The Science Fiction Culture War Of

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KREITER, MICHAEL P., Ph.D., May 2021 SOCIOLOGY

"THERE WILL BE NO RECONCILIATION": THE SCIENCE FICTION CULTURE WAR

OF WHITE SUPREMACIST PUPPIES (170 PP.)

Dissertation Advisor: Tiffany Taylor

By analyzing the discourse of Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, this research shows how an ideology of white supremacy is emerging from the contradictions inherent in colorblind racism.

The Sad Puppies are a group of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) fans and writers that formed in online spaces to actively challenge the recent trend in SFF genres of being more inclusive and increasing the diversity of writers and characters. They adhere to the abstract liberalism frame of colorblind racism that asserts that there is no systemic inequality, and that outcomes (like earning literary awards) are the result of individual effort and nothing more. To this end, they see efforts to increase diversity as antithetical to the abstract liberalism frame, as a form of unjust

“affirmative action,” which hurts writers like white men precisely because they cannot claim to be “victims.” They employ a variety of discursive strategies to legitimize this political viewpoint, while simultaneously delegitimizing opposing viewpoints that they lump into one all- encompassing group they call “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs). The success of writers like N.

K. Jemisin, the first Black author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, can be used by colorblind frames to point to the legitimacy of the ostensibly meritocratic colorblind system. Yet, at the same time, colorblind ideology is simply a justification for the existing racial hierarchy, and Black success is a direct challenge to this hierarchy. The Rabid Puppies emerged shortly after the formation of the Sad Puppies, and they thrive in this contradiction. They shed the colorblind ideology in favor of explicitly white supremacist rhetoric. "THERE WILL BE NO RECONCILIATION": THE SCIENCE FICTION CULTURE WAR

OF WHITE SUPREMACIST PUPPIES

A dissertation submitted

To Kent State University in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Michael P. Kreiter

May 2021

Except for previously published materials Dissertation written by

Michael P. Kreiter

B.A., Boise State University, 2014

B.S., Boise State University, 2014

M.A., Kent State University, 2017

Ph.D., Kent State University, 2021

Approved by

Tiffany Taylor , Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Kamesha Spates , Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Katrina Bloch

Kathryn Feltey

Patricia Dunmire

Landon Hancock

Accepted by

Richard Adams , Chair, Department of Sociology

Mandy Munro-Stasiuk , Interim Dean, college of Arts and Science TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii

LIST OF TABLES ...... ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... x

I INTRODUCING THE SAD PUPPIES ...... 1

THE ILLS OF MESSAGE FICTION ...... 5

THE POPULAR CULTURE OF SFF ...... 6

THEORETICAL LENSES ...... 7

STRUCTURATION ...... 7

(DE)LEGITIMATION AND KNOWLEDGE ...... 9

COLORBLINDNESS ...... 16

FRAGILITY ...... 19

RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 23

OVERALL METHODS...... 24

Data Collection ...... 24

Positionality Statement ...... 28

Limitations ...... 28

ANALYSIS AND CHAPTER OVERVIEW...... 29

REFERENCES ...... 32

II POP CULTURE AND OPPRESSION: THE COLORBLIND RACISM OF THE SAD

PUPPIES ...... 41

iv RACIALIZED SOCIETY AND IDEOLOGY ...... 43

EMERGENCE OF COLORBLIND IDEOLOGY...... 45

FRAMES OF COLORBLIND RACISM ...... 46

OPPRESSION-BLIND RHETORIC ...... 49

INTERSECTIONALITY ...... 50

METHODS ...... 51

RESULTS ...... 52

Abstract liberalism ...... 53

Minimization ...... 57

Culturalist Frame ...... 61

Naturalization ...... 65

DISCUSSION ...... 69

CONCLUSION ...... 73

REFRENCES ...... 76

III DELEGITIMIZING SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS THROUGH SAD PUPPY

RHETORIC...... 84

Cultural Knowledge and Ideology ...... 85

Legitimation ...... 86

System of Meaning Making ...... 88

“Knowledge” is Power ...... 89

Methods...... 92

Critical Qualitative Content Analysis ...... 92

Data Collection ...... 94

Coding ...... 95

Analysis...... 96

Us versus Them: SJWs as Oppressors of Sad Puppies ...... 97

The Rationality of Sad Puppies versus the Irrational SJWs ...... 102

Civil Sad Puppies versus the Uncivil SJWs ...... 105

Discussion ...... 108

Conclusion ...... 109

REFERENCES ...... 111

IV THE WHITE MAN VICTIMHOOD OF THE RABID PUPPIES: CONNECTING THE

ONLINE CULTURE WARS TO ALT-RIGHT EXTREMISM IN SCI-FI FANDOM . 116

HATE GROUPS AND EXTREMIST IDEOLOGY ...... 118

WHITE INJURY IDEOLOGY ...... 120

THE CULTURE WAR ...... 121

CULTURE WARS IN POPULAR CULTURE ...... 123

METHODS ...... 126

Defining & Studying Pop Culture...... 126

Data collection ...... 127

Critical Qualitative Content Analysis ...... 128

Coding ...... 130

EXTREMISM OF THE RABID PUPPIES – WHITE SUPREMACY ...... 130

A WHITE VICTIMHOOD CULTURE WAR ...... 137

TOTALITARIAN SJWS - THE PRIVILEGES OF “VICTIMHOOD” ...... 141

CONCLUSION ...... 144

REFERENCES ...... 147

V SUMMARY OF RESEARCH: REFLECTING ON THE TRANSITION FROM

COLORBLIND RACISM TO WHITE SUPREMACY ...... 155

RESEARCH FINDINGS ...... 157

Chapter 2: Pop Culture and Oppression: The Colorblind Racism of The Sad

Puppies ...... 157

Chapter 3: Delegitimizing Social Justice Warriors Though Sad Puppy Rhetoric

...... 158

Chapter 4: The White Man Victimhood of the Rabid Puppies: Connecting the

Online Culture Wars to Alt-Right Extremism in Sci-Fi Fandom ...... 160

THE IMPORTANCE OF SAD AND RABID PUPPY RHETORIC ...... 161

IMPLICATIONS ...... 162

FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 165

REFERENCES ...... 168

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Gender of Hugo Winners for Written Fiction Categories, 2010 - 2019 ...... 2

Figure 2: Gender of Hugo Finalists for Written Fiction Categories, 2010 - 2019 ...... 3

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Gender Breakdown of Blog Posts...... 26

Table 2: Blog Post Author Demographic Data ...... 27

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to make several acknowledgments to the people who have helped me with this

dissertation, and without whom I could not have finished this project. First, thank you to my committee. I appreciate the feedback you gave me after the prospectus and tips and advice that

many of you have given me throughout my time in graduate school. I would especially like to

thank Dr. Tiffany Taylor, chair, and Dr. Kathryn Feltey for giving so much of their personal time

to read multiple drafts of this dissertation and give me so much useful feedback. I again want to

thank Dr. Tiffany Taylor for taking me on as an advisee. I could not have finished graduate

school without her insightful and friendly mentorship. I also want to thank all of Dr. Taylor’s

other graduate mentees who have built such a collaborative community. You have given me so

much encouragement. Another thankyou belongs to Dr. Arthur Scarritt, who first introduced me

to sociology during my undergraduate years and helped me transform from college dropout to a

successful graduate student. I also want to thank my family. Thank you to my parents and

brother for giving me a loving family and the support I needed to attend graduate school. Finally,

I want to give my biggest thank you to my wife and best friend, Stacy Kreiter, who gave me

encouragement, who supported our family while I was in graduate school, and who watched our two beautiful children during times when I needed to write. Thank you! I could not have done this without any of you!

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCING THE SAD PUPPIES

In 2015, a group known as the Sad Puppies gained viral fame due to their organizing, which drastically affected the works of fiction that were on the final ballot for the prestigious science fiction and fantasy (SFF) award – the Hugo Award. “Puppygate,” as it came to be known, revealed a growing rift in SFF fandom about the role of politics in the genre and the legitimacy of awards. According to Ben, a Sad Puppy man:

The Hugos (and the Nebulas too) have lost cachet, because at the same time SF/F has

exploded popularly — with larger-than-life, exciting, entertaining franchises and

products — the voting body of “fandom” have tended to go in the opposite direction:

niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what

might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun. The kind of child-like

enjoyment that comes easily and naturally when you don’t have to crawl so far into your

brain (or your navel) that you lose sight of the forest for the trees. (Ben, 2015)

The Hugo Awards are given to works of speculative fiction in the genres of science fiction and fantasy based on two rounds of voting among members of Worldcon, the annual conference that began in 1953. There are no guidelines on what qualifies a work for the Hugo other than being written in English and published in the previous year. Early winners were overwhelmingly white men. Recent winners represent a marginally more diverse group of

1 creators, including women and people of color. In the 66 years of awards between 1953 and 2019

(none given in 1954), there were only three years in which only one man was among the finalists, and no years without men among the finalists for the category of Best Novel.

Conversely, there were 42 years in which women were limited to zero or one finalists for Best

Novel (Nicoll 2019). Only in the last few years have women been heavily represented among

Hugo winners in the categories of written fiction.

Figure 1: Gender of Hugo Winners for Written Fiction Categories, 2010 - 2019

Source: Morgan, Cheryl. 2020. “The Decade That Women Won.” Vector: The British Science Fiction Association. Retrieved March 10, 2021 (https://vector-bsfa.com/2020/01/12/the-decade- that-women-won/).

For the years 2017 to 2019, women have won every Hugo award for a written work of fiction.

Similarly, an increasing proportion of women have been among the finalists for the same categories in recent years. Also, non-binary authors have been among the finalists since the 2015

Puppygate, which created the most man-skewed ballot of the decade.

Figure 2: Gender of Hugo Finalists for Written Fiction Categories, 2010 - 2019

Award winning works are also more diverse, featuring a vast array of narrative styles, themes of gender and race inequality, and primary characters who are not white males (Martin

2015; Oleszczuk 2017; Salter and Blodgett 2017). The most coveted award in the genre is the

Hugo for Best Novel. Of the 300 finalists between 1953 and 2015, only five have not been white, with zero winning (Brown 2015). In 2016, N. K. Jemisin made history by being the first Black woman to win the Hugo for Best Novel for her book The Fifth Season. She made history again in

2018 when she became the only author ever to win three consecutive years, one for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy (The Hugo Awards 2021).

In 2013, a published author created the Sad Puppies as a campaign to get his recent novel on that year’s ballot for Best Novel. The campaign was unsuccessful, but it did manage to bring together a subset of sci-fi fans who commiserated about the “changing taste of the voting audience for the Hugo Awards” (Oleszczuk 2017:128). He later wrote:

I started this campaign a few years ago because I believed that the awards were

politically biased, and dominated by a few insider cliques. Authors who didn’t belong to

these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned. When I said this in

public, I was called a liar, and told that the Hugos represented all of fandom and that the

awards were strictly about quality. I said that if authors with “unapproved” politics were

to get nominations, the quality of the work would be irrelevant, and the insider cliques

would do everything in their power to sabotage that person. Again, I was called a liar, so

I set out to prove my point. (Lance, 2015)

This shared dislike of voting trends grew into a cohesive movement of backlash politics over the next two years. Sad Puppies, and a later offshoot group known as the Rabid Puppies, became a movement dedicated to delegitimizing works they deemed as liberal propaganda.

Voting participation in the 2015 Hugos increased by 65 percent over previous years due mainly to the Puppies’ efforts (Stevens and Lara van der Merwe 2018). Final Hugo ballots are created from an early phase of open nominations. Recognizing comparatively low participation and scattered choices in the nomination phase, the Sad Puppies organized a bloc vote to skew the final ballots away from works by perceived “social justice warriors” (Wilson 2018). The Puppies succeeded in creating five categories with only Puppy-selected works. This drove a general participation increase in final voting. In four of the five puppy-slate categories, “no award” was the most popular choice (Stevens and Lara van der Merwe 2018). Sad Puppy campaigning fizzled out online after 2016. The voting system was changed in 2017, with the effect of undermining efforts at bloc/slate voting (World Science Fiction Society 2017). The new voting system was ratified by members of the World Science Fiction Society with a sunset clause. It will be up for a vote again in 2022.

THE ILLS OF MESSAGE FICTION

The Sad Puppies describe their mission as reorienting the genre away from “message fiction” that they claim has been forced upon readers causing decreasing sales. Samantha, a Sad Puppy woman, writes:

The problem where it specifically hits science fiction, is that when you make literature

about “the correct messages” (I don’t have it to my fingertips, but this really is a thing.

There have been any number of articles about the artist’s DUTY to promote the “right”

(left) “Messages.” Because the DUTY of the artists is to hasten the coming of Utopia.

And stuff.) you need other markers to distinguish the “good stuff.” Or in other words,

when you all are saying the same thing, we need to figure out who is saying it better.

Over the last twenty to thirty years, this has led to an elevation of purple prose and/or

bizarre faddish “markers” of “quality” which in turn have led to plummeting sales figures

and the reduction of what was once a vibrant genre to a sad little few books in bookstores

(excluding game and movie tie-ins.) Sad Puppies was an attempt to reorient the genre to

other definitions of good, removing the “must have message about bright CORRECT

future” and the “must have precious language that gets in way of sense, or in other ways

play with language to the detriment of the emotional involvement in the narrative.”

(Samantha, 2015)

In the next chapter I explore how their mission and rhetoric relies upon colorblind frameworks, which also frame their worldviews around other structures of social inequality. They enthusiastically write about the importance of their mission to challenge what they see as

“message fiction” to save not only sci-fi culture, but all culture, broadly conceived. In what

follows I discuss the importance of studying the popular culture of science fiction and fantasy,

the I describe the theoretical lenses I intend to use in my analysis.

THE POPULAR CULTURE OF SFF

Science fiction and fantasy are genres with very socially conservative roots; Sci-fi works

prominently featured the expansion of white men into space and the colonization of others and

classic fantasies frequently used the tropes of light skinned heroes/elves/(full) humans battling

dark skinned beasts/demons/orcs that thinly mask white-supremacist symbolism. However,

during the last half of the twentieth century, science fiction incorporated an increasing number of

liberatory narratives. Oleszczuk (2017) argues that “there is no other literary convention that so

boldly challenges such issues as racism, sexism, social justice, and ecological devastation” (p.

128).

Yet, this cultural change has not gone unchallenged, but rather is a source of growing

contestation in SFF fandom. Some fans argue that recent works awarded a Hugo were too

focused on themes of social justice and lost the “swashbuckling fun” so essential to ‘legitimate’

sci-fi (Oleszczuk 2017). Groups calling themselves the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies

lamented what they saw as social justice fiction being award a Hugo, which they problematize

because they assert that issues of racism and sexism have long been solved (Bechtel 2016). They

actively organized themselves to disrupt the voting process of the Hugo awards and challenge

Hugo values about what works deserve awards.

In such calls to arms, a common rhetorical device is the binary us/them categorization

(Oddo 2011). The binary of ‘inclusive we’ and ‘threatening them’ legitimizes actions taken by speakers who define us/them. However, the lack of a well-defined ‘them’ for the Sad Puppies

may lead them to develop and modify their discourse over time, in a form of “discourse-in-the-

making” (Dunmire 2009). The controversy over the Hugos cuts right to the core of issues about

who is considered legitimate and who has the power to construct reality. Ideologies legitimize

group membership and exclusion (van Dijk 1998).

THEORETICAL LENSES

To better understand this purported post-sexism and post-racial perspective of the Sad Puppies, I

will utilize a structuration (Giddens 1984) theoretical lens, which includes structural racism

(Bonilla-Silva 1997) and gender as a social structure (Risman 2004). I will also rely heavily on literature discussing legitimation (Della Fave 1980; Rojo and van Dijk 1997) and the social construction of knowledge (Berger and Luckmann 1967). Social processes of legitimation connect social structure to ideology, which, in part, affects worldviews and perceptions that are accepted as “truths” – socially constructed knowledge. Current social structures that maintain racial hierarchies utilize and reinforce ideologies of colorblindness (Bonilla-Silva 2010).

STRUCTURATION

Giddens (1984) conceptualizes a recursive model between structure and agency. Structure affects individuals’ actions, but those actions in turn have an impact on the structure. Because people can be reflexive about their motivations for actions, they can change those actions, sometimes breaking away from the influence of existing social structure, thereby altering it. Thus, it is necessary to think about structuration in the context of place and time. Giddens argues that structure also refers to the resources that agents can mobilize, thus agency is dependent upon power within the social structure.

Race is one such structure. Using a structuration model, Bonilla-Silva (1997) argues that the economic, political, social, and ideological levels of society are all “partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races” (p. 469). Racialization is not just an inert form of categorization but instead always involves the mobilization of power to place racialized groups into a social hierarchy. In defending the argument that the study of race is essential and not just a specialized form of “group-making” and “boundary construction, maintenance, and decline” (Loveman 1999:891), Bonilla-Silva argues “that after race-based structurations emerge, definite socially existing races arise, which develop distinct objective interests” (Bonilla-Silva

1999:899 emphasis in the orginal). Racialization is always a political act, inventing racial groups and placing them into a hierarchy. It is a dialectical process of creating an “other” group while implicitly creating a “same” group. Relationships between the groups are formed and molded around pragmatic group interests. Racialized meanings are attached to people of a racial group, and thus, race becomes a “real” group and identity.

After racial groups are created, race becomes an independent element of the social system. Power is unequally distributed along racialized lines, and racial contestations ensue. In this model, Racism is not a concept that refers to prejudiced ideas of individuals, rather it is the racial ideas that exist at the ideological level of a racialized social system – one that rationalizes and justifies the “social, political, and economic interactions between the races” (Bonilla-Silva

1997:494). This ideology then mediates between racialized social structures and social interactions as culturally held understandings.

Like race, gender is socially constructed. Gender can likewise be theorized using the structuration model that places cultural understandings into a causal relationship. Risman (2004) argues that gender is a social structure. She uses a similar framework as Lorber (1994) and

Martin (2004), who both argue that gender is an institution that is “embedded not only in

individuals but throughout social life” (Risman 2004:431). Operating from an institutional level,

gender “establishes patterns of expectations for individuals, orders the social processes of

everyday life, is built into the major social organizations of society, such as the economy,

ideology, the family, and politics, and is also an entity in and of itself” (Lorber 1994:1). These

gendered norms and expectations affect interaction. Risman (2004) prefers the concept of structure over institution in order to highlight that gender is more than just one aspect of social life, it is a part of all social life. She draws heavily from Giddens’ (1984) structuration model to

give nuance to the notion that gender is a structure. Structure shapes interactions and individual

choices, while human agency either reproduces or changes the current social structure. The

strength of Risman’s (2004) approach is that it is not limited to the idea that one single

dimension determines another. Because the theory is complex and dynamic, it cannot explain

gender relations across all times and places. Rather, the gender as a structure approach is best

used to explain causal mechanisms in a particular context. Gender structure theory is aimed at

answering “how” questions about gender relations, but does not presume that there is one right

answer for all contexts.

(DE)LEGITIMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Legitimation is one of three dimensions of Giddens’s (1984) model of structuration. It refers to

the theory of normative regulation. In Giddens’s conception, social structure “refers not only to

the rules implicated in the production and reproduction of social systems but also to resources”

(Giddens 1984:23). Resources are “media through which power is exercised” (Giddens 1984:16)

in a social system. Allocative resources are those material artifacts that help reproduce the power

9 of those who control them. Whereas, authoritative resources are non-material resources that result from control over others, such as legal institutions. The power of these authoritative resources lies in how legitimate they are perceived to be.

People experience the social world as a reality that ostensibly exists outside of themselves. Berger and Luckmann (1967) argue that this “reality” refers to that which happens independently of peoples’ own agency, but that regardless of this independent nature, people’s understandings of it take place in the context of knowledge which is socially created and shared.

They assert that common sense knowledge is distributed in social systems and that the mechanisms that distribute knowledge can be studied sociologically. Individuals interpret the reality of their everyday lives through subjective, yet meaningful lenses. Socialized individuals learn to recognize that others have unique subjective meanings that coexist in the same reality.

Additionally, those same people learn that there is overlap in the subjective meanings of reality, making the exchange of ideas possible. Knowledge is distributed primarily through a language system, emanating from various domains of expertise.

Berger and Luckmann (1967) argue that “all human activity is subject to habitualization”

(p. 53), meaning that repeated actions become patterned. This patterning precedes institutionalization, when patterned behaviors become typified knowledge. Institutions then control human behavior by communicating predefined patterns of behavior, making other behaviors deviant. Institutions are legitimated through knowledge, which dictates what and how the world is to be experienced as reality. Social roles are presented to individuals as naturally proscribed patterns of behavior, but they are in fact typifications of conduct created through habitualized interaction in the history that preceded the current social institutions. Mechanisms of legitimation work to keep a separation between various recognized experts of knowledge and

10 others (e.g., doctors vs. laypeople). The legitimation of institutions can be so strong that human phenomena can be perceived as something other than human activity, or reified. Human activity is thus dehumanized and perceived as something that results from nature or cosmic laws.

Legitimation of social institutions also has an impact on values. By following institutionalized patterns of behaviors, individuals are assured of the “correctness” of their conduct. They feel that they are living the “correct” life. All of society can make sense with legitimized institutions that fluidly fit together and help order phenomena in an understandable hierarchy. Berger and Luckman go on to argue that “all social reality is precarious. All societies are constructions in the face of chaos” (1967:103). The knowledge that humans use to understand the universe is the product of their own creation, implying that social institutions can crumble under the weight of chaos that cannot be ordered. However, it is more likely that institutions adapt to incorporate new information.

Glaringly absent from Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) discussion about the social construction of reality is the influence that power within the social structure can exert upon the construction of that reality. Indeed, stratified social systems can often be maintained by more than the threat of violence; history demonstrates that those in the dominant positions usually endeavor to secure their dominance through normalizing the stratified order (Della Fave 1980).

Those with social power influence hegemonic institutions, such as schools and media, to legitimize existing hierarchies (Gramsci 1996). Legitimation, then, “refers to normative approval of stratification” (Della Fave 1986:477; emphasis in original). Legitimation is analytically distinct from “consent” (Burawoy 2001), which may be a grudging acceptance of expected behaviors in an institutional context. Legitimation refers to the internalized beliefs that the system ought to be the way it is (Della Fave 1986). People disadvantaged by stratification who

perceive that stratification as legitimate may be critical of their placement in the social hierarchy

but are not critical of the existence of a hierarchy in the first place.

In trying to explain why late capitalism has not destroyed itself through the crises that it itself produces, Habermas (1973) argues that because the political economy exists separately from the state and the cultural system, the sphere that is experiencing a crisis caused by late

capitalism may undergo a legitimation crisis without capitalism being called into question. Thus,

a political system that is more flexible, such as liberal democracies, can better create legitimation

of the capitalist political economy than a rigid authoritarian system, where a crisis in one sphere

would be intrinsically linked to other spheres of social life.

Ideologies that legitimize a hierarchical social structure then become authoritative

resources that power can exercise to reproduce its own control over others (Giddens 1984).

“Legitimation is one of the main social functions of ideologies” (van Dijk 1998:255). Ideologies

help explain why cognitive inconsistencies so rarely topple an inequitable power structure, why a

“dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marx, Engels, and Tucker 1978) has not emerged to rule in the

‘universal’ interests of the would-be former-working class. Ideologies mobilize social

constructions of reality, and the powerful have more resources to push legitimating ideologies.

Della Fave (1980) argues that these macro-level processes are dependent upon micro-level interactions involving the social psychological concept of the generalized other. When the stratification that exists in society is consistent with the self-evaluation that a person has regarding what they believe is just, then that stratification is legitimated. Inconsistencies cause individual delegitimation of stratification. Those who control more resources are able to control the relationships with socially marginalized/exploited groups, thereby influencing what

‘generalized other’ people internalize to use in their own self-evaluations. In reworking the

theory of self-evaluation, Della Fave (1986) incorporates Gramsci’s (1996) concept of

hegemony—the ability of the ruling classes to rule through the consent of the dominated—to

make two important modifications. First, historically situated ideologies must be understood as

influencing the self-evaluation process. Second, the process of legitimation in self-evaluation theory cannot be completely self-reinforcing. Rather, the history of subordinate classes shows that they can and do develop independent ideologies and counternorms that challenge the top- down social construction of reality.

Van Leeuwen (2008) argues that there are four major categories of legitimation.

Authorization is a form of legitimation that references the authority of a legitimating mechanism, whether a speaker, custom, law, or tradition. Moral evaluation refers to the normalized values of an institutional context to justify legitimacy. Rationalization is a form of legitimizing the means to accomplish an end. If the goal is legitimate, then the means to achieve it must be legitimate.

Finally, mythopoesis is the use of narrative to legitimize actions and values. In moral stories, good things happen to those who engage in socially legitimate actions. In cautionary tales, bad things happen to those who defy legitimized social norms. Rojo and van Dijk (1997) use these categories to analyze a Spanish political speech justifying the expulsion of “illegal” migrants.

They go on to add that there are multiple levels of legitimation that can be studied. They focus

on three levels: pragmatic, the various strategies used to justify a social act; semantic, the

discursive maneuvers that shape ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ to support the justification; and

sociopolitical, the way discourse becomes self-legitimating, using its authority to delegitimize opposing discourse. Rojo and Van Dijk (1997) argue that the micro and macro forms of legitimation can be connected through the following model: institutional authority of a discourse

sustains the semantics used to describe social acts, which then justifies a social act, legitimizing

it.

Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway (2006) break down the steps involved in the process of

legitimation. They base their analysis on two sociological fields, organization study and social

psychology, both of which tend to theorize about legitimation in similar ways despite disparate

research methods. The first step in the process of legitimation is a social innovation, where a new

status characteristic or an organizational practice is created in response to some local need.

Second, that innovation must be locally accepted as valid, meaning it is congruent with existing cultural frameworks and effective at solving the exigent problem. Third, innovations that are locally validated are spread to new contexts. Fourth, if this diffusion process continues, consensus in many local contexts translates into widespread validation of the innovation, resulting in its legitimacy. This four-step model helps further specify the relationship between structure and agency that is mediated by culture in the structuration model (Giddens 1984).

Legitimating discourses usually require an institutional context in which to be legitimized (van

Dijk 1998).

These local innovations can be a rationalized myth within an institution (Meyer and

Rowan 1977). DiMaggio and Powell (1991) argue for the “new institutionalism” approach to

study ideologies, rather than self-interested utility, to explain economic transactions within an

institution. People’s motivations for actions cannot be understood outside cultural and historical

frameworks, which shape what is perceived as legitimate. They argue that “legitimacy is derived

from post hoc accounts or symbolic signals” (DiMaggio and Powell 1991:27). Meyer and Rowan

(1977) argue that “institutionalized products, services, techniques, policies, and programs function as powerful myths, and many organizations adopt them ceremonially” (1977:340), even

if their adoption results in less efficient practices. Organizations that become isomorphic with

other organizations in similar institutions gain legitimacy that then enables access to resources

needed for their survival (Meyer and Rowan 1977).

Worldcon could be considered one such organization within the institutional context of cultural production. The Hugo Awards ostensibly legitimize works from popular culture,

specifically in science fiction and fantasy. Researchers of popular culture argue that it is a site of

contestation between dominate and subordinate group values and norms (Browne 2006; Freccero

1999; Parker 2011). Browne argues that “popular art draws from Elite and Mass, and Folk, but does not take away without subjecting it to a greater or lesser amount of creative change”

(2006:17). Popular culture is not imposed from above or emergent from below, but rather “a site of struggle between the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups and the forces of ‘incorporation’ operating in the interests of dominant groups” (Storey 2009:10). If ideologies and values are

mobilized through culture, mediating between interaction and structure, then issues of

legitimation over popular cultural works involves the struggles between groups who consume

that culture.

Social rhetoric is “used to justify the mistreatment of the group and to control the people

within the group” (Rousseau 2013:201). Social rhetoric constructs images of subordinate groups,

and justifications for their social position, often without their input. Mainstream social rhetoric is

a discourse of legitimation for the status quo; “As a result of the dominant hegemony, the masses

themselves have taken up the creation of the images previously painted by the elite, to control

itself on behalf of its oppressors” (Rousseau 2009:164). The concept of social rhetoric

compliments a structuration model (Giddens 1984). Social rhetoric exists at the

cultural/ideological level of society, justifying and rationalizing the social structures and social

hierarchies that exist. Rather than having a direct impact on individuals, “structural forces are

always mediated by a cultural milieu” (Bettie 2000:4). This cultural milieu includes norms,

values, and social rhetoric about subordinate groups that then act as guiding maps for interaction.

COLORBLINDNESS

Using the racial formation approach (Bonilla-Silva 1997), racial discrimination precedes racial prejudice. After a social system unequally allocates resources, race is socially constructed –

“racialized” – infusing society with a racialized social structure. From this structure, racial ideology emerges, reflecting the racialized social structure and acting as a guide for social interactions. Social rhetoric delivers this ideology. Propaganda, stereotypes, and controlling images about racialized “others” make racial inequality seem natural and justify white- supremacist social structure (Collins 1990). The war on crime drives a racialized fear of crime based on “fears [that] have been driven by decades of social rhetoric designed to instill fear, panic, and dread of Blackness in White America” (Rousseau 2009:140). Historically, the color line is repeatedly drawn between whiteness and racialized “others” based on unfounded fears

(Zinn 1980). Thus, internalized racial ideology reproduces the racialized social structure similar to the one that created it (Bonilla-Silva 1997).

After World War II, the contradictions of winning a war against genocidal white- supremacists but continuing to maintain white supremacy in a Jim Crow United States, further destabilized the racial structure, giving more power to the Civil Rights movement of the latter half of the Twentieth Century (Katznelson 2005; Winant 2001). Even though the notion of explicit white supremacy became less legitimate in dominant discourse, the structures of racial inequality changed very little (Lipsitz 1995; Massey 1990; Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Zinn 1980).

Instead, colorblindness became the dominant racial ideology, which then created alternative explanations for the continued racial inequalities (Brown et al. 2003; Guinier, Torres, and

Gallagher 2009). Colorblind racism, then, is an ideology that claims to not see race, thus refusing to acknowledge how the racialized social system contributes to observable racial inequality

(Bonilla-Silva 2010). It obscures the role of the racialized social structure in producing inequality. Thus, colorblind racism permits people (especially whites) to see inequality as the result of individual failures (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Brown et al. 2003; Carr 1997; Guinier et al.

2009), much like how “achievement ideology” that perpetuates class inequality (MacLeod 1987).

A colorblind racial ideology, which then recreates a social structure of racial inequality, relies on social interactions at the individual level that involve discursive strategies and semantic moves that both protect the status quo inequality and purport a moral high ground (Bonilla-Silva

2002; Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000). In many social contexts that consist mostly of white people, such as suburban schools, actors deny the salience of race, yet commit themselves to a staunchly colorblind discourse that masks practices that are highly racialized, such as the celebration of race-related holidays like MLK day or Thanksgiving (Lewis 2001). This constructs a legitimate social reality that is favorable for white people, but explicitly harmful for people of color. Many whites then claim not to experience race, that race is experienced by racialized others, obfuscating that they themselves belong to, and enjoy the benefits of, a privileged racialized group (Lewis 2004). As Dyer says, “white power secures its dominance through seeming to be nothing in particular” (1988:44).

Bonilla-Silva (2010) further explicated the frames that people use to maintain a colorblind racial ideology. Frames, or “set paths for interpreting information” (Bonilla-Silva

2010:26), explain racial phenomena according to the dominant racial ideology. In his research,

Bonilla-Silva found four central frames of colorblindness. First, abstract liberalism emphasizes

the moral impetus for equal opportunity, a political ideology of liberalism and non-governmental

intervention. Through this frame, whites assert their morality and reasonableness, while at the

same time denying support for nearly all approaches to pragmatically reduce racial inequality.

Second, naturalization is a frame that asserts that racial inequalities are natural occurrences.

Again, de facto racial inequality is maintained by assertions that that is just “the way things are”

(Bonilla-Silva 2010:28). Third, cultural racism sidesteps the old trope of biological essentialism

and instead points to supposed cultural deficiencies to explain racial inequality. This amounts to

“blaming the victim” by suggesting that laziness, ineptness, loose family structure, or

inappropriate values explain away racial inequalities. Fourth, minimization of racism suggests

that racial discrimination no longer has a large effect on the lives of people of color. Through this

frame, whites “accuse minorities of being ‘hyper-sensitive,’ of using race as an ‘excuse,’ or of

‘playing the infamous race card’” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:29). This frame suggests that racism is not

as bad as ‘before’ or not as bad as other places, thus, people of color cannot make socially

legitimate claims that racial discrimination has caused problems in their lives.

Ideologies are symbolic expressions of a power structure. Thus, the “ideologies of the

powerful are central in the production and reinforcement of the status quo” (Bonilla-Silva

2010:26). A primary method of maintaining a hierarchical social structure is through the

expressions of ideology in symbolic interactions between actors (Jackman 1996). Studies on

diversity discourse highlight how semantic maneuvering mends logical gaps in people’s

disavowal of any practical method of addressing racial inequality with their proclaimed love of

diversity and all its symbolic benefits (Berrey 2015; Hikido and Murray 2016). Thus, a system

18 that privileges white people and disadvantages people of color, while at the same time purporting to be racially neutral, is embraced by whites and mainstream discourse.

Colorblind ideology has pernicious effects for people of color. Because inequalities are obfuscated as individual failings, colorblindness is a tacit endorsement of structural racism. For example, the same white people who can denounce racism as morally wrong see no contradiction in conflating race with citizenship and espousing harsh nativist viewpoints (Bloch 2014).

Similarly, state legislation that effectively legalizes racial profiling is supported by politicians using colorblind discursive strategies that emphasize race neutrality, while at the same time linking race with criminality (Rodriguez 2017), again creating an unrecognized contradiction in racial ideology. These contradictions are troubling because “white moral objection to racism increases white resistance to acknowledging complicity with it” (Diangelo 2011:64). Colorblind ideology creates safe spaces for whites to never have to deal with the effects of race nor acknowledge their own privilege. In instances when those colorblind safe spaces are challenged, it can result in extreme hostility and emotional outbursts (Diangelo 2011).

FRAGILITY

Positive self-perceptions and the comfort of white people are protected by white habitus

(Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006; Lewis 2001). They enjoy an unrecognized, yet very internalized, sense of belonging in the U.S. based on their white race (Diangelo 2011; Dyer

1988). But, when whites enter into contexts when race is made salient, they may experience racialized vulnerability, an unease about a perceived loss of control over various threats shaped by the identity status difference between dominant and racially marginalized groups (Jayakumar and Adamian 2017). In contrast to people of color, whites generally have little experience

dealing with racial stressors, resulting in their white fragility (Diangelo 2011; DiAngelo 2018).

Diangelo defines white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress

becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (Diangelo 2011:54). Those

defensive moves include emotional displays of anger, fear, and guilt or behaviors like silence,

argumentation, or exiting the situation. Diangelo argues that these moves work to “reinstate

white racial equilibrium” (Diangelo 2011:54). White fragility may call on whites to use the minimization of racism frame of colorblindness (Bonilla-Silva 2010) to assert that people of

color are just hyper-sensitive to race, when, from a white perspective, there has been little to take

issue with, illustrating how deeply whiteness is embedded into the larger culture, especially in

the U.S. (Diangelo 2011; Dyer 2017).

When whites are engaged in discussions of race, they may position themselves as the

victims of “reverse discrimination.” Such discursive tactics are victimization rituals, where the

speaker claims moral superiority through being victimized for their, now demonized, opponent

(Blain 2005). Inequality is maintained by a dominant group claiming moral superiority and

rationality, subverting challenges to the social structure (Bloch 2016). These claims to moral

superiority obscure the structural power differences of social locations, place blame on others

with less social power, and conflate discomfort about racial discourse with something socially

dangerous (Diangelo 2011). Diangelo (2018) argues that these behaviors among whites point to their lack of stamina to deal with racial triggers, indicating that racial change needs to include stamina building for whites.

White fragility is maintained through colorblind social rhetoric that normalizes whiteness and makes its dominant position invisible (at least to white people) (Dyer 2017). In the world of science fiction and fantasy, it has been a very recent development that the social rhetoric has

expanded to include more diverse stories, storytellers, and characters. Predictably, this expansion has resulted in a backlash, primarily among white men, who feel they are the victims of ceaseless diversity campaigns that are tantamount to reverse discrimination from the “‘politically correct’ pro-diversity crowd – commonly referred to as ‘social justice warriors’ (SJWs)” (Proctor and

Kies 2018:127). One group leading this backlash is the Sad Puppies, who are incensed by the increasing multiculturalism of Hugo winners and theirs stories. They represent the

“phallogocentrism and white male privilege” (Stingl and Weiss 2015:61) that structures the zone

occupied by both SFF and science and technology. White male privilege has long been

ingrained in the spheres of science and technology and the early sci-fi that fictionalized those realms. Recent small shifts toward more inclusive SFF have caused conservative white men to go so far as to advocate violence against women in Sci-Fi, both characters and storytellers, because women are “ruining” the roots and the fun of the genre by crossing genre boundaries, using new narrative methods, and including more race and gender diversity (Yaszek 2018).

Like the Sad Puppy movement, the video gaming industry also experienced a backlash against perceived over-extension of race and gender inclusivity. Known as “Gamergate,” these

primarily white, male gamers allege that academics and journalists who study and report on the

gaming industry are feminists (in a pejorative sense) trying to destroy the industry (Chess and

Shaw 2015). Gamergate uses the premise of concerns about ethical standards in video game

journalism to justify increased gendered harassment of women online (Salter 2018). Like the Sad

Puppies, they are an online collective “dedicated to hunting down and silencing voices in gaming

that they view as feminist or as ‘social justice warriors’” (Salter and Blodgett 2017:12), a slur

shared in common across both movements.

Salter and Blodgett (2017) argue that Gamergate and Puppygate are representations of geek fragility, which like white fragility, is a set of defensive reactions and emotional outbursts regarding the salience of geek masculine identities. Geek masculinity is a shared exclusion from the mainstream, that finds dominance through destroying opponents (e.g. zombies or aliens in video games). That identity is strongly tied to white, straight males. Perceived threats to the geek or gamer identity create stressors for the geek fragility, resulting in attacks that are particularly hostile because of a culture that has celebrated the total destruction of opponents through gaming

(Salter and Blodgett 2017).

Gamergate, and the toxic masculinity it represents, is the next phase in an ongoing negotiation of nerd masculinity. Most of those historically stereotyped as nerds still enjoyed the privileges of being white and male. However, the identity of nerd, or geek, is a stigmatized identity. Nerds have accomplished masculinity through their mastery of technology and normalized their whiteness through colorblind online discourse (Kendall 1999). They distanced their identities from anything perceived as feminine by appropriating, and celebrating, some nerd stereotypes, thus forming an identity that finds its dominance through shared stigmatization

(Kendall 2000). Popular culture fandom is similarly constructed around nerd white masculinity, which enables fans redemption from stigmatization of their fandom through popular representations of their race, gender, and expertise on a narrow subject (Wilson 2018). Research has found that nerd masculinity is maintained through online communities that help self- identified nerds find love or sex. The use of “seduction workshops” teach nerds to use “geeky” solutions to courtship, such as viewing it as something that is standardized and rule-governed, which can be ‘won’ with gaming strategy, resulting in the objectification of women (Almog and

Kaplan 2017).

The mainstreaming of geek/nerd identities has brought with it an expansion of the white

masculinity that perceives any challenge to those identities as a personal attack. Those “attacks”

then justify toxic reactions and outbursts directed at those who have less power than them (Salter

and Blodgett 2017). Toxic discourse in communal spaces increases as an identity-based sense of entitlement grows, leading to their perception of the right to exist and control those spaces

(Stevens and Lara van der Merwe 2018). Because status in these spaces is so tightly connected to stereotyped identities, participants in those spaces find power through actively policing the borders of identity and discourse. Gamergate represents a victory in the battle for “men’s rights activists” engaged in a “battle against social justice, something that men’s rights activists see as acting in opposition to the ‘natural’ male dominance” (Wilson 2018:431). These cultural wars fought across the internet demonstrate the toxicity of their fragility when real or perceived social justice movements threaten the dominance of white males in these spaces.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This research will examine the discourse of this conservative backlash and its role in the legitimation process. I will explore online blog posts written by Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy organizers to analyze the rhetoric they employ. They generally claim to be rallying against a liberal agenda from “social justice warriors” who care more about politics than supposedly legitimate science fiction. This study asks how conservative sci-fi fans frame their opposition to perceived threats from “social justice warriors” and what rhetoric do they use to maintain their exclusionary claim to SFF legitimacy?

The Puppygate saga draws attention to the rhetoric of backlashes against real or perceived changes to social institutions. The dramatic rise of the Puppies and their lasting impact

23 asks the question how do members of a socially dominant group use delegitimation to vitalize their social position and maintain social structure? To understand this phenomenon, I will analyze the online discourse of Sad Puppies used to create a movement and justify their ideological positions. My research will focus on what rhetoric they used to maintain their social position, while claiming victimhood. I ask how the Sad Puppies frame their opposition to perceived threats from ‘social justice warriors?’

Coming soon after the Sad Puppies, the Rabid Puppies represent a more extremist arm of the puppy-movement. The language of the Rabid Puppies is overtly racist and misogynist, which begs the question of how extremism is ideologically linked to more mainstream political ideologies based on blindness to issues of inequalities. After analyzing the rhetoric of the Sad

Puppies, I will explore the links between the colorblind racism of the Sad Puppies to the overt white supremacy of the Rabid Puppies.

OVERALL METHODS

Data Collection

Because of the increased importance of the internet, and specifically social media networks, to daily social lives, it is necessary that sociology collect and analyze internet communications to understand modern social relations (Gerstenfeld, Grant, and Chiang 2003;

Grant 2018; Skalski, Neuendorf, and Cajigas 2017). The internet allows communities focused on social change to create and spread an ideology as well as recruit new members without geographical constraints (Adams and Roscigno 2005; Gerstenfeld et al. 2003). Online communities give members a sense that their views are not solitary, which strengthens their bonds and allows social borders to be reinterpreted versus reproduced (Bloch 2014). The Sad

Puppies built a community through communication via online social media and personal blog posts. Thus, to analyze their rhetoric, I collected data from these online sources. Sad Puppy discourse took place mostly on a small set of personal blogs from Sad Puppy organizers, with much interlinking between them. The data include all Sad/Rabid Puppy related posts on these blogs as well as the official Sad Puppy website and Facebook page. Specifically, data were collected from:

• http://monsterhunternation.com/ (original founding member, Lance)

• https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/ (prominent organizer, Ben)

• https://accordingtohoyt.com/ (prominent organizer, Samantha)

• https://madgeniusclub.com/author/katepaulk/ (prominent organizer, Kelly)

• https://voxday.blogspot.com (blog of Theodore Beale, a.k.a Vox Day, Rabid Puppy

organizer)

• https://www.facebook.com/sadpuppies4embiggening/ (Sad Puppy Facebook page)

• http://sadpuppies4.org/ (Sad Puppy website)

Table 1 below provides the descriptive statistics for blog post authors by gender for both

Sad and Rabid Puppy Blogs. Men make up about 59 percent of the post authors, which includes posts from the Rabid Puppies that are exclusively written by men. Women make up slightly more than half of the writers of Sad Puppy posts. There are 584 total blog posts from Sad and Rabid

Puppies to be analyzed.

Table 1: Gender Breakdown of Blog Posts

Women Men Unknown N = Documents (N=239) (N=343) gender (N=1) Puppy: Rabid, 0 (0.0) 122 (35.4) 0 (0.0) 122 Number (%) Puppy: Sad, 239 (100.0) 223 (64.6) 1 (100.0) 462* Number (%) N = Documents 239 (40.9%) 345 (59.1%) 1 (0.2%) 584* * 584 posts in collected data; totals were reduced by 1 to reflect a co-author blog post.

Table 2 provides the known demographic data for authors of blog posts in the collected

data. Gender was identified by pronoun usage of other similar indicators in the data. The type of

puppy (Sad/Rabid) was identified by where the blog was posted (Sad Puppy blogs vs. the Rabid

Puppy blog). Table 2 also provides a count for the number of posts each author has in the

collected data. Women only account for five of the 25 authors in the data (20 percent). However, women account for about 40 percent of the posts written. Other demographic data like race or age where not easily discernable for most authors in the data. Authors names were changed to pseudonyms in all cases but one. Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day, is a well-known

figure within the fandom engaged in the conflict over the Hugo Awards. His identity as a Rabid

Puppy is important for the analysis in Chapter 4. The gender of one author of one post, Poodle,

could not be determined from the collected data.

Table 2: Blog Post Author Demographic Data

Author (pseudonym) Gender* Posts (n)** Puppy Type Samantha woman 140 Sad Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day) *** man 122 Rabid Lance man 89 Sad Donald man 59 Sad Kelly woman 59 Sad Ben man 51 Sad Amy woman 28 Sad Cassandra woman 10 Sad Jim man 4 Sad Dereck man 3 Sad Cameron man 2 Sad Dean man 2 Sad Connor man 2 Sad Darlene woman 2 Sad Parker man 2 Sad Poodle unknown 1 Sad Tyler man 1 Sad Carson man 1 Sad Corbin man 1 Sad Justin man 1 Sad Josh man 1 Sad Jordan man 1 Sad Wyatt man 1 Sad Jake man 1 Sad Bruce man 1 Sad

Women 5 Men 19 unknown gender 1 * 584 posts in collected data - total here is greater because of 1 co-authored post ** Gender identified through pronoun usage or other similar indicators in the data *** Name unchanged due to being a well-known figure in the fandom whose identity is important to analysis

Positionality Statement

The research conducted for this dissertation is qualitative, which is inherently

interpretive. This puts the researcher into the position of being an instrument of data collection

and analysis. Thus, the validity and reliability of these research findings much be understood

through the lens of my own positionality. I am a critical scholar trained in areas of research that

include critical race theory and feminist theory. I use critical theory to understand power,

difference and inequality. With that in mind, my analyses are shaped by other factors of my

personal identity and social location – positionality (Bourke 2014). While I am critical of

ideology and rhetoric that maintain power inequalities, my criticality is shaped through my

experiences as a white, straight cis-gendered man who grew up in rural northwest United States.

I am also someone who really enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy, which, in some ways,

gives me insider status to understand the discourse of the Sad and Rabid Puppies as they talk

about and critique SFF. Though, I am very much an outsider when it comes to their political

position regarding “social justice warriors.”

Limitations

There are some limitations to the findings of this research. First, the gender of Sad and

Rabid Puppies may not be how those individuals identify, but rather were inferred from pronoun usage. Second, the results of this research are not generalizable. The data collected only

represent Sad and Rabid Puppy blog posters and may not be exhaustive of all members of either

Puppy group. Third, as mentioned above, the following analyses are interpretive and inductive.

My findings are mediated through my positionality.

ANALYSIS AND CHAPTER OVERVIEW

I present my analyses in the following chapters. Qualitative content analysis served as the

general approach to this research; however, specific analytical strategies are discussed in each

respective analysis chapter.

In Chapter 2, I use the frames of colorblind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2010) to analyze the

postings of the Sad Puppies. They also utilize these same frames to discuss structures of inequality beyond race that shape their oppression blindness (Ferber 2018). Sad Puppies utilize the internet to easily and quickly disseminate their colorblind and oppression-blind ideologies.

The rhetoric they use then becomes part of the cultural toolkit (Swidler 1986) for followers of their blogs and website. Subscribing to an ideology of colorblindness or oppression-blindness does nothing to stop the social structures that create inequality and instead simply inhibits constructive discourse about how to reduce those inequalities. While the Sad Puppies are an online activist group specifically organized around works of fiction in the genres of science- fiction and fantasy and the institutions that recognize works in those genres, the scope of the Sad

Puppy discourse is much larger. They frequently write about politics in general for U.S. and other Western societies. Their strong belief in abstract liberalism, especially individualism and meritocracy, justify a worldview where they are the victims of greedy, manipulative Social

Justice Warriors.

In Chapter 3, I explore how the Sad Puppies use discursive strategies to legitimize themselves as experts of a domain, as knowers of ostensibly self-evident truths about how to evaluate works of SFF fiction. They use a variety of strategies to delegitimate any challenges to their own worldview. Their discourse revolves around self-evident cultural values, which are then used as frames for understanding their position regarding the conflict about the Hugo

Awards. This strategy of discourse dismisses any understanding of cultural values as social constructs shaped by histories of social conflict, oppression, and power. Their discursive strategies reinforce social hierarchy through explications of “truth.” Unchecked, this style of rhetoric leads of a form of authoritarian populism, which is “a movement towards a dominative and ‘authoritarian’ form of democratic class politics – paradoxically, apparently rooted in the

‘transformism’ (Gramsci’s term) of populist discontents” (Hall 1985:118). Sad Puppy rhetoric is just part of a growing cultural trend of identify social justice movements as a form of privilege- making that hurts white people, especially heterosexual men. By playing their discontent at the perceived loss of social status, these movements try to reassert a “truth” that challenging the status quo gives privilege to formerly marginalized groups, hurting white heterosexual men, which is self-evidently wrong. Therefore, these cultural movements construct social justice as wrong from an ethical frame, thereby discursively protecting the hierarchies of the world’s social institutions.

In Chapter 4, I explore how the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies differently engage in the culture war. I find that the culture war of the Hugos is not some momentary spat among niche pop culture fans. Rather, it is a nascent front in the American race war, one that builds bigger and more accessible pathways to white supremacist extremism. While people of color struggle to survive and succeed in an overwhelmingly white-dominated society, their attempts to succeed are taken as a direct threat. In fact, efforts to simply raise awareness about privilege or systemic inequalities are enough to activate a framework of white injury. White injury ideology motivates white activism against perceived threats from people of color (Cacho 2000). This white activism is part of a confluence of factors connecting a culture war built on the ideology of colorblindness to white supremacist extremism. The Obama presidency represented the ultimate example that

30 the U.S. had entered a “post-racial” society. But at the same time, Obama’s election was the ultimate threat, representing a demographic and political shift in electoral politics that signaled the waning of white political power. This perceived threat heightened white anxiety, making extremist ideology more permissible in mainstream spaces (Bloch, Taylor, and Martinez 2020), and motivating white collective action to restrict non-white political access through ostensibly colorblind voter suppression policies (Anderson 2016). Whereas the Sad Puppies represent a group of people still trying to reconcile a fractured colorblind ideology, the Rabid Puppies represent a group thriving in the social rifts created by the culture war who are crafting a new racial ideology that is post-colorblind and overtly white supremacist. This extremist ideology embraces the white victimhood framework and replaces the worldview of equitability with white supremacy to better understand the perceived threats from people of color.

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CHAPTER 2

POP CULTURE AND OPPRESSION: THE COLORBLIND RACISM OF THE SAD PUPPIES

Pop culture is an important cultural context that functions as a site of conflict over competing societal values (Parker 2011). Culture can broadly be conceived as shared ways of life through norms, values, and knowledge (Geertz 1994). Swidler (1986) proposes a more complex model of

“culture as a ‘tool kit’ of symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views which people may use in

varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems” (p. 273). Culture therefore is more

than just the collective values and worldviews of a society; it also acts as a set of resources

available to members of a society to use as needed. This, combined with the notion that culture is

not monolithic, but rather a battleground of competing ideas and interests (Hall, Grindstaff, and

Lo 2010), means that individuals and groups can create aspects of culture that then can be used

by them and others as resources.

Cultural resources are particularly relevant when it comes to establishing and maintaining

a system of oppression. Maintaining a hierarchical structure requires those who benefit to

legitimize their privilege so that those who do not benefit continue to participate in the

inequitable social structure (Della Fave 1980). For example, the structure of white supremacy in

the US adapted to progressive cultural shifts by adopting the notion that explicit declarations of

racial superiority were taboo. Replacing cultural ideologies of white supremacy, colorblind

ideology, which supports claims of race-neutrality in social interaction, hides the structures that

maintain white privilege (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Guinier, Torres, and Gallagher 2009).

While popular culture, like works of science fiction and fantasy, might be an

“unauthorized culture,” meaning that is does not fall under the purview of interests or tastes associated with the privileged classes (Parker 2011), it also has its own institutions for legitimizing cultural objects, much like museums do for highbrow art (Bourdieu 1984). The

Hugo Awards are the oldest and (debatably) most revered award for works of science fiction and fantasy (SFF) – especially written works.

Recent controversy surrounding the Hugos shows how the broader conservative populist movement (e.g. Tea Party, Gamergate, Trumpism) has seeped into areas of discourse surrounding popular culture, and specifically SFF. Most prominently, an online group of writers and SFF fans calling themselves the “Sad Puppies” assert that the Hugo Award has lost legitimacy because of a perceived leftist takeover of the awards. Kelly, a Sad Puppy woman, writes:

The previous campaign, Sad Puppies 2 [2014], was actually about a different topic. The

charge was that people voting the hugos cared more about the race/gender/politics of the

authors more than the story (especially the politics). Those folks claimed this wasn’t true

(except with every other breath they took). Larry mobilized his fanbase to try to get just

one conservative author on the ballot, and the SJW side of the fandom immediately

pitched a fit and set about proving him exactly right, with a campaign to put every

conservative below no award. It was a perfect Xanatos [Star Wars reference] Gambit, and

by losing, Larry won. (Kelly, 2015)

They claim that Hugo voting is controlled by a small leftist minority that does not represent SFF

fandom. This so-called elitist minority, which they frequently refer to as Social Justice Warriors

(SJWs), is ostensibly more interested in giving awards based on increasing the diversity of recipients or based on the perceived liberal messages contained within the works of fiction. The

SJW label is used pejoratively and refers to a stereotype that Sad Puppies have created and

perceive in those they have labeled as SJWs. These motivations hinder the ability of whites,

particularly men, to win and thus undermine what science-fiction and fantasy by blurring the

boundaries around the genres.

This chapter uses the blog posts of Sad Puppy leaders to examine the discursive strategies

used in their cultural battle over the legitimacy of SFF works. I utilize frames of colorblind

racism (Bonilla-Silva 2010) to make sense of the rhetoric they use as examples of cultural

resources or “toolkits” (Swidler 1986). I then explore how these discursive strategies extend

beyond the frames of race in an attempt to obscure all discourses of systemic oppression, making

them “oppression-blind” (Ferber 2018).

RACIALIZED SOCIETY AND IDEOLOGY

Bonilla-Silva (1997) argues that racial ideology emerges as an explanation to justify racialized

structural inequalities. This theoretical approach explicitly recognizes the rationality of racism in

a society structured by racial hierarchy (Bonilla-Silva 1997). Unlike racial formation theory,

which argues that a racial project is racist only when a demonstrable link can be made “between

essentialist representations of race and social structures of domination” (Omi and Winant

1994:72), Bonilla-Silva (1997, 1999) argues that the creation of racial categories always implies

the existence of racism and power differentials because the process of “racialization” is rooted in

the inequitable allocation of resources by groups characterized by racial traits. Racialization

always involves the mobilization of power to place racialized groups into a social hierarchy.

Race is the socially constructed concept used to distinguish group membership in this process.

Thus, racial discrimination precedes racial prejudice. After a social system unequally allocates resources, race is socially constructed – “racialized” – infusing society with a racialized social structure. From this structure, racial ideology emerges, reflecting the racialized social structure and acting as a guide for social interactions. Social rhetoric delivers and reinforces this

ideology (Rousseau 2013). Propaganda, stereotypes, and controlling images about racialized

“others” make racial inequality seem natural and thereby justify racial inequality (Collins 1990).

For example, the war on crime drives a racialized fear of crime based on “fears [that] have been

driven by decades of social rhetoric designed to instill fear, panic, and dread of Blackness in

White America” (Rousseau 2009:140). Historically, the color line is repeatedly drawn between

whiteness and racialized “others” based on unfounded fears (Zinn 1980). Thus, hegemonic racial

ideology reproduces the racialized social structure that created it through social interactions

(Bonilla-Silva 1997). Racialization is an ongoing process that adapts to social change. Ideology,

being a part of one’s cultural toolkit (Swidler 1986), places culture in a cyclical causal model,

where racial inequality creates the ideology that justifies it, which in turn, reinforces or recreates

racial inequality as adaptations to ongoing social changes.

This approach contends that the economic, political, social, and ideological levels of

society are all “partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races”

(Bonilla-Silva 1997:469). Relationships between the groups are formed and molded around

practical group interests. Importantly, racialized meanings are attached to people of a racial

group, and thus race becomes a “real” group and identity. After racial groups are created, race

becomes an independent element of the social system. Power is unequally distributed along

racial lines, and racial contestations ensue. Racism, then, is not a concept that refers to

prejudiced ideas of individuals, rather it is the racial ideology that exists at the cultural level of a

racialized social system—an ideology that rationalizes and justifies the inequitable “social,

political, and economic interactions between the races” (Bonilla-Silva 1997:474).

EMERGENCE OF COLORBLIND IDEOLOGY

Because of the successes of the 1960s U.S. Civil Rights movement, the legitimacy of explicit

white supremacy began to wane. After World War II, the contradictions of winning a war against

genocidal white supremacists while continuing to maintain white supremacy in the United States

made the existing racial system unstable, giving more cultural power to the Civil Rights

movement (Katznelson 2005; Winant 2001). By the end of the 1970s, the white right-wing

activists who staunchly opposed affirmative action policies had adapted their rhetorical strategies to this social change. They ended their public support for white supremacy and instead focused on the ills of racial preferences and so-called “reverse discrimination.” They argued that colorblindness was necessary to prevent the favoring of any racial group over another (Brown et al. 2003; MacLean 2008). Even though the notion of explicit white supremacy became less socially palatable, the structures of racial inequality remained (Lipsitz 1995; Massey and Hajnal

1995; Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Zinn 1980).

In the justice system, courts became increasingly hostile toward color-conscious policies, but never completely colorblind (Nelson, Berrey, and Nielsen 2008). The Supreme Court

cemented a legal orientation that argued for a policy or practice to be considered discriminatory,

it must be proved to be purposefully discriminatory (Davis 1976). Ian Haney-Lopez (1999)

45 argues that such colorblind legal rationales result in a form of institutional racism, a nonintentional process of generating and sustaining racial inequality within institutions.

According to Haney-Lopez “The Supreme Court undermines efforts to bring about racial equality when it imposes a model of racism predicated on purposeful action, or worse, on the mere consideration of race” (1999:1841). In a short time, public discourse was infused with the same logic of colorblindness, which does nothing to undo centuries of systemic racial inequality but rather asserts that any racially conscious talk or policies are, in themselves, racist.

Colorblindness dominates the racial ideology in the U.S., creating alternative explanations for continuing racial inequalities (Brown et al. 2003; Gallagher 2009; Guinier et al.

2009). Colorblind racism is an ideology that permits people to claim to not see race, thus refusing to acknowledge how the racialized social system contributes to observable racial inequality (Bonilla-Silva 2010). It obscures the role of the racialized social structure in producing inequality. Thus, colorblind racism permits people, especially whites, to see inequality as the result of individual failures (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Brown et al. 2003; Carr 1997; Guinier et al.

2009).

FRAMES OF COLORBLIND RACISM

A colorblind racial ideology relies on social interactions at the micro-level that involve discursive strategies that both protect the status quo inequality and purport a moral high ground

(Bonilla-Silva 2002; Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000). As Richard Dyer (1988) says, “white power secures its dominance through seeming to be nothing in particular” (p. 44). Bonilla-Silva

(2010) further explicated the frames that people use to maintain a colorblind racial ideology.

Frames, or “set paths for interpreting information” (p. 26), explain racial phenomena according to the dominant racial ideology. In his research, he found four central frames of colorblindness.

First, abstract liberalism emerges from the political ideology of classic liberalism and espouses a moral impetus for equal opportunity and non-governmental intervention (Bonilla-

Silva 2010). Through this frame, whites assert their morality and reasonableness, while at the same time denying support for nearly all practical approaches aimed at minimizing racial inequality. For instance, using this frame, people can argue that reparations need not be paid to descendants of Black slaves because there is equal opportunity now, ignoring the centuries of enslavement and segregation that have contributed to racial inequalities experienced now.

Anything that could be perceived as hindering the supposed equal opportunity that exists now is constructed as immoral and illegitimate. Thus, actions to remedy inequality, such as localities actively desegregating schools, is viewed as top-down actions forced upon people and are therefore a form of tyranny to be reviled.

Second, naturalization is a frame that asserts that racial inequalities are simply natural occurrences. De facto racial inequality is maintained by assertions that this is just “the way things are” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:28). This approach is often used to explain segregation specifically, suggesting that “we all try to stay with our own kind” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:38). This same logic is used to explain the low rates of interracial relationships. By claiming that these preferences are somehow natural and occur on both sides of the color-line, whites thereby dismiss notions of racism. When something is a “natural” occurrence, it is nonsensical to both find blame for its cause and to try to resist it. By constructing racial preferences not as what they are, ideological values emerging from the deeply racist structure of society, but as natural, both blame and corrective actions are swept away.

Third, cultural racism sidesteps the classic racist trope of biological inferiority and

instead points to supposed cultural deficiencies of racialized “others” to explain racial inequality

(Bonilla-Silva 2010). This amounts to “blaming the victim” by suggesting that laziness,

ineptness, loose family structure, or inappropriate values explain away racial inequalities.

Originating from the “culture of poverty” (Lewis 1966) perspective, cultural racism in the United

States views cultural practices as fixed aspects of a group that explain lower social status. These

supposed cultural practices are often the result of stereotypical controlling images that are

attached to racial meanings (Collins 1990). Laziness is the assumed cultural practice of people of

color who are struggling to find economic stability, while whites deny the existence of racial

barriers at the same time by minimizing the existence of racism.

Fourth, the minimization of racism frame suggests that racial discrimination no longer has

a large effect on the lives of people of color. Through this frame, whites “accuse minorities of

being ‘hyper-sensitive,’ of using race as an ‘excuse,’ or of ‘playing the infamous race card’”

(Bonilla-Silva 2010:29). This frame suggests that racism is not as bad as it once was nor is it as

bad as in other places. Thus, people of color cannot make socially legitimate claims that racial discrimination has caused problems in their lives. This frame includes outright denials of racism, but also incorporates a more nuanced approach. In some instances, whites using this frame are likely to acknowledge that racial discrimination does exist. However, they also see most claims by people of color of racial discrimination as exaggerated or inflated. Thus, this frame suggests that it is people of color who make things racial when they otherwise are not – i.e. playing the

“race card.” Bonilla-Silva (2010:40) argues that “when cultural racism is used in combination with the ‘minimization of racism’ frame, the results are ideologically deadly.” For instance, whites will combine these frames to claim that people of color “use discrimination as an ‘excuse’

to hide the central reason why they are behind whites in society: their presumed ‘laziness’”

(Bonilla-Silva 2010:41).

OPPRESSION-BLIND RHETORIC

Ferber (2012) argues that colorblind ideology is not a distinct ideology, but rather part of a more

widespread ideology that is blind to many structures of inequality. Where colorblind ideology

reinforces racial hierarchy and white privilege (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Carr 1997), “oppression

blindness…overlaps with and reinforces other systems of inequality in the United States” (Ferber

2012:63). She cites Crenshaw’s call to study inequalities with an intersectional lens (Crenshaw

1991). By studying only how blindness to race affects the racial hierarchy, critical scholars are

missing the ways that this broader ideology of oppression blindness reinforces a variety of

inequalities, including gender, sexuality, and class.

Racial inequalities are partially, and importantly, maintained through racial ideologies

(Bonilla-Silva 2010; Carr 1997; Feagin 2006). Ideologies are part of cultures, providing mental

frameworks for making sense of the world and giving meaning to social interaction (Crane

2010). Ideologies provide scripts for interaction that become part of people’s “cultural toolkit”

(Swidler 1986) that they use to explain social phenomena. Colorblind ideologies provide scripts that those benefiting from white privilege can use to explain racial inequalities while maintaining that those inequalities do not exist (Bonilla-Silva 2010). Ferber (2012) argues that “these scripts are so ubiquitous that they are drawn upon to explain other forms of inequality as well” (p. 67).

The frames of colorblindness explicated by Bonilla-Silva (2010) are used more widely to explain away many inequalities, not just racial inequalities. Viewing the discourse of the Sad Puppies from an oppression-blindness perspective allows for a more intersectional approach to their

rhetoric. The specificity of the colorblind frames provided by Bonilla-Silva can be adapted to explore how a general ideology of “oppression-blindness” is used by Sad Puppies in their online discourse to try to maintain systems of privilege and inequality.

INTERSECTIONALITY

Intersectionality, as a methodology and as a way of theorizing about inequalities, arose from the lack of gender in race scholarship and the lack of race in second wave feminism (Collins 2019).

Importantly, people do not live their lives in just one dimension. Rather, people experience

multiple dimensions of inequality, some that create privilege and others that create disadvantage

(Collins 1993). Crenshaw (1991) argued that focusing on one aspect of a person’s identity, such

as race or gender results in entire groups of people made invisible or further victimized.

Knowers have access to different knowledge based on their social location, known as

standpoint epistemology, which argues “that all knowledge is constructed in a specific matrix of

physical location, history, culture, and interests, and that these matrices change in configuration

from one location to another” (Sprague 2005:41). The hegemonic standpoint of “science” is that

it constructs knowledge that is separate from the knowledge of the common people; however,

Collins (1990) asserts that this dichotomy is a fallacy because lived experiences also shape the

evaluation of knowledge claims and create wisdom. Intersectional analysis has the potential to

illuminate contradictions within social systems. For example, Romero (2002) studied a

contradiction of the feminist movement where middle-class white women escaped the drudgery

of housework to participate more fully in society and the economy, only to exploit poor and

immigrant women working for low wages in low-status, domestic jobs in dehumanizing

conditions. She found that the most degrading aspect of domestic service was not the labor itself

50 but rather the interaction between employees and employers. Domestic workers were expected to be “invisible” by silently cleaning around employers and their children without interacting with them. The conspicuous display of “invisible” labor worked to heighten the status of the white employers.

Incorporating an intersectional lens means being sensitive to complex nuances of social settings, recognizing how systems of oppression intersect in the lives of individuals. These intersections combine to create unique experiences, varying the marginalization or privilege experienced on one axis of power (Collins 1990). In this research, I use an intersectional lens to understand ways that Sad Puppy rhetoric affects multiple dimensions of power while at the same time considering the various ways Sad Puppies are privileged by such rhetoric. Intersectional theory makes it clear that “privilege is not monolithic” (Coston and Kimmel 2012:109). Rather mechanisms of marginalization of one status can mute the privileges experienced by another social status (Coston and Kimmel 2012).

METHODS

To best explore the ideologies of the Sad Puppies, I collected data from their preferred medium – online blogs. Internet-based communication encompasses an increasing amount of human interaction, and likewise, social research must study this nascent form of interaction to better understand the relationships between culture, ideologies, and systems of oppression (Bail 2014;

Chung, Barnett, and Park 2014; Lemke 2004). I started with the blog of the Sad Puppy founder and then expanded data collection to the blogs of others who were considered leaders in the movement. Each year, a different person led the Sad Puppy campaign. In all, I collected 584

51 posts from 6 blogs and one website –the official Sad Puppy website that also included a series of blog-like posts.

Being a fan of science fiction, I had some previous exposure to the Sad Puppies and the controversy surrounding them. Based on this exposure and the literature about colorblind ideology, I began this research project with an expectation that I would find much data illustrating frames of colorblind rhetoric. Beginning with these expectations, I used an adapted form of grounded theory (Charmaz 1996). Rather than coding the data with exclusively colorblind frames, I started with open coding. In open coding, the researcher applies a theoretical or empirical concept to a chunk of the data in a brainstorming fashion (Becker 1998; Harwood and Garry 2003; Whiteside, Mills, and McCalman 2012). After the first pass of coding, I ended up with 381 initial codes. These were subsequently combined and synthesized into more conceptual codes representing recurring themes throughout the data (Corbin and Strauss 1990). I then used those prominent themes to looks specifically for more instances in the collected blog posts. After seeing how the frames of colorblindness were being utilized in similar styles in regard to other dimensions of inequality, such as gender or sexuality, I went back to the literature and found Ferber’s (2012) arguments about oppression blindness, which are highly applicable to the ideological rhetoric espoused by the Sad Puppies.

RESULTS

These following results are organized into sections using the frames of colorblind racism, one section for each of the four frames. First abstract liberalism presumes there is no racial inequality, thus any inequality must be due to individual faults. Second, minimization downplays the severity of inequality by asserting that things are ‘better’ now than in the past or in some

52 other location. Third, the culturalist frame modifies the frame originally explored by Bonilla-

Silva (2010). Sad Puppies lump all political/critical actions and discourse that challenges structural inequalities into one group – SJWs – arguing that SJW culture is oppressive and power-hungry. Finally, naturalization is a frame that argues that inequality is natural, thus it is pointless to challenge naturally occurring phenomena.

Abstract liberalism

The colorblind frame of abstract liberalism emphasizes the supposed existence of equal opportunity and meritocracy (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Seron et al. 2018). Through this frame, the social structures that create and reinforce inequality are overlooked. Instead, the world is seen through the lens shaped by the political ideology of freedom and liberty, where challenges to this viewpoint are seen as an attack on liberty itself. Sad Puppies often use this frame in their rhetorical attacks on political opposites who support active diversity efforts, such as affirmative action. For example, Donald, a Sad Puppy man, wrote:

I’d like to believe in his [referencing a Sad Puppy author of another post] future, where

individuals matter, and people are judged on their merits, and not on superficial

characteristics. I try to support this idea in my usual subversive (superversive?) way by

writing plausible characters, people that readers feel they’ve met and know, who behave

in a plausible manner in the story… who just don’t fit the stereotype, and to whom the PC

token characteristic is not the defining feature of their lives, (it may shape them, but

doesn’t define them or the story) but is just an aspect of the character’s life. There are

times when being black and being discriminated against may be central to your life, but

possibly not when you’re facing Scylla and Charybdis (Pyramid Scheme) with a group of

other humans. Then not being dinner is central. (Donald, 2015)

Meritocracy is the key to this argument, suggesting that people are rewarded and “judged on their merits, and not on superficial characteristics.” Meritocracy is a convenient way to claim to have just ideals and value equality, when it, in fact, ignores contexts that are central in shaping the opportunities to create merit. For instance, race has a significant effect on employment

(Neckerman and Kirschenman 1991; Pager 2003; Pager, Bonikowski, and Western 2009), but looking strictly at the resulting merit, such as employment, obfuscates the barriers that people of color are more likely to face. Thus, by assuming that equality already exists, Sad Puppies assert that any attempt at corrective justice, such as increasing the representation of frequently marginalized groups in works of fiction, is an unnecessary and unfair task.

However, instead of arguing that this implied advantage is harmful to people from dominant groups, like white men, this is an example of arguing to preserve the aesthetic of the genre. Works of fiction recognized for dealing with issues of inequality or adding more diverse representations to the genre are dismissed as focusing on “PC token characteristics.” The implied logic is that these stories are sacrificing quality narratives in favor of PC (politically correct) tokenism. While SFF is not one-dimensional, it has a long history of overvaluing stories mostly about and written by white, straight, cis-gendered men and their hegemonic masculine adventures (Feagin 2003; Langer 2011; Nama 2010; Zaki 1990). By claiming to be only interested in the integrity of SFF stories, Sad Puppies are, in effect, using their politics about what art should be valued in the genre as a means to protect the legacy of white male domination in SFF fiction.

In an earlier post, opined even more explicitly from a colorblind abstract liberalism position:

I am a firm believer in the idea that all humans should be equal before the law, and

should have the best opportunities we can provide. No human who has the brains and

ability should ever be denied the opportunity for education – as much as they can hold, if

possible. I believe that no group of humans is innately superior to any other group. I

believe -and I think I have the evidence on my side – that you cannot determine a

human’s character or their intelligence by their gender, skin color or sexual-orientation. I

believe every human is an individual and that they deserve a fair go, and not to be

prejudged. (Donald, 2014)

Here, individualism (“I believe every human is an individual and that they deserve a fair go…”) is directly linked to notions of equality (“…all humans should be equal before the law…”).

Rhetoric like this reinforces the ideology that individualism is necessary for true equality. Thus, issues of group-membership are antithetical to establishing or (as many Sad Puppies believe) maintaining equality. It is this logic that bolsters their belief that focusing on group identities, such as race or gender, is a misguided approach to equality. If individualism is an essential component to equality, then focusing on group-based disparities will undo what they perceive as an already existing equality. Stories that have “diversity” based on race, gender, or orientation are acceptable, but those that are perceived as “preachy” fall into the “bad” fiction category and are not worthy of awards in the genre. Lance, another Sad Puppy Man, writes:

Award winning became a synonym for boring and preachy. The insider cliques just

declared that my part of fandom was stupid and didn’t matter anyway, while those who

honestly cherished the awards didn’t like seeing their Hugo lose its luster in the eyes of

the masses. (Lance, 2015)

The following quote from Donald, a Sad Puppy man, illustrates the resulting ideology

that comes from adhering to the abstract liberalism frame:

So: that in a mere six page nutshell is why I oppose the PC diktat. Not because, as Zuky

fantasizes, because I want to have fun or repress anyone. Not because I support prejudice:

the opposite is true. As a tool to put down prejudice it has become a tool to merely shift

prejudice. And I am [in] favor getting rid of prejudice, not just shifting the irrational

kicking boy to the new bottom of the pecking order. The trick is going to be–to use a

cliche that you really need to understand the history of to grasp well–to not throw the

baby out with the bathwater. To keep any gains from the concept of PC and to lose the

bad aspects. To build the bridges that lead not to a conquest, but to a better country for

all. A country where respect and reward is earned by the merit of individuals and not

prejudice based on perceived group characteristics. A country where we look at

intentions and learn to laugh at ourselves. Where we do not magnify trivia for the sake of

manufacturing indignation. Where we accept that different cultures will not always see

things our way, and where we try to meet them half-way, and find that they come and

meet us too. A country where we heal wounds, and there is no value in keeping the flesh

raw and suppurating forever. A country which has no ghettos for anyone. (Donald, 2014)

Common among the Sad Puppies is to regard any language about group-based oppression as PC rhetoric. Sad Puppies often construct this PC language as a top-down, authoritarian method of telling people how to think and speak – “PC diktat.” This rhetoric fully embraces the notion that talking about race is what causes racism, or that talking about sex/gender is what causes sexism,

56 etc. “I am [in] favor getting rid of prejudice, not just shifting the irrational kicking boy to the new bottom of the pecking order.” The implied belief is that “PC” rhetoric was a necessary tool to eradicate inequalities based on race, gender, orientation, but now that those inequalities are

(perceived) to be gone, continuing to use the same “PC” language is now creating new inequalities. Again, individualism is illustrated as a key to equality… “A country where respect and reward is earned by the merit of individuals and not prejudice based on perceived group characteristics.”

Donald goes on to imply that this so-called “PC diktat” is what creates divisions and inequalities between people by writing about a desire to live in “A country where we heal wounds, and there is no value in keeping the flesh raw and suppurating forever.” Therefore, talking about group-based inequalities is “keeping the flesh raw and suppurating forever.” Thus, this rhetorical strategy labels justice-oriented dialogue about categorical inequalities as authoritarian “diktat” that also keeps “flesh raw.” In effect, abstract liberalism has moved beyond the realm of racial inequality, and is used to protect the status quo in most, if not all, areas of inequality, illustrating the pervasiveness of oppression-blind ideologies (Ferber 2018).

Minimization

Colorblind ideology is persistent because the frames of abstract liberalism and minimization work so well together (Bonilla-Silva 2010). While abstract liberalism allows people to claim adherence to lofty political ideals, minimization bolsters this frame by diminishing the realities of existing inequality. Being blind to the nature and degree of inequity makes it easier for people to believe in ideologies of equality and liberalism as shaping most of society. There are two basic forms to minimization: things are not as bad as they used to be, or

57 things are worse elsewhere. In the following blog excerpt, Donald opines that being a

“designated victim,” or someone historically oppressed, is actually a privilege, implying that things are not as bad as they used to be:

Those selected for deliberate non-offense are free to abuse those declared ‘bad’, as is

anyone else. It sets up a clear hierarchy of who has most ‘right to redress’ (AKA

privilege) as a victim. It has no sunset on those privileges. If your great great

grandmother was a designated ‘victim’, and you – with just 1/16 of her blood now live in

a mansion and enjoy special privileges as [a] result, which set you far above Joe Average,

your grandchildren will still have that 1/64 of DNA outvoting the rest and insuring (sic)

that they can stand in front of line. And to those who have set the orthodoxy, even the

questioning of individual points, let alone the concept of top-down prescription, is not PC

and must be disciplined away. Very Stalinist, and a little historical research should show

why that is a bad idea. (Donald, 2014)

The above quote, like most discussions of inequality among Sad Puppies, avoids dealing in specifics. Rather abstractions, like “designated victim,” are used, suggesting an informal norm that discussing specific groups is antithetical to the ideals of abstract liberalism. However, the above example focuses on the blood quantum (e.g. “1/64 of DNA”) of the “designated victim,” implying that Native Americans, “pedigreed” by blood quantum based on the history of the U.S.

Allotment Acts (Fain and Nagle 2017), were in mind, or possibly African Americans, where the

“one-drop rule” of hypodescent was a criteria for racial border maintenance.

The unspoken logic that underlies this hypothetical example is that at some point in the past, the social forces that were oppressing this group were ostensibly solved. Since that time, this oppression turned into a “right to redress,” which is also understood as “privilege” in the

minds of the Sad Puppies. Rhetoric of this nature is difficult to challenge. First, the lack of

specificity means that there is no space for specific counterexamples. For instance, if the above

Sad Puppy had been specific about Native Americans, a counter argument could be made

showing the extreme levels of inequality that manifest in high rates of suicide, high rates of

poverty, poor health outcomes, and high rates of victimization by violent crimes (Berger 2009;

Churchill 1998). At the same time evidence could be provided about the structures that contribute to these inequalities, such as employment discrimination, lack of mental and physical health resources, or the unusual nature of policing on reservations (Biolsi 2007; Churchill 1998;

Deloria 1973).

Second, by using a frame that is blind to current inequalities, abstract notions of equality and liberalism can be used in place of specifics. This has the advantage of positioning any opposing viewpoint as opposing equality and liberty. This discursive strategy can be seen in the example above. By assuming that inequality no longer reigns, then the supposedly SJW position that creates the “right to redress” is actually creating a form of inequality – it is creating

“privilege.” This is implicitly unfair because this “privilege” is undeserved. Therefore, by having some small claim to oppressed ancestors, someone thusly privileged is unfairly “outvoting the rest and insuring (sic) that they can stand in front of line” in the colorblind ideology of the Sad

Puppies. This notion of line cutting is further explored by Hochschild (2018) and Metzl (2019)

where far-right conservatives in the United States see women, immigrants, and minorities of color as cutting in line for the “American dream.”

In other examples, two different Sad Puppies focus on how inequality is worse in other

places.

Most folks know them as ISIS, though the Arabic and Islamic nations partnering with

NATO and other countries to fight ISIS, call those guys DAESH, which is derogatory

towards ISIS/ISIL. DAESH are the charming folks who throw gay men to their deaths,

from rooftops. And chop the heads off of innocent women and children. That stuff is

happening right now, in the real world. But apparently, going after a writer or a director

— for movies and TV shows — is the best way armchair activists can spend their time?

No, I don’t get it either. I don’t think I ever will. (Ben, 2015)

But you don’t have to go to the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism to find societies that

treat women worse than America does. In point of fact ALMOST every culture and

society in the world treats women worse than America does. (Exception might go to the

Scandinavian cultures but that is changing for the worse with the importation of people

with toxic misogynistic cultures.) (Samantha, 2015)

Both of these examples use militarized Islamic fundamentalism as the comparison group.

Compared to ISIS, who “throw gay men to their deaths, from rooftops. And chop the heads off of innocent women and children,” SJW concerns about representation and justice in works of fiction seem trivial. This is an effective discursive strategy that replaces concerns for the long- term effects of white, straight, masculine normativity in SFF works with the concerns for the immediate effects of life and body. By focusing on the extreme issues of oppression and inequality in another place, Sad Puppies position similar localized concerns into the realm of illegitimate and disingenuous discourse.

As an extension to this discursive logic, one of the above Sad Puppies writes that “In point of fact ALMOST every culture and society in the world treats women worse than America

does.” The implication made by her statement is that it is illegitimate to even criticize the United

States for its treatment of women because it is worse almost everywhere else. Again, this rhetoric

avoids specifics. Instead it makes blanket generalizations, which would require numerous

counterexamples to challenge – something that can readily be done, but that requires far more

discursive energy than the original Sad Puppy generalization, a strategy referred to as shifting the

burden of proof (Rothwell 2017).

In Sad Puppy spaces, such as their blogs and website, the two frames of minimization and

abstract liberalism frequently work in tandem. Minimization of inequality, created through

generalizations, provides the basis for blind ideologies of abstract liberalism. Because most

people in the U.S. generally subscribe to a political view that supports equality and individual

liberty, this form of Sad Puppy colorblindness attaches itself to a highly valued social norm – a

moral high ground. Thus, challenges to Sad Puppy talking points are discursively positioned as

antithetical to U.S. ideals, requiring far more nuance to challenge these colorblind frames.

Culturalist Frame

In Bonilla-Silva’s (2010) formulation of the cultural racism frame, people (mostly white

people) blame culture as an explanation for why some racial groups lag behind whites

economically in the U.S. For example, it was common to describe a racial minority group as just

“lazy” and that is why they do not have jobs, and thus incomes, compared to white people.

Interestingly, this frame of rhetoric was not common in the accounts I analyzed.

However, the Sad Puppies have put a new spin on this form of dialogue. Instead of blaming the culture of a minority racial group, they focus their blame on the political left’s culture. They see this as a homogenous group variously named liberals, the left, Social Justice

Warriors, or PC (politically correct) enforcers. A common thread in this ideological frame is that the Sad Puppies see the previously discussed frames (abstract liberalism, and minimization) as

axiomatic. This taken-for-granted approach to the supposed lack of racial inequality and the

individualistic nature of social problems, leads them to reject group-based prescriptions to social problems that they view as endemic to leftist thinking. This ideological position, combined with their belief that the left has unwarranted influence over the culture-at-large, especially in the entertainment industry, helps form the basis of this new spin on cultural racism. For the Sad

Puppies, it is the culture of the left that produces the inequality that the left claims to be against.

For example, Donald wrote:

Another thing that really bothers me about PC roles and characters in books is the sheer

arrogant Victorian-era racism and sexism that goes with it. It’s as condescending as hell.

‘We Anglo-Saxon superior types must be nice to these lesser people, because we are so

far above them that they’ll be annihilated otherwise.’ As an egalitarian myself who has

lived and worked with people who aren’t white or male: there are individuals among

them who are my intellectual and physical superiors. Quite a few of them have been third

or fourth generation of University graduates. To treat them (merely on the basis of skin

color or sex) as if they need an extra leg-up is a bit of an insult as well as a display of

ignorance. They certainly deserve EQUAL treatment. I’ll back that to the hilt. There may

be some bloke from the back of beyond who has suffered from say a lack of education or

job opportunities, based on his skin color. He’d get a break, a leg-up from me–but I can’t

reach a decision like that on the basis of skin color. It’s a decision reached about an

individual, on its merits, not the entire mob. (Donald, 2014)

In this excerpt from Donald, multiple frames of colorblind racism are present. First, there is the assumption that whatever racism might exist is minimal – “there are individuals among them who are my intellectual and physical superiors. Quite a few of them have been third or fourth generation of University graduates.” This anecdotal evidence implies that there is little racial or gender inequality when it comes to intellectual or physical skills, let alone educational

opportunities. Next, there is a strong devotion to the ideals of abstract liberalism – “They

certainly deserve EQUAL treatment.” Similarly, any disadvantage that a person may have is

attributed to individual, rather than group-based, circumstances – “It’s a decision reached about

an individual, on its merits…” Both of these frames are used to explain and justify the Sad Puppy

position that the culture of the political left actually creates inequality. A tokenistic and

stereotypical writing style is identified, which in itself is problematic for lessening inequality

(Bell and Hartmann 2007; Hale 1997), with the assumption that it is emblematic of all leftist or

PC writing.

Again, this argument is based on vague hypothetical examples rather than specific

writing examples that could be critically examined. Without specifics, it is difficult to challenge

the evidence Sad Puppies use to support their ideological positions. However, the general logic

of this frame is that any opposing ideology that ignores the supposed minimization of racism and

the ideals of abstract liberalism is in itself the cause of inequalities – “To treat them (merely on

the basis of skin color or sex) as if they need an extra leg-up is a bit of an insult as well as a

display of ignorance.” The logic of this frame suggests that it is ignorant for the left to approach

inequalities from a group-based perspective. It is illogical to even say that there are social

inequalities. Rather, according to the Sad Puppies, there are differences based on individual

63 differences, and any attempt to disregard this logic is what is actually creating inequality in society.

Based on the logic of this cultural racism frame, they then explain the lack of sales for women and racial minority authors as the fault of the left’s culture. Sad Puppies justify systemic bias in sales of fiction as rational actions caused by previous emphases on PC messages in fiction by Social Justice Warriors. Cassandra, a Sad Puppy woman, writes:

You see, we have noticed there is a pendulum effect, and a push-back, happening with all

the harping on women in the industry. Rather than letting stories stand on merit, works

are being recognized for their ‘message’ or for being written by the minority-du-jour.

Readers are beginning to cue in on this, and to avoid certain clues when they shop for a

book. And one of those, I found when I published Pixie Noir, is a hint of either “strong

female character” or female writer. Not because they think either is a bad thing. No,

because they associate both of those with message fiction, and like a puppy who has had

his nose rubbed in a steaming pile (more than once!) they aren’t going to make that

mistake again. (Cassandra, 2014)

Again, this quote illustrates the importance of a supposed meritocracy to the Sad Puppies.

According to the Sad Puppy perspective, recent awards in fiction writing, like the Hugos, have been awarded based on the “message” and not merit – “Rather than letting stories stand on merit, works are being recognized for their ‘message’ or for being written by the minority-du-jour.”

From this ideological frame, a meritocracy already exists, but the left is defying this supposed meritocracy by giving awards to works based on the message it presents or who writes it. Again, there is no specific example used as evidence for this anti-meritocratic culture Sad Puppies see in the left, rather it is an assumed cultural fixation. They then point to this recent history of giving

awards to works that they do not approve of as both anti-meritocratic and as justification for why white men still lead in sales of SFF works.

This new variation of the culturalist frame argues that the left and the “anointed darlings” are just seeking handouts to get and maintain a privileged position. This is the culture that they are critical of and which they blame for any inequality that can be identified. This ideological frame is the logical result of an ongoing belief that there are no more inequalities except for the ones that people fabricate themselves. Thus, the Sad Puppies view the left as culturally fixated on solving a problem that does not exist and are therefore contradictorily causing the problem they want to eradicate.

Naturalization

Naturalization is an ideological frame that removes the agency from inequality. Using this frame, some argue that racial segregation is natural, stating that “no matter what racial group you are, you do, um, sort of gather with those people that are alike” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:111). In the genres of science fiction and fantasy, some of the most recognizable inequality is in the lack of diversity among the creators of fiction and the protagonists of those stories (Clute 1995).

Sad Puppies using a naturalization frame when writing about issues of inequality naturalize inequality in two ways. The first is more straight-forward – they justify the sexism and racism inherent in many stories as authentic tropes of creative worldbuilding because the inspiration for these fictional worlds were derived from actual historical periods rife with various forms of inequality. The second is slightly more complicated. Because it is common for Sad

Puppies to see inequality only in things that upset their worldview of a supposed meritocracy, they naturalize what they see as the source of inequality, claiming victimhood status, as an innate

65 characteristic of people, especially those on the left end of the political spectrum, as inherent greed for privilege.

In the following quote, Donald, a Sad Puppy man, demonstrates the first method of naturalizing inequality. By naturalizing historical inequality, Sad Puppies justify mainstream fantasy’s lack of representation within works of fiction:

While terms may be hurtful–sometimes depending on person or situation (Call me

vertically challenged and I’ll probably punch you just where I’ll deliver the best upper-

cut) – you cannot simply ignore the context or the intent. Steampunk, alternate history

and fantasy which is set in realism-based feudal situations are often eras in which sexual

discrimination and racism, for example, were norms. It is no use having the token black

and Asian and gay character there without some very serious handwaving. It can be done,

but they will have a discrimination hill to climb in that book. And it would [be] perfectly

plausible to have an entire book where there were none of the tokens, because, certainly

in some echelons of society and work that would have been true. Likewise a book of say

only Asian characters would be, in certain settings, a norm. But the setting is key: A

black man would have been totally unlikely in a Victorian Country village. You could put

him there if you wanted to, but you’d need some very good handwavium. And, rather like

the inevitable villain, you can’t do it every time, if you wish to sustain belief. (Donald,

2014)

Despite the creative nature of works of fictions, some Sad Puppies assert that fantasy stories would not be believable without the lack of diverse representation or without sexism and racism inherent in the stories. However, when authors have written stories that include issues of racism and sexism as central plot points, Sad Puppies consider this to be the type of “message

66 fiction” mentioned earlier. In their eyes, such “message fiction” undermines the quality of the genre because they view it is written solely with a political agenda in mind and not a fun, adventurous narrative. In essence, this ideological frame is a type of boundary maintenance

(Schwalbe et al. 2000), that legitimizes SFF works that incorporate the same sexism, racism, and lack of diverse representation of the past, but not if those works directly grapple with those issues. Thus, a work of fiction in these genres “naturally” incorporates racism and sexism from the historical periods on which the genres are based. But, if a work challenges these structures of inequality, it does not legitimately belong in the genre from the Sad Puppy perspective.

Another way Sad Puppies naturalize inequality is through the inherent greed they see in people, especially Social Justice Warriors, to gain a social advantage by claiming victimhood status. From this perspective, inequality is caused by the greed of those who “game the system,” but they also see this greed as naturally occurring, thereby naturalizing inequality. This frame overlaps somewhat with the culturalist frame among the Sad Puppies, as they most commonly see this greed as a defining cultural practice among those on the left. Dean, a Sad Puppy man, writes:

There is of course a large amount [of] cynical manipulation for their own benefit, by

people who have realized there is a big advantage in Western Society in claiming victim

status and farming guilt, so they get preferential treatment. They tend to yell very loudly

and angrily at any suggestion that these privileges should give way to mere equal and fair

treatment for all, or that each and every case should be treated on merit. Humans have

always gamed the system. At least one (and quite possibly more) of my ancestors did so

by ‘passing’ as part of the elite and privileged of their day. I understand why they did it,

but gaming the system should not be necessary. That’s what we should strive for. Not

‘who can claim the most injury’ competitions. (Dean, 2015)

In this excerpt, multiple frames of colorblindness are present. First, there is an explicit

appeal to a belief in meritocracy – “these privileges should give way to mere equal and fair

treatment for all…” This kind of abstract liberalism ties in with the colorblind frame of cultural

racism, where Sad Puppies see a specific culture among their political opponents, who,

implicitly, are primarily composed of people who could claim “victimhood status.” They see this

cultural trait as endemic to the left, who they culturally “otherize,” and they blame that culture for challenging what the Sad Puppies see as true equality – abstract liberal ideals of meritocracy.

Part of this SJWs’ culture is “farming guilt, so they get preferential treatment” and to “yell very loudly and angrily” about the Sad Puppies’ ideals of meritocracy. Finally, they naturalize the greedy and aggressive descriptions of the SJW – “Humans have always gamed the system.” So, in this extended frame of logic, SJWs are aggressive and greedy for trying to claim victimhood status, which, to the Sad Puppies, is equivalent to social privilege, undermining Sad Puppy ideals of abstract liberalism. This type of cultural behavior is natural because humans are competitive and greedy by nature. Thus, inequality itself is natural and legitimate based on the logic of this frame.

While the above quote mentions ideals of equality and striving to end “‘who can claim the most injury’ competitions,” the implicit result of this logic is that the real debate is about who should be at the top of the inequality spectrum since inequality is natural. Going back to the first frame of abstract liberalism, Sad Puppies seek to turn this discussion into one based on a supposed meritocracy. For Sad Puppies, unequal rewards in a system based on meritocracy is

just and fair. This ideological position blinds them to the many structures that inhibit a true

meritocracy and blinds them to the inequality that these systems create and maintain.

DISCUSSION

In the 1990s, scholars began to write about the “new racism,” which was colorblind in form

(Bonilla-Silva 2002; Carr 1997; Winant 2001). They described a change to racial ideology and discourse that had been occurring since the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (Stallion 2013). The Justices ruled that state laws establishing separate schools for Black and white children violated the 14th Amendment, specifically the equal protection clause. Supporters of this ruling hailed it as both an embrace of a colorblind legal system and a destruction of the oppressive racial order in the United States

(Edwards 2004). Thus, colorblind abstract liberalism was the legal foundation for racial justice following Brown v. Board (Guinier and Torres 2002; Skrentny 1996). This ruling established a new social norm that it was no longer acceptable to consider race in policy opinions or personal actions, but instead to focus on individualism (Carr 1997). Importantly, explicit notions of white racial superiority lost legitimacy in public discourse (van Dijk 2000).

Another important victory for equality was the adoption of affirmative action practices among businesses and universities. Affirmative action programs were designed to actively intervene in systems of racial inequality (Skrentny 1996). The guiding principle of affirmative action was that direct intervention based on race and gender was necessary to correct the centuries of unequal opportunities and advantages that had accumulated (Skrentny 2014). While

affirmative action policies were nowhere close to eliminating inequalities, they did have limited

success and help grow a nascent Black middle class (Collins 1997).

The new colorblind racism that followed these successes adopted a skewed version of the

ideology of the Civil Rights movement, such as not judging people by their race, to actually

undermine the practical policies established to reduce inequality – affirmative action (Katznelson

2005). By the end of the 1970s, the white right-wing activists who staunchly opposed affirmative action had altered their rhetorical strategies. They ended their public support for white supremacy and instead focused on the ills of racial preferences and so-call “reverse discrimination” or “reverse racism.” They argued that colorblindness was necessary to prevent the favoring of any racial group over another (Brown et al. 2003; MacLean 2008).

What this history shows is a dramatic change in discourse and ideology that effectively maintains status quo oppression. Opponents of affirmative action found their most effective strategy in adopting the language and ideology of colorblindness, which were championed by the pioneers of the modern Civil Rights movements as a key strategy to social integration. This colorblind approach, however, is ahistorical in nature. It disregards the centuries of social structures put in place to create and maintain inequalities (Katznelson 2005). Colorblind ideology blinds white people to the causes and consequences of racial injustices. In this ideology, whiteness is an unconscious norm against which members of other racial groups are compared

(Bonilla-Silva 2010). White normativity shapes the interactions of white people, segregating most whites from interacting with, or even being concerned about, people across the color line

(Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006).

Using the frames of colorblind racism spelled-out by Bonilla-Silva (2010), I analyzed the discourse of Sad Puppies as they wrote about their opposition to supposed leftist interventionism

in Hugo awards. Essentially, the Sad Puppies see the recent voting results and media attention

given to recent Hugo award winners as a form of affirmative action that has spread from social

institutions like higher education and business to literature and the arts organizations. The organizations that give awards, like the Hugos, serve as a cultural legitimizing force (Bourdieu

1984). They both reflect and shape cultural values about what is distinctive. In the culture of science fiction and fantasy fandom, the Hugos are generally viewed as recognizing the best that the genres have to offer year after year since 1953. Because the Sad Puppies perceive an affirmative action-based change in the award recipients in recent years, they challenge the legitimacy of the Hugos as a leading force in the subculture of SFF.

Consistent with Bonilla-Silva’s (2010) findings, abstract liberalism and minimization were common frames that were most effectively used in tandem. When the notion that there is little to no inequality in a culture is accepted axiomatically, then efforts to reduce that inequality are viewed as unnecessary, unfair, and likely to create inequality instead. Because, the Sad

Puppies minimize the amount of inequality in both the SFF subculture and society at large, they adhere to an abstract notion of liberalism. They highly value individualism and meritocracy, expecting social rewards, including the Hugos, to be given based on individual merit. This also forms the basis of a circular logic. Sad Puppies expect rewards/awards to be given meritocratically. Therefore, if they see inequalities in rewards/awards, they justify them as resultant failures of individual effort or ability and not because of a history of structural barriers hindering the achievements of some social groups. These rhetorical strategies are effective because they give the illusion of a moral high ground – valuing fairness above all. However, that fairness is conflated with individualism and is blind to group-based structural barriers.

I found that the Sad Puppies also use the other two frames explicated by Bonilla-Silva

(2010), but in new and adapted ways. For Bonilla-Silva (2010), cultural racism referred to ideologies that used stereotypes to explain inequalities. For instance, some might explain racial income gaps with the culture of poverty argument. This form of blaming a racial group’s culture was not found among the data I analyzed. Given that the Sad Puppies were writing these blog posts nearly two decades after the first edition of Racism without Racists (Bonilla-Silva 2003) was published, new rhetorical adaptions likely evolved. Presently, Sad Puppies are still blaming the culture of a group for creating inequality; however, they are no longer grouping people based on race. This is most likely due to the ease in which cultural racism can be commonly recognized as explicit racism rather than colorblind. Instead, they are grouping people based on political

orientation, and placing blame for inequalities on the culture of their political opponents. Sad

Puppies view SJWs as greedily capitalizing on past inequalities that they have minimized, like

racial or gender inequalities, to hoard social rewards/awards for their own group. While they are

not explicit about the demographics that they perceive belonging to the SJW culture, Sad

Puppies write about how SJWs use the rhetoric of being a victim as a form of privilege. Such

victim rhetoric frequently includes oppression by race, gender, and sexuality, implying that

people who have been marginalized or oppressed by hierarchies of race, gender, or sexuality

generally belong to the SJW group. Thus, Sad Puppies have taken the extra rhetorical steps to

guard themselves from accusations of racism, sexism, and general bigotry by the culture of a

group defined by politics rather than by race, gender, or sexuality. Because they minimize

inequalities, Sad Puppies are not blaming culture to explain why those groups are still

marginalized and oppressed, but rather to explain how they, the Sad Puppies, are being

marginalized and oppressed by SJWs.

Finally, Bonilla-Silva (2010) illustrates people using the naturalization frame to explain and justify social segregation. Primarily, they viewed residential segregation as the result of self- segregation and that it was “natural” for people to want to be around others like themselves.

Similarly, the Sad Puppies naturalize factors that create inequality. However, instead of naturalizing same-group racial preferences, some who use this frame are naturalizing fictional content that lacks diverse representation or utilizes abhorrent stereotypes. This, they claim, is because many subgenres, especially those in fantasy, are based on historical eras from Earth’s past in which stark inequalities were present. Sad Puppies argue that to write in these genres and ignore the past inequalities or hierarchies interrupts the suspension of disbelief for potential readers and loses legitimacy as a work in the genre. Ironically, they see no problem with aliens/non-humans as main characters or the use of non-existent technology affecting the suspension of disbelief. Rather they find it more unbelievable that existing social hierarchies of race, gender, and heteronormativity could be challenged. They regard writing that purposefully ignores this “naturalized” whitewashing of stories as “message fiction,” which is equivalent to

“bad” writing, undeserving of awards. And since they view many recent Hugo winners as writers of “message fiction,” they now regard the Hugos as illegitimate, and those works as defiant to the naturalization of inequality that they see as a sensible cornerstone in the genre’s writing, essentially justifying a lack of diverse representation of characters.

CONCLUSION

Overall, colorblind discourses are representative of ideologies that stem from a system of unequal power relationships. They function to preserve the inequalities of the status quo by obscuring their existence (Jackman 1996; Marx and Engels 1845). Colorblind racism unburdens

white people from the responsibilities of racism (Bonilla-Silva 2010), disregarding centuries of

purposeful oppression through white supremacy (Feagin 2006). The Sad Puppies are playing an

important part in this process. They are one side of a cultural battle that is shaping the ideas and

practices of a subculture’s future. Sad Puppies utilize the internet to easily and quickly

disseminate their colorblind and oppression-blind ideologies. The rhetoric they use then becomes

part of the cultural toolkit (Swidler 1986) for followers of their blogs and website. Sad Puppies

write frequently about their disagreements with political opposites, thus providing lots of

practice and many examples of rhetorical strategies that support the ideologies of colorblind

racism and oppression-blindness. Subscribing to an ideology of colorblindness or oppression-

blindness does nothing to stop the social structures that create inequality and instead simply

inhibits constructive discourse about how to reduce those inequalities.

While the Sad Puppies are an online activist group specifically organized around works

of fiction in the genres of science-fiction and fantasy and the institutions that recognize works in

these genres, the scope of the Sad Puppy discourse is much larger. They frequently write about

politics in the U.S. and other Western societies. Their strong belief in abstract liberalism,

especially individualism and meritocracy, and their belief that they are the victims of greedy,

manipulative Social Justice Warriors is not specific to the Sad Puppies. Rather, their ideology

and discursive strategies are shared among other right-leaning groups, such as the Tea Party

(Blee and Yates 2015), gamergate (Chess and Shaw 2015; Salter 2018), Brexit supporters

(Wilson 2016), and Trump supporters (Pascoe 2017). More research is needed to further explore how the ideologies and rhetoric of these and other groups are related and how the burgeoning colorblind ideology in addition to claims of victimhood led to the election of a President in the

US that actually normalizes more explicitly racist dialogue and has increased the incidences of

hate crimes (Müller and Schwarz 2018; Rushin and Edwards 2018), and overt forms of racism and bigotry.

REFRENCES

Bail, Christopher. 2014. “The Cultural Environment: Measuring Culture with Big Data.” Theory

& Society 43:465–82.

Becker, Howard S. 1998. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think About Your Research While You’re

Doing It (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing). Vol. 1. University Of

Chicago Press.

Bell, Joyce M. and Douglas Hartmann. 2007. “Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural

Ambiguities and Consequences of ‘Happy Talk.’” American Sociological Review 72:895–

914.

Berger, Bethany. 2009. “Red: Racism and the American Indian.” UCLA Law Review 56(3):591–

656.

Biolsi, Thomas. 2007. Deadliest Enemies: Law and Race Relations On and Off Rosebud

Reservation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Blee, Kathleen M. and Elizabeth A. Yates. 2015. “The Place of Race in Conservative and Far-

Right Movements.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):127–36.