Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I'm continuing to see more bluechecks/influential Tweeters aggressively standing their ground in making this a race issue, and making Dawn the villain in this, and as a POC it makes me genuinely a little... disoriented? Like, am I a racist for not agreeing with these takes? Am I not as liberal or as progressive as I thought? I feel like I'm going crazy.

Anyone.in particular?

This entire thread (+ more, if you go to her feed):

I'm just like... Sonya is the one who literally hid behind POC by changing her Twitter header photo days before the article dropped? And the group chat that you so identify with is literally filled with white people...? IDK it all feels so off-base to me.

White woman here - I keep trying to keep my biases and blind spots in check. And yet - I find that whole twitter thread so awful. It just seems so effing nasty and out of touch with the actual story here, which seems so much more about power and class than race (at least to me).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imani Gandy needs better friends or something. She is coming across poorly not only in terms of character but as far as legal and other analysis. Yikes.

Like all the others with the wrong take that Sonya is the victim, she hurls a grenade and announces she'll be muting the thread. I think the content doesn't matter to some people. They know they can mine the outrage for clicks and a few new followers and people will eventually forget. Except there are a number of people (me included) who are completely obsessed with the story so there might be some backlash.

I also think part of what is happening is that this story was (smartly) spun by Larson and Ng as a white woman weaponizing her feelings to attack a woman of color, and lots of prominent women of color are understandably triggered by that narrative. Even though it's not accurate in this situation, it is something that happens a lot, and so without really investigating the truth or details of this situation, people link Gandy and Gay and others are throwing their support behind Larson simply because this sounds like something they have experienced before.

In fact, in Gay's case, I think she has doubled down because her initial support for Larson apparently led some people to write her directly with complaints about that support. And she hates stuff like that because she somewhat famously does not like it when people take issue with her Twitter opinions because she doesn't think she should have to answer for everything she says on Twitter. Which I generally kind of agree with -- it must be be exhausting to be a prominent black, gay, woman and have people constantly asking you to justify everything you say.

So Gay sees people coming after her yet again about one of her Twitter opinions and views it the way she has before -- as white people needing to tell her what to think, at least in part due to racist/sexist/homophobic feelings they might not even be willing to admit to themselves. I mean, I've experienced those same things over and over again so I am sympathetic and can only imagine it's much worse for someone with a prominent voice.

But in this case they are wrong. It makes me frustrated with them for wading into a debate they don't really have the details on, but it makes me actively angry at Larson and Ng for turning this into a conversation about race when it very much was not. There is zero evidence that Dorland actually is some kind of white savior character who weaponizes her emotions against POC. If that's something that has happened in the past I'd want to know about it, but I see no evidence of it in this situation. But people are giving Larson/Ng the benefit of the doubt because they are painting the situation with that brush and to me it's unconscionable. Do they not understand the damage this will do to the next WOC who deals with an actual, not imagined, example of white saviorism or a white woman weaponizing her feelings? These arguments are already viewed suspiciously by many and Larson/Ng are just making them harder to make in the future. I hate saying this but it really feels like they are weaponizing their race to win a petty interpersonal spat, and particularly when you know that Larson is white passing and most of the Chunky Monkeys are white, it starts to feel really really gross to me.

Not to let people like Gandy and Gay off the hook -- they are responsible for their actions. But wow has Ng, in particular, pulled them down this road under false pretenses. If the tide turns I think many of these folks are going to be mad at Ng because I'm betting many of them accepted Larson's story at face value because Ng was vouching for it and they viewed her as someone on their level who understood their concerns. Instead she manipulated those concerns for her own benefit. Yuck yuck yuck.

Sure. Exhausting. But there's an easy answer - and that's don't effing tweet so much. You don't have to explode your opinion grenade on every internet kerfuffle if you don't like people reacting to your opinion! It's so effing entitled to think you have these Important Things to Say all the time but How Dare Anyone Respond because Who Are YOU. Like these twitter people rile up a mob then want to walk away and be like, not my problem? Cmon. CMON!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I'm continuing to see more bluechecks/influential Tweeters aggressively standing their ground in making this a race issue, and making Dawn the villain in this, and as a POC it makes me genuinely a little... disoriented? Like, am I a racist for not agreeing with these takes? Am I not as liberal or as progressive as I thought? I feel like I'm going crazy.

Anyone.in particular?

This entire thread (+ more, if you go to her feed):

I'm just like... Sonya is the one who literally hid behind POC by changing her Twitter header photo days before the article dropped? And the group chat that you so identify with is literally filled with white people...? IDK it all feels so off-base to me.

White woman here - I keep trying to keep my biases and blind spots in check. And yet - I find that whole twitter thread so awful. It just seems so effing nasty and out of touch with the actual story here, which seems so much more about power and class than race (at least to me).

I’m technically mixed but am entirely White-presenting and I hate what Larson and Ng did but how can people exonerate Gay and Gandy? They have actual evidence from the pleadings, and here they are telling people effectively to F off. And one of them makes a living in legal analysis and commentary. It would be appropriate to rip into them, this is insane behavior, dishonesty to a degree where it presents as madness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I'm continuing to see more bluechecks/influential Tweeters aggressively standing their ground in making this a race issue, and making Dawn the villain in this, and as a POC it makes me genuinely a little... disoriented? Like, am I a racist for not agreeing with these takes? Am I not as liberal or as progressive as I thought? I feel like I'm going crazy.

There’s plenty of us POC with you. I don’t think I’d want to be friends with Dorland but Larson’s energy and that group are toxic.

Yup and plenty on Twitter too.

https://twitter.com/Karnythia

[Anonymous]

The issue is that if this isn't a race-based issue, what remains is appallingly cruel and (in Larson's case, unlawful) behavior by some of the most powerful and well-known writers out there. I don't think they can stomach that version of themselves, let alone their fans. The unusual aspect about this situation is the court case, so there is hard evidence of what actually happened. We can all read the emails, DMs, etc. We can all see what happened. But if there isn't a race-based aspect to somehow mitigate the behavior of Larson and Ng, what only remains are the words on the pages we can all read. And those are horrifying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The issue is that if this isn't a race-based issue, what remains is appallingly cruel and (in Larson's case, unlawful) behavior by some of the most powerful and well-known writers out there. I don't think they can stomach that version of themselves, let alone their fans. The unusual aspect about this situation is the court case, so there is hard evidence of what actually happened. We can all read the emails, DMs, etc. We can all see what happened. But if there isn't a race-based aspect to somehow mitigate the behavior of Larson and Ng, what only remains are the words on the pages we can all read. And those are horrifying.

Exactly. And what does internet culture in the 2020s appreciate more than ever? Receipts.

[Anonymous]

Roxane Gay has shown herself to be a terrible person over and over again.

Stop caping for her.

Being gay, female, black does not give you the right to be a bully and an a-hole. This is not her first time going after some random woman on her Twitter feed, a person she has no personal beef with, just a pile on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I'm continuing to see more bluechecks/influential Tweeters aggressively standing their ground in making this a race issue, and making Dawn the villain in this, and as a POC it makes me genuinely a little... disoriented? Like, am I a racist for not agreeing with these takes? Am I not as liberal or as progressive as I thought? I feel like I'm going crazy.

There’s plenty of us POC with you. I don’t think I’d want to be friends with Dorland but Larson’s energy and that group are toxic.

Yup and plenty on Twitter too.

https://twitter.com/Karnythia

So grateful for Mikki Kendall and other POC voices that are speaking up about this. I legit think I would have gone into some sort of spiral, thinking I was going crazy all by myself lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the first to feel this way, but I feel like the discourse around this is going to be seen as a sea change within the culture wars years from now. The fact that this discourse is largely happening within "The Left" and features such polarizing opinions where a lot of people are like, "Wait... that actually doesn't make sense," and causing people to REALLY stop and think about how their biases are functioning against them.

I say this as a die-hard liberal.

I think this comment will turn out to be prescient.

If the Chunky Monkeys were not POC, the narrative would be more straightforward. This is a group of people who were so invested in mocking someone who was needy, weird, and not like them that one of them took it to the level of creating the best inside joke of publishing a story that would be immediately recognizable to everyone in on the joke for what it was. The plagiarism aspect that ironically outed the jig is a red herring -- Larson was mocking, not copying. What makes the story disorienting is that the group of classic mean girls have identities to lean on to justify the behavior. A clueless whiny white woman is fair game.

[Anonymous]

I bet Larson et al. are really disappointed dawn doesn’t come from an economically privileged upbringing (though Larson did make the dawn character rich in her story.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the first to feel this way, but I feel like the discourse around this is going to be seen as a sea change within the culture wars years from now. The fact that this discourse is largely happening within "The Left" and features such polarizing opinions where a lot of people are like, "Wait... that actually doesn't make sense," and causing people to REALLY stop and think about how their biases are functioning against them.

I say this as a die-hard liberal.

I don't know if it's going to be a flashpoint for many people because it's a niche issue that most people don't care about as much as we do.

But wow is it resonating with me in interesting ways. It's raising a lot of questions for me about what it means to be a liberal white woman these days. One thing I keep thinking about is how there is this evergreen dynamic of women ripping each other apart to save men the trouble of oppressing us. It's one thing for the liberal Twitter mob to go after that woman in Central Park who called the cops on a black guy looking at birds -- she sucked and was doing something clearly terrible. She was ACTUALLY weaponizing white womens tears, in a blatant and disgusting way, to endanger the life of a black man. It's simple and clear cut.

But applying that same thinking to Dawn Dorland is horrifying to me. She wasn't calling the cops on a person of color. She wasn't actually doing anything to a person of color. Her crime, as far as I can tell, was contacting Larson to ask if she wanted to be removed from the private support group on Facebook. The decision by the Times Magazine piece, and by Larson, to frame this as "she was demanding to know why I didn't like her posts on Facebook" is hugely problematic because I've read the email and that's not what she says. She was worried she'd overstepped by adding Larson to the group (which she had!), was suddenly concerned about sharing private info with someone who maybe was not empathetic/sympathetic to her situation (prescient, as she should definitely not have been sharing that info with Larson), and was looking for a way to undo that mistake without passive aggressively removing Larson from the group. I mean, what was Dorland supposed to do in that situation? Should she have just unfriended Larson? Apparently that would have been better to some than reaching out and having a brief, simple convo about it. This was NOT a white woman weaponizing her feelings. This was a fairly thoughtful person recognizing a relationship didn't feel like it was matching up well and trying to resolve it in a mature way.

To compare Dorland to the many examples in recent years of white women using their tears/feelings to endanger POC is horrifying to me. Larson was never in danger! Not even professionally, not event when Dorland kind of lost it and started contacting organizations about her. All she had to do was stop submitting/publishing the short story that plagiarized Dorland's letter. That's it! Just write another damn story, it's your literal job.

That's what I don't get. Dorland didn't do anything to Larson. She was trying to be a reasonable person. And Larson went nuclear anyway, lying and plagiarizing and lawyering up and trashing Dorland a dozen different ways. Was Dorland just supposed to... take it? Is that what it means to be a white ally these days? You accept abuse and ridicule from [it must be said: a white passing] woman of color because to stand up for yourself is racist?

Nope, that can't be the conclusion. Sorry. That's not going to work out for anyone. Not even Larson in the long run. Try again.

[Anonymous]

shan1212 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

shan1212 wrote:A Chunky Monkey, Becky Tuch, apologizes and announces she has left the group: https://twitter.com/BeckyLTuch/status/1447603792804032512

I feel like some of her tweets are contradictory:
"I want to say on record that I always loved this story. I was proud of Sonya for writing it, thrilled to see it getting recognition I felt it deserved."
"I did not participate in any discussion of this story, until it was finally published."
"My understanding of the legal issues was superficial."
"Everything I have ever said to her in email or elsewhere was with the understanding that I was supporting my wonderful and talented friend through a truly awful situation."I owe Dawn Dorland an apology. I’m sorry for the role I played here. I’m sorry I didn’t make a greater attempt to learn her side of the story. And most of all, I am sorry I did not intervene to de-fuse a situation that I believe did not have to come to this."

So did she leave in 2013 and have no knowledge of the story or was she involved and supporting this all along? Now I want to search documents for her.

If you look at the top of this email chain, there's Becky Tuch saying "f*** DFD."

https://twitter.com/loveindiebooks/status/1447607425293438983

Holy moly, nice catch.

Lying liars. Unreal.

The best part is we have these trove of info thanks to SL's lawsuit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I'm continuing to see more bluechecks/influential Tweeters aggressively standing their ground in making this a race issue, and making Dawn the villain in this, and as a POC it makes me genuinely a little... disoriented? Like, am I a racist for not agreeing with these takes? Am I not as liberal or as progressive as I thought? I feel like I'm going crazy.

Anyone.in particular?

This entire thread (+ more, if you go to her feed):

I'm just like... Sonya is the one who literally hid behind POC by changing her Twitter header photo days before the article dropped? And the group chat that you so identify with is literally filled with white people...? IDK it all feels so off-base to me.

White woman here - I keep trying to keep my biases and blind spots in check. And yet - I find that whole twitter thread so awful. It just seems so effing nasty and out of touch with the actual story here, which seems so much more about power and class than race (at least to me).

I’m technically mixed but am entirely White-presenting and I hate what Larson and Ng did but how can people exonerate Gay and Gandy? They have actual evidence from the pleadings, and here they are telling people effectively to F off. And one of them makes a living in legal analysis and commentary. It would be appropriate to rip into them, this is insane behavior, dishonesty to a degree where it presents as madness.

People like Imani Gandy are used to believing that they are untouchable and can say whatever horrible things they want on Twitter.

[Anonymous]

Here they are, in all their Chunkster glory. So glad they named names so I can know who to avoid buying books by in the future.





The Chunky Monkeys. Back row (l. to r.): Calvin Hennick, Sonya Larson, Whitney Scharer, Chip Cheek, Grace Talusan, Celeste Ng, Christopher Castellani, and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. Front row: Becky Tuch (l.) and Adam Stumacher. Not pictured, co-founder Jennifer De Leon.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/80887-two-boston-writing-groups-produce-12-books.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the first to feel this way, but I feel like the discourse around this is going to be seen as a sea change within the culture wars years from now. The fact that this discourse is largely happening within "The Left" and features such polarizing opinions where a lot of people are like, "Wait... that actually doesn't make sense," and causing people to REALLY stop and think about how their biases are functioning against them.

I say this as a die-hard liberal.

I don't know if it's going to be a flashpoint for many people because it's a niche issue that most people don't care about as much as we do.

But wow is it resonating with me in interesting ways. It's raising a lot of questions for me about what it means to be a liberal white woman these days. One thing I keep thinking about is how there is this evergreen dynamic of women ripping each other apart to save men the trouble of oppressing us. It's one thing for the liberal Twitter mob to go after that woman in Central Park who called the cops on a black guy looking at birds -- she sucked and was doing something clearly terrible. She was ACTUALLY weaponizing white womens tears, in a blatant and disgusting way, to endanger the life of a black man. It's simple and clear cut.

But applying that same thinking to Dawn Dorland is horrifying to me. She wasn't calling the cops on a person of color. She wasn't actually doing anything to a person of color. Her crime, as far as I can tell, was contacting Larson to ask if she wanted to be removed from the private support group on Facebook. The decision by the Times Magazine piece, and by Larson, to frame this as "she was demanding to know why I didn't like her posts on Facebook" is hugely problematic because I've read the email and that's not what she says. She was worried she'd overstepped by adding Larson to the group (which she had!), was suddenly concerned about sharing private info with someone who maybe was not empathetic/sympathetic to her situation (prescient, as she should definitely not have been sharing that info with Larson), and was looking for a way to undo that mistake without passive aggressively removing Larson from the group. I mean, what was Dorland supposed to do in that situation? Should she have just unfriended Larson? Apparently that would have been better to some than reaching out and having a brief, simple convo about it. This was NOT a white woman weaponizing her feelings. This was a fairly thoughtful person recognizing a relationship didn't feel like it was matching up well and trying to resolve it in a mature way.

To compare Dorland to the many examples in recent years of white women using their tears/feelings to endanger POC is horrifying to me. Larson was never in danger! Not even professionally, not event when Dorland kind of lost it and started contacting organizations about her. All she had to do was stop submitting/publishing the short story that plagiarized Dorland's letter. That's it! Just write another damn story, it's your literal job.

That's what I don't get. Dorland didn't do anything to Larson. She was trying to be a reasonable person. And Larson went nuclear anyway, lying and plagiarizing and lawyering up and trashing Dorland a dozen different ways. Was Dorland just supposed to... take it? Is that what it means to be a white ally these days? You accept abuse and ridicule from [it must be said: a white passing] woman of color because to stand up for yourself is racist?

Nope, that can't be the conclusion. Sorry. That's not going to work out for anyone. Not even Larson in the long run. Try again.

I think you make some good points. Acting like dawn is the equivalent of the Central Park dog woman does a disservice to all the people who’ve been harmed by Central Park dog woman type actions. And it gives fuel to the “not a racist bone in my body” crowd too. I do think the backlash suggests though that happily most people can easily make that distinction (if the nyt comments are anything to go by.) a toxic group of friends tried it on and by and large the “audience” said nope.