Ender's Game: What I Missed the First 20 Times Around.

[Content note: racism, homophobia]

Ender's Game

Like many people, I loved Ender's Game as a child. It was my favorite book; I must have reread it at least once or twice every year, starting when I was in middle school. I loved the plot; I found Ender to be a sympathetic hero; the details of the writing grabbed my imagination. I only recently, however, after a long break, sat down to reread it.

And what. the. everloving. fuck.

On page 65, Ender has the following exchange with his friend, Alai:

They grinned. Then Ender said, "Better invite Bernard."
Alai cocked an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"And Shen."
"That slanty-eyed butt-wiggler?"

"Slanty-eyed"? Since when was that in there? 

"And Shen.''
"That slanty-eyed butt-wiggler?"
Ender decided that Alai was joking. "Hey, we can't all be niggers."

No. Ender- Ender, who I respected and who I identified and sympathized with- just called someone a nigger. Just called Alai a nigger. Alai, whose open friendship meant the world to Ender, whose friendship meant the world to me and had stayed with me as I moved on from the books. Ender just called Alai a nigger. That is then followed by these two lines:

Alai grinned. "My grandpa would've killed you for that."
"My great great grandpa would have sold him first."

It's a mark of my privilege that I didn't notice this exchange when I was younger. Later editions of the book were modified* to take out the word, but I know that my copy contained Ender calling someone a nigger. And that when I was a kid, I didn't notice. Or care.

Orson Scott Card

The story, of course, gets worse. I had heard for a long time that Orson Scott Card (henceforth OSC for brevity) was a bigoted homophobe in real life. I had not known the extent. Wikipedia quotes him as calling for laws that ban gay sex to "remain on the books... to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society". So, basically: gay people are subhuman. Card also apparently believes that "the dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally." Yeah, okay, apparently all we gay people have just been molested into being gay, and all we want is to live "normally." Okay, bigot, how about you shut the fuck up.

But I had not seen his bigotry run into his work, having not reread it since before I was aware of these issues. I had not seen the link between his (stupid, wrong) non-fiction theorizings and his fiction. I had been trying to be careful, in fact, to keep my own prejudices against Mormonism (which has some racial and gender-based stuff that I am not going to get into here, as well as policies on homosexuality, that I strongly disagree with) from biasing my view of OSC as an individual. And then I read the following response to a teacher's question about why he had chosen to release an edition with the word "nigger" removed:

Even as the old obscenities dealing with sex and excrement were unleashed upon the public, new obscenities moved from the realm of the merely indecorous to the sinful. What f* and s* (and worse words) had once been, now n* has become. And, just as there were prudes who screamed in outrage and demanded that any work containing those old bad words must be banned, so we have a new group of prudes making identical demands about works containing the new bad word. 

... 

Such a word, today, is n*. In the scene just quoted, I had Ender using the word to wake Alai up to the fact that by calling Shen "slanty-eyed," Alai was being racist. A sort of tit-for-tat response: If you're going to call my East Asian friend "slanty-eyed," then you choose to live in the kind of world where you would be called "n*." Morally, this is clearly (to me, at least) a rejection of the kind of world where people call each other names based on superficial racial characteristics.

Oh fuck no.

First off, let's talk about how you chose, as a white person, to create a circumstance in which a black person would have to be taught about how to not be racist by a white person. Let's just take a look at that.

Second, let's talk about how there is a distinction between "prudes" and "people that you have offended by being racist." Shit and fuck? Those are words that people might feel offended by. They are "strong language." The word nigger's offensiveness does not stem from how "strong" it is, it stems from how it is a word that was used (and is being used, now) BY WHITE PEOPLE to OPPRESS BLACK PEOPLE. So having Ender (a white person) call Alai (a black person) a nigger is not at all the same as having people of any race say "fuck you" to other people. It replicates the power imbalance and the violence that we, if we are not racist scumbags, are trying to move AWAY from in the US. There is no prudishness involved here. This is not a case of feeling that the word is improper, this is the use of a word that actually hurts people and contributes to systemic inequality.

Thirdly, let's talk about that second paragraph there. The moral that OSC seems to be trying to impart is apparently: if you, as a person of color, say something racist, you deserve to be put in your place by having someone use racial violence against you. You "choose to live in the kind of world where you would be called 'n*'." 

But there's no way that a white person- there's no way that Ender- would ever be at risk of making that choice. They could never choose to open themselves up to racial invective, because there aren't any structurally racist words that apply to white people. If there were, the logical conclusion of that scene would have been Ender getting his comeuppance for using a racist term: after calling Alai a nigger, Ender would have been called something racist. But that didn't happen, because white people apparently don't have to follow the same "tit-for-tat" rules that people of color do.

So my feelings on Ender's Game are now basically: fuck that shit. I loved this book, but OSC, while he may be a gifted writer, is a racist, homophobic, sexist douchebag, and that stuff doesn't just magically not get included in his writing. It's there, and I hate it, and I don't think I'll ever be able to read this book, that was my favorite book, again.

*Transcription:

They grinned. Then Ender said, "Better invite Bernard." 

Alai cocked an eyebrow. "Oh?" 

"And Shen." 

"That little butt-wiggler?" 

Ender decided that Alai was joking. "If you didn't hold yours so tight it would wiggle, too."

Note: I've chosen not to discuss some other problematic portions of the book, including the gender essentialism (apparently girls tend not to pass the tests to get into Battle School, because there are "too many centuries of evolution working against them" or some bullshit); the whole thing about how OSC has written it so that Jews think they're the shit, but they actually suck; a whole damn lot of adults saying "yes, we're abusing these kids, but it's totally justified because: alien menace, so we'll joke about how horrible this is and then do it anyway!"; and the entire structure of Ender's growth, which reads like a perfect portrayal of someone who is being abused justifying their learned abuse of others.

Elementary and "Child Predator"

[Content note: contains discussion of child abuse]
[Spoilers for Elementary ep. 3]

I have very much been enjoying CBS's Elementary, a modern-day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes taking place in NYC. It features a female, Asian Watson, and a Holmes that can show real emotion and isn't limited to being an acerbic asshole. This Holmes can, instead, apologize when needed! and say thank you!, in a way that makes it actually believable that someone as intelligent and self-possessed as Joan Watson would choose to spend time with him (even after her duties as sober companion have expired, I hope I hope!) But there has been one cloud in my enjoyment of this lovely series: the third episode.

Now, let me come out and say that I do not enjoy movies, shows, or books about child abuse very much. It's just not something that I enjoy watching. Seeing kids being abused turns my stomach, in a way that other violence does not. But I decided to watch this episode, because I had been so impressed with the others. I was glad of that decision, until half way through it.

In this episode, Sherlock demonstrates a great understanding for the experiences of a child who's being abused. He acknowledges that children are manipulated into feeling grateful to their abusers, as is the boy in this episode. While talking to Sherlock, the boy relates how, trying to escape from the room he slept in, he cut his hand on the glass, and he expresses gratitude towards his abuser for bandaging the cut afterwards- a neat example of the double-think required for victims of abuse. They must hold in their heads both that they were trying to escape from a place and a person that they hated and feared, and that they are required to be grateful- genuinely grateful, lest they incite more violence from their abuser.

At this point in the episode, I was surprised and pleased to see that Elementary was doing such a bang-up job of portraying someone who had been abused for almost a decade: the lies and manipulations of their abuser still as strong as ever in their mind, even after they were removed from the abuser's control, only changeable with lots of work and the mindfulness and understanding of the people around them. The boy is so scared of the adults near him that he can't speak to any of them, until Sherlock acknowledges that he must have loved the man who abused him- as any child must love someone who takes care of them, even if the adult mixes that care with severe abuse. I liked that they didn't shy away from portraying something as heartbreaking as that.

So, I was feeling pretty good about the episode. Until the plot twist: the boy is actually the one abusing the man, and indeed, the one killing all the other children.

This is fucked. up.

Almost all children who have been physically abused have also been psychologically abused. The psychological abuse very commonly consists of the abuser telling the child that they are causing the abuse- that they are responsible for it. "If you just cleaned the house right, I wouldn't have to hit you." "If you didn't look scared all the time, I wouldn't get so angry and have to yell at you." "If you didn't get smart with me, I wouldn't have to lock you in your closet for the night." "This is for your own good." "If you weren't a bad kid, I would be able to love you."This isn't just limited to child abuse- domestic abuse and elder abuse look very similar to this, as well.

And sometimes children (or other victims of abuse) feel as if they are complicit in the crimes that their abusers commit. "He told me that if I never told anyone, he wouldn't hurt my little sister. But he raped her too, and it's my fault because I didn't tell anyone. That rape is my responsibility."

These are very common narratives in the minds of people recovering from abuse. They are not rare.

Now imagine that you are someone recovering from abuse (or currently being abused), and you see this episode of Elementary. There's a boy who was abused. He's afraid. Sherlock is kind to him, and understands that he has conflicting feelings about the man who kidnapped him a decade ago.

And then: the boy is evil.

Everything is his fault. He wasn't being abused; he was actually the abuser all along. He was manipulating his poor adult into doing things, like hurting other kids, that he didn't want to do. The man wouldn't have done it if that kid hadn't been so evil. Everything is the kid's fault.

Add to that that the reason that Sherlock discovered that the kid was evil was because he was sleeping in the bed that should have belonged to the grown man. Imagine being sexually abused, and seeing that scene. Seeing that sleeping in the grown-up's bed proved that he was the bad one, the one who had been hurting other people. What would that do to you? You're being raped in an adult's bed, and this show is telling you that if anyone ever finds out that you were raped there, they will know that it's you who is hurting other people. You who is causing the abuse. You who is the bad person.

THAT IS DISGUSTING.

So basically, I found this episode of Elementary to actually be really revolting and kind of unconscionable. I was shocked that they could represent abuse so well in the first half, and then do something so horrible to people with histories of abuse in the second. Basically: fuck that shit. I may or may not continue watching the series, but I have become very disillusioned about the emotional safety of the content.