Comments on: The Big Idea: Malinda Lo

By: Muğla

Muğla — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:18:49 +0000

Interesting. Will definatly be on the lookout for this one…

By: aydin

aydin — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:46:34 +0000

Well, I wasn’t speaking biologically. I specifically avoided the word “race” in an attempt to sidestep any such implications. After all, Americans are “a people”, despite the vast array of different backgrounds.

By: B. Durbin

B. Durbin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:55:20 +0000

Tanya Huff’s Quarter novels have quite a few accepted gay and lesbian couples— however, it is strongly implied that some countries are more accepting than others. I particularly like the implication that marriages of state can be set up between any two handy nobles, even if the ones in question don’t swing that way. Again, marrying for love is a recent concept, so it’s nice to see that taken to its logical extreme in a world where homosexuality is just the way it is.

So now the question is— if Cinderella doesn’t fall in love with the prince, what are the implications if he still falls for her? Guess I’ll just have to get the book to find out.

By: Raynre

Raynre — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:48:43 +0000

Interesting. Will definatly be on the lookout for this one.

By: John

John — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:14:28 +0000

Laurie Marks’ “Dancing Jack” is a fantasy where the culture is gender netural as to pairings.
Funnily enough, the protagonist is also a woman named Ash. Though in her case it’s a title.
Good book.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:31:59 +0000

“But all of this is utterly tangential to the post, and I’m going to stop trying to clarify what I wrote.”

The proprietor thanks you and hopes others will follow your sterling example.

By: Mark Reed

Mark Reed — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:28:51 +0000

Greg@122:

When I hear a “people”, a “nation in the old sense”, an “ethnos”, I start hearing a biological definition.

I’ll concede that “nation in the old sense” may have been a poor choice; what I have in mind is somewhere between the old and new definitions. Not a race, but not a state either.

The word ethnos is just a direct borrowing of the Greek root behind “ethnic”, used both because it’s shorter than “ethnic group” and because the word “ethnic” has acquired some negative connotations due to associations with racist attitudes. But when “ethnic group” is used as a term of art in the social sciences, it means what I meant. Max Weber defined it as:

[a group of humans] that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both [...] it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.

Wikipedia puts it more pithily:

a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.

I think the point is that “common descent”/”heritage” is about shared history, not biology. Cultural, not genetic.

I believe I’d mentioned something about a person who grows up in a devout Catholic famiy, but becomes a non-catholic. You wouldn’t call him “catholic”, even though he is going to be living in a culture of Catholicism because his entire family is Catholic.

I know several such people, and they self-identify as “lapsed Catholics”. Is that a subset of Catholic?

But all of this is utterly tangential to the post, and I’m going to stop trying to clarify what I wrote. At best, some future author will read this and avoid assuming that “Jewish” is just a religion. More likely, I’ve just managed to convince the Interwebs that I’m racist. (Well, more than usual, bearing in mind the lessons of RaceFail.)

Either way, I love the concept for this book, and I look forward to reading it.

By: GregLondon

GregLondon — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:35:31 +0000

Mark: boy howdy did you misinterpret what I said!

WHat you said was this:

The Jews are not just believers in a common faith;

Which I take to mean religious beliefs isn’t what defines “Jew”.

they’re a people, a nation in the old sense, an ethnos

When I hear a “people”, a “nation in the old sense”, an “ethnos”, I start hearing a biological definition.

I’m taking this in part because
GregLondonon@57: “Well, a Jewish character would observe Jewish holidays and traditions to some degree or another, or they wouldn’t be Jewish.”

And the Craig@65 disagreed with me. I explained in #71 that it is purely a matter of the persons beliefs, not anything physical. To which you apparently disagreed in @116 by saying a “people”, a “nation in the old sense”, an “ethnos”. To me, that’s arguing for some biological definition. You also said that anyone with a Jewish mother is a Jew (more biological definitions) but you didn’t mention that not every Jew uses that definition, you didn’t mention the cultural definition of “Jew”.

So, if you didn’t mean some sort of purely biological defintion of “Jew”, then I’m sorry, but that’s exacty what I read from your post based on your choice of words, your choice of things you didn’t mention, and the context of the other posts.

I believe I’d mentioned something about a person who grows up in a devout Catholic famiy, but becomes a non-catholic. You wouldn’t call him “catholic”, even though he is going to be living in a culture of Catholicism because his entire family is Catholic.

By: Mark Reed

Mark Reed — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:35:49 +0000

Greg: boy howdy did you misinterpret what I said! Who said anything about genetics? Or racial purity? The tradition I mentioned may be based on biology (matrilineage) but even if there were such a thing as race on a genetic level, it would be gone after just a few halvings when a Jewish woman married a Gentile man!
I’m just talking about cultural identity, identification with the group, which is as much about self-perception as anything else. If your goal is to eradicate all such groupings, then good luck with that. I’d rather see people learn to celebrate their differences even as they recognize that we’re all fundamentally the same. I don’t want to eliminate groups – just stop folks from equating “other” with “inferior”.
Anyway, my entire point was just that it’s an oversimplification to equate Jewishness with the religion. That’s only a part of the picture. I was trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. Sure, people who didn’t grow up in the culture but convert to Judaism in adulthood are still Jews, no matter who their mother is. But so are the people who grew up in the culture but reject the religion. Different subclasses, different facets of the Jewish world. You’ll find people who reject either of the above inclusions, but I think you’re missing a big chunk of reality if you do so.

By: Nargel

Nargel — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:04:26 +0000

SaraS @ 109

The Big Idea was around for years before the “ongoing conversation” even started, as far as I know. I may be off a bit here, as my knowledge of the whole Racefail thing is, what, less than a year old and it may have been around in its current form somewhat longer than i am aware of. While I’m sure the questions the Racefail discussions are involving have been around longer than either of the two, I am also sure that The Big Idea series is much the elder of the two.