September 5th, 2009
by
Yonmei
Reading various discussions and justifications online about whether or not to boycott Shadow Complex – a new game which is written as a prequel to Empire, Orson Scott Card’s novel/game about a liberal conspiracy taking over the US – brought this to mind again. There’s a thoughtful article by Christian Nutt in Gamasutra: The Complex Question and another by SurplusGamer in Destructoid – both defending the principle of a boycott, whether or not you take part.
Peter David, the writer of Shadow Complex, takes the rather disappointing position that (Kotaku) “If anyone wants to boycott the game and thus damage me or Chair while doing nothing to change Orson’s opinions, that’s naturally their right. Or…They can display the sort of tolerance for someone who is different from them that they feel is lacking in Orson and thus prove they’re better. Your choice.”
Orson Scott Card was born on 24th August, 1951, six years after Alan Turing had received an OBE from the British Government for his services to the Foreign Office during WWII. Those “services” at that time remained unspecified: we know now that Turing had been working at Bletchley, building a computer out of stone knives and bearskins that could crack the German codes of the Enigma machine. He called his computer the Bombe.
In his lifetime, Alan Turing visited the US twice, two years at Princeton University (1936-38), and a stay of five months over nine years before OSC was born: November 1942 to March 1943. Before he went to Princeton, he published a paper famous now in computer science: “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” in which he outlined the concept of a Turing Machine. The Universal Turing Machine was, in concept, a programmable computer. Like Ada Lovelace before him, Alan Turing could conceive of computer programs before technology was sufficiently advanced to build the machine that could run them.
In 1942-43, Turing worked with U.S. Navy cryptanalysts on Naval Enigma and Bombe construction in Washington DC. Alan Turing was probably more responsible for the Allied victory in WWII than Winston Churchill: as Churchill himself would have agreed, if he hadn’t been there, someone else would have stood up: but there was only ever one Alan Turing. (He enjoyed long-distance running, and apparently used to frequently avoid the wartime transport difficulties by running the 40 miles between Bletchley and London when summoned there for an important meeting.)
The paper which was to make Turing posthumously famous far outside his particular fields of mathematics, logic, and cryptology was published in Mind, in 1950, Computing Machinery and Intelligence: in it he proposes what was to become known as the Turing Test. He wrote a computer program to play chess, before there was a computer built on which that piece of software could be run. He invented the concept of storing a program in a computer, long before anyone built such computers. He was the founder of computer science. He is acknowledged and honoured by the annual presentation of the Turing Award to the person responsible for the greatest innovation in computer science.
“Jane”, the AI software that becomes sentient, in Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, is Orson Scott Card’s clearest literary debt to Turing: though there is another fictional character whom Card dealt with very similiarly to Turing. Anssett, the former Songbird, who is chemically castrated in Songmaster as a consequence of having a sexual relationship with another man.
In November 1951, Turing had finished his first long paper in mathematical biology. In December, Alan Turing picked up a young man, invited him home for sex, met him a couple of times more, and then the young man broke into Turing’s house with a couple of friends and robbed him. In the course of their investigations into the burglary, the police established that the young man and Turing had had sex, and Turing (who kept his notes on the case in card folder labelled “Burglary and Buggery”) found himself on trial for homosexuality. He was convicted – he was unquestionably guilty of the crime! – and lost his security clearance, so he could no longer work on government cryptanalysis; he was given the choice of jail or chemical castration, and chose castration.
This was all in accordance with the principles which Orson Scott Card advocated in 1990 (and has since, consistently, defended) – principles which he explicitly says should be applied to “the polity, the citizens at large”:
Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.
The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity’s ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships. The Hypocrites of Homosexuality
Just as Card advocates, Turing did not go to jail: he was nonetheless sent a clear message that he could not be permitted to remain an acceptable, equal citizen of British society. He had flagrantly violated society’s regulation of sexual behaviour – and the penalty was one which Orson Scott Card could have written of with relish.
Alan Turing was born in 1912: it’s possible he could be alive today, aged 97. In 1953 he was writing what biographer Alan Hodges describes as a “sudden explosion of ideas about the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics and relativity”. But he’d lost so much: he’d lost what Orson Scott Card proposed a man like Alan Turing should lose – the right to be regarded as an acceptable, equal citizen. His friends at Cambridge spoke for him in court and stood by him until death: but he lost his job, he was subjected to routine harassment by the police, and – a known side-effect of the hormones used to castrate him – he had grown breasts. On 7th June 1954, he ate a cyanide-laced apple, and he died.
In the video linked to here (Alan Turing’s death) his friends discuss the motivation for his suicide and all assert that it couldn’t possibly have been the hormone castration or the police harassment, because he was always so witty and amused about that, never seemed troubled at all.
I first heard of Alan Turing in my high school biology class, when I was 14, and the teacher was talking to us about what was life and what was sentient life and how could you tell: I first played with an AI program (as a joke – it used BASIC arrays and BASIC’s not-very-random numbers – worked to fool teenage boy-nerds, but that’s an easy game) when I was 19. I was a computer science nerd: I knew what I owed to Alan Mathison Turing.
There is a petition now active on the Prime Minister’s website, that will remain live till 20th January 2010: if you’re a UK citizen, you can sign it here. The petition asks for a formal apology to Alan Turing – an acknowledgement, by the government, of their wrong-doing towards him, and recognition of the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended Turing’s life.
I have never been sure how Orson Scott Card justifies his homophobia to himself: I know he loathes being identified as a homophobe, because he would rather think of himself as a normal person with a normal distaste for and hatred of gay men who normally wants gay men to be kept in the closet, and chemically castrated or otherwise punished if they fail to keep themselves out of sight. Peter David feels we should show tolerance towards Card for being “different” from us: though that is not what Card himself advocates. I’m not in a position to say one way or another about a boycott of a game I wouldn’t buy – I’m not a gamer.
The Alan Turing Year, 2012, will be a celebration of the life and scientific influence of Alan Turing on the occasion of the centenary of his birth on 23rd June 1912. He never got to be 42. Orson Scott Card, whose writing career was made by computers both real and fictional, shared a planet with Turing for less than 3 years.
—
Update: 9th September. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has released a statement in response to the petition: “So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”
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- More blogging by
Yonmei at
http://yonmei.insanejournal.com
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Filed under activism, politics | Comments (23)
Beautifully said, and I still can’t get over the sheer brutal waste of Turing’s death, and all the beautiful minds of the other men and women killed, mutilated or driven into hiding by such cruel policies.
Well said!
Turning’s prosecution and persecution are possibly more brutal for the fact that he was such a central figure when it came to the war effort and to science and technology… the stuff upon which we operate so much we barely notice it in a way.
Thanks for all the links.
[...] over at Feminist SF writes a heartbreaking post about Alan Turing (who was convicted of gross indecency for homosexual acts) and Orson Scott Card [...]
I have never been sure how Orson Scott Card justifies his homophobia to himself
He’s quite clear about it in the essay you link to, he thinks he’s following “the word of God as revealed through his prophets”. In his mind, no further justification is needed. It is unlikely that anyone will convince him that his interpretation of “the word of God” is wrong, even more unlikely that anyone will convince him to abandon an authority-based ethical system in favor of a teleological, humanistic one.
Peter David, the writer of Shadow Complex, takes the rather disappointing position that (Kotaku) “If anyone wants to boycott the game and thus damage me or Chair while doing nothing to change Orson’s opinions, that’s naturally their right.
Peter David seems to be missing the point. It’s not about convincing Card to change his mind (not going to happen), and it’s only tangentially about refusing Card financial benefit. It’s about marginalizing Card by changing the minds of other people, convincing them that associating with Card is a poor idea.
Whether this particular boycott is a good idea on those grounds, I don’t know. However, I’ve seen enough evidence that Card’s beliefs are reprehensible (quite a bit from you) to convince me that marginalizing him may be a good idea in general.
I’m amused that Peter David is attempting to convince us not to boycott OSC, considering that I’m boycotting Peter David himself for this.
[...] Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing [...]
I went and looked up a bit from a friend of mine:
Tolerance and intolerance are opposites, and like most opposites, are mutually incompatible. I’m not intolerant of you – I value tolerance, which means, by definition, that I oppose intolerant behavior.
Tolerance doesn’t mean “everything for everyone.” It is a positive, affirmative values system, which has a proper moral structure. It says “this is good” sometimes, and “this is bad” at other times. It isn’t relativism, it isn’t the idea that everything is good, or the idea that you can’t know good from bad. The values of a culture which are positive and affirming for everyone are to be celebrated, while the values of a culture that are harmful and intolerant are to be changed.
Tolerance isn’t a “kick me” sign, or a “go ahead and kick whom you want” sign. It’s a “no kicking” sign. Because “kicking” however defined, harms other people, and harming another person is wrong.
(credit to UrsulaL, or ursula1972 on lj)
Well-said, agreed, and beautiful.
One quibble, though. Ansset, in Card’s SONGMASTER, isn’t chemically castrated as a result of his gay relationship. He’s chemically castrated as a child, as part of his training/preparation to be a singer; they give him drugs to delay puberty, which have the side-effect (in adulthood) of making him incapable of having sex without horrible pain and seizures.
It *is* clear that Card intended Ansset’s effective castration to be yet another way in which he suffers — he loses his home, his father-figure, his brother-figure, his lover, and more. Pretty much every possible iteration of the Tragic Gay stereotype. Just saying the cause-effect relationship isn’t as blatant as you’re describing here. It’s more symbolic.
I knew Card had some odd ideas, but I hadn’t realised just how odd, and in particular that they went so far beyond ‘normal’ homophobia, if such a term is possible. I have some gaps in my reading of his books which, thanks to this post, will remain unfilled.
[...] I’d intended to mention THIS piece by Yonmei over at Feminist Blog yesterday, which I thought EXCELLENT. It reminds us very [...]
[...] Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing I have never been sure how Orson Scott Card justifies his homophobia to himself: I know he loathes being identified as a homophobe, because he would rather think of himself as a normal person with a normal distaste for and hatred of gay men who normally wants gay men to be kept in the closet, and chemically castrated or otherwise punished if they fail to keep themselves out of sight. Peter David feels we should show tolerance towards Card for being “different” from us: though that is not what Card himself advocates. I’m not in a position to say one way or another about a boycott of a game I wouldn’t buy – I’m not a gamer. [...]
Gordon Brown apologizes.
I’ve been meaning to respond to this thread for a while, and now Gordon Brown has apologised! Petition’s still open, and I hope people will continue to sign it.
lilacsigil: Thank you. The awful waste of what happened to Turing – and when I found out about it, in the 1980s, he very probably would still have been alive if not for this – has ground at me painfully ever since I first heard about it. The same thing happened to so many men – to women, too: either their lives or their capacity to enjoy sex destroyed – we know about the awful instances that happened to public people.
Mel: I don’t think what happened to Turing was any more brutal than what happened to so many others. We simply see more clearly how awful it was to do these things – to anyone.
L33tminion: I realise Orson Scott Card justifies his hatred and contempt for LGBT people with reference to his religion: but not every Mormon is as ugly about this as Card. But consistently, people who justify expressing hatred and loathing for LGBT people in terms of “God wants me to do this” inventively claim they do it out of “god’s love” – and cannot answer, when you ask “Does love really look like this to you?”
syfr: Great definition of tolerance. Thanks.
ian: With me it’s not that “He’s got awful views, I cannot bear to read his books” – it’s that knowing what his awful views are, even his fiction writing has lost me. I can’t bear it.
Gary: Yes, I’d updated the post, but a comment is always a faster away to get information to the top of the page.
With regard to Peter David:
L33tminion, the problem with “boycotting the people who won’t boycott” is that it all too often extends outward beyond the known universe. (As far as I know, Janis Ian has forgiven Orson Scott Card for his ugly remarks in print about her marriage: should I boycott Janis Ian because she’s not boycotting Card? I don’t think so: that would be absurd.)
The professional association is another matter. Peter David evidently figured it couldn’t hurt him to be associated with Orson Scott Card. I can see why people feel that boycotting Peter David’s game for being a prequel to Card’s is a bit tangential: I think you’re right that there’s a solid case for doing it: most of all, though, it needs to be talked about. Orson Scott Card’s bigoted views need to be exposed for the outrageous pile of crap they are: anyone who willingly sits down next to him does need to be asked “were you aware you have just chosen to picnic next to a humungous pile of crap”? If they are and they’re OK with the stink, well, fine: but it would be unfair to let them ignorantly unpack their picnic when the smell of that pile of crap is only going to get worse.
Softestbullet: Oh yes – I’d forgotten. That pile of crap, the Peter David who decided he wanted to shut down scans_daily because the community was being insufficiently respectful to His Greatness …and somehow, I’m unsurprised he’s also breathing in the pile-of-crap air around Orson Scott Card without apparent disgust. [Update: His Greatness has convinced me in private e-mails that I have the order of events the wrong way round: Peter David decided he wanted to shut down Scans_Daily, and then got into a fight on the community with fans of his work who were being insufficiently respectful of him. I note Catherynne M. Valente's wise words, and will be glad to drop the subject.]
N. K. Jenisen: One quibble, though. Ansset, in Card’s SONGMASTER, isn’t chemically castrated as a result of his gay relationship.
I said “as a consequence”, not “as a result”.
He’s chemically castrated as a child, as part of his training/preparation to be a singer; they give him drugs to delay puberty, which have the side-effect (in adulthood) of making him incapable of having sex without horrible pain and seizures.
No, Ansset isn’t chemically castrated as a child. Because he is a Songbird, and because their culture values children’s singing voices far above adult singing voices (which is odd: children can have lovely voices, but I find adult voices much more beautiful) he is given drugs to delay the onset of puberty. These drugs already exist – they may have existed in principle at least when Card was writing Songmaster. What they do – and all they do – is delay onset of puberty.
Card’s invention, which is a Tomato Surprise and a classic example of Fridge Logic, is that these delay-onset drugs are (a) given in one massive dose before the Songbirds leave the Songhouse for several years – and (b) that, for boys only – since he had already written a scene in which a Songbird girl made love to a boy – these drugs make the boy’s first orgasm an experience so rackingly awful that he will never have another. The Songhouse has been giving these drugs to pre-pubescent boys for thousands of years, and Ansset’s teachers are supposed to care for him very much: and yet – we are invited to believe – they did and said nothing to ensure that his carers on Earth would know to give him the antagonist before his first wet dream became his last nightmare.
Both emotionally, in how the story works from the inside, and externally, looking at how Card’s mind works as a writer, Ansset is chemically castrated as a consequence of having a voluntary sexual relationship with another man. (We may also consider Josef, Ansset’s lover and friend, who is physically gelded as a consequence of having an affair with Ansset.)
It is blatant, symbolic, and direct: love another man, have a sexual relationship with him, and either lose your mind and your genitals, or your capacity for sexual feeling. At the point when I noticed this, I realised that I’d even lost Songmaster: one of Card’s novels written well before his 1990 essay which I’d used to love. I can’t any more.
“Peter David seems to be missing the point. It’s not about convincing Card to change his mind (not going to happen), and it’s only tangentially about refusing Card financial benefit. It’s about marginalizing Card by changing the minds of other people, convincing them that associating with Card is a poor idea.”
No, I understood that that’s the point. I get that, and others have made that clear in the event that I didn’t. The endgame is to create a world wherein Orson Scott Card is unable to make a living because publishers and editors (and presumably other writers) don’t want to associate with him, and that potential customers will steer clear from his work.
Here’s the problem: If you do your job well, you SHOULD be able to earn a living doing it. The fact that Card has loopy ideas about gays doesn’t make “Enders Game” (for instance) a crap book, and people shouldn’t be discouraged from reading it, nor booksellers from shelving it, nor editors or publishers from desiring more sequels. If you don’t like what a person has to say, then attack what he’s saying; don’t try to destroy the person’s ability to earn a living just because you don’t like his opinions. It’s a course of action that is antithetical to a free society.
It’s easy to be tolerant of popular speech. The true measure of one’s devotion to free expression is how tolerant they are of unpopular speech. The problem is that many people don’t understand that unpopular ideas–or at least the ability to express them–need to be protected even more than the popular ones, because many ideas that we now consider to be common sense began their existence perceived as bad ones. The earth moving around the sun, the smallpox vaccine, interracial marriage, were all once notions that flew in the face of then-accepted beliefs.
Do I agree with Card’s beliefs? Hell no. But trying to shut him down or make it impossible for him to earn a living because of them is the wrong approach. Bad ideas shouldn’t be driven underground; they should be confronted and addressed. “I disagree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” is a far healthier attitude than, “I disagree with what you have to say and will try to convince as many people as possible not to associate with you.”
“Softestbullet: Oh yes – I’d forgotten. That pile of crap, the Peter David who decided he wanted to shut down scans_daily because the community was being insufficiently respectful to His Greatness …and somehow, I’m unsurprised he’s also breathing in the pile-of-crap air around Orson Scott Card without apparent disgust.”
You know, repeating a lie endlessly doesn’t make it any more true, although it’s becoming comical that any discussion involving me will always result in someone throwing around lies about Scans_Daily. SD got itself shut down. They ran material that was far in excess of fair use under copyright law. Just as conscientious fans routinely point me to pirate sites of my work, I pointed out to Marvel that SD had run half the art pages of an issue of X-Factor (and the only reason I knew about it was that people on a Comic Book Resources thread wanted to know where they could read the issue for free and a link to SD was posted). It was only after I took that step that I then started reading the comments, which consisted of profanity-laced wishes for my demise. The latter had nothing to do with the former.
And gee, in my quarter of a century association with the Internet, no one has ever been mean to me. Please. If I had the power and intolerance to shut down every site where people posted vicious things about me or my work, there wouldn’t be a comic book related site left, and my own website wouldn’t have an open policy for talkback.
My assumption (purely a guess) is that Library Journal (the host site) was contacted by Marvel and told to take down the offending material. LJ presumably took a close look at SD, saw routine violation of LJ’s prohibitions against copyright infringement, and nuked the site. Either way, it had nothing to do with anything anyone said about me and everything to do with the fact that SD didn’t care about copyright infringement.
So what you wrote was a lie. I would appreciate it if you retracted and/or apologized for it. If you fail to do so, I will track down your employer and inform them that you are engaging in an act of libel and character defamation and should be sanctioned…
Oh. Wait. No. I wouldn’t do that. Because I’d rather rebut what you say directly instead of trying to find a way to damage you commercially.
But that’s probably just me.
PAD
If you do your job well, you SHOULD be able to earn a living doing it.
I’m sorry: I think you have this confused with some other universe where people can be compelled to buy books they don’t want because those books are so well written.
This is true for some groups of people (students on courses with compulsory textbooks) and for some authors (the sort who write works that appear on compulsory reading lists) but it is by no means a universal rule, and most educational establishments will allow a student who finds a specific novel distasteful to choose another.
Orson Scott Card writes well. This does not mean he “should” be able to earn a living as a writer, if no one wants to publish him because no one wants to buy his books. If that day ever comes, and in a world with Mormon-owned publishing houses it seems unlikely, then Card will simply have to do what every other good writer who isn’t able to earn a living as a writer does: find another job.
With regard to Peter David’s issues about why and how Scans_daily was shut down: this post, and this discussion thread, is about Alan Turing, Orson Scott Card, and institutional homophobia.
To Peter David, the issue of Scans_daily and the fans who don’t love hin any more, may loom rather larger than any: but you may take this as formal notification that any further attempt to discuss Scans_daily and Peter David on this thread will be disemvowelled and persistent offenders will be banned.
Here are some links to blogs&c where the topic was being discussed: Thoughts on Scans_Daily and Peter David, scans_daily suspended, The Death (and resurrection) of Scans_Daily, Editorial: Livejournal Kills Scans_Daily, And I Shall Call It Dumbassopalooza: scans_daily and Peter David.
“I’m sorry: I think you have this confused with some other universe where people can be compelled to buy books they don’t want because those books are so well written.”
No one is suggesting anyone be compelled TO buy his books. The suggestion is that various publishers be compelled to STOP buying his books because people are boycotting them irrespective of their quality. I have a problem with the latter.
And I formally apologize for any off-topic subjects I brought up…or would if I had.
PAD
The suggestion is that various publishers be compelled to STOP buying his books because people are boycotting them irrespective of their quality. I have a problem with the latter.
Oh. So, you feel it’s the publishers who should be compelled to continue to buy the publishing rights to Orson Scott Card’s books, regardless of whether they are able to sell them? I’m sorry: we live in a universe where publishers are by no means compelled to agree to publish books they know will be unsellable.
If you have no problem with people not buying Orson Scott Card’s books because they do not wish to do so, I cannot see how you can have a problem with publishers no longer buying Card’s books because they can no longer sell them.
It’s easy to be tolerant of popular speech. The true measure of one’s devotion to free expression is how tolerant they are of unpopular speech.
Indeed. And Orson Scott Card’s devotion to free expression is measured by how intolerant he is of the unpopular idea that everyone should be treated equally regardless of sexual orientation. But this is slightly irrelevant to the thrust of what appears to be your main argument: that Card has some magical, mystical right to continue to sell his books, regardless of whether anyone wants to buy what he writes.
[...] Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing, from Feminist SF. [...]
I read Card’s books for years and considered him a very creative person. Children’s lit are another hobby. His politics, though, as you report, are disgracefully hateful flummery.
I laugh rather bitterly about the ‘great leftist conspiracy’. It is a favourite tool of disinformation of a media owned by a privileged clique who use it to channel public conversation into acceptable ever-decreasing circles of futility.
Few relate the ‘education’ of children and ‘religion’ with public canalization designed to limit dissent by promulgating ignorance and disinformation. Such is described in terms designed to discredit an argument without taking any account of its sanity or truth.
‘Lie First’ is the credo followed.
Rather than rant, I have collected articles on the topic. Even the likes of Rush Limbaugh are explainable : even in a coherent context!
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/perception-alteration.html
This is a great post, Yonmei.