When did we decide that people don't get to choose for themselves what they are called?

[prusik]

I'm in the midst of this very weird exchange in the "Learn Writing With Uncle Jim" thread at Absolute Write right now. (Actually, that should be past tense. Regardless of the response, I'm done. I have nothing left to say.)

The details aren't important. The gist is that someone doesn't get that "SciFi" has negative connotations. My attempts to inform him/her aren't going well. This is a person who may not know what Boskone is, or anything about the "Trekkie"/"Trekker" distinction. That's fine. Not everyone has even the tenuous connections to fandom that I do. That s/he keeps referring to having read SF for pleasure since the age of eight is a bit annoying. How is reading SF supposed to inform you of the culture of fan interaction? S/he also pointed to the "SciFi Channel" as evidence. However, agents at the "How Not To Publish" panel at Boskone suggested one not use the term "SciFi" in a query letter. Why is that hard to understand?

I get the impression that the only reason there is an argument is because I made him/her feel bad. I don't think the argument is really about the negative connotations of "SciFi." (I think I was snarky at some point. D'oh... Totally inadvertent. Maybe I should apologize.)

Anyway, this reminds me of a Making Light argument that I was involved in. Someone was making the claim that there is absolutely nothing wrong with calling an Asian person an "Oriental," despite the fact that all the Asians on Making Light were telling her otherwise. (Granted, that would be, like, all three of us. Not exactly a groundswell.) She claimed that picking the current correct word for a given ethnicity was just a game of gotcha, and she was refusing to play. (I note with interest that, in the course of this conversation, she referenced the N-word, but never used it where it would have been logical.)

This is all a reinforcement of the idea that when it comes to determining how I wished to be referenced, what I think doesn't matter. As far as this person was concerned, the question of how I should be referenced wasn't about me at all. It was really all about her. [Incidentally, I don't remember this person's gender. I picked female arbitrarily. Feel free to substitute male pronouns.)

Of course, it's not limited to names. Every once in a while, someone lacerates me in public. S/he tells me to "to back where I came from" and, in general, blames me for all the ills of society. (After the first couple, I stopped listening. It's a shame, really. I could probably use the diatribe in some story.) It's not so uncommon that I'm surprised when it happens. It's uncommon enough that, in the time between lacerations, I gull myself into thinking that it's happened for the last time. However, it's not about me. It's about someone else making himself comfortable. He sees me as a generic instance of the Other. I don't really come into it.

The Absolute Write thing is only interesting in that it's a self-professed SF fan not caring about other SF fans. I don't think I've seen that before.

Comments

[drumiller.livejournal.com]

Totally understandable, especially on the ethnicity side, that's a boggle for me.

However, you do have to remember that the con-attending/LJ-reading portion of the fan community is small(in absolute number), and to a vast majority of people SciFi == sff / sf / skiffy.

Especially if you talk to people under 20 who socialize solely online via new media. It's a lost argument. Yes, *we* know differently, but we also need to recognize that terms change over time. Look at dude!

Some people really care about what you call them, others don't. Some fans have a really big fury button with the whole secret language thing. Frankly if someone is socially going to cut me because I used the wrong term, IMHO they're not worth knowing anyways. Secret language is a social divider, and I'm not a fan of it. Then again, I want the community to grow, not shrink.

Ergh, sorry, sore point for me. I really dislike cutting fandom down because someone didn't flash the group appropriate secret hand-signal. If people are enthusiastic about what we love too, then great.

I guess it really depends on your definition of fan and fan community.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

Dru, I'm apparently in a mood to be argumentative, so forgive me.

What happened is that I pointed out that agents find using "SciFi" in a query letter unprofessional. This person didn't understand why. I told him/her. From there, s/he basically told me I was wrong about what I had witnessed.

The fact that most people who read SF are not in fandom, but that most agents who represent SF are is precisely why I wanted to make the point clear. It would be awful if a talented writer made a poor impression because he or she didn't know any better. With that in mind, at no point did I pull out my Fandom Membership Card. I limited myself to "these agents don't want to see it, so don't give it to them", and "if you don't understand why they don't want to see it, this is why..."

It's not about socially cutting anyone, least of all the person who is arguing with me. It's about what agents want to see in a query letter.

What it boiled down to with me though was someone saying, "I don't like being called X", followed by someone else saying, "Well, I don't find being called X offensive, so I will keep calling you X whether you like it or not."

It's not about mastering secret languages. It's not about being involved in cliques. It's about the amount of respect you have for other people.

[drumiller.livejournal.com]

Ahh, context matters, makes more sense now. Certainly it behooves someone attempting to get published to ensure they know the potholes and flashpoints of who they are submitting to.

Your delivery makes tons of sense. I should have just read the dang thread. :P Bad Dru.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

I just thought of better way of putting it:

This is not about someone who doesn't know he's calling someone something she doesn't want to be called. (You're right that to get angry at that is not useful.)

This is about someone who knows, but calls her that anyway. The excuse is that he doesn't see anything wrong with it. (So, I guess, no one else in the world should either.)

The bit I'm missing is if someone says "Please don't call me X", why should that person's reason matter? You may want to know because you're curious. But, regardless, just don't call her X.

Once I informed this person of the agents' views on "SciFi", s/he moved from the first case into the second.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

I agree, totally. If John doesn't want to be called Johnny but the person in question continually does so, that's just rude, egotistical and, frankly, mean. It's a passive/aggressive way to taunt someone.

It goes hand in hand with those people who use 'honesty' to say any damn thing they like. "Well, I'm just being honest!" they say and whatever cruel thing they've just said is supposed to be ok. Grrr...

As for the person on AW--(and as I said to Jen just a few days ago) you are FAR too wonderful to continue arguing with this person. You made your point. He/she refuses to see it in any way, shape or form. His/her loss. Let him/her submit to an agent and use the term SciFi and deal with the consequences. Don't waste time, energy or thought any further.

[krylyr.livejournal.com]

I haven't been following the AW thread, but that's exactly what I was thinking of when I read your post. It's more that this person does not want to be corrected, because s/he really wants to believe there's nothing wrong with the way s/he's doing it, than it is not "getting" what you were saying. It's "I don't think it's a big enough deal to call it something besides X, so I will continue to do so."

On a tangent, when did calling things SciFi become such a stigma? Honestly, I hadn't realized this was a problem until about a year ago, well after VP.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

On a tangent, when did calling things SciFi become such a stigma? Honestly, I hadn't realized this was a problem until about a year ago, well after VP.

The first time I got called on it was, perhaps, the late '80s/early '90s?

Like Dru said, it's a fannish thing. (i.e., if you have no contact with fandom, there's no way you'd know, and no reason for it to matter. This is why I find the protestation that s/he been reading SF since the age of 8 pointless. If, instead, s/he'd said that s/he'd been to all the worldcons since 1992...)

Besides, as Uncle Jim said on that thread, while it marks you as a tourist, it's also a pretty minor point. I doubt anyone has ever been shunned, just gently corrected. However, being marked as a tourist is not first impression you want to give to an agent.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

It's been considered infra dig for decades, but wow, that ship has sailed. Sure, in a query letter I'd never use Sci Fi or any variation. It's an unprofessional term. But in a social situation I really don't care at all. It doesn't bug me.

[bmlg.livejournal.com]

Semi-off-topic - I've read enough Victorian-Edwardian fiction that the word 'Oriental' doesn't mean Chinese or Japanese to me. My first assumption is that it means Jewish, Middle-Eastern or Indian (Oriental potentate; more-than-Oriental-splendour). For Chinese, and I think Japanese, one says 'Celestial'. (Aha! My terms are more archaic than his/hers! I win at obscurity!)
I think Celestial is a cool term, by the way, but it would just confuse people nowadays.

I can't feature using 'sci-fi' in a query letter for another reason as well - it's slangy and way too informal. What's wrong with 'science fiction' in full, no hyphens? Takes too long to type, or something?
-Barbara

[prusik.livejournal.com]

Neat, I don't know if anyone could take offense at being called Celestial. (It does remind me of D&D though.)

BTW, we don't have common definitions for these sorts of terms now. The English definition of Asian isn't the same as the American definition of Asian.

As for "SciFi," I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Instead of explaining that it's a term some people find derogatory, I probably should have just left it at "too informal for a query letter." I'm still not sure why any explanation matters. If an agent doesn't want to see that term, don't show it to her. It's not as if a point of ethics, or honor, is at stake.

Maybe as a practice of faith and devotion to a deity, this person can only use the term "SciFi" for science fiction. That would be an interesting pickle. (In that case, I'd be more sympathetic.)

[bmlg.livejournal.com]

Come to that, Jerusalem is the first Orient, because early maps had the East at the top, with the City of Jerusalem pictures - that's where orienting comes from.
Don't mind me, I'm just falling into a rabbit-hole of word origins.
You're right, Asian in the UK has quite different connotations than in the US. 'Black' is different as well.

I wonder if that person was resenting the process of figuring out what the agent wants and providing that specifically (agentomancy?) and decided to dig in heels at that particular point because it seemed arbitrary.
And I should go and read the UJ thread, which I haven't looked at for some time (for some reason I can't see the long threads at work, even though I'm using Firefox at home and work)
-Barbara