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TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
Thu May 10, 2018, 03:42 PM May 2018

I Call It "Leetsplaining". And I'm Done With It.

A discussion began on a blog I follow: Reader Request Week 2018 #6: The Fall(?!?!?) of Heinlein

(Capsule summary for those who missed the last 20 years of posthumous literary dissection of RAH --aka "Robert A. Heinlein"-- and his ouevre: He started writing Sci-Fi stories in the 30s and 40s, became something of a phenomenon in the 50s with popular YA-oriented Sci-Fi novels, hit the Cultural Fooforaw jackpot in the 1960s with "Stranger In A Strange Land" and kept on writing a buttload of novels.

Many of his novels were controversial in their depictions of alternate histories, societies, etc., based on ideologies and concepts that ranged from hippie-lefty-libertarianism to anarcho-libertarianism to rightwing neo-fascist authoritarianism with a libertarian cherry on top. His depictions of women have been widely criticized as misogynistic in the extreme, and much discussion has focused on evidence of racism and white supremacy in his framing of cultures and characters. But even many of his most passionate detractors grant his storytelling expertise and his influence on speculative fiction and storytelling. He remains popular, his books still sell.)


I put in my two cents' worth on the discussion. I'd read and enjoyed some of RAH's oeuvre, then I ran across "Farnham's Freehold" which slammed every "squick" button I had, even at a much younger and less-philisophically-developed age. And that was more or less the end of my enjoyment of the RAH oeuvre, with one or two exceptions.

But people started talking about "Farnham's Freehold" ("FF" ) and it was pointed out that no, no, people who thought it was racist, misogynist dreck were all wrong, it was SATIRE (or maybe "zany madcap humor" or something.) And how RAH, in spite of his quite freely expressed embrace of white supremacy, was actually making a courageous stand on behalf of civil rights in a time before the great victories of the Movement.

Thing is, none of the folks carefully providing their highly enlightened literary interpretation of RAH and his underlying motivations, themes, and accomplishments in "FF" mentioned being African American, and, I strongly suspect, none of them were.

Which meant they were Leetsplaining.

Leetsplaining happens when guys tell women about how some misogynist fuckery isn't really all that reprehensible because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when white people analyze for black people why "all lives matter" can't be racist because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when straight people provide copious philosophical and ideological glosses on why opposing gay marriage isn't an expression of actual homophobia because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.)

Or when people without any kind of physiological or cognitive impairment or challenge present the case for why making public facilities accessible just isn't reasonable because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when cisgendered individuals defend other cisgendered individuals' (rarely their own-- isn't that peculiar?) "right" to be squicked out by trans people because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.)

Let me be very clear, here: I'm not saying that white readers and fans of RAH have no right to have, or express, an opinion of "FF" that differs from mine. Had such a reader responded with, "Well, I didn't read it that way, it felt like satire to me," well, fine. Your experience, your opinion. We can happily discuss why we think each other are deluded without ever hitting leetsplaining territory.

But when that reader presumes, from their place of omniscience and, very likely, shared privilege with RAH (who was, well, yeah... caucasian, duh) to analyze and explain why "FF" isn't actually racist, it's kind of a classic example of leetsplaining.

And I have to say, I'm done with that shit. In all its forms. I expect to be called on it if I do it.

To be ultra-ultra-ultra clear: As someone who's been negatively affected by misogyny, I will identify misogyny, describe it, and call it out. I may even take it upon myself to dismiss something others who do not share the experience of being negatively affected by misogyny claim to be offensively misogynistic as not offensive. Ditto on other kinds of shit that's negatively affected me because I don't enjoy the privilege of an exclusively heterosexual orientation or the privilege of never experiencing mental illness and its stigma and consequences. None of that is leetsplaining.

But if I, who enjoy the privilege of a melanin deficiency, decide to explain why something isn't really racist, I am leetsplaining. Call me on that shit.

And if someone who does not have a melanin deficiency but who DOES have a Y chromosome decides to expound on the whys and wherefores of how something makes it okay to treat someone without a Y chromosome as less than fully human, and I call them on that leetsplaining, I am not speaking from my privilege as melanin-deficient, but from my lack thereof in respect to not having a Y chromosome.

This shit gets complicated fast, I know. But the essentials are fairly clear: If you enjoy some type of privilege, then analyzing, dissecting, and/or deconstructing oppression against others who do not enjoy that privilege in any way that contradicts or invalidates their experience with that lack of privilege becomes leetsplaining. And it makes you look like an ass.

Expressing an opinion based on your privilege may make you look a bit ignorant and unenlightened. I have done this, and learned from it. I think everyone does. But asserting some kind of Higher Knowledge of What Really Is and bloviating thereupon with an assertive assumption that You Have The Real Answer? That's leetsplaining and it puts you squarely in "asshole" territory.

And all of the foregoing is, of course, my opinion.

See what I did there?

exasperatedly,
Bright

12 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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lapfog_1

(29,166 posts)
1. In the sixties I was a huge RAH fan... and read everything he wrote
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:13 PM
May 2018

I enjoyed most of his works, FF was not one of the ones I liked even at the time.

However, that being said, I've matured since then and would not read those works the same way today... and recognize the racism and misogyny for what it is... and I remember even as a privileged white boy of 12 reading some of those more extreme passages and cringing even at the time.

He and his works belong in the dustbin of history... but not burned in bonfires.

I was also a huge fan of Ursula Le Guin and other SciFi authors who were not racist or misogynists.

RAH was a libertarian... extreme libertarian. I have rejected that in favor of a more human socialist philosophy.

TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
2. I like the way it was described in the discussion: "The Suck Fairy's visit"
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:15 PM
May 2018

Stuff you thought was so great all that time ago... you go back to it, and, behold! while you weren't paying attention, the Suck Fairy visited it.

amusedly,
Bright

Hekate

(90,202 posts)
11. Oh, I like that. I read a LOT of Heinlein as a kid, quite uncritically early on. It was in the house
Tue May 15, 2018, 12:05 AM
May 2018

...so I read it.

It took awhile for it to sink in that no matter what he only had 3 female characters -- My BIL says: "Only one woman, made of very thin cardboard," but I am willing to grant him the Maiden and Mother and Mistress. The creepy thing in retrospect is that the Maiden is always 12 years old, and he gallantly waits for her to grow up. Usually. The Mother is a wimpy dweeb who knits socks for her son going into Space Academy, or (as in FF) a toxic wreck who must be replaced. And of course there are no Crones.

Part of my discontent that had no name was explained when Schmidt wrote his Telzy Amberdon stories. Suddenly there was a girl! A self-activating, very bright and inquisitive 17-y.o. iirc. I must have been 15 or 16 when those came out. Then the author abruptly died.

So much of what I was looking for was simply not yet written.

But back to RAH, sis-boom-bah. Since I was very clear in my mind that what I was reading was fiction, I was somewhat aghast to discover there was a literal cult springing up around Stranger in a Strange Land. In college, someone told me he was going to emigrate to New Zealand with his water brothers and form a nest. I wondered what the actual residents of that country would think of that.

I read Farnham's Freehold with a straight face, whenever it was it came out. It feels like I was in high school. Satire? I saw nothing humorous in it whatsoever. I saw that he killed off the unsatisfactory daughter and her bastard child, disposed of the unsatisfactory wife, and literally castrated the unworthy son. He seemed to be of the opinion that it was all their mother's fault. I thought he was also maybe trying to hold a mirror up to contemporary racism, but it didn't exactly work for me.

I grew up with Heinlein -- and then I simply outgrew him and moved on. If I were to be assigned to write a paper on him at this point in my life (70) it would be scathing.

He was in his own way a very good writer -- there are things that have stayed with me all these years, and things that became catchwords among my sibs. The cat who is looking for The Door Into Summer is one of those. Anyone who has ever owned a cat knows about that, even if they never heard of RAH. So I picked up a copy at a used book sale a couple of years ago, and discovered that while Pete the Cat (Petronius Arbiter, in full) was much the same, the entire rest of the book had been -- you guessed it -- visited by the Suck Fairy.

Loki Liesmith

(4,602 posts)
3. Oh good another category of "-splaining"
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:23 PM
May 2018

Well at least English has gotten an agglutinating suffix out of the deal.

 

LanternWaste

(37,748 posts)
6. Oh gooder.... another post minimizing and trivializing a concept
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:35 PM
May 2018

Oh gooder.... another post minimizing and trivializing a concept they cannot and will not understand.

regnaD kciN

(26,035 posts)
10. Let's just call it...
Thu May 10, 2018, 05:22 PM
May 2018

...everyonewhodoesnotthinkexactlylikemesplaining. An all-purpose category to allow you to brush off any positions, arguments, etc. you don't like, and feel self-righteous while doing so!

Hekate

(90,202 posts)
4. This looks real good. Kicking to read in full later...
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:23 PM
May 2018

Hekate, who read a lot of Heinlein as a young impressionable person, and

hunter

(38,264 posts)
7. It's probably too soon to talk about the late Jerry Pournelle...
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:45 PM
May 2018


Nope, not a fan of militaristic libertarian fantasies of the clever white boy.


Blue_Adept

(6,384 posts)
9. A lot of RAH was instrumental in shaping my opinions
Thu May 10, 2018, 04:51 PM
May 2018

And a lot of that came from not agreeing with things that he wrote, characters that he created. There's a lot I love in his works, flaws and all. I'd rather see a creator that worked the gamut of types of stories than someone with just one story to tell over and over with the same staid characters.

Heinlein presented a lot of opinions, contradictory ones, that left people assigning his beliefs as being those.

I recently re-read both Time Enough for Love (a big shaping piece for me, being polyamory and all) and Stranger in a Strange Land. Both suffer from the time and culture they come from but it's instructive to go back to that time and look through that lens. Even the weirder stuff like To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

No dustbin for me. That's like junking films from decades ago because they don't line up today. It's in these kinds of works that we'll see more of the truths of the time than in history books.

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