Amanda Marcotte Nails It

Last night, Amanda Marcotte published one of the most interesting meditations on privilege & the problem with the way it is applied that I've seen this week. It's been a busy week for that discussion, too, with Ron Lindsay's tone-deaf opening to Women in Secularism 2 and his subsequent comparison of blogger Rebecca Waton's criticism as being comparable to North Korean propaganda leading to an escalation of the feminist and secularist blogospheres' discussion about the way women are treated in the secular movement.

What I like about Amanda Marcotte's post from last night is that it isn't diving back into the drama from WiS2. Instead of going back over the details of the weekend's drama, she takes on some of the longer-term arguments commonly seen in comments and Twitter conversations about feminist issues, and she examines the term "privilege", which Dr. Lindsay had such problems with in his speech. Most notably, she brings up her own problem with the way the term is used and with what it implies:

Frankly, the notion that people defend and minimize sexual harassment because they’re privileged twits living in a bubble and it’s never occurred to them that being creepy is wrong doesn’t pass the sniff test.

And this is the real problem with throwing the word "privilege" around. It too generously (and, I would argue, condescendingly) treats the bad actors in a given situation as if they are merely ignorant of their own situation in the world. I don't believe this to be true, at least not with the most intransigent cases, and it's obvious Ms. Marcotte does not either:

Or, to be more blunt, it’s possible that when you tell people not to sexually harass other people, people who like harassing others—or those who haven’t tried it yet but like to keep their options open—will throw a fit and try to preserve their social license to harass without facing pushback.

Yes! And, in addition, her argument exposes the flaws in Dr. Lindsay's idea that checking someone's privilege or asking them to "shut up and listen" is the equivalent of silencing. It can only be silencing to be told that you should listen to an idea before you attempt to refute it if you are already in possession of the information that the refutation would give you and you have already rejected it. That is, if you're not willing to hear the other side's argument before you respond to it, then you've probably already examined it (or you're not willing to examine it). If that's the case, then of course you would view the other side trying to speak as "silencing". Unfortunately, you would also be guilty of arguing in bad faith and of attempting to preserve a social... let's use Ms. Marcotte's term "license"... that violates the rights of other people in the room.

Even in that case, most of the people who claim they are being "silenced" are conspicuously loud. You can find them all over comment threads on blog posts about feminism, including Ms. Marcotte's post from last night. You'll also find them crawling all over the Skepchick post linked above and both of Dr. Lindsay's posts. For people who are not being given any opportunity to share their views, they sure don't seem to get banned very often.

When Dr. Lindsay's conference speech was first being criticized last weekend, I didn't write about it. This was partly because I was not there and did not feel like piling onto something that happened at a conference that I was only able to follow via liveblog. It was also partly because I do see problems with the way "privilege" is thrown around, and being overly generous in my interpretations of other people's words, I wanted to see Dr. Lindsay's comments as poorly framed, poorly timed, and poorly worded, but in spirit with my own objections.

A week later, though, I find that Dr. Lindsay's follow-up posts and behavior subsequent to delivering his address are compelling me to be less generous. In the meanwhile though, Ms. Marcotte has articulated exactly the problem with the overuse of privilege-checking: It's only an effective exercise when you are dealing with people who are open to the idea that they should care whether their behavior takes advantage of others.

Her whole article is worth the read.

Spring Site Update & New Projects

I'm pleased to announce some major changes to Shaping Clay. Some of these are layout changes (which you can see), and some of them will be content changes going forward. As you can see, there's a new mailing list, an Amazon.com aStore, a quick link to go to my official Facebook page, and some other minor tweaks and updates. I know that the commercial changes (like joining an affiliate advertising program) can be offputting to some people, so I wanted to take some time to explain what's going on.

Joining the Amazon Affiliates Program

Okay, so first things first, I'm required to post this: Michael Scott Monje, Jr. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The reason I've joined Amazon Associates is simple: I really want to start a literary journal, but they're expensive to get off the ground. They're especially expensive if you intend to pay the writers. I'm currently saving up, out of my book royalties and personal income, with the goal of paying each contributor a minimum of $25 dollars per story. It's not much, but it's what I can afford. All of my Amazon Associates earnings will be added to my savings in the hopes of getting that number up to a not-insulting level.

I'm not going to be writing posts specifically to advertise products, and I'm not going to be taking paid reviews or anything like that, but I will be posting book reviews & informal essays about what I read (like I did with American Gods last week), and I'll be including some affiliate links to those books when I write the posts. 

In addition to that, there's a link above to my aStore, which is like a boutique where I can feature whatever I want. Nothing is Right is in the aStore, as are some books by people I know (including some of my old professors). I'm also adding categories that are basically my favorite movies & music, recommended reading, etc. Think of it like a Facebook profile that allows you to buy those items if you want to check them out. Every time you do, you're helping me to pay for my long-term goal of launching this literary journal.

Right now, the aStore is a little thin (books only), but it will be filling out over the next few weeks.

The New Mailing List

The mailing list sign-up that's been added to the right is not a "subscribe to this blog" list. It's only going to be used for book announcements, announcements of free periods when I'm doing giveaways, and discount coupons. I'm putting it up because I'm working on a sequel to Nothing is Right called Imaginary Friends, and I'd like to have a good way to let people know when it comes out on various platforms. I plan on rewarding list members with discounts and/or early-bird specials on my books from time to time.

I promise that the Shaping Clay mailing list is only operated by me. The identities of list members will be kept confidential, and the list will never be sold to a third party. This is strictly a vehicle for me to get the word out when I've finished projects.

You said there was a journal in the works?

There is. I'm not opening submissions quite yet because I'm working on a few writing projects this summer, but when the fall semester starts up and I get too busy to write novels, I will formally open submissions.

The journal is going to be called the SPOON KNIFE Annual, and I'm looking to feature stories that demonstrate the fault lines where different identities collide. When submissions open, I will be looking for stories that feature the tensions between different aspects of the main characters' identities, such as race and gender or disability and socioeconomic class, or any combination of what are commonly called axes of oppression.

If you're interested in contributing to the SPOON KNIFE Annual, sign up for email updates. I will be announcing the submission guidelines to list members a few weeks ahead of the open period for submissions. Otherwise, expect to see a post here on Shaping Clay in late September or October announcing the launch of SPOON KNIFE Annual's site.

I like the journal idea--wait, did you say "a few" projects?

Yup. That's why my mailing list is so important. I'm going to be serializing a new story called Defiant this summer. So far, I have the introduction and 5 episodes written. The outline I'm working from calls for about 25 episodes in the series, but I'm open to the idea that there could be more than one series in this idea. Think of Defiant as "season one".

Defiant brings us a thirty year old Clay Dillon, his wife, and their attempt to integrate his recent autism diagnosis into their identities. For years, they have been working to build a life together that worked for both of them, but when Noahleen (Clay's wife) developed epilepsy and he had to try to find work outside the home to support them both, they realized that she wasn't the only one living with a disability. Now, they have to figure out what that means for their marriage and their future.

I'll be posting one episode per week in this series, starting on 5/31.

I'm also working on two book projects. Mirror Project is my first venture into science fiction, and I'm almost done with the first draft. I'll tease the content of it more as it gets closer to publication. It's going to be short--25,000 words or so--and that means it's going to be ebook-only. Imaginary Friends is the sequel to Nothing is Right, and it takes place during Clay's second grade year. In it, Clay tries to balance the friendships he forged in Nothing is Right against the higher academic demands of the second grade and his parents' demand that he complete catechism and receive his first Holy Communion in the Catholic church.

The goal will be to have Mirror Project out by the end of the summer or in early fall, and to drop Imaginary Friends in both print and ebook formats in late November, right around the 1-year anniversary of Nothing is Right (which is also about when Defiant will be wrapping up).

Closing

So, anyway, that's what I'm doing. How's your spring going? What do you plan to do with your summer? Let me know in the comments.

Re-Reading _American Gods_

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods again. It was my first time through the book since writing my own novel. It was also my first time through since I finished graduate school, my first time through since "outing" myself as an atheist, and my first time through since diagnosis. Not all of these things necessarily affected my reading of the novel this time, but they are notable because it's only been about 6 years since the last time I read this book. Taking note of the changes in my life over that time illustrates the fundamental shift in the reader's point-of-view that can happen in the span of just a few years.

Sometimes, when we talk about our points of view, we talk in terms of childhood vs. adolescence vs. adulthood. Sometimes, that's useful. It's also useful, though, to talk about the large changes in point of view that can happen within a phase of life. For example, I was an adult the first time I read the book. I'd been living on my own for several years, I'd finished school already, and I'd found my career path. In most of the objective ways we measure our maturity, I was the same as I am now. Still, my most recent reading was far, far different than my original reading had been.

For example, in both readings I noticed that Jesus, Yahweh, Allah, etc. from the Abrahamic traditions were kept offstage. The first time I went through this book, I took it to be a choice that Gaiman made to keep the hokey Christ-as-a-character trope from dragging his book into the kind of territory occupied by the worst student writing & the occasional well-worn gem like Life of Brian. This time out, though, it struck me differently. This time, it did not seem so much like it was about avoiding a cliched trope, but instead about balancing the scales.

The new "gods" and the old ones are cultural archetypes. They don't necessarily represent the most successful deities, in terms of the length of the religion's life and/or number of adherents. Instead, they represent the ones that have become the most tightly woven into cultures and the least appropriated/rewritten by outside influences. This is why we see Horus and not Ahura Mazda. Why Jesus is too cool for school, but Czernobog is not. It's also why Odin fits more neatly into the landscape than Zeus would.

Because the Abrahamic traditions are, for the most part, cultural exports who are completely rewritten by each new culture that imports them, they don't reflect their points of origin as clearly and necessarily as the gods we are introduced to are able to do. To put them front-and-center in a book about the way that America alters the gods that land on its shores would be to create too large a problem. The Abrahamic traditions have been altered so much here that they would not have the necessary connection to their "old-world" counterparts. 

More importantly, though, their "old-world" counterparts have little to no resemblance to the original versions of those faiths. They were often-rewritten and appropriated stories long before they came to America, diluted so much from their beginnings that it would become impossible to say for sure that the changes that happened to them here were changes to the original religion and not merely the undoing of changes that had been applied to them by the last culture that assimilated into their faiths.

I appreciated this choice as I re-read the story. It made Gaiman's ideas about folklore and traditions much clearer, and it set certain limits on the kind of criticism he was offering. It also clearly delineated the difference between the monoculture that represents our narrative of our national identity from the lived traditions that make up the diverse range of American experiences. It helped to draw lines around Wednesday's assertion that the U.S.A. is only a single country in the most superficial ways.

This time through, I also found this to be a more profoundly atheistic novel than I had the first time I read it. Some of this might be my imposition of my own ideas on the narrative. The first time I read this I was already an atheist, but it had not yet become important to me to articulate my reasons for being one. As such, I did not think as much about the representation of faith traditions in literature as being critical of faith traditions as a whole. Now, though, I can't miss these points.

For starters, there's the rather obvious point that each and every one of the gods featured here--including the ones from the most ancient flashback scenes--is explicitly shown to be a creation of the human mind. They may be embodied because of a supernatural or fantastic process, but none of them are the mighty creator deities that precede reality and, it is made clear throughout the book, none of them will be here once there are no people to remember them. In fact, the book is littered with references to gods that decide to kill themselves because they find existence without veneration pointless.

Looking beyond that most obvious gesture, there's also a clear lack of definition to the idea that is presented by Whiskey Jack about what the "creator spirit" might be. It's an almost-deism that is presented to us, enough for plausible deniability if the author is accused of outright disbelief, but it is presented with such a high degree of uncertainty that it could just as well be a recognition of the underlying motion of all self-replicating chemistry. It's not a concrete idea, but a description of a vague notion that someone else did not fully articulate. For a book that is so vivid in its depictions of every element of mythology, it is a remarkably unconvincing description of the "true" grand designer or creative spirit.

Lastly, we have the way he sketches out the new gods. The technical boy, the television creatures, and the drugs are all presented as the new objects of veneration, but when they are described, they are often said to be something like the "ideas of people" rather than real people. Their ideal presentation, their abilities, and their talents are, at best, reflections of the desires of some vague and unrealized cultural group who, unlike the people of Lakeside, the First Nations communities, or the immigrants shown in the flashback scenes, do not seem to really exist themselves.

These unreal ideals are themselves the product of an unreal ideal, making them flavorless, formless, and ultimately, unsatisfying to both the reader and to the characters who are often confronted by them. It's a brilliant move, and an unsettling one if you happen to catch it.