It’s amazing to me that people can look at me...criticizing a book... and say, “just like Mao.” Because yeah, that’s what Mao was known for. Criticizing books.
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But they look at people who literally filed a complaint with an organization with actual institutional power, which then took action to silence me and sent out a notice to its members saying that THEY needed to be silent. And that doesn’t even ping on their radar.
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By the way, people who keep claiming that Kathryn Lynn Davis’s book was historically accurate need to put up or shut up. KLD’s book described Chinese female oppression as women having to serve their husbands after marriage. Sorry, this is entirely Western.
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She could have made it sound more historically accurate to then-China by mentioning something like mother-in-laws—or making reference to the fact that China doesn’t follow a modern nuclear family. She could have mentioned first wives or concubines.
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She didn’t. If you go back to the original thread, you’ll notice I never said that Chinese women weren’t *oppressed*. I said they weren’t *submissive.* Huge difference there. Thanks.
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Once they realize the Mao comparison is inaccurate, I’m sure they’ll go back to Genghis Khan, the only other Chinese historical figure they’ve ever heard of.
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Criticism is part of free speech, assholes. Squelching criticism is not. Look at which side asked for institutional support in silencing someone else, and look at which side just...criticized. This one is pretty clear.
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In any event, please PLEASE take note of how WEIRD it is that numerous accounts are all coming up with the same baffling “Chinese person talking about racism is actually trying to oppress us all with Chinese Communist rule” story. It’s coming from somewhere.
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That somewhere is, in large part, racism. But it’s part of a narrative that is beginning to surface. That narrative is going to be louder in the next handful of years, because the white supremacists are going to try to divide us off, one by one.
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And I promise you if we don’t fight this shit NOW and call it out for what it is, things are going to get a lot more fascist for a lot more people.
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Some day, I will tell you the story of my great-grandmother, and you’ll understand why it offends the living shit out of me to be told she was submissive. She was oppressed. She wasn’t submissive.
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In any event, what happened here was that I said something on Twitter about a book and then two white women went and told a lie about how they were damaged to another white woman, who apparently encouraged them to file an ethics complaint about me.
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The organization they filed the ethics complaint with then created a shadow committee, populated with new people who apparently don’t know what racism is, with a Board Liaison when there is no Board Liaison. That committee found against me on a charge based on lies.
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This was then presented to the Board in—at best—truncated form, by that same Board Liaison. As soon as the full evidence came out, more than half the Board recanted their decision and resigned.
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Since then, that organization has told people that I am actually a Bad for unrelated reasons, then that my conduct as described in the complaint was actually Bad, and then back maybe to more vague suspicions.
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If the thing you’re taking out of this entire tale is that *Courtney* is the one who is trying to take institutional power to punish her enemies? You’re a white supremacist. Thanks for telling on yourself.
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What I did when I had a *tiny modicum* of institutional power as a Board member was to work with my fellow Board members to write procedures. Anti-harassment procedures. Ethics procedures. Electronic RITA procedures.
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End of conversation
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. 羽生結弦/紀平梨花 fan account. Bad with directions. She/her.