Bad Art Friend

[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.

Exactly. And I think it's worth mentioning that Sonya Larson is half-white, half-Asian. She is just as much a "white woman" as she is an Asian-American, and I say that graciously and without malice -- multiracial people have a right to totally own both parts of their identities. What's telling is that she also wrote a short story before this called "Gabe Dove" where she basically dances around the trope of finding Asian-American men unattractive, which is such a low blow and such a boring cliche at this point. (I am Asian-American, so this particular line of thinking particularly irks me). Why is it that so often, the Asian-Americans who dominate the discourse around the Asian-American experience happen to be Asian-American women with profound proximity to whiteness? It's just another whole layer of this saga that has really, really rubbed me in the wrong way. Both Larson and Ng are deeply, deeply privileged by being Asian-American women who surround themselves with white people, have (presumably) married white spouses, and have always found themselves in white spaces. I really don't mean to discredit their experiences or to downplay what it's like to grow up different in predominantly white communities (trust me, I've been there), but it's weird to see women like them continually own and dominate narratives around the Asian-American experience. And then to see them weaponize their identity in this whole conversation leaves me deeply disturbed.

Sorry. I know this is a tangent at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

shan1212 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 can give Imani a pass because Sonya purposely framed it as a white woman oppressing a WOC; she has a right to be triggered by that. Should she do more research? Sure, but anyone can say anything on Twitter. I stopped following her because she tweets so much, lol. She has over half a million tweets! So I didn't see this.

No, I don't give people a pass for actively ignoring new information because it doesn't suit their narrative

+1 These are writers for goodness sake. They are supposed to research, not offer blind support. I really think it messes with their credibility.

It seems like there are several race related issues here, that are being conflated, and are also obscuring the real issue for many people: the plagiarism. (And, for many the lying, gaslighting, backstabbing on top of it.)

Race issue #1: Dorland thought Larson was her friend. POC say that too often white women try to latch on to them as token friends. My *guess* is that Dorland was really trying to latch on to Larson and friends for the writing community, and race didn't have anything to do with it. But, lots of women of color can't get past the fact that Dorland thought she was Larson's friend, and ignored the part where Larson egged Dorland on because it's not the POC's responsibility - or she would be subject to white women tears.

Race issue #2: Larson wrote the piece with a white-savior character, which means that presumably she thought Dorland was racist, either knowingly or not. Obviously all white women have this issue as we learn about our privilege and what aggressions or microaggressions we have blatantly or inadvertently committed. Many people assume that Dorland went after Larson due to this characterization. To many on Team Larson, this is not her motivation due to the timeline. Also, Dorland expressed being an outsider - and she was very outside of this group, which she realized and confronted them about, and for many people reading this that fact motivated her.

Race issue #3: Dorland's pursuing this is an attempt to take down a minority writer, which is bad and outright racist. But, many people looking at it with the plagiarism at the forefront have said she behaved exactly as someone being gaslighted behaves. That assumes that she is not doing it due to Larson's race, but that it's an emotional reaction.

Another interesting facet of this being called a race issue is that many people on Twitter are bemoaning the fact that white women are piling on this angle, which the very act of is that placating, or playing, of women of color. It's just virtue signaling. Again, can you untangle that from the fact that we're talking about a very exclusive writing community. You're either in or your out. That really seems to be at the heart of it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

shan1212 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 can give Imani a pass because Sonya purposely framed it as a white woman oppressing a WOC; she has a right to be triggered by that. Should she do more research? Sure, but anyone can say anything on Twitter. I stopped following her because she tweets so much, lol. She has over half a million tweets! So I didn't see this.

No, I don't give people a pass for actively ignoring new information because it doesn't suit their narrative

+1 These are writers for goodness sake. They are supposed to research, not offer blind support. I really think it messes with their credibility.

It seems like there are several race related issues here, that are being conflated, and are also obscuring the real issue for many people: the plagiarism. (And, for many the lying, gaslighting, backstabbing on top of it.)

Race issue #1: Dorland thought Larson was her friend. POC say that too often white women try to latch on to them as token friends. My *guess* is that Dorland was really trying to latch on to Larson and friends for the writing community, and race didn't have anything to do with it. But, lots of women of color can't get past the fact that Dorland thought she was Larson's friend, and ignored the part where Larson egged Dorland on because it's not the POC's responsibility - or she would be subject to white women tears.

Race issue #2: Larson wrote the piece with a white-savior character, which means that presumably she thought Dorland was racist, either knowingly or not. Obviously all white women have this issue as we learn about our privilege and what aggressions or microaggressions we have blatantly or inadvertently committed. Many people assume that Dorland went after Larson due to this characterization. To many on Team Larson, this is not her motivation due to the timeline. Also, Dorland expressed being an outsider - and she was very outside of this group, which she realized and confronted them about, and for many people reading this that fact motivated her.

Race issue #3: Dorland's pursuing this is an attempt to take down a minority writer, which is bad and outright racist. But, many people looking at it with the plagiarism at the forefront have said she behaved exactly as someone being gaslighted behaves. That assumes that she is not doing it due to Larson's race, but that it's an emotional reaction.

Another interesting facet of this being called a race issue is that many people on Twitter are bemoaning the fact that white women are piling on this angle, which the very act of is that placating, or playing, of women of color. It's just virtue signaling. Again, can you untangle that from the fact that we're talking about a very exclusive writing community. You're either in or your out. That really seems to be at the heart of it all.

Also, if you don't want her to be your friend, don't lie to her and call her your friend???? It's clear from the correspondences that Sonya totally, unforgivably led her on. She was effusive in her communiques with her (that we see), literally using the word friend and friendship multiple times, calling her my dear, praising her, telling her to trust her. That's just straight-up duplicitous behavior. You can reject someone's friendship or advances gracefully and non-controversially. This clearly did not happen here.

Did none of these people go through the phase in high school where being labeled fake was no joke the worst insult ever?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Exactly. And I think it's worth mentioning that Sonya Larson is half-white, half-Asian. She is just as much a "white woman" as she is an Asian-American, and I say that graciously and without malice -- multiracial people have a right to totally own both parts of their identities. What's telling is that she also wrote a short story before this called "Gabe Dove" where she basically dances around the trope of finding Asian-American men unattractive, which is such a low blow and such a boring cliche at this point. (I am Asian-American, so this particular line of thinking particularly irks me). Why is it that so often, the Asian-Americans who dominate the discourse around the Asian-American experience happen to be Asian-American women with profound proximity to whiteness? It's just another whole layer of this saga that has really, really rubbed me in the wrong way. Both Larson and Ng are deeply, deeply privileged by being Asian-American women who surround themselves with white people, have (presumably) married white spouses, and have always found themselves in white spaces. I really don't mean to discredit their experiences or to downplay what it's like to grow up different in predominantly white communities (trust me, I've been there), but it's weird to see women like them continually own and dominate narratives around the Asian-American experience. And then to see them weaponize their identity in this whole conversation leaves me deeply disturbed.

Sorry. I know this is a tangent at this point.

If you read Joshua Luna's Twitter feed, he talks about Celeste Ng's proximity to anti-Asian male stereotypes, while at the same time observing that she's been victimized as well.

[Anonymous]

I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Completely agree that this has been a great discussion with a lot of unusually thoughtful posts. I’ll add that the professional writers on here seem a lot more self-aware than the those in the Grub Street clique.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Uh oh, now you are going to be the subject of the side group chat we have going. Also, I might steal your post and make it the subject of my short story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Completely agree that this has been a great discussion with a lot of unusually thoughtful posts. I’ll add that the professional writers on here seem a lot more self-aware than the those in the Grub Street clique.

I also agree but this it's largely in part due to the fact the The Chunky Monkeys look so terrible in the discovery documents that it's hard for people to argue anything otherwise

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Uh oh, now you are going to be the subject of the side group chat we have going. Also, I might steal your post and make it the subject of my short story.

Will you give me an “F” as a middle initial?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

This whole thread has actually inspired me to start writing fiction again. I loved to write creatively in another life and I feel like sharpening some pencils again. Dawn is kind of cringey but I totally identify with her and being on the short end of the mean girl dynamic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

This whole thread has actually inspired me to start writing fiction again. I loved to write creatively in another life and I feel like sharpening some pencils again. Dawn is kind of cringey but I totally identify with her and being on the short end of the mean girl dynamic.

Oh gd yes it's part of why this is all so engrossing. Because you're either Sonya or Dawn - or Celeste, in which case you peaced out about 10 minutes after the piece came out because who cares, we never even liked Dawn, she wasn't our friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

This whole thread has actually inspired me to start writing fiction again. I loved to write creatively in another life and I feel like sharpening some pencils again. Dawn is kind of cringey but I totally identify with her and being on the short end of the mean girl dynamic.

Oh gd yes it's part of why this is all so engrossing. Because you're either Sonya or Dawn - or Celeste, in which case you peaced out about 10 minutes after the piece came out because who cares, we never even liked Dawn, she wasn't our friend.

There is some truth to this. And can I say that I think more people should be thinking about how they are Celeste in their own lives. The friend who loves to gossip, eggs on petty hatred and jealousies (and yes, Larson was jealous of Dorland and she ought to ask herself why), who give terrible advice because it’s easier than being thoughtful or telling a friend who is going down the wrong path to hold up.

You might think “whatever, it’s harmless gossip, who cares.” But if there was ever a story that illustrated very clearly why this kind of mean girl gossiping is NOT harmless, it’s this one. It’s not just that it hurts others. It hurts the gossipers too. It makes them dumb, obliterates objectivity. It’s a really, really bad habit that gets treated as benign. It’s not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Uh oh, now you are going to be the subject of the side group chat we have going. Also, I might steal your post and make it the subject of my short story.

Will you give me an “F” as a middle initial?

Done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

This whole thread has actually inspired me to start writing fiction again. I loved to write creatively in another life and I feel like sharpening some pencils again. Dawn is kind of cringey but I totally identify with her and being on the short end of the mean girl dynamic.

Oh gd yes it's part of why this is all so engrossing. Because you're either Sonya or Dawn - or Celeste, in which case you peaced out about 10 minutes after the piece came out because who cares, we never even liked Dawn, she wasn't our friend.

I can admit that I have been a Sonya and Dawn and was briefly taken in by a Celeste. This story reminds me to check my dark impulses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mean to be the over-earnest cringey character here - but can I just say how much I appreciate the conversation we've managed to have here about this?

It's been intense and deep but not mean or attacky. This feels like DCUM at its best.

I hope I didn't ruin it by saying that.

Completely agree that this has been a great discussion with a lot of unusually thoughtful posts. I’ll add that the professional writers on here seem a lot more self-aware than the those in the Grub Street clique.

I also agree but this it's largely in part due to the fact the The Chunky Monkeys look so terrible in the discovery documents that it's hard for people to argue anything otherwise

That hasn't stopped the quite toxic Twitter discussion, though. There is a world where as far as I can tell, those documents don't exist.or are very minimized.