I've been watching the Lulu Awards scandal with some dismay. Now, I've never seen eye to eye with Valerie D'Orazio, but really I'm disgusted by the treatment she's receiving from the older members over this one. As uncharacteristic as it is of me, I think we should give her some sympathy for an honest mistake. Let's face it, Von Allen could very well have been a woman's name. Clearly both the nominator and the President thought so. Pushing this matter just makes harder for her to admit it and apologize properly to Mr. Allen.
Look, what's done is done. Give it a pass this year and have the voters determine if he wins. Next year's officers can discuss setting up another award for female creators, or rewrite the rules to specify only female nominees for the Kim Yale Award and have a different one for good portrayals of female characters by any gender. Surely we can forgive her this one bit of provincialism in light of everything she's been through so that we can go back to promoting female professionals and readership. Okay?
Well, here's the thing. Men have NEVER been ineligible for Lulu awards. NEVER. So to suddenly claim they are is disingenuous at best and downright lying at worst.
ReplyDelete" Clearly both the nominator and the President thought so. "
ReplyDeleteWhat's your basis for thinking that? Based on the link you provided, it seems to me that everyone involved knew that Allen was a man, and simply didn't think that disqualified him until people started complaining.
While I also don't always agree with everything Val says, I've got to take her side on this one, especially in light of what Elayne says about the rules here and that there was no mention of it in the rules on Val's site, and especially if what Val said on her site about lack of involvement in FOL was true.
ReplyDeleteNotintheface -- :)
ReplyDeleteAnon -- Her history of never checking a fact before she presses publish and then portraying anyone who notices as a bully?
Elayne -- Yeah, that's the Distilled Essence of Val, especially when she makes a mistake. When confronted on her inability to check facts and her enormous biases she never fails to make the confrontation bigger, better, and all about how she's being persecuted for her Neverending Crusade for Justice. You guys are playing right into her hand. This is most likely just a stupid mistake that should be belittled, and in rolling your eyes at it all she would look like is a foolish liar but instead she can play it off as one half of a fight. Once again, the old guard fails D'Oraziology and allows her to promote herself at the expense of FoL's reputation.
If you guys don't just move on and try to focus on the positive future, the fight will generate such bad press as to leave the organization an irradiated husk that will be unfit for future fundraising. Your best bet is to write this off as incompetence, cut your losses, reorganize, and never speak to or of Valerie D'Orazio again.
I have a lot of sympathy for how hard it is to do work for a non-profit organization, that's unpaid, that has to fit in around working and living, and having to wrangle volunteers who may be well-intentioned but don't always follow through. That's really, really hard to do. And when there are far more people with an opinion on how you're doing things, than there are people who actually step up to help, it can be really frustrating.
ReplyDeleteThat I totally get, and I have a lot of sympathy for her in that regard. It seems like running an organization like that to its full potential should really ideally be a paid gig.
But nominating a man for an award set aside for best new female talent? That's where she loses me.
Maybe she didn't have the information available to her that said it was for women, but she certainly seems conscious of the fact that it was a man being nominated for something at least perceived as being for women. It seems to be a choice she believes was right, and is one she's prepared to defend. And given that the decision is in line with her future plans for "Comics Are For Everyone," it seems more than likely the inclusion was deliberate. In fact, she goes so far as to say it's gender discrimination not to allow men to be nominated for the award, even. (Which, lol, no. This is where I like to point out the difference between equality and equity.)
I think it's a dumb idea to nominate men for that award, and suspect it was more about her wanting to start on CAFE while calling them the FoL awards, imposing a new approach where it may not have been appropriate to do so.
But she's an adult. If she honestly didn't know Von Allen was a man (though it seems she did know), she should be capable of owning up to the mistake, regardless of what's being said.
Holy crap, I didn't realize my comment got that long.
ReplyDelete"D'Oroziology". Hee! :D
ReplyDeleteWhat other courses are there? "Regnellistics"? "Simsometry"?
Maddy -- Good points and thanks for clarifying. May have to rethink my original position.
Anyway, this whole uproar is unworthy for an award named after the mother of "Suicide Squad".
Now this is why I have decided that I am qualified to run for the new president of FOL. Although I don't know how to run a web site, I usually DO admit it when I've made a mistake. And when it comes to slacking off, I'm a champion!
ReplyDelete