that they just received a new revelation from God that He's totally cool with The Gays.

For most people, this is sufficient. There are people who are zealous and dogmatic about everything their church teaches, and there are those who clearly struggle sometimes with a religious doctrine that conflicts with their personal feelings. Most people recognize that everyone wrestles with cognitive dissonance, think "live and let live" is good enough, and if they like Brandon Sanderson despite disagreeing with his religious beliefs, they'll recite "no ethical consumption under capitalism" or "how to be a fan of problematic things."

Most people, but not Gretchen Felker-Martin.

Gretchen Felker-Martin is a transwoman with a single published book: Manhunt. If you wanted to create a hostile caricature of an unpleasant leftist conflict theorist who checks every stereotype, you'd have a hard time finding a better archetype. Think trans Arthur Chu with a foothold in SFF.

Manhunt is about (caveat - I haven't read it, this is what I gathered from reviews) a plague that turns all cis men into feral zombies, and in the post-apocalypse, brave stunning transfolx battle for survival against cismen and TERF hordes. (Yes, seriously.) They also harvest testicles for hormones or something, there's a ton of graphic rape and murder, and also apparently there's a throw-away line about JK Rowling being burned alive in her mansion.

Manhunt was published by Tor, which also, incidentally, publishes Brandon Sanderson.

So, a few days ago, Felker-Martin posted this tweet. (ETA: Hilariously, Twitter's new "added context by readers" feature is now defending Sanderson. I wonder how enraging that is to Felker-Martin?)

In itself, this would be hardly a skirmish in the Culture War. Trans woman doesn't like a Mormon author, wants to cancel him, writes stupid Tweet. It looks an obvious move to try to kneecap a rival, but Felker-Martin probably bit off too much to chew this time and has mostly been mocked for presuming to have some sort of gatekeeping role in deciding who SFF will "tolerate."

But - the reason I wrote this is because I've seen the Sanderson criticism take off a little bit, more than in previous attempts. His haters are really trying to give it legs. The Midnight Society, for example, is a woke satirist who is actually, pretty funny most of the time with really on-point skewerings of SFF and horror authors (except when taking obligatory swipes at JK Rowling by portraying her as a slithering snake hissing about Jewssss and transsss), and this tweet started out great (a completely deserved send-up of Sanderson's tropes) before shifting to an unsubtle signal-boost of the discourse started by Felker-Martin.

Twitter and Reddit seem to have an awful lot of "Hey, did you know Brandon Sanderson is a Mormon?" threads. (It is amazing to me that there are people who've been reading his books for years and had no idea - he does not make it a secret, and also I guessed by the end of the first Mistborn trilogy that the author was a Mormon without knowing anything about him.)

You can see all the usual arguments being recycled: "Should we cancel all Mormon/Catholic/Christian authors then?" (Felker-Martin: "Unironically, yes.") "It's just his personal belief, has nothing to do with how he treats gay people." ("But he TITHES and that means he is funding the LDS's Anti-Gay Death Camps!")

So woke fandom tried to take a scalp and overreached (this time), because while Tor is pretty darn woke, they're still not going to drop one of their biggest cash cows. Yet.

Can You Cancel a Bestseller?

Not literally, no. But can you hurt even a big name? Yes.

JK Rowling is still mega-rich, still a best-selling author, still beloved in most of the world. Yet I'm sure it does sting, even if she never says so publicly, that she and her books will never be celebrated again without an asterisk, that Harry Potter fandom tries to put her name in small print if at all, that she will never be reunited with the stars who she saw grow up and considered friends, until they were forced to denounce her. (Though in Emma Watson's case, it doesn't seem like much forcing was needed.)

They might not be able to Voldemort Brandon Sanderson, but being turned into a homophobic villain who is reviled by fandom and no longer invited to conventions would definitely hurt him. More cynically, Felker-Martin might know that Sanderson was too big a target, but that much smaller Mormon (and Catholic and Baptist, etc.) authors might be intimidated.

(Which makes me tempted to say, "Okay, now do Muslims," but there are only a handful of Muslim SFF authors I know of. The most famous is probably Gwendolyn Willow Wilson, an American Karen who converted to Islam and writes the Ms. Marvel comic book series. Saladin Ahmed wrote a few fantasy novels and also the Miles Morales Spider Man. Amal El-Mohtar is very in with the woke Hugos crowd. All of them apparently believe that Mohammad was totally cool with The Gays. It will be interesting to see if an actual tradcon Muslim ever tries to break into the industry.)

This specimen is who Tor threw some of its authors under the bus for? And by that I mean when Tor was going woke, around the Sad/Rabid Puppies time it did push out some mid-list authors, and fired (then later quietly re-hired) one of its staff who went a bit too far with the two-minute hate stuff.

Gretchen is the sort they wanted to represent, now they have her* and I wish them joy. I can take or leave Sanderson's writing (mostly leave it, to be blunt; his prose is too cardboard for me and 'rigorously worked out magic systems' while they may be good are too much 'baseball stats' oriented for me to enjoy in fantasy, I don't want to be mentally rolling dice and looking up tables as I'm reading). But that he's a Mormon who believes in his faith and hasn't adopted the liberal progressive Unitarian Universalist version of Christianity? How shocking! It's always immensely amusing to see the people crying about being persecuted and oppressed starting up their own Crusades and Inquisitions and heresy-hunts and witch-burnings for not falling in line with the new orthodoxy.

Rowling at least is now relaxed enough to just laugh at the terrible Twitter attacks, which drives them even crazier trying to get her.

*Someone in their forties who never grew out of the "ooh Abby from NCIS is so cool, I wanna be her!" phase. Anyone who describes themselves as "a professional cenobite" has no fucking clue. They swiped that from the Hellraiser movies of course, the whole goth-witchy vibe (the patheticness), but while Clive Barker was raised Catholic and knew what he was doing with that term, our person here is only a poseur, someone desperately copying last year's look and trying to break in to the world they've been writing freelance criticism covering. They're a Real Author now (just like they're a Real Woman) and of course the first thing our neophyte 'literally who' does is attack big names in order to get coverage and publicity. Because they certainly don't have the talent to make it on their own merits, and the publishing world is so increasingly dog-eat-dog that new authors have to be massive sellers fast, or they don't survive. Tor may tolerate Gretchen as "see how diverse and inclusive we are!" for a while, but unless they start earning, they'll be quietly let go. And they know it, which is why the preemptive posturing on the trans angle - "fire me as an author and I'll claim it was because I'm trans and that will be bad publicity for you!"

It's always immensely amusing to see the people crying about being persecuted and oppressed starting up their own Crusades and Inquisitions and heresy-hunts and witch-burnings for not falling in line with the new orthodoxy.

I mean given the examples you yourself invoked of what Christianity itself did I am not sure there is much of a leg to stand on. Christianity was the underdog and was persecuted, rose to power, did its own persecution in turn and now some of the groups it doesn't like/thinks are sinful have banded together and are repeating that cycle and doing something similar to it (though without yet launching actual crusades or priest burnings I suppose). I guess it's darkly amusing in a schadenfreude kind of way. Live by persecution, die by persecution?

In other words if a church says a group is sinful, they can't exactly be surprised when that group isn't well predisposed to them, and that if said groups gets the chance may well choose to try and reduce the power and influence of the church and its followers. Sure maybe in an ideal world LGBT groups and the like should take the high road and forgive and forget, but given Christianity itself struggles with getting its followers to do that, I'm not sure that is anything we should actually expect.

And specifically with Mormon's its not as if they didn't mostly do an about face on race:

"In 1978, apostle LeGrand Richards clarified that the curse of dark skin for wickedness and promise of white skin through righteousness only applied to Indians, and not to black people.[3]

In 2013, the LDS Church published an essay refuting these ideas, describing prior reasoning for the restriction as racial "folk beliefs", and teaching that blackness in Latter-day Saint theology is a symbol of disobedience to God and not necessarily a skin color."

So politically I think you could see the LDS reversing their stance on homosexuality at some point (assuming you think the racial reverse was done for pragmatic reasons and not because God told them to) so it makes sense to put pressure on them to become more "correct".

In other words if a church says a group is sinful,

I think this is how it's perceived more broadly by non-Christians, but misses the specific point that (most?) Christian denominations believe everyone is sinful. If you described a group of devout Catholics as sinful, I suspect the response would be "yes we are," with some commentary about confession, forgiveness, and repentance.

I dunno, how does a gay person seek confession, forgiveness and repentance without giving up his identity as a gay person?

Isn't there a bit of a parallel here to offering Sanderson forgiveness if he gives up his identity as a Mormon?

I'm on Sanderson's side on this, to be clear. I really don't have a problem with the LDS church as a basic tenet of pluralism. They reciprocate, too: they supported the federal same-sex marriage law that was recently signed into law.

But I do think it's a bit obscurantist to claim that gay people are positioned similarly in the eyes of the LDS church to the rest of the faithful on the basis that sin is a feature of the human condition.

If a thief claims that kleptomania is a factual component of his identity, which of the steps of your comment apply, and which don't?

I mean, yeah, in that case the kleptomaniac 100% has to give up his identity to become right with society/god/etc., as he should.

I think that's really the point, though. LDS Church sees gays as morally on par with kleptomaniacs. And this whole thread is a complaint that some particularly strident trans SF/F author sees Mormons as morally on par with kleptomaniacs.

Ugh. This is getting combative. I truly hold no grudge against the LDS Church. They (now) walk the walk on pluralism. I am fine with them believing and even professing that gayness is sinful and bars one from Mormon Heaven. I don't think Mormons should suffer any retribution for their affiliation with the Church. This trans "filthcore" author is behaving badly.

All I want to insist upon, here, is that the LDS Church really does hold gays in lower esteem than the average person. That's their right and I'm totally fine with them doing so. But it just really isn't accurate to claim that they see gays as morally on par with the rest of humanity in the sense that we're all sinners.

it just really isn't accurate to claim that they see gays as morally on par with the rest of humanity in the sense that we're all sinners.

I don't see how that follows. I think they would say to the kleptomaniac, "Dude, we're all sinners. We all have our tests and trials. We all sometimes experience strong desires for things we know are wrong. [Young preacher adds in a story about having been an alcoholic or whatever.] But you can choose to embrace it and make it a core part of your identity... or you can choose to fight against it and reject it. That choice is what determines who you are."

What follows from that is that if they look around in the world and see that there is a group of out and proud kleptos, screaming about the importance of being sensitive to their identity, they're going to say, "Yeah, most of those people have been informed, and they've made their choice." I don't see how that somehow obviates a Morman belief that they're Imago Dei (do the Mormans hold this? is definitely valid for most other branches of Christianity) and equally possessing inherent human value. Most Christians (again, not as familiar with Mormans, specifically) would be the first to point out that if a klepto-prodigal son made a choice and a change, they'd be overjoyed, specifically because of the person's moral worth.

I don't see how that somehow obviates a Morman belief that they're Imago Dei (do the Mormans hold this? is definitely valid for most other branches of Christianity) and equally possessing inherent human value.

Mormons can still think gays and kleptomaniacs possess human value while still thinking less of them. I think that thinking less of kleptomaniacs is a good thing for society; theft is bad and we should try pretty hard to discourage it. I understand why Mormons think less of homosexuals, but ultimately disagree with their conclusion, and I think gays should be treated just as well as straights. To me, trying to discourage homosexuality is insulting and morally wrong*.

*I do think it's acceptable to discourage the encouragement of homosexuality. There's a big difference between telling your kid "Don't be gay" and telling your kid's elementary school not to be teaching intersectionality.

I'm not exactly sure what we're disagreeing about at this point. Is it that you think committed "out and proud" gays and committed "out and proud" kleptos are morally similar? Or that you think committed "out and proud" kleptos are in the same moral boat of basically good people who are nonetheless tempted to sin per the universal human condition? Both propositions seem pretty hard to defend, but perhaps I'm biased due to being gay.