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News & ArtsMonday, March 11, 2013
Books How Hateful Homophobe Orson Scott Card Became a Hateful Homophobe
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:05 PM
Steven Lloyd Wilson provides a good analysis of the problem with Orson Scott Card, and he provides some interesting criticism of Ender's Game that suggests Card has been entertaining these ideas from the very beginning of his career. Go read the whole thing.
1
I think it should be possible to write a very interesting story in the disintegration of Card, but I disagree that the piece you linked (twice!) and urged people to read came anywhere near telling it. There was almost nothing there - no reporting about Card's views, his progression into hatefulness, about anything he's written other than his first, great novel (or at least the first one to attract widespread notice; I don't know if it's first). All the writer does is look back at the author's recollections of Ender's War and note that when he wrote that book Card may have been sympathetic to the idea of the Ubermensch and to the idea of the benevolent dictator. To which any rational person would have to say "Duh". The piece doesn't describe, let alone explain, what has happened with Card.
2
Yeah, it was pretty disappointing to me, too. I don't know that much about Orson Scott Card, to be honest. I read Ender's Game about five times in middle school, but all my friends said Speaker for the Dead sucked, so I stopped there. Finding out about his political views in high school ended any interest I had in him. So I'm curious what the hell happened to him, but I'm no wiser now than I was before I read that article.
3
I'm suspicious that people are looking for things in his fiction that might not really be there. That happens a lot when artists reveal their ugly side.
4
I agree with @1.
Also, the author of the piece mentions that he can't separate the artist from the art. Well, I can. I separate Wagner from his arrogance and antisemitism. I separate Biggie from his drug dealing past, and Mike Tyson from his assaults of girlfriends. I also separate Roman Polansky from his rape of a child, Mel Gibson from his racism and misogyny, and Bobbie Brown from his drug use and rough marriage with Whitney. (Have you seen him dance?) Hell, I can listen to NWA rap about using and abusing women and enjoy the nasty beats and unvarnished, that's-how-it-is lyrics. People separate artists, athletes, etc. from their performance or creations all the time, even if they don't realize it. And now that we'll never know, I'm really curious about the plot of Card's abandoned Superman story.
Also, the author of the piece mentions that he can't separate the artist from the art. Well, I can. I separate Wagner from his arrogance and antisemitism. I separate Biggie from his drug dealing past, and Mike Tyson from his assaults of girlfriends. I also separate Roman Polansky from his rape of a child, Mel Gibson from his racism and misogyny, and Bobbie Brown from his drug use and rough marriage with Whitney. (Have you seen him dance?) Hell, I can listen to NWA rap about using and abusing women and enjoy the nasty beats and unvarnished, that's-how-it-is lyrics. People separate artists, athletes, etc. from their performance or creations all the time, even if they don't realize it. And now that we'll never know, I'm really curious about the plot of Card's abandoned Superman story.
5
Aside from his personal stance on same sex marriage, im struggling to find any real information that suggests this guy is a full blown hateful homophobe as the stranger is painting him out to be. I was hoping this article would connect the dots for me, but it hasnt, just as previous articles ive read about the guy havent.
6
The linked piece was a letdown.
Here's is Card's own site. He likes Sarah Palin! He likes Scott Brown. He doesn't like the liberal media. He doesn't like Obama. He appears like a run-of-the-mill low information right wing commentator.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/in…
But if you want homophobia you can read this piece in particular. He plays the victim card. He puts marriage in scare quotes. And he trots out every tired arguments against equal civil rights. This piece, from 2004, almost reads as a right wing playbook.
Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/20…
Fuck him.
Here's is Card's own site. He likes Sarah Palin! He likes Scott Brown. He doesn't like the liberal media. He doesn't like Obama. He appears like a run-of-the-mill low information right wing commentator.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/in…
But if you want homophobia you can read this piece in particular. He plays the victim card. He puts marriage in scare quotes. And he trots out every tired arguments against equal civil rights. This piece, from 2004, almost reads as a right wing playbook.
Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/20…
Fuck him.
7
3, that is the entire point of fiction. If there wasn't anything the reader could extrapolate from the writer, to expand on, to create him or herself, then that is a really boring story. There have been mountains written upon Hamlet, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Don Quixote, etc. Do you really think the author's intended their work to mean all that? No. Those works survive because people find something more in them, far beyond the author's intent.
9
@5, the second link @6's post contains is the core of why I refuse to support OSC any further. That post was shameful and horrible, and nothing short of a full apologetic retraction will get me to read his books again.
10
I read Ender's a few times in middle school too and was blown away. Then when I found out one of his next books I bought was about the "Mormon experience" or something as they migrated west, I put it down and quit reading Card altogether. I fondly look back on Ender's Game, but I've never read a whit since like 1990 by OSC because I don't care. It's amazing how many Ender's Game fans all these years share the same revulsion to Card now. Love the message, but hate the messenger -- as far as Ender's Game. The rest, don't know so much about.
11
@ 7, you misunderstand. There's legitimate experience and interpretation, and then there are retroactive attempts to find smoking guns.
Not the same thing.
Not the same thing.
12
@3: Well, he did recently publish a reworking of Hamlet in which the prince of Denmark catches the gay from being molested by his pops, which is pretty conclusive evidence of homophobia seeping into his work. More interestingly, I vaguely remember one of his early novels having a gay man murdered by a mob, a story told by the dude's heroic (but celibate) lover.
14
I was a huge OSC fan for years. Read about how he wrote. He had a day job and four kids, one who was disabled. He had to steal time to write, which his wife supported. He was inspired by dreams, and his kid's struggles. His work during those years, it seems to me, was writing he HAD to do.
Then he got successful. And he quit his day job. And he started writing with his brain instead of his soul.
And in my opinion, that is when everything he did went into the toilet. Pedestrian, strident, down right weird, lecturing, and frankly unreadable.
It's an object lesson in what it means to be an artist, for me. Don't let your brain rule. Write or paint or whatever because your innards burn to do it.
Keep that rational brain out of it. Deadly to art. Just deadly.
Then he got successful. And he quit his day job. And he started writing with his brain instead of his soul.
And in my opinion, that is when everything he did went into the toilet. Pedestrian, strident, down right weird, lecturing, and frankly unreadable.
It's an object lesson in what it means to be an artist, for me. Don't let your brain rule. Write or paint or whatever because your innards burn to do it.
Keep that rational brain out of it. Deadly to art. Just deadly.
15
I was in my twenties when Ender's Game came out and thought that it was a fairly good story,but not much more.It just goes to show that propoganda is more effective when directed at unformed minds. It's manipulative emo fiction, fun but not something you should base your life on. He's a pot-boiler-writing creep. You're now grown up, move on. Lewis Carroll (Dodson) was a pedophile. Don't throw away your childhood over it..
16
I misremembered the plot of Hamlet's Father. The king turns Laertes, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern into gays via molestation, not Hamlet. He does drag hamlet down to hell, though. You see, the king's ghost tricked his son into murdering Claudius so he could bugger him for eternity.
17
I agree with Matt here. I looked up some other articles after I read this one, trying to figure out what the connection between the guy who wrote Ender's Game and the guy who wrote all the weird anti-gay editorials is, and a lot of them were kinda ridiculous. Ender is a stand-in for Hitler, but you're supposed to sympathize with him because Card is a fascist. Or something else equally Godwin-y.
I dunno, from what I remember, it was very very good at depicting how vicious kids can be in a way no other books I came across at the time were, and it depicted adults as evil people who were just out to manipulate you, which is the shit when you're in seventh grade. If it has flaws, it's more just that it's kinda juvenile and not that it's the sinister basis for some LDS-SS ideology.
I dunno, from what I remember, it was very very good at depicting how vicious kids can be in a way no other books I came across at the time were, and it depicted adults as evil people who were just out to manipulate you, which is the shit when you're in seventh grade. If it has flaws, it's more just that it's kinda juvenile and not that it's the sinister basis for some LDS-SS ideology.
18
Looking up old Slog posts, I see that not only did Paul Constant already cover the whole pedoHamlet deal, but that Matt commented on the post.
19
@ 12, he's a hateful homophobe, just as Paul repeats. We know this. And people don't just go from neutral about teh gheys one day to hateful homophobia the next. He has likely always been this way. Perhaps it was mild back when he wrote Ender's Game, since gays were still third class citizens at the time, and it's only since they've made strides toward equality that it began to boil.
That doesn't mean that it was something he felt the need to express in his writing from day one. Okay, maybe he wrote it in a story that you read once but don't really remember. A story that can't be up to the same par as Ender's Game, or else you'd remember it better. Fine. But we've already established that it's safe to assume that he's always been a homophobe.
What I think is going on is an attempt to smear his novel in order to justify calling for bans, or at least being free to judge people who so much as read the book. As I've said, this happens to other controversial artists. Last week, on the Card/Superman thread, someone brought up Richard Wagner. He's a good example because he was a hateful anti-Semite and he was Hitler's favorite composer. But his operas are totally free of anti-Semitism. So people who want extra justification to vilify Wagner (and - more importantly - have a reason to try to stop people from listening to them) go to pains to find anti-Semitism and racism in his operas, and they "find" it. So now they have an answer to those who separate the art from the artist.
So, are people trying to do that with Ender's Game? That's how it appears to me. If so, it's unfortunate because it's immature, intellectually dishonest and unnecessary. You don't need homophobia in Card's classic sci fi to justify never reading him again, or even in the first place if you haven't. You don't need anti-Semitism in Wagner's operas to personally boycott them. People who need that are seeking to persuade others to join their personal boycotts, or an excuse to judge those who keep enjoying the art despite the artist.
Anyway, how old is that post about his new Hamlet? I can't remember commenting on that.
More...
That doesn't mean that it was something he felt the need to express in his writing from day one. Okay, maybe he wrote it in a story that you read once but don't really remember. A story that can't be up to the same par as Ender's Game, or else you'd remember it better. Fine. But we've already established that it's safe to assume that he's always been a homophobe.
What I think is going on is an attempt to smear his novel in order to justify calling for bans, or at least being free to judge people who so much as read the book. As I've said, this happens to other controversial artists. Last week, on the Card/Superman thread, someone brought up Richard Wagner. He's a good example because he was a hateful anti-Semite and he was Hitler's favorite composer. But his operas are totally free of anti-Semitism. So people who want extra justification to vilify Wagner (and - more importantly - have a reason to try to stop people from listening to them) go to pains to find anti-Semitism and racism in his operas, and they "find" it. So now they have an answer to those who separate the art from the artist.
So, are people trying to do that with Ender's Game? That's how it appears to me. If so, it's unfortunate because it's immature, intellectually dishonest and unnecessary. You don't need homophobia in Card's classic sci fi to justify never reading him again, or even in the first place if you haven't. You don't need anti-Semitism in Wagner's operas to personally boycott them. People who need that are seeking to persuade others to join their personal boycotts, or an excuse to judge those who keep enjoying the art despite the artist.
Anyway, how old is that post about his new Hamlet? I can't remember commenting on that.
20
@3: "I'm suspicious that people are looking for things in his fiction that might not really be there. That happens a lot when artists reveal their ugly side."
I recall from the comments on a BoingBoing article there was a lot of naked boy-wrestling in earlier editions of Ender's Game, awkwardly made co-ed in later. They also noted a screed against gays in a later Ender series book.
Sometimes fiction ain't.
I recall from the comments on a BoingBoing article there was a lot of naked boy-wrestling in earlier editions of Ender's Game, awkwardly made co-ed in later. They also noted a screed against gays in a later Ender series book.
Sometimes fiction ain't.
21
@ 20, we need to distinguish between "later Ender books" and Ender's Game. By all accounts, Card's post Speaker For the Dead fiction sucks and wouldn't be read by anyone if it weren't for the first novel.
If he's made such revisions, it wouldn't actually change the fact of the first edition, which won awards, became a milestone in science fiction, and was read and loved by millions. It would just be one more bit of proof that he's a hateful homophobe, and we already have more than enough.
If he's made such revisions, it wouldn't actually change the fact of the first edition, which won awards, became a milestone in science fiction, and was read and loved by millions. It would just be one more bit of proof that he's a hateful homophobe, and we already have more than enough.
22
I would say Songmaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songmaster is his most homophobic and misogynist book which also flirted with pedophilia. In it a bunch of kids are given drugs that make them incredible singers at the cost of never being able to have a climax without excruciating pain. There is a gay character who is castrated and commits suicide after trying to have sex with the main (male) character. There is a female character who's had the drugs but gets married and is supposedly happy (I guess because women aren't capable of climax so it's not a problem in card's tiny brain). He's been a pig from the beggining.
23
The thing about these OSC discussions that always, ALWAYS, sticks in my craw is that the central narrative arc of Ender's Game, from its' earliest short story incarnation, is, obviously and on the face of it, an act of terrible institutional child abuse. Whether or not OSC is or was a closeted, conflicted, self-loathing pedo or whether or not he draws a specific character as an evil homo is really beside the point.
Ender commits genocide, and was enabled to do so by his caretaker structure, and had no idea he was so doing. The story is in and of itself a condemnation of western institutional structures and the way they pretend to shield and protect children but actually fail at this task.
The story has great psychological authority. One possible, probable reason for this is not at all hard to infer.
Ender commits genocide, and was enabled to do so by his caretaker structure, and had no idea he was so doing. The story is in and of itself a condemnation of western institutional structures and the way they pretend to shield and protect children but actually fail at this task.
The story has great psychological authority. One possible, probable reason for this is not at all hard to infer.
24
As Mr. Card has written quite extensively and explicitly about how he feels about The Gays, it hardly seems necessary to go sifting through his fiction to figure out what he really thinks.
25
Mr. Card has written extensively and explicitly about how he feels about The Gays. It's not necessary to go sifting through his fiction to figure out what he really thinks.
26
@23: If someone missed that point and instead argues as if it's a beloved childrens' story, what are you gonna do?
@25: This too. Only some people use his fiction to suggest his ultimate worth over his hate.
@25: This too. Only some people use his fiction to suggest his ultimate worth over his hate.
27
The author has written eloquently on the topic of gay marriage from a position of a devoted Latter Day Saint. I do not see any hate speech in his writing. He has said - "love the sinner not the sin, and Jesus treated sinners with compassion." While it is not my world view that homosexuality is a sin, and I have no problem with gay marriage, I think one should be careful not to group people that don't agree with us with the people that hate us. The ability to have an intelligent, nuanced discussion about important topics, without hyperbola, is one of the most important strengths of America.
28
I was shocked when I found out about this. I'm a lesbian myself and I'm shocked that OSC was so hateful, but at the same time I can't deny how much I love the story of Ender's Game. It's a shame that the author would consider me as something sub-human, like how the alien race is viewed in Enders Game. I still dont understand his outrage, apparently he has a diasbled kid. My brother has severe autism and growing up with him, I've heard his peers and adults insult him. I was always there to defend him even though he was oblivious to what was being said. I gave all the bullies hell for what they said, and I know disabled people recieve hurtful jibes. Surely he's experienced this with his own child? Surely he'll know first-hand the pain and anguish that arises from discrimination. This is why I do feel let down by OSC. I love reading and I admired OSC's imagination, but hypothetically speaking if he were to meet me he'd probably already hate me...
Nevermind.
Nevermind.
29
I find it interesting to note that Card has long been lambasted by the conservative community as Pro-Gay. Whereas most everyone else immediately labels him as "homophobic" for holding the opinion that homosexuality is sinful. While, yes, Card's position on homosexuality has "evolved", no evidence has ever been given that he is a person who, at any point, hated homosexuals. Holding an opinion formed by religious inclinations, even one which inclines a person to deem a person's actions sinful rarely qualifies as hate. Do we condemn a non-drinker, who believes a genetically inclined alcoholic's overconsumption is sinful, as being a hater of alcoholics? If he does not hate the alcoholic, of course not? I am not equivocating being an alcoholic to being homosexual in terms of moral correctness, but they are similarly judged: according to the moral zeitgeist. Card's opinions on gay marriage stray from the current moral zeitgeist. Does that give you the right to label him as hateful, evil? Is intolerance for the sake of tolerance justified? Every witch hunt of the past tells, resoundingly, NO.
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