Seal Press: Suggested Rectification

As the WAD* turns. In this week's episode, Seal Press gets cranky with those damn "negative discoursing" women of color, who for some reason just aren't beating down their door . [Scroll down for the goods.]

Shocking, I know. (And we won't talk about how they seem to beat down the door of white feminists who want to talk about sex.)


And since you asked, Seal, here's what you can do: start by not giving some asinine excuse about how we're "dissecting your every word" and by:

1) Examining how you have created and/or contributed to the lack of women of color at Seal. This includes stopping with the "they don't come to us" and asking first if that's true or if it's an assumption based on your erroneous perception of the problem and whose responsibility it is to fix it and second, if women of color aren't beating your door down, why?

Because I'm just speaking for me here, but if I feel unwelcome somewhere, I'm not going to trust someone with my life's work. I'm going to find a publisher who seems interested in what I have to say and, perhaps, gets it. Or at least shows interest in getting it. And I'm definitely not going to go somewhere that thinks I'm too negative, too angry, or just plain unpalatable. Because chances are if you can't hear a critique of why WOC aren't impressed with you, then I doubt you're going to want to publish my work, seeing as it's probably just as negative and angry as I am.

2) Issuing a sincere apology based on the insight you've gained in your careful examination of where you went wrong. Now, I realize it's hard to be put on the spot like that, but you know it's just a bad idea to stick with the "it's not my fault" schtick even when it's not working. The most graceful and respectful thing to do is to apologize and learn from your mistakes, even if they weren't made intentionally. Because let me tell you, I can't count how many times a white person/institution has unintentionally hurt me. Or how many times I've comforted a friend who's been hurt--held their hand or given them a hug as they recount the painfulness of betrayal, ignorance, and hurt.

Chances are, if you've got a grip of angry brown women saying you fucked up? You fucked up.

Give it a few to think about it, will ya?




* WAD (White Asshat Disorder): "Primary symptoms include but are not limited to: colorblindness, positive stereotyping, calling all wo/men of a particular racial/ethnic background 'so hot,' divide-and-conquer mentality toward social categories and subsequent deprioritization of race, repeated inquiries about where someone is 'really from,' passing judgments on whether someone does or does not look and/or act like their stated race/ethnicity, assorted head-in-sand disorders [see subsections on ignoring non-whites in life-or-death situations and 'the past is past, get over it'], exclamations that 'mixed babies are the cutest,' purse-clutching, assumptions about a speaker's native language(s), assumptions about class, piling on non-whites when they make a mistake, calling all members of a particular racial/ethnic background 'exclusionary,' making irrelevant references to someone's race/ethnicity, caricaturizing of non-whites, unsolicited hair touching. Disorder, if left unchecked, may lead to death by shin-kicking." Suggested course of treatment: Repeated blows to the head with a heavy object followed by slamming the fingers of at least one hand into a door (repeat as needed). Resistant strains might require treatment of one or more sessions with at least three Angry Brown PeopleTM in order to reverse the Special Snowflake damage. Unfortunately, outlook is not good, with most cases still resulting in significant damage to the portions of the brain most implicated in empathy, consideration, and developing a sense of how to be a fucking decent person.
(Term coined by parlance and defined by chitinous. Course of treatment suggested by yours truly.