Race to the Bottom

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So I was going to write a post about what I started calling Science Fiction’s Great Divorce a complicated and therefore long-delayed post, but, so, this happened on twitter.

 “Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette · 12h12 hours ago Thank you to Sarah Hoyt, for introducing me to “Chicom,” which was an ethnic slur I didn’t know.”

And here is the screenshot, as apparently the tweet has gone down the memory hole, or at least some can’t find it (I don’t respond for the tech competency of my minions.)

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Now, a word of explanation for those of us who don’t speak a foreign language, learned as an adult fluently.  Those of us who do have special “head boxes” for things like swear words or ethnic slurs.  This is because those words have a strong charge that we don’t FEEL because it was not “forbidden” as a kid, so we need to wall them off extra strongly.  (For instance, the words d*mn and h*ll are not swear words in Portuguese and I have to watch myself not to use them in casual conversation.)

So when I read the above I went to box marked slurs and the only thing I could figure was that I MIGHT on FB have said something intemperate about the Chicago con com.  I have no idea why I would, since they’ve never done me any harm, but in the heated post sad display at the Hugos someone might have said something and I might have blasted.  (Am Latin.  Have temper.)

So I posted this:

Dear Ms. Mary Three Names, what in HELL are you talking about? How could I introduce you to a word whose meaning I don’t KNOW, slur or not? Perhaps you should take a powder and swoon already. Mary Three Names: “Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette · 12h12 hours ago Thank you to Sarah Hoyt, for introducing me to “Chicom,” which was an ethnic slur I didn’t know.”

Which in village terms is the equivalent of jumping to the middle of the street hitting my left hand with the back of the right.  (A gesture for which mom would spank heck out of me, so I presume it’s simulated copulation?  No one ever told me.)

Then people in comments mentioned I’d used it on my post on burning down the hugos, and I realized that dumb bunny (Sorry, but all presumption of intelligent but misinformed just went out the window) thought that Chicom — as in Chinese communist, a common term to distinguish them from the RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS in Europe (often referred to as the Sovs when I was young) was suddenly a “racist slur.”

I added this to my post, so it was clear the multiply Hugo-nominated and I think three time Hugo Winner Mary wasn’t a liar, merely addled:
UPDATE: My attention has been called to the fact that I used the word in a post. I used it exactly as “Chinese Communist” — when I read it was an ethnic slur, mind went blank as I don’t know the word as an “ethnic slur.” (Yes I have compartments for words in my head. Probably the result of being ESL. Never mind.)

And yep, when I’m hit with something like this, I’ll come up blank, just like I’ll blank out if I’m talking to mom on the phone in Portuguese and Marshall speaks to me in English, which happened just yesterday.  I have to ask mom to hold, cover the phone and ask Marsh to repeat, because until I change “the tape in my head” (yep, dating myself) I don’t understand English.  My husband got used to what he calls “changing tapes” lag when I’m in Portugal and surrounded by family gabbing in Portuguese.  He addresses me, or just calls my name, then waits till I “change tapes.”  Then repeats.

BUT anyway, it highly amuses me that I’m now racist for referring to Chinese communists.

I guess it’s the narrative now.  I MUST be racist, because otherwise they would have no reason to hate my attempt at disrupting their just-so club.  To put this in perspective, this is akin to an all-white club rejecting a Latin member and accusing them of being racist against Chinese.  VERY good.   Slow clap.  One doesn’t know whether to admire them for their inventiveness or their shamelessness.

One does know that one stands ready to expose every one of their attempts to take things out of context and be insane.  Because one is JUST that helpful.  Also because I learned my art of argument in the village, watching the fishwives.  (Smacks left hand with back of right.)  So, (puts hands on hips) be aware.  One thing my grandma taught me is that the more one bows, the more one exposes one’s *ss, so I’m not bowing and not submitting to your idiotic slurs.  One advises you to stop now, if you know what’s good for you.  Or do carry on.  It will be good for a laugh.

AND if they’re as funny as this, they’ll be pure comedy gold.

Yes, guys, I’m racist because I oppose communism.  Sing it with me “I am racist against an ideology that’s not an inborn characteristic, but the characteristic of those choosing to throw their lot in with a movement that, to date, has killed 100 million people and stands ready to continue its work.”

Yes, Mary Three Names.  I’m totes racist against communists.  The miasma of the yawning graves filled by communism makes me gag too hard to tolerate them.  I’m racist against fascists too.  And any others who would keep humanity in chains.

It’s just the sort of b*tch I am.  You got me.

728 thoughts on “Race to the Bottom”

  1. Ok, let me see if I can explain this.

    *deep breath*

    The Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives have no background in genetics, little depth in what they know of cultural anthropology, amd they speak English badly, littering it with jargon and cant.

    The term “racist” no longer has any meaning other than “icky”

    To be called “icky” by the LIRPs is a badge of honor. Wear it well.

    1. Yes. After I was called a fascist in public some time back, a friend took me aside and explained that “fascist” is the currently fashionable way to say “poopyhead.”

      1. You mean, instead of saying ‘that’s so gay,’ the kids now say, ‘that’s so fascist?’

        Chicom is an ethnic slur like Nazi, right? That’s so unfair to Germans! it’s insensitive to point out that killing millions of innocents is not nice.

        1. Preventing us from celebrating our Roman heritage by carrying out mass executions is racist.

              2. how bout if the resident strait up Asatru offers to do it for you? Have axe, will travel, reads the card of a man.

            2. Now really. I’m sure Kate is quite sharing of her stakes. You’re just being greedy, wanting other methods for entertainment.

              2. She uses ’em vertically; some of us would use them horizontally. Not sure how she feels about that kind of mis-use.

            1. My revenge fantasies mostly involve libprogs actually living in the People’s Paradises that they want to create.

              (Really live in, not visit as a pampered pet or useful idiot)

              1. Just? My revenge fantasies involve them being dropped into the middle of the ISIS terror-tories with nothing but their underwear. Then they can be beheaded by ISIS dads being all instructional with their kids. /snark.

                Or drop them into Mecca. The women in typical Western clothes.

          3. Interesting theory. I’m half-Norwegian. Since colleges and universities are today’s equivalents of medieval monasteries, does that mean I can celebrate my Norse heritage by sacking and burning a local higher education institution, and carrying away whatever valuables that me and my Viking homies can get into the longship?

            After all, I wouldn’t want to be guilty of cultural appropriation, by trying to act “civilized” in the Progressive manner, as that’s not my capital-H Heritage, would I? As I understand things, that would be truly heinous of me.

            Where did I put my long sword and axe set? Hmm . . .

            1. “does that mean I can celebrate my Norse heritage by sacking and burning a local higher education institution …”

              No, but it would be an act of cultural imperialism for them to do anything about it. They have no right to deny your cultural rituals.

              They do have the right to respond according to their cultural rites: screaming like little girls, running about like muppets and writig letters of protest to the Times.

              1. By that metric, it’s in my culture to hunt down my enemies and their families, all the way to several generations apart, and ensure the extinction of their bloodline…Heck, by their metric, I’m supposed to do that. Exercise my culture and all.

                That’s what ubusan ng lahi means.

                1. The thing about genocide is that opposition to it is cultural imperialism, deeply rooted in racism.

            2. The American version of policing comes from the British adaptation of the French system. Somewhere along the line the practice of policing becomes appropriation.

              1. Well, the Irish played the raider game long before the Norse did. [Wink]

        2. Right. Using “Chicom” to refer to a Chinese Communist is exactly as racist as using “Nazi” to refer to a member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (i.e., not at all).

          I just thought up the word “pupcom” for “puppeteer communist”, but find myself wondering if that would be considered racist against the Wooden-Headed American community.

        1. A nice, short, derogatory Chinese term for Chinese Communists that you could appropriate would be “Gongfei”, 共匪, which means more or less “Communist bandits”, although the Racial Slur Database (http://www.rsdb.org/slur/gong_fei) compounds the stupid by (a) listing it as a racial slur and (b) translating it “Communist bastard”. It’s a little old fashioned by now, but think of it as a little piece of nostalgia.

  2. I wonder if she thinks that Chinese are genetically Communist, or something. So who’s the racist, again?

    1. And as Sarah says, it’s used to differentiate them from the Russian Communists AND from the Taiwanese who are very often also simply called ‘Chinese’. I wonder how they’d react to us linguist types referring to a good chunk of central Asia as ‘the Stans’ (because that cluster of countries are all -vowel-stan)

        1. And that half of these come from “We have a maximum of 6 letters we can fit on this label part of the display and must now abbreviate all the things. Our people will then attempt to pronounce them in meetings. Whether we want them to or not.” Like “point of interest” became POI and was pronounced as the Hawaiian food of the same spelling. /grump

          1. Hell, I always thought “POI” was “Program of Instruction”, or what civilians might call a “course curriculum”.

            1. Honestly depends on context. I’ve also heard it used for “Person of interest”, but where I was it was place. It was still pronounced like the flavorless stuff the Hawaiians made out of taro root.

          2. This has led to an interesting thing regarding one actual racist term. ‘JAP’ is a slang term meaning ‘Jewish American Princess’. And while my understanding is that it was originally welcomed by the Jewish community, it eventually took on anti-semitic overtones. It’s also the commonly accepted abbreviation for Japan…

        2. Well, you know, to leftists, they all look the same, so they’ve taken to calling all of them people of Asian heritage, rather than properly identifying Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Malay, Fillipino, Indonesian, Thai, Burmese… Because… they’re so culturally sensitve citizens of the world, doncha know.

          M

          2. You forgot the residents of the sub-continent, i.e. the ethnicity of many of the trouble-makers in Great Britain whose religious beliefs are never brought up in the stories about them.

            1. Well, in British speech “Asians” does refer to people from the sub-continent and has been so (IIRC) prior to PC speech.

              Now, ignoring their religion is another matter. [Sad Smile]

              1. It is my understanding that the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans are considered Orientals in the UK. I do not think the word has acquired perjorative connotations over there, at least not yet.

          3. “…calling all of them people of Asian heritage,”

            Tell the truth, Mark. You made that up.

            1. No. Someone else on FB told me this. I can’t imagine a world where Chinese and Japanese would want to be lumped in together, but then these people don’t live in the real world.

              1. Heh. Forget Chinese and Japanese, try tell the Japanese they’re of the same root stock as Koreans. There is a reason that Remo Williams’ sensei, Chiun, is depicted as ethnocentric arrogance personified.

                1. As if I wasn’t already enough of a Bad Puppy, I think it’s time to reread Chinese Puzzle now…

                2. No thanks. I value my life.

                  I was actually talking about this with a friend not too long ago. She’s Japanese, but darker than most Japanese. So people she used to know thought she was a light-complexioned filipina…

                  1. Aff cheerfully recounts stories to me about a friend of his, who is half Japanese, and half Korean. For extra fun, she was born in Beijing and now lives in Taiwan.

                    She plays games with us (I think she’s in our fleet) but I haven’t met her yet.

            2. Look at the vast panoply of ethnicities they lump together as Caucasian/White:

              Greeks & Macedonians, Serbs & Croats, French, Germans & Alsatians, Italians, Sicilians, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrans & Bosnians Poles & Russians, Finns, Swedes & Danes, Brits, Scots, Welsh and Irish.

              About the only thing those pairings have in common is mutual enmity extending back a millennium.

              But to SJW idiots they are all one big happy ethnic family.

              Good lord, the twits even lump Spaniards and Portuguese together as Latino!

              We won’t even start on the abominations they try to impose by declaring Amerindians a single monolithic culture victim group. Claiming (among other twaddle) that we vile Americans forced the Comanche and Apache into an aggressiveness wholly alien to their societies.

              1. The reallymost amusing part of being sorta-kinda Portugee, is being able to tick “other” on the ethnicity box; then writing in: “Brasillians aren’t Hispanic”

                BTW did anyone else get the anti-gamer survey being done at World-con this year? I did my part to skew the narrative: “Latina” female gamer for 35+ years has experienced no racism,, sexism or misogony.

                And speaking of 35+ years, you should have seen the look on Gerrold’s face: pure shock, when John and I and no few of the “puppies” they’d grouped together stood up in response to the “whose been going to cons more than 30 years”

                Jerk..

              3. The SJWs are now offering the talking points that Portuguese are *not* Latino/Hispanic because they aren’t listed as a sub-sub-category on the Census.

                Brazillians, however, are.

                When you point out there’s a “Hispanic- Other” category for those populations (including Portuguese) who are considered too small to merit their own sub-sub-category, they then invariably decide their sock drawers need prompt re-arranging.

                1. Yep. Also, the idea that I’m white, but my cousin born in Venezuela two days earlier (first cousin, his parents immigrated there before he was born) is Hispanic makes them JUST SO FUNNY. Oh, Spaniards are totally Hispanic, too, but I’m not supposed to be because you know if I spell Marques with a z I change race. (rolls eyes.) BRILLIANT.

            3. I’ve seen this in real life. During the early stages of the Minnesota anime convention known as Anime Detour, we had a staff member (concom for you old-school SF types) who was a Korean orphan adopted by some Wisconsin folks. One of our other staffers, a generic Minnesota gal, was babbling on happily during her department report and made some offhand remark about “Asian culture”. Tae’s eyes narrowed, and she interrupted to ask “WHICH Asians?”
              Likewise, the Hmong don’t appreciate being lumped in with the Vietnamese (and vice versa), Filipinos with the Chinese, and someone else has already mentioned the mutual hate society the Koreans and Japanese belong to.

          4. There’s only one context in which that makes any sense, and that’s if you’re describing people. I live in Thailand, but I wouldn’t be able to tell from just looking at someone whether they’re Thai or Burmese or Chinese or Malay. (And there are dozens of different minority ethnicities in each of these countries, anyway, further confusing the issue). So I’d find it perfectly acceptable to say, “The person picking you up at the airport is my friend John Kim. You’ll be looking for an Asian guy, about 5’4″, who’s wearing a green shirt and black pants.”

            But to talk about “Asian culture”… nope, that one’s all kinds of fail.

          5. Oh ghods…. back in 2008-9 someone on Livejournal made some rant about Michelle Malkin defending the internment of Japanese in the US in WW2 saying how could she go against her own people.

            I did point out Malkin is of Filipino descent but it didn’t seem to faze him.

          6. You have no idea how much it pisses me off that the British newspapers like to refer to Middle Easterners as “Asian” ESPECIALLY when referring to criminals doing horrible things in the name of Islam – and lump them in with the REST of East Asia and South-East Asia, and refuse to use ‘Oriental’ as a description.

        4. Which (regarding different collections of Koreans) is even more fun when you notice that two political factions during the Joseon period were the Norons and Sorons.

          Which don’t actually map to north and south portions of Joseon/Korea; they split off from the western (Seo in) political faction.

        1. Uhm. Y’all are *entirely* too nice. The *-astan words used around these little mountains are a *lot* dirtier, and more explicit.

          Why yes, we *do* have a lot of vets and currently serving in the valley, why do you ask? *grin*

          1. Well, they are guests in Mrs. Hoyt’s house. Even grunts can at least fake good manners if they think it’s worth something… like not having her take time away from writing more stuff to chastise them for obscene language. 😛

      3. Not to mention the number of people, especially vets, that have replaced the old term “BFE” with “Buttf**kistan”.
        I personally prefer BFE, because when people use it to refer to my location, I can make them eat their words by driving them 20 minutes up US 421 to Egypt, KY – and telling them “You said you wanted to be here…”

    2. Yep. In fairly common use in those sorts of circles.

      But — you gotta remember, Mary Three Names works from the base assumption that of course she, herself, is racist (she has spoken of it in the past, please don’t ask for a link as I don’t keep up with her nonsense). And if she’s a racist, desperate to reform though she may be, credulous belief that Sarah would be is simply natural.

      She’s the unfortunate sort who had her intelligence critically poisoned by academic exposure. In this instance, a phrase falls outside her experience and rather than wonder what it might mean, her poisoned intelligence feeds her credulous assumptions.

      Kindly: nincompoop.

      Less kindly: well, courtesy forbids.

          1. Yup, I’ve used it once in real life so far, and I have a character who wants to use it. He’s a very well spoken gentlemen who would never resort to the profane when indulging in the invective. 😉

        2. Could be worse… I was thinking of Taylor Swift.

          “Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate” IS about SJWs, isn’t it?

      4. Projection? No. I’m embedded with this lot.

        It goes like this: they are the vanguard of hope-n-change: brave warriors of makin’ stuff better. They’re the Good Guys. Sometimes, and very specifically, this is true. That is, they are working on a project that will, at least in the short term, or in one specific instsnce, improve the lot of a small group of people. Sometimes they suceed, especially if you don’t look long-term toward the unintended consequences.

        At the same time, most of them possess some form of original sin, aka racism, sexism or good golly–? What expresses unreasonable vioent hatred toward the sexually mis-wired? Well… that thing. Because we all do. It’s an article of faith.

        Are you with me so far? Soooo…. if they, the super duper White Hats are so bad (and in the media fields the bigotry extant is pretty bad) how much more hijeously, horribly AWFUL must their libertoid & conservative opponents be?

        Love your enemies. It’s the only chance to defeat their schemes.

        1. Yup, I’d be amused to see the puppy kickers vote a Hugo to Tom Kratman.

          He spends the rest of his life wondering where he’d gone wrong – an endless loop to hardware reset.

          We never see the end of his serial works. Toni has to deal with schedule holes.

          I can’t imagine a more fitting way to kick puppies.

          In a preemptive strike maybe the good Colonel could follow up his current reading list with some suggestions for lessons to be found in Mil SF and space opera – then give a dreaded slate for next year.

      1. From all appearances she has “Black Tide Flu” which means you definitely DO NOT want her to sink her teeth into you.

        2. But do you know the provinence of the vaccine that you used? There is an awful lot of bad or fake vaccine out there for Black Tide Flu according to Ringo.

  4. To put this in perspective, this is akin to an all-white club rejecting a Latin member and accusing them of being racist against Chinese.

    Akin? That’s pretty much exactly what it is.

  5. Sweetie, *I* have to “change tapes” sometimes, and I’m not ESL, unless you count learning how to talk to “normal” people. If someone asks me a question in a context that doesn’t match the one currently in my head, I have no idea what they’re talking about.

    2. “Beware the flying context-switch” for it makes conversations mighty hard to follow, which is a bad thing when you are one of the participants in said conversation.

    4. Whenever I see “ESL” I think “Exxxxxx Sign Language.” Estonian? European? Eritrean?

      3. I normally read it (mentally) as the three letters, but this reminds me that I’ve heard it pronounced “essil,” as though it was a word. That, in turn, makes me want to come up with something rhythmic and rhyming, like, “ESL in a pestle while I’m wrestling with Cecil on the Kessil run.”

  6. And would anyone take a bet that mrk has never uttered the phrase teab*ggers or other unpreferred term. Yeah, Chicom may be seen as impolite today but only because we whitewash and have not grown up with red menace, plus they were the ‘less bad’ communists in the west at waning period of cold war

    1. Less bad? Mao wanted to conquer the entire world. As far as I can tell, we lost more dead in proxy wars stopping him. Mao killed more Chinese and sundry than Stalin killed Ukrainians and sundry, and more than Hitler killed kill Jews and sundry. Those three all killed more than Leopold did. Mao only counts as less evil if you assume Chinese lives are less valuable than Jewish, Ukrainian, or African lives.

      1. I am speaking in terms of that the US dealt with China but not USSR. Realpolitik tried to use as a counterweight to USSR. There is no good communist. And only good socialists are in religious communes

      2. There’s a famous gag about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao having a bet about who can kill the most people. When they meet up in Hell, Hitler is indignant. “We never said you were allowed to kill your own people!”

        1. Stalin was Georgian, but I think he killed a bunch of those also. Anyone know what happened to Mao’s kids?

        2. Heard a riff on the “statistic” bit.

          Stalin and one of his politburo wonks are talking to a Western reporter. The reporter asks about a recent “uprising” and Stalin says “In order to quell the region we had to kill a hundred thousand locals and a janitor at the Kremlin.”

          The reporter asks what the janitor did that warranted death and Stalin turns to the wonk and says “I told you that’s all he’d be worried about.”

      3. When the hell did Chicom become a rude word? It’s a descriptive term, there is nothing that should make anyone feel icky in that term unless they are very stupid.

        1. Another day, another Torbot expression of fauxtrage.

          Oops – my mistake; it appears “Torbot” is an ethnic slur, or will be as soon as the Torbots get the paperwork back-dated.

            1. It’s been a long time, but I recall a comic book — I think it was Nexus — in which it was a running gag to have signs in the background declaring “Not Torbots.”

              IIRC, a torbot was a robot into which some tourist’s consciousness was projected, allowing visiting far places and annoying the natives without leaving home.

            1. Will the Torlocks sentence us to Tor-ture?

              (Okay, if I’m bringing up lines from old MST3K movies I probably should sleep soon.)

        2. Chicom is a rude word because Communist is a rude word. Communist is a rude word because it links modern authoriitarian central,panner types to the inevitable consequences of their buttinskiism.

            2. Well, if it’s all just about rudeness, without regard to fairness, accuracy, utiity, etc. – perhaps Mary 3Names should just go her safe space…

      4. The three biggest political mass murderers in history were two Communists and a Socialist. Anyone who thinks this is an accident has his head screwed on backwards.

      5. If you have a chance read the Mao bio by Jung Chang. Chicoms are like a giant festering carbuncle on the face of Helen of Troy.

        I would have been heartened by the win of the 3 Body Problem if I could hope that MRK and the other No Awarders had read it, rather than just ticking off the checkbox with the Asian Guy.

        Bigots.

            1. I meant the biography of Mao. It’s still around, packed. It was… OMG. Take communism and add a layer of Chinese-crazy — yes, I know, racist. No. I think this is the result of a society that was civilized way before us — like searches for immortality and burning books and such things that happened over and over in their history. The result… Well, we had mad emperors, in Rome, but they were barbarians and their reach was limited. It just… Oh, a quote from Joseph Conrad should suffice “The horror, the horror.”

    3. It is an attempt to make to make a slur of a descriptor used to identify someone they admire, so they want it to be a slur, and racial slur at that. All part of that whitewash. Remember, a TEA Party deserves all its scorn. Anyone they admire doesn’t deserve, even accurate description.

  7. I suppose she thinks Nork (NORth Korean) is also an ethnic slur. Anyone who genuinely dislikes the Koreans or the Chinese as an ethnicity would just use chink or gook without bothering to specify the polity.

    By the standards of this escapee from a Pole joke, everyone who opposes the Confederate States of America is necessarily racist against Americans.

    She is a Gwai Lo looking from the bottom of a well, who doesn’t understand the scale of the heavens and the earth. She has eyes, but does not see.

      1. Years ago, at a family get together (probably Chinese New Year) one of my wife’s aunts was talking with her sisters before dinner, and someone asked about a new neighbor family who’d moved next door.

        Said family happened to have the last name of Lee.

        Another auntie: “Chinese?”

        “No, lo fan.” Followed by a stricken silence, as they all turned to look at me… I just smiled, and things moved right along.

        That was early in our marriage; after 40+ years everyone’s a lot more relaxed.

    2. Well, admittedly when I use “Nork” it is intended as insult, given the rhyming with “dork”, but it’s not based on ethnicity.

    3. I was watching some Korean historical movie a couple months ago, and I could have sworn that the characters were using some word that sounded like “Guk” (hm… needs a circumflex accent, I think) to refer to either their own kingdom or the inhabitants thereof.

      …Which makes me wonder if the term “gook” is derived from the people’s make for themselves. If so, wouldn’t that make it more respectful than referring to them as Korean, which is the westernized form of the country’s name?

      1. Hanguk (or Hankook) = South Korea (hanguk saram is Korean person)

        Miguk = America (USA)

        Before the current Republic of Korea (ignoring the Japanese occupation), there was Korea, preceded by Joseon (chosun, which is the current name for North Korea), preceded by Koryo (which was when the first europeans showed and mispronounced the name from then on), which was preceded by Silla … Too much history crammed into a small area.

        1. Too much history crammed into a small area

          And nearly all of it just gone. Few people alive have seen an actual Korean historical site, and as time goes on that number will fall to zero… *sad*

          1. Unlikely to fall to zero in the near future. I fully intend to take my son to Korea to visit and I still have relatives (mostly cousins) living there. And THEY remember, and tend to be very accurate in their historical recording, good and bad.

            1. The memories exist, but the sites are all gone. Millenia of history (just ask them!) but not one structure a century old. I’m not aware of a single historical site that survived the war. I could be mistaken – my information is second hand – but that’s my understanding.

              1. I’ve seen plenty with my own eyes in the South. In the North? Mot so sure. Yes, there was much damage done, but many places still have things surviving, ancient walls, some buildings, yes, there are many preserved ruins as well. It is not a total loss.

                  1. No worries! I do have to say, I can only speak to the South. North Korea may have far more extensive damage. (Which would make me very sad, since Pyongyang had some great places to go see pre-war according to my grandmother.)

        2. Hanguk (or Hankook) = South Korea (hanguk saram is Korean person)

          Miguk = America (USA)

          Interesting. So… maybe derived from the same linguistic root as the Japanese koku? (… the one that means “country” not the unit of measure…)

  9. Of course you can’t use simple, easily remembered abbreviated words for groups of which they approve – like Chinese Communists.

    Only for those groups of which they do not approve – like German National Socialists.

      1. She says (via Twitter exchange) that she “called it” for 3BP because it was a hard SF work. She didn’t say if she voted for it.

        To be fair to 3BP, Vox Day said he thought it was the best item on the list. I found it to be tedious, except where it talked about the Red Guard while I thought “oh, so they had SJWs, too?”

        1. How could she like it if Vox likes it??? That taints all that it touches!!! Sacrilege!!!!

          (Note to ed: Did I get the right number of exclamation points in that last according to the TOR style guide?)

          1. She tried to say Vox never voted for it. It’s almost like she’s just flinging stuff to see what sticks.

              1. To steal a David Weber line. “It’s a battle of wits with an unarmed man/woman”. [Evil Grin]

                  1. Well, I only remember Weber using it. Of course, the concept could be older. [Smile]

            3. I would reply to her and say “So, you admit you illegally saw his ballot during the voting process? What other process violations did you commit during the Hugos?”

        2. Yeah, but there’s a lot of good books where you can get your Cultural Revolution straight. I recommend When Huai Flowers Bloom by Shu Jiang Lu — particularly for writers among us.

          2. Wild Swans by Jung Chang and Red Scarf Girl are brilliant. But if you want a book that will cause you to punch a fellow traveller in the face, read Never Fall Down. It will break your heart.

            Nothing VD brings to the table can compete with that horror, and yet we share con-space with self-professed un-repentant communists. I am still trying to understand this and failing..

  10. So, here’s the deal. Com for communist. AKA Marxist (Karl, one (1) each), who is a Dead White Male and OBVIOUSLY then a Terrible (TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE) person (being responsible for an ism that’s killed
    100 million (+/-) people just adds on to it). And 3-Name Mary doesn’t give you a link to or quote of what you are supposed to have said is just…tacky.

  11. She knew damn well what the term meant but figured she could get in a cheap shot.

    SJW always lie. Give them no credit for ignorance without proof. Assume malice from them always.

    3. You must be referring to Vox Day’s new novel:

      He has 4 reviews so far 3 5-star and the one 1-star (probably by 3-name Mary) Amazon counts, but won’t let you see.

      1. While the “SJW always lie” line is one he’s been using for a while my “assume malice” from them really blossomed with the jackanape who decided to blame the Puppies for Andy Weir not getting a Hugo nom when plenty people wanted to do so only to be told his self-publication made him ineligible without the Hugo folks clarifying only The Martian as Best Novel was affected.

        For a son of a bitch who would have “No Awarded” it if we had nomed it to complain we didn’t let it get nomed after being told it was ineligible was it. They are liars and they are acting with malice and they are the human equivalent of cockroaches spreading disease wherever they are allowed to infest.

        /rant

        Where are my BP meds?

          1. It doesn’t. Publication timing can get tricky, The most contentious I know about it doesn’t matter because the not a Hugo has a 2 year window.

            There may or may not have been incorrect information circulated by folks who may or may not have had some official capacity and it may have been an honest mistake/misunderstanding or it may have been malicious.

            There are currently any number of discussions of rules as they are now and as they might be and as they might have been as applied to actual and hypothetical situations.

            Key points are timing. Subject to discussion and perhaps open questions are nominating a fan for writing fanfic that plays in somebody else’s locked sandbox.

            1. Rumor has it that the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality tried to make a run at Fan Writer this year. And I have to wonder if YouTube videos could count as podcasts. If so, I’m going to have a field day come recommendation time…

    4. SJW always lie. Give them no credit for ignorance without proof. Assume malice from them always.

      A sentiment I can generally understand, but in this case…

      Mary-3-N has provided adequate proof in the past for me.

    5. Oh, malice, always. But their ignorance is so all-encompassing that it’s ignorance always, too.

      That’s the SJWs and the LIRPs, vicious, ignorant, and shameless.

  12. Mary Three Names is displaying just the type of high moral character I expect from someone who complains of the Puppies “slate” and then goes out and openly buys votes.

    Or there’s the time on Brad Torgersen’s blog when she accused someone of threatening to doxx her and when asked to provide proof gave a link to a post where there was not only no threat, but that had nothing to do with her.

    You keep it classy Mary, you keep it classy.

  13. You are racist because they have convicted you of racism and now merely find or fabricate evidence in support of that conviction (which evidence, however innocuous or flimsy must be considered determinative because you are a racist, therefore your usage was racist therefore you are convicted of racism by your usage.)

    Yes, the reasoning is circular. Circular is the only type of reason employed by those who have successfully introduced the entry port of their GI tract into their exit port.

    For the record, Chicom is not an ethnic slur. Presumably Mary 3Names considers being communist admirable, therefore she should recognize the term as complimentary.

    It is clearly an effort to create a diversion, accusing you of stepping on the wrong floor tile and put you into a defensive crouch. The proper return gambit is counter-attack, not an explanation.

    BYW, I am reliably informed that Mary 3Names has spinach on her teeth.

  16. It’s all part of the attempt to silence opposition to their ever so precious narrative. On the political side this last week some SJW tried to tell one or the other of the horde of GOP candidates that the term “anchor baby” was offensive. Their very appropriate response was “fine, then tell me what you want to call them.” He got back a long sentence of loosely connected and disjointed terms from the original objector, looked at him for a moment, then replied, “OK, anchor babies it is.”

    1. That is like ‘undocumented worker’ instead of illegal alien. Problem is, many illegal aliens don’t work and most have enough documentation to get welfare. Only by the perverse illogic of SJWs could the two be equated.

  17. I’m not even a little surprised that she’d pull something like this. This isn’t the first time she’s been caught being dishonest. Hell, she turned “Vox Day threatened to post the SFWA directory page with convicted pedophile Ed Kramer’s name on it” into “Vox Day threatened to doxx me” when she realized Kramer and Kowal were alphabetically adjacent.

          1. Yes and No.

            Yes, you can get into trouble for deleting an example of Stupid.

            But the real problem is that there’s too many examples of Stupid for a single person to delete (without massive collateral damage). [Frown]

      4. I’m surprised she deleted it instead of doubling down:
        “Well, Chinese and Communist are both slurs too – putting them together makes you a Double-Plus Ungood QuadrupleRacist!”

        1. Oh, I would have loved that…would have immediately asked if that’s why she voted “No Award” on Best Novel, why she hated the Chinese, and why she votes Republican.

      6. We really do need something like Deepfreeze.it to help keep track of (and publicize) the near daily occurrences of the science fiction Aristocrats showing their asses in public.

        1. It’s early. And if she doesn’t end up playing the “Hide what makes me look bad” game that is common throughout Twitter, I’ll have to give her a bit of credit.

  18. Noticing Mary 3Names is from Raleigh, I would say the odds are high she was a Johnny Edwards fan. So, facts and reality are not of much importance to her. Given her debut novel was published by TOR in 2010 she is likely afeared that she will never get another Hugo nomination if she doesn’t bark when her leash-holder jerks.

    BTW, did you know that “Kowal” is an ethnic slur?

    Well, it is now.

    3. “Slave” is an ethnic slur, and that one even is plausible. Imagine our insisting that they revert to “thrall”.

  19. This is just a cheap shot in what is to become a year long broadside against Sarah and Kate to discredit them and Sad Puppies IV as much as possible and set the narrative. It will only get worse from here.

    I would suggest ignoring them completely. Simply archive their posts to have for display whenever useful. If SPIII proved anything it is that trying to rebutt them or appeal to logic and reason is utterly useless. Just batten down the hatches and head the bow into the wind, one cannot shout down the hurricane.

    2. Alternatively (or rather, in addition) consider preparing a generic response, along the lines of “Mary? Since when has Chicom been an ethnic slur? You’re just making [stuff] up.”

      A quick ctrl-f at this [ http://www.rsdb.org/full ] reference page does not reveal Chicom’s inclusion on the list.

  20. According to her Wikipedia entry, she is a puppeteer. One of Heinlein’s Puppet Masters, no doubt – an apt description of SJW.

    But given her resume, it would be more accurate to say she is a puppet.

  21. Back in the Carter days, there was a huge rewrite of Army manuals. The words Soviet, Russian and Communist were expunged, because we didn’t want to insult or demean the Soviets, and replaced with the word “Threat”. We were still training to KILL them, and prepared to incinerate Western Europe (indeed, the way Carter gelded the military it would have been our only real option). We still studied the same weapon systems, the same uniforms, the same doctrine. We just couldn’t name them.

            2. If they do, I hope my eyes on twitter captures it and sends it to me. I really should have a “Dumbest opposition tweet of the week” on the weekend. It would save me so much time. And I can’t come up with stuff this dumb.

            1. That’s silly…everyone knows Trump’s hair will be Trump’s running mate.

              Also, I can make a good argument for Trump by invoking the funniest clown theory.

          1. well, you could vote for the gun grabbing, single payer supporting eminent domain loving abortion supporter, or what ever communist the Dems put up next year …

            1. I don’t think Trump’s a gun grabber.

              But if you have evidence, I’ll gladly spread it around.

              I thought Clinton v. Bush the rematch was my worst nightmare. Funny that.

              2. Well, he keeps saying “the right things” about gun control then adds the qualifiers favored by dems. “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun” there always is a BUT when dealing with those who want to “sound reasonable”. Also he told Larry King he wished there were no guns period. I think he is less “pro gun” than Harry Reid, who says and votes the right way to maintain that NRA endorsement, but would do little to block any laws if he thought he could get away with it.
                Trump doesn’t like them (presumably all his body guards are carrying shillelaghs or something) and has regularly slammed the NRA and Repubs for following the NRA talking points. he doesn’t think outright bans would work, but is a scary gun hater.

                1. I’ll put it simply. He’s from New York. What he finds acceptable gun-law-wise is more than any individual rights supporters should be willing to accept.

                  1. there is also the “Good Friends With The Clintons” thing, as well as the “Basically I’m a Democrat” quote from not long back.
                    But Border!

          2. Trump strikes me as a straight up psychopath… His refusal to be politically correct is amusing, sure, but if we thought Obama sucked at diplomacy, I really don’t want to watch the Man With The Rug try it…

            1. I’m not so sure about that. If he isulted all the Islamic States instead of sucking up to them and then launching idiotic military operations that don’t accomplish jack, that would represent a huge improvement.

              1. I wasn’t thinking of the Islamic States in terms of diplomacy, I was thinking of our allies, like Israel, or France, or Britain… 😀

                The Islamic states can go hang.

        4. From the East, Donald Trump.

          From the West, Bernard Sanders.

          From the top, Sweet Meteor of Death.

          Seriously, while I do think a fighting tournament would be a pretty good way of sorting through the candidates, Sumo is simply the wrong set of rules.

      2. Their enmity is an understandable reaction to America’s repeated and continued disrespect of the culture and belief systems. It is America’s fault for continually maintaining threat situations in relation to them.

        This is the same dynamic through which racist America oppresses and devalues Black Lives. As Peggy Hubbard says,

        Police brutality? How about black brutality? You black people, my black people, you are the . . . most violent [people] I have ever seen in my life. A little girl is dead. You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered. It mattered. Yet, you trifling [people] are out there tearing up the neighborhood I grew up in.

        Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423000/peggy-hubbard-black-lives-matter?target=author&tid=1219816

        Oops. Well, what does she know? She’s just some dumb African-American grandmother who

        turn[ed] her own son in for a crime he committed, as she’d warned him she would if he ever broke the law. Unless black people show that they care for their own lives and the lives of their neighbors, Black Lives Matter “doesn’t matter,” says Hubbard. “If your life doesn’t matter to you, then it doesn’t matter to us.”

        With that kind of attitude how’s an African-American ever supposed to get ahead in this racist country!

        Why, that woman is so unappreciative of the gains and benefits given to her ungrateful self that when CNN’s Don Lemon confronted her with “some of the angrier and more obscene internet comments [her remarks] earned her”, her response was “Bite me.”

          1. So your Aunt M was from East Texas then, ’cause I know lots of those ladies. Dear wife included.

          2. “Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn’t mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years I’ve been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now…well, being a Christian woman, I can’t say it!”

          3. My dearest dream is to round up a bunch of these SJWs and lock them in a room for about 2 hours with my rather…erm…unPC East Texas relatives. There would be brains all over my aunt’s wall from the exploding heads 😀

            2. Your relatives heads would explode? Why would you want to do that to your relatives? (That is the only way you would get brains or for that matter guts on the wall.)

  23. Yep, a term used since at least 1968 (Green Berets) to mean “Chinese Communist” now in SJW land is a pejorative. Niiiccceee. How else may we offend you today?

    2. “Niiiccceee. How else may we offend you today?”

      Make a list — I intend to go through every one, methodically offending as I go. As one of those militaryisms used to go, “Your ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower.”

  25. Typical SJW?CHORF Tactic: if you disagree with someone, be it an individual or organization, comb through their writings, find something that maybe could be considered racist, then screech and screech and try and make a mountain out of a molehill. I’ve been on the receiving end of that myself. Just consider yourself fortunate that you’re in a position where you can ignore her and she really can’t use it to hurt you.

    1. *SJW / CHORF. That’s what happens when I get excited, hold down ‘Shift,’ and then don’t proofread before clicking ‘Post.’

        1. Believe me, I’m trying to get another stout cold front to push down your way. They keep stopping at the OK border for some reason.

          1. Not quite that bad this week.

            But I did have a party of Vulcans stop off for a nostalgic picnic…

          2. It’s 72 F, partly cloudy, with 56% humidity here in greater Cincinnati. Not sure how that happened in the midwest in August, but I’m not complaining. 🙂

  29. Changing tapes might be a specific case of a more general framing alters perception. Lots of that going around.

    For my sins, my own first response to chicom is to picture a semiautomatic pistol chambered in .30 Tokarev. I used to form cases from chopped off and necked down 5.56.

    I’ve also been censured publicly for saying damn with faint praise

          1. Additionally the 7.62 Tokarev is pretty much the same thing as 7.63 Mauser so you can use the brass/ammo. Just don’t Tokarev cartridges in an actual Mauser since they tend to be loaded hotter then the originals(especially the S7B /czhech surplus)

            1. This was about 1970 so the 5.56×45 was free and the factory Tokarev loads were scarce – 9×19 conversions were not yet common the market. Notice that 5.56 can be used for a wide range of cartridges but don’t use it to make .30 Mauser for a broom handle because the case head is just different enough to damage the extractor.

  30. So my tweet about the CHORFs saying: “They did a wonderful cosplay of that scene from Ch1 of 3 Body Problem.” ….makes me a bad person? 😉

      1. “You accused them of Cosplay???? Clearly an endorsement of Pudding Rape Culture!”

        Are you morbidly fascinated by what something is, but too terrified that an internet query will lead to embarrassing questions when the NSA confiscates your computer? Well that’s what your public library is for!

        Remember: public libraries are safe places for people to look at Tumblr.

        A Public Service Message from a Cultural Libertarian Humorist. Who Cares. Well, mostly cares 😉

        1. “Pudding Rape Culture”
          Does that have anything to do with the infamous Haldeman Lime Jello? 🙂

          1. You know, when Cosby was saying “first you dip your spoon into the pudding” I had no idea that “spoon” and “pudding” were code words.

      2. Puddin’ Rape Culture… ?

        Dude, not even the CHORFs are crazy enough to try and rape The Joker. I can think of a lot less painful ways to commit suicide…

            1. Fanfiction.net allows you to search by character names. Including Joker and OFC. Just sayin’.

          2. What was that line? “When supervillains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories!”

          3. Steven Brust had a line in one of his books that goes something like “This is an example how the love of a good woman can make a bad man into a real son-of-a-bitch”. Just imagine the Joker falling in love with a woman as insane as him and she returns his love. [Very Big Evil Grin]

              1. Haven’t read those or seen those.

                I’m thinking of having Batman musing “Fighting Joker is bad enough. Now that he married her, it’s going to four times the trouble”. [Wink]

                2. Eh, they both have their weaknesses. Once Harley had Batman dead to rights, and Batman just told her that she wouldn’t be able to prove to the Joker that she had killed him. Which meant she called him to have him show up, and Batman then exploited him to escape.

      1. I did post a link to the French Revolution scene from Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I back on the megathread, IIRC.

    2. I can’t, but you might want to see if someone that has worked with Project Gutenberg might be able to recommend one.

      I know all the cheaper commercially available ones I’ve tried have given me fits, though they’ve improved in the last 20 years. The earliest ones were prone to treat each character as different font size, and each line as completely different in line format, and ended up turning a 20k character file into a 5 meg document.

      One quick fix is to save scans as .txt files, then go back and add the formatting.

    3. I have something that came with a Brother scanner/printer/fax, but I don’t know if I’ve ever used the OCR on it.

    5. A couple of years ago I did some OCR work for one of the Hoydens using OpenOCR. It worked well, even though the document was printed on a dot matrix printer. The one exception was the page with the coffee spill on it; that I had to enter manually. 🙂

  33. Oh dearie me. My sides.

    She’s now trying to say that GG laughing at her for trying to turn Chicom into an ethnic slur is proof that GG was behind SP.

    So the fact that people you publically blamed for a thing for months now are involved with that thing? Yeah, that totes proves they were behind it to begin with.

    I may just get to see my brain today from rolling my eyes so hard.

    Of course she also has a tweet a couple down from that trying to link SP to Trump.

    No I’m not making that up.

      1. I think GG, now that they are aware of the same B.S. heading at Sad Puppies like to check it out to see if our SJWs are dumber than their SJWs. That or see which ones you can have the most fun Fisking.

        1. Keep in mind – there is actually a lot of overlap.

          If not for SP Feminist Frequency would have gotten nominated for best related for the stupidly and blatantly factually wrong videos about games. (Complete with stolen let’s play footage/artwork and going on a killing spree in a Hitman game and calling the game sexist for it… when the game penalizes you for any unnecessary violence and exposure. ‘Cause, you know, game about an assassin, not a spree killer.)

          Then there’s Arthur Chu, and Brianna “Half of his stuff is mine so I have 2 Hugos” Wu.

          Throw in Scalzi trying to show how superior he is the to GGers and it’s almost the same bunch of elitist killjoys.

          1. Oh yeah, I saw that footage. She had Agent 47 murder some dancers, stuff the bodies in a trunk and decried it as violence against women, all while the status screen on the top left was granting her penalty points in red.

            (You’re supposed to sneak past them and get to the target.)

            Sort of like the Renegade Interrupts from Mass Effect: You have to choose to use them, though at least one was very tempting.

            (Longest interrupt prompt in the game. It’s almost screaming for you to push the jolly, candy-like button.)

              1. NM. Wasn’t sure which you referred to – the email didn’t show the video.

              2. Punching a reporter can be tempting.

                (Though I think only one of my Sheps has done that.)

                Be careful, though. In ME3 she dodges the punch.

                1. Yeah, but if you get the prompts right after she dodges it you head butt her.

                  (Keep in mind, I always played Paragon. My Shepard was such a goody-two shoes that I replayed 1 to romance no one so I could go after Tali in 2 without problems. Yeah. Blue alien babe, slightly speciesist Marine woman… or the awesome mechanic girl? Not a hard choice.)

                  1. I liked Ashley, thankyouverymuch.
                    But yeah, given the choice between her or Tali…sorry, Ash. My heart belongs to the chick who DIDN’T DECIDE I WAS A TRAITOR BECAUSE I WORK FOR THE ORGANIZATION THAT BROUGHT ME BACK FROM THE DEAD.
                    I was not impressed with Bioware’s writing of that scene.

                    1. I felt the same way about Kaidan’s reaction. My Shepard was standing there with AN ALIEN AND A FORMER VICTIM-EXPERIMENT of that very organization saying “No, really, we’re not working FOR them, just with them for the time being” and he’s all “Nope. Traitor.”

                      I was almost disappointed that Garrus didn’t offer to shoot him for me…

                      And having played 2 before I played 1, I was happy with Garrus and never looked back. (Whiny biotic vs. awesome and snarky sniper? No contest. Entirely different species notwithstanding.)

                    4. The tango scene was awesome. One of my favorite moments in the entire trilogy.

                      (I gather Kaidan will cook Shepard breakfast. Not nearly as awesome as tangoing–particularly since Garrus got Shepard-who-is-known-across-the-galaxy-as-not-being-able-to-dance-at-all to do a tango. And do it well.)

                    5. Also, yeah: it really irked me that they don’t give Sole Survivor Shepard the opportunity to go “What? HELL NO I’M NOT WORKING FOR YOU LUNATICS.”

                      Though it is a nice meta touch to consider this: in ME1, every freakin’ Cerberus base you go to, their experiments have broken out and killed everyone. What happens at the end of 2 or in 3 (though who in their right mind would agree to TIM’s suggestion that you not blow up the baby human Reaper full of millions of liquefied colonists is beyond me)? Their biggest and most expensive lab experiment (Resurrected Shepard) breaks out…and kills them all. Personally I always found it especially satisfying to talk TIM into shooting *himself*…

                    6. @Sara the Red: I think it’s called the Cerberus Taco Cart Theorem or something.
                      Joker: “Hey, Liara. What do you think’d happen if Cerberus made a taco cart?”
                      Liara: “The taco cart would kill all the scientists involved and take over the base… What’s a taco cart?”
                      Or: http://i.imgur.com/JwpyHd4.jpg

                  2. I always got the impression that they didn’t give you all that many Renegade points, realizing that even a Paragon Shep would want to punch that woman in the face.

                    And Tali is adorable.

                  3. I played mostly Paragon, though on one ME1 a FemShep ended up with full Paragon bar filled and 3/4s Renegade. Got the Paragon-only hostage rescue mission after she stole the Normandy near the end of the game.

                    Sadly there was no dialogue like this for it:
                    Admiral Hackett: Shepard, if you do this we’ll consider not court-martialing you.

            2. Punching the SJW reporter is one of my favorite interrupts. And you can do it more than once over the course of the trilogy.

              (Granted, if you can restrain yourself, the Paragon action in the third game actually nets you a War Asset, since you can pretty much guilt her into stopping her stupid and doing something useful to aid the fight. But I only did that once, on account of it being so blatantly unlikely to happen with a real SJW, it kinda broke the immersion… :D)

              1. I kind of liked using one of the Charm or Intimidate dialogue options to knock the SJW reporter down a peg.

                1. Yeah, those are fun too. Her muttered comment as she stomps off the first time you do it “Railroaded on my OWN SHOW *grumble*”

                  1. Yeah, and I like the Intimidate dialogue option on the merc during the Thane recruitment mission. (The one with the “push him out the window” Renegade interrupt.)

                    1. I do that even if I’m playing a Paragon Shep. It’s just too good a straight line from that idiot merc to NOT shove him out the window when he starts demanding what you’re gonna do about it. If I recall right, Garrus’ remark on this is hilarious. (Of course, most of his remarks are hilarious.)

                    2. The Intimidate option has Shepard crowd the merc up against the window as it cracks and then Shepard says something about “will you stop screaming before you hit the ground” and the merc folds and gives up some information.

            3. I’d actually rate the interrupt in miranda’s rescue mission more tempting due to combination of sheer badassery to the multiple kills, and being the most appropriate response to some nobody merc trying to intimidate Shepard

              1. Yeah, that one’s good too. I picked the one in the video since it has the longest expiration timer of pretty much any interrupt in the game.

                “Do it!” -Not Grunt.

              3. Oh, and headbutting Uvenk (“You…. you dare?!”) or shocking the mechanic (“You’re working too hard!”) were also good ones.

                They’re why I say my Sheps are Paragon. Mostly. 😉

            4. At Tosho-con Chris Zimmerman (Sucker Punch games) explained that when they gave players the option to go “evil” and just shoot everything up, or go ” good” and have to control fire, take hits to save innocents etc. 75% of the gamer fan boys chose the more difficult good option.

              BTW: Zimmerman is a class act and then some.

              Gamerhaters are massive poopyheads.

              1. Just shoot everything can be on occasion a Kobayashi Maru reprogramming or better reframing. At one time Roy Chapman was the only person to make it through and out of the fun house at Gunsite when it was set on nobody gets out of here alive.

                He began by shouting Police Officer everybody down and take cover! then running through the house as fast as he could taking every shot offered – ignoring even the possibility of a no-shoot or hostage. It might even have got him ahead of the operator’s OODA loop.

      2. I think she is making a fundamental category error. GG laughing at her for trying to turn Chicom into an ethnic slur is not proof that GG was behind SP, it is proof that she is an ignorant twit who has publicly and loudly beclowned herself.

        And is now proceeding to spray seltzer down her own pants. Face planting herself with a cream pie and accusing somebody else of doing it should happen any time now.

    2. Is it true that “Kowalling” is an ethnic slur meaning “gibbering idjit”?

      Isn’t that an offense against ….

      wait for it …

      … gibbering idjits?

    3. …and here’s the doubling down. Are we arguing with actual people or entirely predictable programs?

    1. Well, I’m already picking out blue shirts and a red beret, for the sheer pleasure of watching leftists’ faces contort in confused rage. 😀

  35. On a semantic note, large swaths of the American public do not consider Damn or Hell improper for casual conversation these days. It is in some parts of the culture no more offensive than Heck or darn and seen as much less childish. Admittedly those parts of the culture see little problem with the F-bomb. The F-bomb and Goddamn being about the only truly offensive swear words. Unless you are white in which case crucifixion is acceptable for using the N-word ar anything which sounds remotely similar.
    As far as the meaning of the back of the right hand into the left I was given to understand it was a reference to buggery, This may or may not be accurate since I don’t know whether my informant nearly 40 years ago was correct

    1. I’m a card-carrying Mormon girl and I use damn and hell in everyday conversation. Though not, admittedly, when I’m at church. 😉

      1. Lapsed Catholic Appalachian, and damn and hell are mild enough that they’re everyday words here, too. Admittedly, we restrict ourselves around children and our elders. Well, most of our elders. *grin*

        Damn and hell are okay for the preacher or priest to use in church here, though, but more in the literal Bible sense than as punctuation. Layfolk get told off for it. Not that I’d have personal knowledge of such, mind…

    2. “On a semantic note, large swaths of the American public do not consider Damn or Hell improper for casual conversation these days.”

      I’ll just point out that when I saw Blazing Saddles on network TV many years ago in the bit in which the pie-delivering woman uses the word “goddamn”, they bleeped “god” and left “damn” in.

      1. they bleeped “god” and left “damn” in.

        Saw many examples like that years ago. I think the logic was leaving “God” in the phrase makes it blasphemy, and much worse than just saying “damn”.

        1. Didn’t Eric & Ryk’s book dealing with the world Grantville left behind, and the the prison that got relocated into the megayear past with a lot of other temporal fragments, point out that pre-Victorian-era, even the F-Bomb was acceptable from the pulpit in the US? (only GD being an issue, and then preachers could probably get away with it in sermons).

            1. My bad – was typing while half asleep – I donated my copy of the book to a library book sale.

        2. Saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at BYU. It was a midnight showing, which was when they showed stuff that wasn’t current. So everyone had already seen it. And films shoen at this hour had the bad words removed. Not bleeped. Just silent (speaking of which, watching Jack Nicholson go silent during his profanity-filled rant at the climax of ‘A Few Good Men’ is hilarious). So Indy and his Dad reach the crossroads leaving Germany, and Dad says they have to go back. And then he suddenly slaps Indy, and tells him, “That’s for blasphemy!”

          Everyone started giggling. The edit in this one instance was so perfect that it hadn’t been noticed by the audience.

    4. Times change. The Stratemeyer Syndicate dropped gosh and golly from the Bobbsey Twins series after complaints. Only right. Look what a Hare Krishna chant has done at World Con; obscured all the properly politically correct behavior that did happen in Spokane.

    1. You are evil for posting that link.
      I felt 2 IQ points drain from my brain for each post she made.
      I particularly like that she searched Google until she could find a definition that she liked.

    3. I’ve learned that engaging these folks on Twitter is pointless. Document and share. Undermine them with their own statements.

  38. I almost forgot: 3 Names is the reason that I quit listening to Writing Excuses. It wasn’t even because of her moronic beliefs, though she’s easily the most boring of them. Adding her in to the cast while keeping the show the same length ruined the rhythm of it.

    1. Amen.

      She’s not BAD, but she doesn’t bring depth, and running 4 hosts vice three keeps an of the others from going into a matter to the same depth, making the whole thing more shallow.

          1. Howard earned it. he, Dan , and Brandon said some really insightful stuff, 90% of it applied to storytelling period.

            1. I don’t listen to Writing Excuses, but I think Howard deserves it for Schlock Mercenary – especially after seeing the finalists this year. But I’m also sure that Writing Excuses only got the Hugo because they brought one of the in-tribe onto the show.

              1. Actually, that’s a Sad Puppies One win. Hey, will Mary Three Names give back that Hugo because it was nominated by Sad Puppies?

                1. I think eligibility is determined by the date the work is published as a collection. So whichever book comes out this year would be up for nomination. Howard used to announce which work was up for that year, but he hasn’t for a while and it’s the major reason why I didn’t nominate Schlock this year.

        2. Interestingly, the final nail in the coffin that made me scrub it off my podcast list was her discussion on her blog of 12 rabid weasels during the chainmail bikini kerfluffle, when she nudge-nudge, wink-wink, dissed Dr Pournelle.

          That said, it wasn’t much of a loss. The loss of focus, and loss interesting guests had dragged it down from “listen right away” to “maybe I can scrounge a new audible credit first” well before that.

          1. I have objections to chainmail bikinis and their relatives. But those objections are because it’s stupid armor that protects precisely *zero* vital areas. (I object to boobs molded into breastplates for similar reasons: it directs the force of the blows to your sternum. Bad idea, that.) Beyond that, though, I tend to just roll my eyes. The folks losing their collective minds over it have some messed up priorities.

              1. I love that game.

                And yeah, fine, the mage “armor” isn’t practical…but I agree with Rule of Cool here: awesome leather coat trumps *everything* 😀

                Though the latest DLC with the Qunari armor–specifically the mage female version–made me snort-giggle. It’s cool…but it’s totally a bikini. On the other hand, it’s not a great idea to try and close quarters with a mage…

            5. Hmm – I know some SCA heavy-fighter gals who prefer at least some molded relief for the soft tissues. I assume correct fitting redirects blows to ribcage instead of sternum. Haven’t discussed it at length with ’em though…

    2. Same. That and the incredibly racist post/comments they had up for a scholarship to one of the retreats a year or two ago. (Actual racism–that was apparently PC–not the token SJW racism.)

      1. Sad to see that, given how well he and Larry apparently knew each other. You’d think he’d give Larry more benefit of the doubt as to hearing out his side..

      2. I suspect, based on a few of Tayler’s more SMOFy posts and book recommendations, that he was a driving force in bringing Mary aboard. But there’s hardly any real proof to that hunch. That said, after getting burned by one of his recommendations, some Jim Hines fairy tale super bad-ass princess book, I learned to ignore his blog.

      3. Saw that as well. Only reason I haven’t scrubbed his web comic off my daily read list is that it’s apolitical for modern times. I have done that with other webcomics due to the writer getting down right snarky with conservatives and politics. More of that “shut up and ‘sing'” mentality.

  39. As an appropriate ‘…ist’ to call Mary three-names after her hopeless grubbing for insults: “Desperatist” comes to mind. But I’m not sure about the spelling… “Desperatest?” “Most desperate” might be more accurate…

    I suppose Incoherentist would work…

        1. Ooh, I had that once at Baskin-Robbins — a blend of blood orange and dark chocolate. It tasted wonderful and smelled like victory.

          1. Unlike the ham that tasted of despair…

            (And if you get the correct Bioware reference for that, you win internet cookies!)

                1. Silly Hawke is best Hawke. And probably smartest Hawke. (“Did they just SAY th– why is there this knife in my kidneys?)

          2. Ooohh – I want some of that! Will HEB (OK, the major ruling grocery chain in Texas, for the edification of those who do not get the reference) carry it in their freezer case? Cause I want to buy a five-quart bucket, stat!

                1. I can’t wait for Blue Bell to open up again in TX. They’re my favorite ice cream. As of today I believe that only their AL plant is open.

                  1. Yup. And they will start with Houston, D/FW, and Austonio once they are back in Texas.

                    MomRed is already planning a road trip with a big cooler.

                    1. Are you coming to Dallas? Do you have a date when bluebell will again be sold in Dallas?

                    2. Emily, I don’t think I’ll be heading your way in the near future. My folks might drive down, and I know Mom will be through Love Field because she’s flying Southwest to go see Red 2.1 this fall. My one trip this fall will be to Albuquerque, for an FAA license renewal.

                    3. I have not heard a date for the Blue Bell return yet. My Mom would be one of the first to know – she’s on their fan list and gets all the e-mails right after the press does (and gets the flavor-of-the-month announcements, too.)

                2. Austin has 2 Apple store, about 40 HEBs and Red’s Indoor Range so it isn’t all bad.

            2. I would kill to get an HEB in Atlanta…we had three in Bryan-College Station which is now four.

              The big College Station one is open 247 and was always good for girl watching or when you were up and bored at 3am.

          3. I’ve indulged in a spoonful a time or two — it does taste awfully good — but I almost always feel rotten afterwards, so I avoid it as a general rule. Never did have much constitution for the rich stuff.

  40. Chicom is such a horribly racist term that it is listed on both wikipiedia (redirects to Communist Party of China) and Merriam-Webster. Probably other dictionaries as well.

    The fact that a Hugo-winning author and former officer of the SFWA isn’t familiar with a common term is no one’s fault but her own. According to her bio she’s just a few years younger than I am, so she can’t blame her age for her ignorance.

    Besides, you’d think that a puppeteer would be intimately familiar with all things Communist out of professional courtesy.

    1. She was then trying to justify by saying the dictionary said it was racist. I guess as a red diaper baby she got SPECIAL dictionaries? This is a guess. I don’t know her parents’ politics.

  41. Wait – the sterling example of literate author hood who is actually (admittedly, the weakest link) in an excellent podcast on how to improve one’s writing did not know what “chicom” meant?

    Oh, wait, she hates Jerry Pournelle. But even if she never would’ve read “there will be a war”, I am amazed that this supposedly educated person her age has never run into the term before But we are the stupid and uneducated ones

  42. “Bigotry” — most of these assholes have *NO* clue….

    I get to whip this one out every so often:

    OK, show of hands: Who here has actually attended a KKK/white-supremacist rally?

    *LOUD*. *FUCKING*. *SILENCE*. *AIN’T* *IT*?

    So: When you’ve actually been to a Klukker or Nazi rally… when you’ve watched a cross go up in flames in person… when you’ve had to shout “HEIL HITLER”, in order to keep up the pretense… when you’ve had to BS your way past their security (“Can’t have tats — I have to work with the mud people; they’d notice”)… then I will be perfectly willing to listen to anything you have to say on the subject of Bigotry.

    Until then: Sit down, close your mouth, and do not speak in my presence again.

      2. I heard that term a lot growing up in Texas. It was a term of derision. To me it brings up an image of a guy with very few teeth and a perpetually angry and stupid face.

  43. Well, the next time she uses ‘neocon’ disparagingly we can accuse her of antisemitism.

  44. But, wouldn’t she have encountered it by reading Clancy or Could or Counts or Ing or….

    Oh, the twelt was from Mary Mary Quite Contrary? As Emily Latella might say: Never mind.

  45. Sarah, maybe what Mary Three Names is really upset about is your belief that there is something discreditable about being a communist. After all, I have learned over on the Scalzi blog that being a commie hater is a very bad thing. 😉

    1. This has occurred to me. And little Johnny barefoot proves my opinion of his mental and moral prowess. If you can’t hate people willing to give another try to a philosophy that killed 100 million you’re a mental midget and morally… well. Let’s just say it matches your mental prowess.

  46. Heck, I understood it clearly as “CHInese COMmunist(s).” Are these people dumber than an ox? And no, I won’t be offended by that – I know we’re not exactly brilliant. Ever see an ox get a Nobel in a hard science?

    2. These people are dumber than what an ox leaves behind. They are actively stupid, it’s actually one of their advantages in debate. Nobody thinks that the “arguments” they use will actually come up, so they don’t have counterarguments available.

        1. This one. This one irks me like nobody’s business. “Refusal to provide” is not the same thing as denial, and it *certainly* is not the same as prohibit. Drives me bug nuts every time I see it.

          1. You cannot argue with these people. They don’t pay any attention to facts, everything is feelz, and besides, someone at The Daily KOS said that Republicans want to ban contraceptives, so it must be so!

  47. I agree that chicom is not a controversial term. But if you’re looking for an alternate meaning, as someone who grew up in Chicago I hereby grant you permission to use it to refer to the many marxists in Cook County, Illinois.

  48. My IQ suffered just by watching her double down on stupid. As my fellow vets would say…She’s gone past potato to full turnip.

  49. OMG. I was born in 1980 and I know what a Chicom is — I actually use the term (correctly) in The Penitent as a shorthand term for the Chinese military command structure.

    This idiot must have (probably deliberately) tried to misread it as some form of “Chicano” which, even then, isn’t an ethnic slur anymore than “Latino” or “Hispanic” is.

    I used to be continually amazed at the sheer lack-of-education-and-knowledge shown by people from wealthier states and countries back when I lived in France and worked for a big multi-national company. Being from Mississippi, I knew that school was my ticket out of the poverty-zone so, once I was out of there, I was constantly amazed at how much more I knew than people who’d had access to better schools and more resources than me. Madame Kowal is just another one of those folks.

    Btw, I’m “borrowing” your screenshot of the Tweet to run on my own blog tomorrow (with credit, ofc). Is that okay?

    — G.K.

    1. “I used to be continually amazed at the sheer lack-of-education-and-knowledge shown by people from wealthier states and countries …”

      It is often surprising how ignorant the people who know everything tend to be. Almost as surprising as how gullible “smart” folk are.

      1. Kinda like how my last platoon sergeant wondered why I called my “ID tag necklace” dog tags, as I graduated basic training well after Desert Storm–my uncle who was in World War II (and probably my dad too, who had a peace time tour of Korea in the late ’50s).

        I didn’t know P-38 referred to a can opener; that was before my time.

          1. Once upon a time (early 80s so pre-MREs by just a hair) when issued actual in-the-can C-rations (don’t remember the dates on the cans – likely Vietnam era, possibly Korea, maybe WWII), the training cadre came around and collected all the P-38 openers. Still wish I’d pocketed mine.

            1. Every time we went to the field (not once a month like some people, but more than once a year for certain), my sergeant would complain about MREs and how C-rats were better. I thought most MREs were okay, but I have very plebeian tastes–I like potted meat, eg., and think it’s better than vienna sausages, which I find to be too plain.

            2. Nah, back in those days the Vietnam-era C’s were long gone. You could tell because they didn’t have the cigarette packs in them any more. The ones we ate in the Regulars and Reserves through the mid-80s were all made in the late 1970s, after the fall of Saigon.

  50. One wonders if she also views people who voice issues with Islam as “racist”, even though there’s no inherent racial component to belief in a religion.

    1. Funny story. I got into a discussion where we ended up discussing the history of Islam, Jihad, “spray and pray” maintenance as a lesser act, cultural trends, and even the grounding of F14’s after the embassy siezure.

      I was careful to back up everything I said as neutrally as possible, with known historical sources, and statements by Imams that were readily findable. Some of the more interesting tidbits were straight from a Turkish friend who’s wife (English) goes pale as she’d jump on people for islamophobia for saying half of what he does.

      After pointing out that true education beyond elitist upper-crust stuff, learning, variances of opinion, and a willingness to work and build rather than garner the benefits of others work was culturally discouraged, one older lady looked at me. ” I don’t know how someone so smart could say that kind of stuff, or paint it with such a broad brush. My husband is Iranian, and he’s smart, and dedicated, and works hard. he’s secular and not a religious fanatic!”

      I looked at her. “Hey, first, Individuals may come from culture, but they aren’t just that, and one should never make assumptions. ” She accepted that. “So , has he ever gone back to Iran? To visit, to see family?”

      “No, he’d be killed.”

      1. There are Iranian adult involuntary permanent expats out here who are still “on the list” from 1979, and would be in very deep doo doo indeed were they ever to come into the hands of the IRGC, purely due to their famly names. They last were in Iran as college students or even younger, yet the terror imposed by the authorities back in Iran is still so potent that they are carefully avoided to this day by other, later emigrating Iranian-born tech workers.

        These later immigrants are not on any list and want to keep it that way, so they avoid all contact with the pariahs in order to avoid the chance that word will get back home and these more recent expats relatives still in Iran would be in trouble.

        Nice place. We should sign an “on your honor” treaty with them or something, just to prove how gullible we really are.

        1. You know, if Trump announced that one of his first actions as President would be to order CENTCOM to bomb Iran back into the gravel age, I would gladly vote for him.

            1. We don’t need to bomb the rubble until it melts, that would be overkill. Yes, overkill.

    2. If “it isn’t racist because Islam isn’t a race”, explain nitwits who think we can identify “Muslims” by APPEARANCE? Oh, it doesn’t mean “dark-skinned furriner what sounds furrin?” Indian tourists have not been rousted and handcuffed for Looking And Sounding Like Terroriests?

      When I asked a blogger to explain a reference to “Muslim-looking young man”, I was told that it means “someone who looks as though he is or might be Muslim”. Oh? Like my 6 foot blond cousin the dervish (who was jailed by the Pasdaran). Clear as Gowanus Creek.

      1. In “A Deeper Blue” Ringo discusses “Muslim looking”. As I recall his tells were things like walking as if your shoes had no back rather than skin color or particular features.

      2. I wasn’t talking about buttheads (mild form) attacking someone because they think “dark = Muslim” or things like that. “Stupid is as stupid does”, and Lord there’s a lot of stupid out there. 😛

        My comment was about people crying “racist” when someone points out one or more of the problems with Islam and its rules (about which I won’t get into here, not the place), when race has precisely zero relevance to the issue(s) being raised.

  51. I had never heard the term before your post, but taken in context, it wasn’t hard to surmise what ‘chicom’ meant. The term itself is hardly offensive–especially when you consider how high the body count was under Mao.

    Her ignorance would not have been so bad (we all, I think, have misread something or said something stupid at one time or another), but to double down and insist a thing is racist that never could be (at least to a rational person who isn’t enmeshed in identity politics, and even identity politics is a weak reason to consider a term for communism racist) as a means to strike out at a person is very unbecoming. It would have been gracious of her to admit her mistake and apologize–something I’ve seen her demand of other people when they make a mistake. Sometimes before the person has even realized they misread something. :/

  52. This all reminds me: has the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the Sad Puppies as a hate group yet?

    I mean, you haven’t *arrived* unless the SPLC’s undergarments are in a wad…

  53. As simply a voracious ready of SF&F for 60+ years, obviously a wrongfan, I haven’t been involved in the cons and the award circus, but this cannot be allowed to stand!
    http://cedarwrites.com/this-puppy-has-been-muzzled/
    I’ve been advocating walking away from the Hugos and the assholes (asterics) associated with the SJWs, but forcing someone like Cedar out of the game is unconscionable, so guess I’ll start saving my pennies.

  54. P.S. Not my idea, but a damn good one -any Tor books I want to read will be bought USED on Amazon unless I know for sure the author is one of us – then maybe I can send their royalty direct.

    1. This. Shortly I will be buying some of JCW’s back catalog on Amazon used, and sending him the difference in his tip jar. I suggest everyone do that.

      1. Back when I was very young and broke (as opposed to old and broke. We were spending money on baby food not college tuition back then) if I bought books used and cheap or alternately got them free off the “free books” shelves outside bookstores, I would then send a couple of dollars to the author. I wonder how many of them stared in horror at a little card saying “thank you” and two grubby dollars. But it made me feel better.

        2. I did that once when I was younger and flusher. I’d found a copy of L. Sprague de Camp’s AN ELEPHANT FOR ARISTOTLE on the antiquarian book market and paid some princely sum for it. Realizing that the author himself was not partaking of any of the proceeds from the transaction, I sent de Camp a fiver. Got a really nice thank you note back, with a remark that he wished more readers thought like I did.

  55. 1) I thought Twitter was a dumb idea when they announced it, nothing in the implementation has disabused me of that analysis. It’s to the point where I actually think a bit less of anyone who is on it. Why would you subject yourself to that kind of potential abuse? Is there any upside worth dealing with such nimrods?

    2) A thing that totally needs to happen at the next Worldcon (hopefully my schedule will allow me to attend): A Puppy Pride Parade, where we dress up in our most outrageous SP gear and roam around the con chanting “We’re here. We’re fans. Get used to it.” If they try to kick us out, start yelling “Come see the violence inherent in the system.”

    1. Isn’t Twitter the alternative for those unable to handle the intellectual rigor of FB discussions?

    2. I found this year’s Seveneves criticisms of social media to be quite timely, to include figurative and literal cannibalism…

    1. That may be why ESR finished below No Award in the not a Hugo but still an issue award.

    2. Hell, some people were saying EXACTLY that about Brad’s story in last year’s Hugos. Having non-white villains is inherently racist, or something.

    3. Your question is likely irrelevant: As we now know, the actual story doesn’t matter, but you do have to indicate on the cover (or in the listing if an ebook) how many PC checkboxes you’ve checked. No differently-abled unnassigned-gendered oppressed Central-American undocumented pot-smoking antiwar wheelchair bound US Army infantry officers in your story? No Hugo for you.

      To check for racistnessism, you are required to go through the full pallor assessment sequence (PAS) using the specified Captain Comics paint chip method, and if your pallorousness is sufficient, you are automatically raaaaaacccccciiiiiiiiissssssssss.

      And note you have to be really careful with the film rights contract – they’ll digitally swap the PLA into the Norks on you at the drop of a bloody hat.

      1. “using the specified Captain Comics paint chip method”

        Problem with that is the average SJW couldn’t finish without eating the kit.

  57. MRK isn’t the only one disgracing themselves on Twitter today:

    “tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden · 1h1 hour ago
    @monsterhunter45 @Popehat No. I’m also not a giant wuss who throws a fit over losing one award nomination.”

    This was in response to something Larry said about her at the beginning of Superstorm Hugo. To which the International Lord of Hate replied:

    “Larry Correia ‏@monsterhunter45 · 1h1 hour ago
    @tnielsenhayden @Popehat you are responding to an 4 month old tweet? Did your sail barge just get Wi-Fi?”

          1. Unlikely that’s the case. To her it’s “Larry making a fat joke”, which she ignored. (Knowing him it’s “Larry picking anything suitable to insult the richly deserving with.”)

  58. Clearly the word is a slur against the many Bhuddists from Central America – you know, Chicanos who say “Om…” all the time.

  59. I’m guessing that Mary Robinette Kawaii, or whatever her last name happens to be, is simply so ignorant of anything written before around 1990 that she doesn’t know “Chicom” means “Chinese Communist,” and simply imagined it an ethnic slur because she has ethnic slurs on her brain, and it’s not a very big computer and she can’t run too many programs at the same time.

    1. No, she’s not Kawaii. Kowai, maybe. My understanding of Japanese is rather limited, I don’t know if kowai (scary) can be applied to stupidity or if there’s another word meaning “scary” or “frightening” that gets associated with it.

    2. Or she knows exactly what it means, but figures the typical ignorant younger SJW won’t.

      As several others have said, I’m done with the whole “benefit of the doubt” thing.

    3. “…ignorant of anything written before around 1990…”

      Interlibrary loan surprised me when they lent a 12 year-old me a book published before 1900. I was astonished – and very grateful, and treated ‘A Budget of Paradoxes’ by Augustus De Morgan with great care.

  60. I read through her twitter feed and she’s using a dictionary link to defend herself. Here it is: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chicom?s=t

    The thing is I can’t decide if she’s being dishonest, because the link doesn’t say what she claims it does. Or if she’s just too stupid to realize just because the term is derogatory it doesn’t automatically mean it’s racially derogatory. For a writer that’s a pretty big reading comprehension fail.

    2. Could always be both. :p

      The problem is a lot of people join the Outrage Train without ever stopping to make sure the conductor knows what she’s talking about.

    4. It is because she is robbing other sorts of Chinese of their voice and identity. If only communist Chinese are authentically Chinese, then it works as she says. Someone word an SJW style message attacking her for not recognizing Wang Sheng as a human being.

  61. ‘Chicom’ not only was used to differentiate the Chinese communists from the Soviet variety, but also form the non-communist Chinese. Calling it an ethnic slur is so ludicrous as to be funny.

    2. Exactly right. I read a lot of WWII and post WWII non-fiction, and the main purpose of Chicom was to distinguish them from the Nationalist Chinese led by Chiang Kai-Shek who lost the civil war and ended up on Taiwan, where comparing the two relative ways of life of the people, means they won the civil war. But how can that be construed in any way as an ETHNIC slur? And ol’ three name needs to read a bit more it seems.

  62. OT, but in the spirit of Sarah’s “We build, not destroy,” I’ve already started compiling my ideas for next year. Assuming y’all like the ideas in a few months, this is going to be fun…

    I wonder, do MMOs count as Long Form Dramatic Presentation?

    1. If you want to have fun with her you can screencap her Twitter admission that she, native english speaker, had to look up chicom, befote accusing an immigrant Latina of mis-using an “obscure” word and publicly attacking her (By implying that she’s an anti-chinese bigot.) Mention white-privilege much.

      If there’s any hope that she’s a readonable woman, rather than a cynical liar, you can offer her a chance to save face: This is classic: she, a privileged white woman, disqualified a much-poorer, immigrant by holding her less than perfect (by MRK’s lights-she didn’t know that she had her head up her ptuchkis) English up for public derision.

      But, still assuming honest error, that mean she did not intend to be a grade A asshat. Can she not the same might be true of the Puppies? What is they think of themselves as the same kind of freedom fighters and revolutionaries that her liberal friends imagine themselves to be? What is the current folks winning the awards are the establishment – the 1%-ers – and “sad puppy” supporters think they are the revolutionaries?

      What would you (MRK) say to them?

      Just a thought (I’ve been spending time with Mrs Wright as you can see )

      1. Wasn’t even thinking about that kind of fun.

        I’ve talked on Facebook about bringing fandom to the Hugos. Brad made a good argument about lit SFF being a small subset of science fiction fandom, but SP3 never really demonstrated that in the nominations. We pushed the boundaries of lit SFF outside that of the Aristocrats’ in-group, but we stayed in the general vicinity of lit SFF.

        People have talked about reaching out to the Dragon*con crowds. Comicons, too. Why stop there when there’s Blizzcon, PAX, RTX, anime cons, etc., as well? But to appeal to our sister fandoms, we’ll need to make different choices than SP3 for nominations. If we can get even the overflow from any of those cons to vote for the Hugos, it’ll dwarf that 3000 No Vote slate. But those fans won’t come unless we bring the awesome and the relevant to the nominating table. The Aristos sure haven’t.

        We’re Huns and Hoydens, and they screeched at us when we were at the gates. Next year, lets bring the Horde!

        1. Somebody might consider printing up a few hundred (a few thousand?) flyers for Dragon and other cons, explaining how to vote in the Hugos. There is no need to tie it to Sad Puppies, merely explain the benefits of associate membership (free stuff to read … and a voice in the Hugo awarding) and provide the internet address for purchasing such a membership.

          It would probably be necessary (or at least advisable) to explain what a “Hugo Award” is.

          Alternatively, establish a web page with that information and a live link for membership and simply relay that through flyers at cons. The page could even offer a summary of the Sad Puppy and Puppy Kicker positions, expressed as objectively and fairly … belay that: presented from the point of view of an advocate for each side. Make it clear that nobody need be pro- or anti- Puppy to vote in the Hugos, and that you get LOTS OF GREAT READING (and a bunch of crap.)

          1. I’m thinking even bigger. For instance, it strikes me that the short fiction SFF publisher with the deepest pockets and largest audience isn’t Tor.com, Analog, or Asimov, it’s Blizzard Entertainment. Yes, the makers of World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft often release short fiction on their website. And there are entire sites that make their cash off of reporting every little smidgeon of news related to the game. Get even 0.1% of that audience to vote in the Awards, and it’ll dwarf the Puppy invasion in the same way the Puppy invasion dwarfed Worldcon.

            And I don’t think the Aristos have the balls to spit in the face of Blizz.

            1. Nathan, I doubt they’ve even heard of Blizzard. They aren’t the sort of people who game, you know.

              Speaking of Blizzard, they have the old games up on their website to download now. So if you’ve got a few bucks and a kid who needs to learn to respect the Zerg properly . . . you can buy a ‘gift’ membership, then download it onto the kid’s computer without ever giving kid’s identifying information to them or allowing said kid access to your credit card. 😀 (Eldest is playing Protoss at the moment.) Starcraft runs brilliantly well on Windows 7, by the way.

      2. Is a “readonable woman” one whose books/posts we can continue reading without throwing them across the room with a scream?

  64. Lord, I am stupider for having read her tweet. Who do I sue to get my I.Q. points back?

  65. Pingback: Throwback Thursday: A Cold War Vocabulary Lesson - Warden's Keep

  66. It occurs to me that everything is an ethnic slur to those obsesses with ethnicity and race. Thinking in terms of categories rather than individuals is the source of the problem.

  67. What is hilarious is how she doubles down on the mistake. Its really the doubling down that reinforces her dishonesty.

  68. This reminds me a bit of the keruffle a few months ago when the Defense Department was discussing “chinks in our armor,” and some SJW morons, apparently having never heard the phrase before, decided it must be racist. I guess they though “chinks in armor” was referring to a bunch of Chinese cosplaying LoTR.

    Before that, of course, there was the infamous “niggardly-gate” in the Washington D.C. government, when a DC employee decided that “niggardly” was a racial slur and that other people needed to be fired because of his ignorance.

    The more things change…

    1. ” I guess they though “chinks in armor” was referring to a bunch of Chinese cosplaying LoTR.”
      Zsuzsa just made me shoot the new coffee out of of my nose…

    2. Ah, the “I saw that, immediately thought of an ethnic slur so it’s the OTHER PERSON’S FAULT!!!” cry.

        1. Oh, yeah — like it is her fault?

          I don’t think so.

          You talk like you think she has free will or something. As if maybe she is a grown-up.

    3. I was thinking the other day that it’s not surprising that the Chinese were the ones who built this world-famous military fortification, the Great Wall. I mean, they must have looked at their military situation and said, “This is terrible. We’ve got all these chinks in our defenses.”

      *Buh-dum-bum ti-i-i-i-ng*

    1. SOOO much smug fail in there.

      It’s an insult because — well, because they say so!

      Also, note the additional battlespace preparation. Petty fools.

      1. This is why the term fauxtrage needs to be deployed. Such allegations can be dismissed with a curt, “Your fauxtrage is noted” and nothing more needs saying.

        Their is no reason to dignify their false claims of outrage by crediting them as legitimately founded and no point engaging them in an argument after calling them out as phonies.

    2. RIDICULOUSLY SAD. They’re actually butthurt because they DID vote for 3BD under the impression it was a paen to Chicoms. I TOLD you. I see their gears in their little heads. Seriously. These are the people I went to school with. Same model, different year. They know nothing and will learn nothing.
      And you should have captured the exchange. I plan to start running a “Stupid opposition” feature where we point and make duck noises at them once every while. Because I’m a peacemaker, me.

      1. The idiocy of “making up a slur”

        Ha ha Sarah Hoyt made up a slur (“Chicom”, “Chinese communist”) to smear Cixin Liu with, you can’t make this up #HugoAwards

        is astonishing. The whole effect of a slur derives from historical precedent; that’s why they get their panties so knotted up over the “N-Word”, “C-Word” and whatever other X-Word they hear.

        In order to rub salt into a wound there must first be a wound.

        These twits are prime example of people so ignorant they don’t begin to apprehend how ignorant they are, mocking somebody for not sharing their ignorance.

        1. Natalie the Lurid chimed in as well:

          “Natalie Luhrs ‏@eilatan · 10h10 hours ago
          @arthur_affect It’s not a made up slur, it’s derogatory slang that dates at least back to the Vietnam War.”

          1. Yeah, I love that “derogatory slang” bit. Like DFAC. And UNREP. And CENTCOM. And…

            Silly children, except — children learn.

              1. That is a hallmark of fauxtrage, one of the signs of its insincerity. The goal is to make the target defend or apologize.

                1. They can fuck themselves. I’m just going to make a post about how stupid they are (maybe call it fauxtrage) this weekend and point and laugh. It might have GIFs

                  1. Are their any available instances of Chu using slurs, such as tea-bagger? They might be a useful adjunct to demonstrate their fundamental hypocrisy.

                    1. It’s different when they do it.

                      Though I don’t think they’d like it if I pointed out that if we’re tea-bagging, they’re probably the tea-baggee. *evil grin*

                    2. Oh, I’m sure there are. Ask the GGs, they’ve been fighting him as long as we have.

                    3. Mr. “I knew rapists but said nothing” calls people who don’t agree with him “terrorists”, leaves 1 star reviews of books he has not read, calls Brad’s family “human shields”, mocks attempts to care for a rape victim because his “enemies” are involved, and advocates doxxing. Oh, and he tried to buy votes in Sad Puppies 2.

                      Frankly, he’s not so much a hypocrite but a one-man Aristocrats show.

                      http://theralphretort.com/tag/arthur-chu/

                      It’s Ralph, so the articles are muckrackery,

                  2. They can fuck themselves.

                    Oh no. No. Don’t have them do that. They’ll probably fission or something. Then there’ll be more. O_o;;

              2. Details. You know how irrelevant such are to such as them.

                Also: CASEVAC, PERSCOM, SITREP… Really, this could go on forever.

                I could forgive people being uniformed of the meaning, military and intelligence fields do funny things with words. But I can’t and assuredly won’t forgive the assumption of bigotry and the immediate condemnation.

                Keep a copy in the BATTPREP file and slap ’em about the head and neck with it in future.

              3. So… the CHORFs either don’t know you were insulting them, or they’re trying to claim it was at the author/translator to soothe their general butthurtness. 😉

                2. I think mostly they want to prove I’m “racist”… against … ASIANS? OMFG these people REALLY don’t even bother to read the books of people they want to slander. I’m starting to think they move their lips when they read, and have to follow with their finger.

                  1. Damn those people who came from the continent of Asia! Russian Caucasians, Turko-Mongols, Indians, North Siberian tribesfolk, Ainu, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, and any other groups I forgot to mention. I hate `em all! Because … Asian! 😀

              1. Those are icky soldier words that good people like themselves never use, you see.

                2. Downsize the military because CINCPAC is money from the military industrial complex?

            1. Except, it’s not really derogatory slang, at all. Commies is (and not nearly as much as they deserve), but CHICOM is just another in a long list of word contractions, much popular in certain circles.

              Certainly, as you note, it may have negative connotations having entirely to do with rational people’s inherent distaste for communism in all forms, in all places, and at all times, but…

      2. Did they even read it? Or did they, like some bragged, simply mark it as 1 like they did with No Award?

        1. Gah, still half asleep. I meant some people bragged that they never read the items they No Awarded, wondering if they did the same for 3BP or maybe got lost in ecstasy at reading the scene in Chapter 1 with the professor and couldn’t go any further.

    3. Chu is so ignorant (remarkable for someone whose claim to fame is being good at trivia–at least on Jeopardy) that he thinks Sarah invented a term that goes back to just after WWII.

      1. Succeeding at Jeopardy does not involve correlating and connecting data; no actual thought involved, just data retrieval.

        In fact, I am not sure that thinking might not be an impediment to the idiot savantry involved.

      2. Now, now, don’t pick on him. I’m sure he’s got a lot of things on his mind since they found his email in the Ashley Madison database…

        1. Yes, she regenerated from her original white male incarnation just to spite the SJWs.

    4. My God, Arthur Chu is quite uniquely stupid, isn’t he? He’s a marvel, one of the Seven Blunders of the World.

  70. Even more stupid:

    “Alyssa Wong ‏@crashwong · 2h2 hours ago
    Dear Sarah Hoyt,
    Don’t call anyone a Chicom. It’s not clever, funny, or cute.
    Any admiration I had for you has burnt.”

    “Sarah L. Tolcser ‏@LenoreTolcser · 1h1 hour ago
    Oh. I had always meant to read those Sarah Hoyt books someday. Oh. Okay. Welp. Guess not. Hoooooly crap.”

    Yes, the Usual Suspects have decided this is the Worst Thing Ever.

    1. Sure, why not!

      “Paul Weimer ‏@PrinceJvstin · 2h2 hours ago
      Marxist (n.)
      Anyone politically more liberal than Jeb Bush
      –The Sarah Hoyt dictionary”

      Gee, I wonder if this is their new strategy, to demonize Sarah Hoyt in advance of SP4.

      1. Prince Jvstin? Isn’t that the turnip-head scarecrow in Howl’s Moving Castle?


        How appropriate.

    2. It is fascinating to watch these people work.

      Deceit, ignorance and calumny meet credulity with remarkable results. What is it, exactly, that they think it slurs? Where is the derogation?

      Oh, it doesn’t matter. Sarah Hoyt could declare the sky was blue, she’d be accused of mocking the cyanotic with such an obvious slur and the usefully credulous would pile on in droves to denounce her shameful behavior.

      Hope you’re archiving, Mr. Chupik.

      1. I have not mastered screenshots. I know it should be easy, but I just can’t seem to do it for Windows 8.

        2. Somebody around here (not I, alas) knows how to do the archive thing. Surely they’ll speak up?

            1. Ah! There it is. Many thanks!

              I suspect the site’s going to be getting a workout in the coming months.

        3. Shift – PrintScreen still works for me, then paste it into Word / OpenOffice / whatever.

    4. Mad Mike:

      “Michael Z Williamson ‏@mzmadmike · 6m6 minutes ago
      So, WHITE Mary Robinette Kowal accuses Writer of color @SarahAHoyt of being “Racist.” The shitbitch needs to check her privilege.1/2″

      “Michael Z Williamson ‏@mzmadmike · 11m11 minutes ago
      2/2 and then she needs to check a dictionary. “Chicom” is political, not ethnic. If she’s going to pretend to be writer should know that.”

      “Michael Z Williamson ‏@mzmadmike · 8m8 minutes ago
      Seriously, how ignorant does a 40something have to be to not know Chicom is “Chinese Communist”? #worthlessDegreeInAgendaStudies”

      1. Awww, Mike oughtta cut Mary RK some slack. it is only because people like him, Ringo, Kratman and others put their butts on the line that she never learned what Chicoms were, so its really all their fault!

        What? Like it could possibly be hers?

    5. (Shrugs) Welp, see if either one of those idiots sees any of my cash or a book recommendation from me.
      Of course, I wasn’t going to buy anything from them anyway…but wait, they weren’t going to read anything by Sarah Hoyt, either.

        1. Yes, but her degree in navel-gazing, and her undergrad degree in underwater basket-weaving, don’t mean she ever took a history class.

    6. Wait, she’s a Nebula Award winning author and she thinks that “Chicom” is a “racial slur from the Vietnam War” …???!!!! She’s that ignorant of the history of just 40-60 years ago?

      The Nebulas really have become a shame-award, then.

      1. I’m so very sorry, I missed the obvious:
        ✨🌟Achievements Unlocked:🌟✨
        ☑ 1. Skim until Offended
        ☑ 4. Disregard Inconvenient facts
        ☑ 7. Concern Trolling
        ☑ 8. When all else fails, Racism!
        ❇️Efficiency bonus!❇️
        (Only four more to go for a complete checklist!)

  71. Dear Sarah,

    At no point did I say you were racist.

    Further, because it was a word I didn’t know, I looked it up and this is the definition that I got. “Slang: Disparaging. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Communist Chinese.”

    I also read more than just the dictionary, and know the historic usage. I’m familiar with Chinese Communism because my brother’s PhD was about it, but I hadn’t encountered the slang before. Why? Because it’s not in current use academically because it’s an insult.

    Now, you say that you didn’t know the word either. “How could I introduce you to a word whose meaning I don’t KNOW” Did you not mean it to be insulting? Because if you didn’t, then I apologize for misreading your intentions.

    But if you did intend it to be insulting… it’s an insult that can only be applied to someone who is Chinese, as opposed to something like “Commie.” The *only* reason to use it there instead of Marxists/Commies/Pinkos is because Three Body Problem was written by a Chinese man. That’s what makes it a racial slur rather than a political one in this context.

    I fully grant that you didn’t realize that this is the current connotation for it and apologize for pointing it out online rather than letting you know privately.

    Yours,
    Mary Robinette Kowal

      5. Maybe if they were quoting something from Blazing Saddles or similar, but otherwise it’s not really possible.

        “But no Irish!”

    7. I’ll post the reply I mad on your blog here, as well, just for the symmetry (trilateral, at this point):

      “But if you did intend it to be insulting… it’s an insult that can only be applied to someone who is Chinese, as opposed to something like “Commie.” The *only* reason to use it there instead of Marxists/Commies/Pinkos is because Three Body Problem was written by a Chinese man. That’s what makes it a racial slur rather than a political one in this context.”

      That is a remarkable stretch. Truly. While it is certainly true that it can only be applied to Chinese communists, that’s rather the point. To differentiate the communism practiced in the nation of China from that practiced in other nations.

      It is a contraction of two words, nothing more. Such contractions are common in certain professional circles. It is no more a racial slur than CASEVAC.

      I’ll stipulate that it may well have negative connotations. But those derive entirely from the reprehensible acts of communists in the nation of China, not from a racial slight. The inclusion of Chinese is, once again, merely to separate those acts from other reprehensible acts carried out by communists in other nations.

      Furthermore, I have been unable to find any support for the contention that this is the current connotation, outside of the one source, dictionary.com. Forgive me if I find this uncompelling.

      I’m am left to wonder if your eagerness to jump upon this perceived iniquity of Mrs. Hoyt’s is indicative less of a desire to address racism and more of a desire to undermine Mrs. Hoyt in the public eye.

      I would be pleased to learn I am wrong regarding your eagerness.

      1. While it is certainly true that it can only be applied to Chinese communists, that’s rather the point. To differentiate the communism practiced in the nation of China from that practiced in other nations.

        Because, of course, Chinese Communism actually was in some ideological and practical ways different from the Soviet Communism which was during the Cold War its chief rival for leadership of international Communism. This became fairly important to the history of the Cold War, as the more nationalistic nature of Chinese Communism was why China ultimately allied with America against Russia in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

        I’ll stipulate that it may well have negative connotations. But those derive entirely from the reprehensible acts of communists in the nation of China, not from a racial slight. The inclusion of Chinese is, once again, merely to separate those acts from other reprehensible acts carried out by communists in other nations.

        Indeed. “Chicom” isn’t, for instance, a term usable against Taiwanese or American Chinese persons, unless they profess Communist ideology, and even then, it would logically have to be the form of Communist ideology practiced or advocated at some time by Red China.

        Furthermore, I have been unable to find any support for the contention that this is the current connotation, outside of the one source, dictionary.com. Forgive me if I find this uncompelling.

        Indeed, this smacks of an on-the-spot declaration of racist connotations, equivalent to claiming that “thug” is a peculiarly anti-black term. It is to be laughed at. 😀

    8. At no point did I say you were racist.

      The distinction between “used a racial slur” and “is racist” is a rather fine one, but let’s assume it’s a real one for long enough to get through the rest of the letter.

      Further, because it was a word I didn’t know, I looked it up and this is the definition that I got. “Slang: Disparaging. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Communist Chinese.”

      Other dictionaries don’t say anything about “Chicom” being contemptuous; see Sarah’s GIF post regarding you choice in dictionaries.

      (By the way, I’ll admit to not having a suitable definition for the pejorative “Social Justice Warrior”, but the way you jumped to the conclusion that this is a racial term rather than a political one is the sort of thing we mean by that phrase.)

      I also read more than just the dictionary, and know the historic usage. I’m familiar with Chinese Communism because my brother’s PhD was about it, but I hadn’t encountered the slang before. Why? Because it’s not in current use academically because it’s an insult.

      Academics not using pejorative terms for communists; who could have imagined such a thing. This is my shocked face: 😑

      Now, you say that you didn’t know the word either. “How could I introduce you to a word whose meaning I don’t KNOW” Did you not mean it to be insulting? Because if you didn’t, then I apologize for misreading your intentions.

      Here’s where the time-line gets a bit twisty. I point you (as I did on Twitter) to the edit to Sarah’s post above, beginning with “UPDATE:”.

      But if you did intend it to be insulting… it’s an insult that can only be applied to someone who is Chinese, as opposed to something like “Commie.” The *only* reason to use it there instead of Marxists/Commies/Pinkos is because Three Body Problem was written by a Chinese man. That’s what makes it a racial slur rather than a political one in this context.

      I’ll mention only in passing the question of whom Sarah was calling a ”Chicom”—or rather, to whom she was attributing such a misapprehension. I’ll admit to being skeptical until I saw some people, and also Arthur Chu, talking as if Sarah had called Liu Cixin a Maoist; having demonstrated such spectacular inability to understand written English, Sarah’s hypothesis about them becomes believable.

      As to whether this is in fact a racial slur, and by what definition—we discussed this on Twitter, you and I; and I can but quote the relevant part of our interaction:

      My gast remains flabbered at the thought that some consider it wrong to call the murderous self-designated “Islamic State” by the name Daȝesh (or Da3esh or Daesh) which they so despise. Unless the term “racial slur” is descriptive without moral judgment? But then you’d not have called Sarah out for such use. No; I acknowledge myself confused.

      I fully grant that you didn’t realize that this is the current connotation for it and apologize for pointing it out online rather than letting you know privately.

      Here I turn off the snark; this apology is for Mrs. Hoyt to judge and to accept or reject.

      (I gotta say, though, that other members of the Evil League of Evil are Christians far more orthodox than our host and would feel a correspondingly greater push to forgive. On this blog, and with that wording? I wouldn’t bet too heavily on it.)

      1. I don’t accept apologies that patronize me. I don’t accept apologies that say that she knows better than I. Either by education or vocabulary or intelligence (Show you my scores if you show me yours, Mary) I’m her superior. I don’t give her the right to absolve me of ignorance. I commend her to gaze on my middle fingers.
        And in the future when she thinks she has morsels of wisdom related to anything I’ve said or done, I recommend she keep them under her tongue.
        She might or might not catch me at a time I get mad enough to drop everything and mock her relentlessly for 3 months. But hey, I’m a Latina, and it COULD very well happen 😉

    9. I also read more than just the dictionary, and know the historic usage. I’m familiar with Chinese Communism because my brother’s PhD was about it, but I hadn’t encountered the slang before. Why? Because it’s not in current use academically because it’s an insult.

      You’ve never read anything written in the1950’s about Chinese Communism, or historical fiction set in the era? Certainly possible, I suppose, as you might be fairly young … though odd, considering that you’re a writer, and hence expected to be fairly literate.

      But if you did intend it to be insulting… it’s an insult that can only be applied to someone who is Chinese, as opposed to something like “Commie.” The *only* reason to use it there instead of Marxists/Commies/Pinkos is because Three Body Problem was written by a Chinese man. That’s what makes it a racial slur rather than a political one in this context.

      ROFLMAO!!!

      You still don’t get it!

      Sarah wasn’t talking about Liu Cixin being Chinese Communist (that’s something morally equivalent to “German Nazi,” which one wouldn’t accuse someone of being without good evidence).. She was saying that a lot of left radicals who didn’t read the story may have voted for it thinking that Liu Cixin was Communist. (He is most definitely Mainland Chinese).

      The funny thing is that you’re so obsessed with looking for racists under fandom’s bed that you missed the actual structure of the insult, because it didn’t occur to that Commuinist, rather than Chinese, was the term of opprobrium.

      1. I think she doesn’t get it, because she STILL thinks Cixin Liu is a Chinese Communist. Dear sirs, exhibit one. Unless you have another reason for her blinkered insistence.
        I’d like to know here her brother’s Phd is from. Columbia? And she’s forty. She just acts like a toddler.

        1. I think she doesn’t get it, because she STILL thinks Cixin Liu is a Chinese Communist.

          Maybe she can’t grasp that anyone fortunate enough to be born into the wondrous system of Chinese Communism could possibly dislike it? Or perhaps she imagines that the Chinese think with a Hive Mind, and thus when China became dominated by Communism, all Chinese automatically converted?

      2. You still don’t get it!

        Or she does and is deliberately ignoring it so she can lie and claim it’s about the author of 3BP. Projgs/SJWs/CHORFs seem to love dragging claims of “ethnic slurs” and so on into attacking people they don’t like. So she pretends it’s about Liu Cixin and not about people like her.

        1. To be fair, she’s a Tor author not names Weber, Sanderson, Card, or Anderson. We probably shouldn’t expect too much from her

    10. “Just because I said you used an ethnic slur doesn’t mean I called you racist!”

      Nice dance, Mary.

      Standard troll tactics. It’s like claiming someone trades sex for money or barter and then innocently proclaiming you never called that person a whore.

      Try another way to weasel out of this. Or maybe take the above paragraph and try to manufacture more fauxtrage so you can play the victim or claim someone else was the victim and have a nice case of the vapors.

      You’re welcome.

      1. “Just because I said you used an ethnic slur doesn’t mean I called you racist!”

        Bless her heart, of course it doesn’t mean that. It means Mary didn’t have the guts to say what she meant and thus chose to imply her slur.

        I can only second the statement with the minor edit of changing the name to convict the guilty.

        Please note that by calling her a slut I in no way mean that she is able to “sleep around.”

    11. She Of The Three Names:

      Please post a link to where you’ve amended and/or deleted the tweet. Coming here to make amends, a place that you know your fellow travelers won’t ever visit, is worse than having said nothing.

      1. You mean like saying you accept Israel’s right to exist in English and Hebrew and calling it illegitimate in Arabic?

      2. Amen. And Peter, as I told your wife, I have a plan that I can take the war to her without even denting my writing time. If she thinks the Huns are trouble…

    12. She was very specifically referring to the Chinese Community Party, hence “Chicoms”. It’s as unavoidable as referring to Nazis as German, because they were.

      (Yes, I Godwinned, but it was a legitimate comparison)

    13. As always, this is so filled with illogic it is nearly incomprehensible.
      Second paragraph… Her brother’s PhD? Is this an appeal to authority or something? My Brother is apparently one of the top AMX controller programmers in the country. What do I know about that? They are used for video-conferencing.
      Next sentence, not in current use academically. This may be her opinion, but who exactly defines what is currently in use? Apparently he, him, his is not in use academically. Neither is terrorist. Academia; a fantasy environment where nothing anyone in the world might consider offensive is ever uttered, and it matters not if the word is offensive merely that someone thinks someone else *might* find it offensive.
      Third paragraph; 3BP was written by a Chinese man? /satire WOW! Who could have possibly known that? /endsatire My understanding of Social Justice was that there are 5 race cards; white-yellow-red-brown-black. SJWs usually consider the yellow race card to be a complementary white race card and therefore, the only racial slurs are those against red, brown or black race card holders. Is Mary-3-Names confused because due to her brother’s vast knowledge, a term often used for people of Mainland China is ‘Red Chinese’, so therefore M-3-N naturally thought he held a red race card?
      Fourth paragraph; Sarah, you don’t know what you are thinking nearly as well as Mary-3-Names knows what you are thinking. My advise? Think in Portuguese, and stop this invasion of your mind.
      What do you call 1000 SJWs at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.

    14. Mary’s rationale appears to be that professional victim groups have declared it to be a racial slur, and that’s good enough for her (going by the Twitter conversation we had this week).

      Given that such items as sandwiches and peanut butter have been declared racist, I’m not inclined to grant dictionarial authority to said victim groups. In addition, it’s very clear to any rational person (which leaves out 2 of Mary’s Twitter supporters whom I ended up blocking) that Sarah’s comment was an insult directed at the stompy-foot Worldcon voters, not a judgement of the author of the well-written (according to Vox Day) and tedious (according to me) 3BP.

      And I’m still waiting for an apology from Scalzi for using an anti-gay slur (the main image on this year’s Worldcon flag) toward me.

    15. Mary:

      That’s some cheap, mean stuff you ladled out. Your explainpology is incomprehensible.

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+does+chicom+stand+for%3F

      You say “I’m familiar with Chinese Communism because my brother’s PhD was about it”. Did you ask him what chicom meant? If he didn’t use chicom in his dissertation, I’d be surprised because, well, chicom means Chinese Communist. Communists. In China. ChiCom. Did he never once use chicom? Because chicom is a thing and has been for decades.

      You brought up your brother. Here’s mine: I’m familiar with ChiComs because my brother had to actually work in China over the years. They took his passport away. He would only get it back if worked a miracle or 5. He did. He was there when Tienanmen Square finally opened up again. We was the first westerner to enter. (Is westerner ok? FFS.) He will never go back.

      He had no issues ever in Taiwan. You know, the non-chicoms.

      There is nothing racist about the acronym chicom. Yeah, it’s derogatory. Because being a communist is a shitty thing to be.

      I bought your book. It’s not to my taste, but I can see it’s appeal. I would not have No Awarded it regardless of how it got onto the ballot. Loved the Lady Mars thing.

      Viktor

    16. At this point, I think my favorite Brigham Young quote applies equally to both of you…

  72. I e-mailed the following to Alyssa Wong:

    Dear Alyssa,

    I’ve been watching this and it’s painful. I’m going to let you know the meaning and origin of the term.

    “Chicom” means “Chinese Communist.” It’s not an ethnic slur, it’s an abbreviation for a political faction (the Chinese Communists, as opposed to the Russian, Korean, or Vietnamese ones). It dates back to at least the Korean War (1950-53) not the Vietnam War (1964-75). It may date back even further, to the Chinese Civil War (which ended in 1949), but I’m not sure about this. The Urban Dictionary reports a later and derivative meaning.

    Furthermore, Sarah Hoyt was not calling the author of 3-Body Problem a “Chicom.” She said that it’s possible that some of the support came for him because other people thought he was. The author, based on the evidence in the novel, is anti-Communist (or at least anti-Cultural Revolution). Though he is, of course, Mainland Chinese.

    You’re demonstrating a profound ignorance of very recent history (the Korean War happened just 62-65 years ago, and the Vietnam War 40-51 years ago) and in the process embarrassing yourself before everyone who knows any actual history of East Asia. Including many of your fellow Puppy Kickers, who are probably laughing at you behind their backs. Seriously, stop doing this. You’re sounding like a fool and digging yourself in deeper with every attempt to double down.

    – Jordan

      1. With pictures? I thought she was trying to be oh so “kawaii” with her white tears mug.

  73. Pingback: Fauxtrage | According To Hoyt

  74. That’s a special kind of ignorance right there. Next we’ll probably be forbidden from reading about the Red Army, or the Red Threat…after all, that would be derogatory towards Native Americans and Barsoomians!

      1. “It’s a question of who is to be master, that’s all.”

        Me:”That sonofabitch ain’t been born yet.”

  76. Pingback: No, Cupcake, there is no right not to be offended! | The Liberty Zone

  77. Nothing new here. Orwell pointed out in ’46 that,

    “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.”

  78. Pingback: I’ve Been To The Desert On A Horse With No Name | According To Hoyt

  79. Chi-Com is a term that is commonly used by the military. There is nothing derogatory in the term. It has been in common usage in the military since the Korean War. It was also used during the Vietnam War to differentiates from the Viet-Cong, the Khmer Rouge and other communist groups in SE Asia.

    And if you watch M*A*S*H reruns you will also hear the term being used.
    “The Chi-Coms overran…….”

    Also Christopher M. Chupik you failed history I see. Not only are there Chi-Coms there are Chi-Nats. (Chinese Nationals who fled and live on Taiwan.) Not all Chinese are Chi-Coms.

  80. Pingback: Of Racist Floods and Chicoms | Cheek's Bay

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