Thousands of years of civilization, billions of lives, world wars, the great geographical discoveries, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, ancient mythology, aeronautics, the telegraph, nuclear submarines, the Internet and millions more of human achievements in their entirety and historical retrospective were needed - all this was This year, people need to understand that the most important thing is to pronounce the names of black science fiction writers correctly.
I will now bring you up to date.
There is a writer George Martin - he wrote the endless books of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, and then these books were used to make the epic "Game of Thrones".
Martin is considered one of the greatest fantasy authors alive today. There is the Hugo Award, which is awarded to science fiction writers. This year's awards ceremony took place online, and Martin hosted the ceremony. And guess what happened? Yes! He was accused of racism. Martin became a racist easily and imperceptibly. During the ceremony, he incorrectly named the nominees several times, two of them turned out to be black, and he also mispronounced the name of the thematic fantasy magazine, which, as it turned out, is published by people with dark skin. The magazine is called Fiyah and I have no idea how to pronounce it.
Grandfather, who will turn 72 in a month, made a slip, honestly trying to pronounce unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce names. That's it, racist!
Prior to that, Martin was accused of transphobia. What is transphobia anyway? If you try to take this word literally, it turns out that this is a fear of people who, for example, were men, and then became women. Agree, this is really quite unusual and even somewhat frightening. No, we are not judging anyone here, not our business. But there is a certain common sense in such fear. Why was George Martin accused of transphobia? As is now customary, the writer was accused of transphobia for the tweet. Quite witty, it should be noted. Martin wrote that the Oscar statuette may not be a man at all, because it looks more like an asexual castrated eunuch. Oh, you couldn't see the genitals of the symbolic figurine? Transphobic! Whatever that means!
Earlier, Martin's colleague, the author of a series of books about Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, was accused of transphobia. It's still sadder and more ridiculous there. Rowling saw in some article the phrase - “people who have menstruation”, she threw this expression on Twitter and wrote: “But there was a word for such people. I can't remember. Something like the word "woman".
And then it turned out that the very word "woman", used in relation to people who have menstruation, is offensive, since it deprives transgender people of the right to be like this. How to figure it out? How do you remember all this? And most importantly - why?
And the fact is that this poking around in terminological dandruff is becoming the main business of the once great humanity. What is important? Write books, make movies, create fantastic worlds, inspire people with your example? Not. It's all empty. It is important to pronounce the names of people with dark skin colors correctly.
What is important? Work, create, discover, study, invent, educate, help? Not. It is important to remember that menstruation, it turns out, happens not only among women, but forget the very word "woman", because it clearly emits the most terrible sin of our time - transphobia.
George Martin, like his predecessor John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, wrote all his books about only one thing - the world is infinitely diverse, complex and beautiful. In this world there is a place for absolutely any form of life and any kind of coexistence. There are people in the world with any skin color. There are pirates and smugglers, there are fat kings and vile ministers, there are incestuous royal persons, there are jovial southerners and restrained northerners, there are giants on mammoths, and there are freedom-loving nomads. The whole essence of the world lies in the fact that anything in the world is possible at all. This is being - all-pervading life as a key phenomenon that fills space.
And now it turns out that a person who has consistently demonstrated the highest forms of diversity to people all his life is a racist and transphobic, because he does not always succeed in pronouncing the letters in some words correctly.
Among the sites that specialized in fan content dedicated to the work of J.K. Rowling, an agreement has already been reached - not to write anything more about the work and personal life of the writer. You see, she is transphobic (remember, because I wrote the word "woman"), which means that she needs to be deleted from modern culture. And no achievements here can serve as an excuse - she did not understand the main thing: it is not achievements that are important, what is important is the terminology that new rulers of public life come up with on the go. Transgender people, intersex people and other minorities whose purpose in life is to feel oppressed and tell everyone about it all the time.
And George Martin will be erased from culture too. The old man will not master this terminology, and if he remembers something, he will not pronounce it later. With such a hassle you will not end up. It is better to immediately label him as a racist - no one has been able to wash it off, this is forever. Called a racist - consider yourself cursed in your own saga, where curses work.
Before that, as you know, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was cursed in the same way - he, it turns out, was also a racist. Apparently, he didn’t mess around all day with a banner on the street, but wrote books - and was also white. By modern times and by the standards of Western culture - pure racism.
All the great science fiction writers were engaged in expanding the worlds to infinity and inhabiting this infinity with ideas and phenomena.
The world today only strives for simplification. People who cherish their oppression do not need real complexity, their coordinate system is limited to one straight line, on which everyone who does not kneel before them needs to be strung.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.