Holy mother of God *is horrified*

[elspethdixon]

Oh my God, every time I wincingly look back at the ongoing Cultural Appropriation bitchfight of doom, it gets worse. I'm not otherwise going to get involved, but here, I just couldn't help myself.

So, for those, like me, who hadn't seen or heard about Teresa Hayden's post wherein she expresses her anger over people badmouthing her husband (at least, that's what I assume she was doing from the descriptions - I haven't read any of the stuff involving him, either, but apparently he said things that offended people, refused to appologize when called on it, and then deleted his journal because people were yelling at him): Holy fuck, she calls fans of color and those who support them nithings.

In terms of offensiveness, as a former student of old English? Fuck, people, that's, well, not as horrible as the other n-word (which, please God, I hope no one's actually said), but it's pretty god-awful. Like, enough that I was reduced to staring at my computer screen in horror.

She has basically stated that all the people who disagree with her husband (including but not limited to, fans of color) are hateful, malicious, deformed, insane, sexually deviant, possibly cannablistic, sub-human or less-than human things. Because that's what that word means. It means monster. It means Not-a-Person. It means Grendal in Beowulf, the Ring-Wraiths in LotR, the in-bred, cannabalistic degenerate monsters in Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear."

That's what she's saying fans of color are. Maybe she doesn't really know what the word means and implies, but even if she just thinks it's an old spelling of "nothing" that would be offensive all on it's own.

And to think I used to respect her so much...

ETA: Apparently, there are differences between the Old Norse and Old English definitions, with the Norse one being a far worse insult and the Anglo-Saxon version being a little less on the digusting monster side and more on the outlaw side (see the discussion of several people with more expert knowledge than me in comments). Both versions are still insults, though.

Comments

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this - I didn't realise the depth of the insult. The sheer vindictiveness (not to mention threats) has really shocked me.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I know - I was/am appalled. I don't agree 100% with all the criticisms of Elizabeth Bear or others involved in this whole thing, but insisting that people out themselves and threatening to make sure they're never published ( I swear that's in there somwhere, or maybe that's just the way I interpreted her "shut up or else" message) takes the entire thing beyond acting like a brat on the internet and into real world consequences. It's bullying in its purest form, and considering the context and whom she's directing it at, it looks an awful lot like racist bullying.

ETA: No, let me rephrase that. It doesn't "look like" racist bullying. It is racist bullying. Directed at people she's openly dismissed as worthless.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

I've seen others translating it to mean "outlaw/outcast," and from tnh's other comments it seems she wants it to mean some combination of "evil lying mob-member" and "person I'm going to snub at parties." What she wants us to act like she's saying vs. what she's actually saying, of course, is the heart of the problem.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

'Evil, lying mob member' is bad enough all on its own, honestly.

The whole post would be shocking even sans insults, just for the threatening element. Threatening + horrible insults is just the icing on the cake.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

The term niding/nithing basically meant someone who was completely without the law, rejected by society to the point where killing them carried no punishment. Needless to say one didn't become niding unless one had committed some fairly grisly and cowardly crimes to start with.

[elf]

It means "outlaw" in the old sense of "our laws do not apply to you," including laws like "don't kill this person." It has additional meanings of "decent folk should kill this person on sight, so they stop using up our good air."

It doesn't mean "vile person." It means "the entities that vile persons can feel good about despising, because they're at least human, and these aren't. And not like bugs or trees aren't human... like cesspits aren't human; like diseases aren't human."

I posted about it at InsaneJournal.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I've been doing a lot of silent listening and thinking through this whole thing (mostly because I'm not confident I won't make it worse) but yeah, when I got to that point in her post, I just had to stop and ask "Did she *really* say that?"

Did she really think that bringing in slurs for underclasses from *other* languages would be helpful in any way?

I hadn't remembered just how awful it was until I looked it up more context just now, but just the suffix -ing ought to be enough to tell you it's an insult based on membership in a cultural (sub)group, which is just exactly on the nose for a privilege discussion.

And omg. Yes! Let's use one of the three homophobic insults that's bad enough to give you the legal right to kill the user! That will calm things down!

(Who thought this debate would come around to the point where "Let Us Explain To Ya'll About Anglo-Saxon Culture" would actually be relevant. sigh.)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Yes! Let's use one of the three homophobic insults that's bad enough to give you the legal right to kill the user! That will calm things down!

I know. Just because it's an archaic term no one uses anymore doesn't mean it's any les insulting than just saying "monsters" or "worthless people" would have been. Plus, this is fandom. If you use an arcane piece of terminology, someone in your audience is going to know exactly what it means, probably in better detail than you do (I just know it's a horrible insult, but I bet there's someone out there on LJ who could write a whole essay on ancient Germanic and Nordic culture and linguistics if asked for a definition).

Who thought this debate would come around to the point where "Let Us Explain To Ya'll About Anglo-Saxon Culture" would actually be relevant. sigh.

Usually it's a digression on how Irish-Americans should count as an oppressed minority, or how X piece of Northern European cultural background means that [thing that offends people] isn't actually offensive (like, "the kelpie's human form is black because he's a kelpie, which anyone who knew celtic folklore would know, so there are totally No Racial Implications At All"). This time, historical context just makes it worse (as in the HP miscegenation wank).

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

apparently he said things that offended people, refused to appologize when called on it, and then deleted his journal because people were yelling at him

To be fair to him, he said things that offended people in response to a Cryptic Non-Specific Post Regarding Unspecific Stupid Mean People (oh my GOD, one of my major pet peeves during kerfuffles are the Cryptic Non-Specific Posts Regarding Unspecific Stupid Mean People, I *hate* them).

Of course, that's no excuse for not modifying, retracting and/or apologizing for his comments when people tried to point out, "Um, you do realize that in context, 'Unspecific Stupid Mean People' = PoC who are attempting to discuss race-related issues, right..."

Oh, and the other hilariously horrifying antique insult that TNH called her critics was "draggle-tailed," which means an untidy slut. So she actually covered both the racist *and* the sexist axes, just like mac-stone with her "blog-whoring" and "orcing." Nice job there!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

oh my GOD, one of my major pet peeves during kerfuffles are the Cryptic Non-Specific Posts Regarding Unspecific Stupid Mean People

I generally get the distinct feeling that you (or at least, the poster's flist) are supposed to know exactly who the poster is angry at, but that they're being coy about it to avoid wank and/or give themselves plausible deniability if someone objects ("Of course, when I said, 'Someone out there on lj is stupid and mean. I won't say who, but you know who you are, stupid mean person!' I didn't mean you.").

My first encounter with it was a classmate in an undergraduate creative writing workshop who turned in a poem for group critique that criticized an unspecified fellow classmate or classmates for not taking the class seriously enough/offering bad critique/being a bitch. I distinctly remember thinking "If you have such a problem with this person, why don't you talk to them about it or mention your concerns to the professor? Instead of, you know, trying to guilt trip the entire class by announcing "I think one of you is so bad in workshop that you deserve to fail, but I won't say which."

the other hilariously horrifying antique insult that TNH called her critics was "draggle-tailed," which means an untidy slut. So she actually covered both the racist *and* the sexist axes, just like mac-stone with her "blog-whoring" and "orcing."

See, "draggle-tailed" just made me snicker (who talks like that outside of an 18th/19th century novel?) though, now that I think about it, in addition to sounding ridiculous, it also sounds dismissive and demeaning.

mac-stone is the origin of the "orcing" term? What is that word even supposed to mean? (I haven't read her original post - it was flocked or deleted or made inacessible somehow before I could). Is it like trolling, but in hordes, with the implication that everyone in said horde is dark-skinned like the Uruk-Hai?*

* which is actually something that bugged me during the LotR movies. Orcs are made from debased and twisted elves, so shouldn't they be pale the way elves are? The Mordor orcs are kind of blue-green, which works pretty well for me, but the Uruk-Hai combine blue-green orcs with men whom I'm assuming are also pale skinned, since everyone in the West is, so why aren't they blue-green? This may be a sign that I put far too much thought into those movies.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

>(just like mac-stone with her "blog-whoring" and "orcing." Nice job there!)<

I've had it in my head that that particular bit of fail came from Medievalist's head?

[tavella.livejournal.com]

She's been behaving pretty abominably, yeah. I thought it was very telling that spiralsheep's scrupulously polite postings were deleted and she was banned, as were many others that dissented courteously
(or bluntly, in my case), while darkerblogistan was allowed to post things about "PoC Scum" unmolested and is still free to post on her journal.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Deleting dissenting comments seems to in general be a good signpost for when someone has started behaving badly, in that it seems to happen eventually in almost every bitter online debate, regardless of topic (i.e. from discussions of things with serious real word implications, like this one, to radical feminist criticism/wank over Joss Whedon, to ship wars), often from someone who's losing the argument.

If I ever host a bitter comics-canon fight on my lj again (or any other very contentious discussion), and for some reason decide it would be a good idea to delete comments that disagree with me/my friends/whatever (outside of someone asking me to remove x comment containing y piece of personal info or whatever), I hope someone calls me on it.

[axolotl-lan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is fandom killing.... seriously. I was semi curious because I recognized some of the names from lurking in various places and then wow. <3 I hope it resolves alright for you as a follower of this. (I was curious about the specificity of the fandom though- I am fairly sure I get what it is from the names I am seeing but was curious)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Kind of general SF fandom, not actually a fandom for a specific book or series - many of the people involved in the whole thing were/are published authors and professional editors.

I'm not directly involved at all - I've been kind of reading along as the thing snowballs, occasionally doing "ZOMG, s/he said WHAT" double-takes, because it's been very educational. I'm still learning an awful lot about priviledge/cultural appropriation/racism vs. opression vs. prejudice/etc.

I used to get very irritated by these debates (fandom is my happy place, vital to my mental health, and I hated having it turned into something not fun), but this fall watching a lot of people respond to Proposition 8 in California - I realized that everyone who critized protests of it or opposition to it or gay rights or gay marriage in general used *every single tactic* that Fans of Color and allies in fandom have been calling people on for years. If it was on a bingo card, someone was out there saying/doing it. It's hard to escape seeing how cruel/offensive those rhetorical tactics actually are when they're being directed at you, and to draw a clumsy parallel, I really don't want to find myself being the fannish equivalent of the Mormons anymore.

[ymfaery]

You'd think alleged professionals like Teresa and her husband would know by now to not post things while angry, but apparently not. Or maybe they don't really care about their on-line image anymore.

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I'm a native speaker of a Scandinavian langauge, and I was rather stunned by her usage of 'nithing.' It is not part of contemporary language but 'nidingsdåd' (nithing deed) remains part of everyday parlance. Also, from what I've seen, Theresa is rather fluent in Old and Middle English, so she would know the meanings of the word.

nidingsdåd

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

That's a really cool fact to know. Thank you.

[helens78]

You know, I was honestly afraid of something like that, but wasn't willing to look it up because she was making herself look like enough of an ass as it was. But that? That's horrible.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I've read Beowulf. I've studied Beowulf. I knew what she meant.

And I'm grateful that TNH revealed herself so eloquently. TNH is why I don't believe that prejudice and racism can be ascribed to ignorance. Pardon me, to be clearer, the likes of TNH are why I don't believe that prejudice and racism spring from ignorance.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

This is fandom, where obscure knowledge is a way of life. The chances that some of the people she was insulting would know *exactly* what she meant are pretty much 100%. I would bet money that at least one fan involved in this debate speaks/reads Old English fluently, and I doubt I'd lose said money.

So I'm wondering if she intended for people to get exactly what she was saying, or if she assumed it was an obscure enough term that the people she was insulting wouldn't know it (nevermind that some of those people have advanced degrees in the humanities).

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

I really would advise everyone to calm down and check your facts. "Nithing" merely means a person whose actions have made them an outlaw. It has nothing to do with monsters, sexually inclined or otherwise.

Likewise, "draggle-tailed" merely means untidy it's an adjective, not a noun and has never been a term exclusive to women, nor does any meaningful definition of it include the word "slut".

Maybe, if people can stop becoming hysterical over words they don't fully understand, this discussion could leave the realms of playground bullying and tackle some of the issues that all the drama queens pretend to care so much about.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

OED: "[a] draggle-tailed person; a woman whose skirts are wet and draggled, or whose dress hangs about her untidily and dirty; a slut"

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang: "draggle-tail n. 1 a prostitute, thus draggletailed, draggled, promiscuous, a general abusive term."

Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: "DRAGGLETAIL or DAGGLETAIL. One whose garments are bespattered with dag or dew: generally applied to the female sex, to signify a slattern."

I think it's pretty clear who "fully understands" the words involved.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I found this via rydra_wong's links. As a current professor of Old English, I was very interested to see what you did with the word.

I don't know what Teresa Hayden thinks the word means. I don't know if Tolkien used it, or Lovecraft. You are mistaken about the Old English, however.

In Old English, "niðing" or "niþing" means "a villain, one who commits a vile action" (Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary). I looked it up in the Old English Corpus, and these are the only results (the Corpus contains almost all extant Old English):

LawWal B14.37 [Roughly: Law about Plundering the Slain]
1. [0001 (1)] Walreaf is niðinges dæde: gif hwa ofsacen wille, do þæt mid eahta & feowertig fulborenra þegena.
[My trans: "Robbing the slain [see Bosworth-Toller again] is a villain's deed: if one wants to exculpate oneself, one does that with 48 full-born thegns" as oath-supporters--taking "þegena" for "begena," as Bosworth-Toller does.]

ChronC (O'Brien O'Keeffe) B17.7 [The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS C]
1. [078310] & se cing þa & eall here cwædon Swegen for niðing; VIII scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn amyrðrode, syððan hine forleton ealle butan II, & he gewende þa to Bricge & þar wunode mid Baldwine.
["And the king then and all the army called Swegen a villain:He had eight ships before he murdered Beorn; afterwards they all left him except two, and he went then to Bridge(?) and lived there with Baldwine."]

The Oxford English Dictionary says: " 1. A coward, a villain; a person who breaks the law or a code of honour; an outlaw."

The word is never used of Grendel. It comes from the root "nið," meaning "hatred" or "enmity." I am in no way defending Teresa Hayden; I think what she said is quite bad enough, and what I've seen of the exchange hardly merits calling the respondents to her husband "villians" or putting them in the same category as those who plunder the dead or murderers! However, the word is not Old English for subhuman or sexually deviant; it's not associated with cannibals there either.

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Nice to see someone who knows what they're talking about.

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I've friended you, btw - anyone who appreciates both Johnny Depp and St. Augustine (and why are there no St. Augustine references, so far as I remember, in Ninth Gate? then one could have combined those interests) is someone I'm likely to enjoy reading...

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

*waves hello* Most of my posts involve comicbooks at the moment, with occasional detours into my apartment and my cat.

The book version of the Ninth gate, the Club Dumas, is actually even better - no St. Augastine, but an awful lot of Three Musketeers.

[mofic.livejournal.com]

I had assumed she meant to write "nothing" and it was just a typo...

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Somebody (can't remember where I saw this, sorry!) stated that they'd seen TNH use "nithing" before, and that she evidently didn't make a typo.

[cleo]

Interesting discussion here. I have been keeping up with most of this since the flurry of posts after Elizabeth Bear's. But this hooked me with the OE, as I am a former student of OE myself. The discussion that's come out of this has definitely been interesting, but I think it's safe to say that TNH knows and is implying the subtler shades of meaning of the word.