Decorum vs. Diversity

An Attempted Dialogue

I wasn’t sure what I’d choose to write about for my first post here, but given all of the imbroglios about Rings of Power (and how, I would argue, those imbroglios are not some new manifestation of racism, misogyny, and homo- and trans phobia in “fandom” but an escalation of problems that have existed for decades), I was pretty sure that the current conflicts would be the topic. I am planning a Resource Page for articles, reviews, and commentary on the adaptation that are notFascist! (given that one of my major projects is tracking the attacks). Then I remembered a short exchange I had with a correspondent who wrote me a few months ago.

What follows this introduction consists of my paraphrase (with a few short quotes) of their two emails and the lightly edited text of my two emails. I have had no reply to my second email which may be due to their being busy. They may eventually answer, but they may not. I’ve redacted identifying information although I left specifics that they shared with me to explain their position that I think are fairly common in fandom (being a libertarian). What was unique about this exchange was that my correspondent, despite our numerous disagreements, was polite (they do believe in decorum in critical dialogue!) which I appreciated and that they apparently wanted a dialogue to build connections (which I also appreciated!).

However, the arguments they made are ones that I have been hearing for decades, since the 1970s, although they have intensified and spiralled since them. The diction has changed (“politically correct” being replaced, mostly, by “woke,” for example), but the message is depressingly similar and is summed up, I think, by the title of this post.

1. Opening Email Paraphrase:

My Correspondent (M. C.) opened by acknowledging that they had not read my work (specifically, “J.R.R. Tolkien, Cultural Warrior: The Alt-Right Religious Crusade's appropriation of 'Tolkien'"). That's not surprising because it's not been published yet: as tends to be the case, I, like many academics, use presentation as part of a writing process. However, as I later pointed out, that presentation was available for free online at the Tolkien Society webpage, and it’s been over a year since I gave it.

However, I appreciated the polite opening (using my professional honorific) as well as the acknowledgement and the framing of their email as a desire to get more information and engage in dialogue!

They were responding to my title and my "Call for Papers" webpage (which turned out to be my CFP on the Tolkien Studies Area of the Popular Culture Website ) and said they were sure we had "strong disagreements" about Tolkien.

The first section was about their fear that Rings of Power will not be based on Tolkien's work but will be, instead, a bad fanfiction although they are open to changing their mind once they see it.

I was confused by this fear because even bad fanworks are "based on" source materials, but the claim drawn from that one was that we all have biases (I agree!), and those biases connect to our interpretations (I agree! though I'd actually use "subject position" because "bias" has negative connotations). Then we reached an area of disagreement: they think that some interpretations are "not valid" (meaning, wrong as examples given below indicate). The first example was the popular response that Sting's "Every Breath You Take" was a love song as opposed to a stalker/abuser's perspective.

This opening led to the issue of why my position seemed to be (as they read it) that people who disagree with me about the Rings of Power are part of the alt-right when they know that they, and people who agree with their position are not alt-right members. They ended by asking to see my data.

2. My response to this email (lightly edited to add links and minor errors since I don’t proof emails more than once!):

Please feel free to call me Robin! I am retired, and now an independent scholar, pursuing my writing for the love of it.

Thank you for your email--specifically for asking me about my work rather than simply posting your concerns online. That consideration is important given the events that led to me starting this project, specifically, a series of articles at alt-right blogs and periodicals attacking those of us who were presenting our work for the 2021 Tolkien Society Seminar on "Tolkien and Diversity."

I have attached a few examples of these attacks from my early analysis (material which I'll also be posting on one of my websites later on). I'll be presenting at the Tolkien Society's Oxenmoot in September if you care to see how I'm developing it—if I can learn how to use a new program, I'll be analyzing the comments on the "Rings of Power" trailer—and also see some more of my data.

Since the entire essay, when I finish it, including the data tables, will eventually be published at one of the open-access journals (meaning you don't have to pay horrendous academic publishing prices to read it), you will eventually be able to judge the whole thing (I hope!).

I am not sure what "call for papers" on what webpage you're referencing: I have several related projects going on and have posted CFP's for those plus conferences I am organizing sessions for, as well as all the past CFPs that are still floating around online. For instance, I've been the area chair for the Tolkien Studies Area for the national PCA for almost ten years now.

So if you could send me the link to what you saw/read, that might be useful. My guess is that perhaps you found this post on my Dreamwidth journal? Or some of the other posts I made there? That's where I'll be posting some of my corpus material.

I can say very strongly that I do not assume that because somebody has a different interpretation of Tolkien's legendarium (or any part of it, or any adaptation) that they belong to the alt-right. Nor do I need to be told that people have different interpretations of texts (in any genre/media): one of my scholarly interests is reception studies (which includes reader response), theories based on how all readers bring their own subjective experiences to creating meaning (the popular phrase for the theory is "the author is dead" based on one of the famous essays about it). I have done some work with surveys for actual fans/readers of Tolkien to report on how they interpret Tolkien and am a huge fan of Verlyn Flieger's essay about how the contradictions in Tolkien's own work has led to such "contradictory" and even oppositional readings of the legendarium.

I have never claimed that some unnamed number of people who have different "beliefs" than I do about Tolkien are part of the alt-right when I am in fact dealing with people who are out and proud about their racism, anti-Semitism, homo- and transphobia, and misogyny, publishing their attacks on public websites, and presumably making money off it. I have attached some of my data that I collected for my first presentation which was based on a corpus that consisted of the text of nineteen or so articles published on alt-right sites, plus the comments in response to them (on those sites that allowed public comments), that not only criticized but in many cases attacked the program for the "Tolkien and Diversity" seminar—based on nothing but the titles.

That experience is why I'm glad you wrote to me to find more more about what I am doing! Those of us drawing on queer theories were especially singled out (my presentation was on a project on how queer atheists, agnostics, and animists interpret Tolkien's work, using a survey I circulated online). I should note I'm one of three editors for an anthology on queer approaches to Tolkien.

Tolkien scholarship, especially those of us working with reception and or cultural studies approaches, is beginning to acknowledge that there is a broad range of political, religious, and ideological positions among Tolkien readers—and always has been.

Some of those readers are self-identified white white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, and yes, broadly speaking, the alt-right. Stormfront and the British National National Party, for instance, have used Tolkien to recruit new members. Some of them LOVE Jackson's film (I note this only because you seemed to imply that I was assuming everybody who disliked the film or is critical of the Amazon adaptation must be a white supremacist—my apology if I misunderstood you).

It's also true that the extent to which these groups draw on their imagined pure white "Middle Ages" has been a concern for medievalists who see their expert knowledge being ignored in favor of white supremacist propaganda. Here are some sources for these claims, both secondary and primary (warning: the third link leads to Stormfront's LOTR forum):

Stand Men of the West

The Devil's Historians

[link to relevant Stormfront forum redacted because this is a public post and I haven’t tried to archive that site]

Did you see the discussion of the medieval imagery exhibited at the riot in Charlottesville several years ago? It was all over the mainstream media and led to some fantastic work by medievalists.

Most Tolkien academics and I suspect most fans are not aware of this segment of Tolkien fandom (nor is Tolkien's work unique—there's a strong neo-Nazi fan group in My Little Pony fandom—and there's work being done on how these alt-right groups are appropriating popular culture.

Now, I have no demographic data on the numerical involvement [of alt-right fans] (there is no demographic study of Tolkien fandom—or most fandoms—given the difficulty of trying to track a global, international, multi-lingual "fandom" that is active with thousands (or more?) offline and online groups spread over every possible social media and online platform). But I do not make any claim to say that X% of Tolkien fans are alt-right. But I do know these groups exist. I do know they attacked a group of people who were presenting topics relating to Tolkien and diversity that they thought "perverted" Tolkien, and if you read over the list of archived posts which make up my corpus (at this point), you can see what they said for yourself.

And I do know that as an queer atheist feminist autist that it is important to me to show the extent to which alt-right fans and discourses are part of the global phenomenon which is "Tolkien."

A final thought: I'd note that many of us who write fanfiction consider all film adaptations to be a type of fanfiction--and that "good" and "bad" fanfiction like all other judgements are subjective--but in no case do fanfic writers OR the Amazon team deserve vitriolic attacks and threats about their work. Nor am I that enthused about RoP—in fact, I'm rather irked that the attacks on the adaptation for the incredibly tiny baby-steps toward diversity that the trailers and teasers have shown are leading me in any way to be perceived as 'defending' Amazon which I consider one of the most exploitative and oppressive corporate behemoths on the planet.

I am not sure how useful this lengthy piece is: I do not think you are wrong, just that as you said, yourself, you hadn't read my work and are working with limited information. That's why I explained at some length, with links, as well as some examples from my work in progress.

Yours,

Robin

3. Their Reply, Paraphrased

Their reply thanked me, apologized for the length of their reply (which didn't bother me in the least—I'm all about the lengthy monologues!), and explained that they decided to share some of their worldview so I could get sense of their perspective, and then respond to the email. They wanted me to know they did not intend to offend me (they did not—in fact, their tone throughout was civil), and that they would also talk about their thoughts on Star Wars.

They explained they were libertarian (which they said was a philosophy not a political position); that they did not believe in "group rights, but in individual rights" (I did not in the least understand what they were saying here—so I cannot convey it in paraphrase and will not quote at length because I do not have permission to do so). They disliked both Presidents Bush and Obama and think that the Clintons and Bushes should be in prison. They have never voted for Trump or the Democrats in the presidential elections. They believe that this perspective makes them able to be objective about the contemporary political divides but acknowledge others may see a "libertarian bias." They are against "diversity," especially "forced diversity" (no statement about who is doing the forcing, but I assume they mean governmental actions because of what I think I know about libertarianism). They think that the people who support diversity do not want conservatives or libertarians as part of diverse groups. They do believe that "the diversity of intellectual thought" is important in contrast to the left diversity supporters.

The next section of their response is what they love about Tolkien (that people from a wide range of "political perspectives" can relate). They note that popular culture has split into "woke" and "anti-woke camps" (and they are in the second one), though there are people acting badly on both sides.

Their response to the 2001 Tolkien Society Summer Seminar was that some of the titles/topics of the papers worried them; that they did not attend; but they have no issue with people criticizing the topics although there should be "some level of decorum" about the criticism.

They plan to read Verlyn's essay but still believe that people expressing "minority" interpretations about a work should be "called out for it" (they gave a hypothetical example of wrong reading that is not worth identifying because it’s made up; there’s also no definition of what "calling out" means—I would say, but didn’t in my reply—that the alt-right commenters were "calling out" presenters based on program titles). The ideal would be a consensus that is "open enough" to accept challenges. The problem is gate-keeping: as a libertarian they are opposed to it, but note the problem of two extremes: strict gatekeeping means "the property will wither and die," and no gatekeeping means chaos will ensue, that the "property will no longer be the property."

A side thought that just occurred to me as I was typing all of this up because I’ve heard this argument before—since the literal text of adapted works still exist—even if the covers are from the movies—the issue seems to be that the existence of such different/wrong interpretations destroys something about the gatekeepers’ ideas about the text and ruins their experiences? I’ve never understood that because if I don’t want ‘my vision’ of a beloved work challenged, and think it might be, I don’t go see the adaptation! And the existence of the people who think/interpret it differently than I do and who love the adaptation (or in the academic context, a very different text than I do) does not affect me.

In the next section they say they are glad I am not going after people who just disagree with me, but that problem exists in fandom where "the left" calls innocent people names (racist, anti-Semite, sexist, homo- and transphobic). They ask if there is anyone doing the kind of study I am doing on the alt-right about the "bad faith actors" on the "woke" side which they have seen. They then talk about hearing Corey Olsen's podcast where one of his students was talking about Italian fascists who were Tolkien fans. They correctly identify that as individuals bringing their biases, then states that Tolkien was "clearly not a fascist." [Added: I am not sure why people assume that if some fans see X (whether X is fascism or religion) in a fictional work that must somehow mean the author must be X (or not X).] They say they "understand" people in various groups interpreting a work based on their experience, but insist that the more challenging readings are never Tolkien's intent and that some, like Sam and Frodo having an erotic or relationship, should be in the non-consensus file. (No information on what that would mean—I mean, OK, it’s not the consensus, but why is that a problem?)

Some discussion of other adaptations (Branagh's Much Ado where the casting of Denzel Washington is declared to be a great performance and thus not a problem), as a different type of work than RoP. They disagree with me about RoP making baby steps and see it as a "mile sprint." Then they say how terrible it would have been if Black Panther had a predominantly white cast (the fact that this film is dragged out to make this argument in (my guestimate) 95% of time by "I'm not racist" fans highlights how FEW films with a majority of Black actors exist!).

They think that instead of turning white/straight/etc. characters into POC or gay characters, the solution is making new heroes (like Captain Jack on Dr. Who). This problem especially relates to comics adaptations. They think the "woke" cheers these instances while being against the opposite changes.

Instances: comic change to Nick Fury (that they approve of because they like Jackson but see it as exception, "woke" casting—which seems to be casting they don’t like?). They have a "Ginger" friend who is upset when red-haired characters in comic books are changed for adaptations (I am not sure how often this happens—the only case I know about is Zendaya being cast as MJ in the recent Spiderman. Anybody know of any others?). They doubt the changes in Tolkien's Elves are justified, and presents another hypothetical counter-example to support the claim that such changes require "justification." Says that there is a difference between hiring best actors without paying attention to race (the preferred justification, as with Washington and Jackson?) and being "diverse for diversity's sake."

[More hypothetical examples that I'm not going to detail since they're making the same point as the BP one.]

[500 plus words about Star Wars which I cannot speak to in any way.]

[Several paragraphs that state that "both sides are behaving badly" except that they don't see as many bad behaviors from their side vs. the "woke" side, and that too many "woke" people are coming into fandoms and attacking fans, which means fans like them and their friends have to "fight back."]

Nice conclusion: no desire to cause offense (they didn't) and wanting a dialogue, and apologies for length.

4. My reply to #3, lightly edited as noted above:

Thank you for the lovely (and lengthy!) response! No need to apologize for length since I'm not going to apologize for the length of my screeds to you. I tend toward what some of my friends on LiveJournal called the "tidal wave" approach—and what the therapist who diagnosed me as on the autism spectrum called an "autist monologue." From my perspective, I just love communicating (in writing or in person) with people who love talking/writing at length about things we're both interested in.

I think that writing/thinking/sharing about our worldviews and our personal experiences and interpretations of cultural productions is an important part of learning why and how other people think differently about the work and larger social contexts. I'd be happy to establish a dialogue!

I agree with you about the polarization in fandom (and in the larger culture) and that there are trolls and harassers among all groups. We clearly come from different political/ideological backgrounds but seem to have common ground in our love for Tolkien's work although I suspect our love takes very different forms. At some point, I'd love to hear your origin story (when you first read Tolkien, what you love about his work, etc.) and share mine. For instance, one way my love is expressed is by critical analysis (not meaning saying his work is bad, but in the academic sense of analyzing some aspect of it). In the parts of online fandom I was in, this sort of activity (called "meta") is often seen as negative and insulting to the creators of the works being analyzed. Many of my students thought the same!

I appreciate the time and care you put into your response although I think I need to sort of choose a few points to respond to in this email, planning to respond to the others in a later one. I'm afraid I won't be able to say much about your points about Star Wars because not only am I not a fan, I started out boycotting it out of personal pique, and know very little about the films and series although my friends who are in the fandom have written about some of the racist actions taken by some fans against John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran.

I was in college when the first film was released (1977!!!), and a bunch of my friends from the Star Trek club we were involved with deserted us to become huge fans of what I thought from the previews was a really bad not to mention totally derivative and stereotypical film. I eventually saw the first three releases because I was in Wales, while on a study abroad, on a very rainy Sunday, and nothing was open except a movie theatre showing the trilogy (this would have been in 1983). I was "meh, Harrison Ford is sort of cute, the brass bikini scene is sexist as all get out—clearly there to give the daddies bringing their kids to the movie a thrill, and it's not science fiction, it's a fairy tale with space ships!"

In the great religious divide that developed then, I was firmly on the Star Trek side although I have never seen that my love for Trek required me to diss SW! Deep Space Nine was my FAVORITE of the Trek series; the fourth movie (save the whales!) along with the second (Khan!) were my favorites—and I haven't seen any of the new things because none of them have appealed. My current pop culture fandom activity is the Good Omens series, and I'm hoping to catch up with Our Flag Means Death when I have some free time.

I would love to talk more with you about what you think about Verlyn's essay! I would not be doing Tolkien scholarship if it were not for her encouragement in the early 2000s; I spent the first ten years of my academic career working on feminist speculative fiction, culminating in editing the first encyclopedia on women in science fiction and fantasy.

Her recent essays (one on the religious conflicts, "But What Did He Really Mean?" and the MythCon Guest of Honor speech I linked to) are also major inspirations on my research projects about how atheist, agnostic, and animist readers interpret Tolkien. I got a bit derailed from work on that project (from which I drew my talk on queer atheists, agnostics, and animists for the Diversity seminar) by the backlash which also dragged me into the rabbit hole of the alt-right's participation in the "culture war." I'm happy to answer any questions I have about my work! I have some questions for you based on what you wrote, and want to answer some of your questions although I think the whole "political" topic will have to wait for another email given the length of this reply.

In terms of what you say about seeing liberal fans behaving badly towards conservative or libertarian fans, I believe you--but I also think we share the experiences of having our own bubbles, where I'm more likely to see the attacks on liberal fans, and you are more likely to see the attacks on conservatives and libertarians because we hang out in very different online/social media spaces. I think we agree on the fact that bad behavior online is not exclusive to any one political (or religious) (or social) group. However, I think it's too easy to fall into the false equivalency fallacy ("both sides are equally bad"—whether applied to "woke/anti-woke" or "conservative/liberal," etc.).

I am interested in these conflicts because, although I'm no longer active in online fandom, the discussions online about science fiction and fantasy are part of what I study as a scholar. For instance, I've already written about the backlash against "Tolkien and Diversity" for a Note that was published in Mythlore responding to another "Note" by Donald Williams that responded to Verlyn's "The Arch and the Keystone" essay.

In one of the footnotes in that essay, I say:

I have never seen a presentation or read an essay by a scholar working in the areas of Tolkien studies I am familiar with that argues that Christian interpretations of Tolkien’s legendarium are wrong or should not be made. My sense is that those of us working with other critical approaches pay little, if any, attention to Christian scholarship and rarely engage with it. However, if such work exists, I would condemn such attacks on Christian scholarship or readers, with the stipulation that I do not consider the mere existence of queer, feminist, gender, or critical race approaches to be an attack on Christians or Christianity.

I would also make the same point to liberals acting badly as well, so if you can give me some examples of the behaviors you have seen (as long as they are on public websites that can be seen/read by people who are not members of the group because of privacy issues), I would be interested in seeing them and considering how to incorporate discussion of them in my academic work. [Added as I am proofing for posting online: Without specific examples, these sorts of claims are the “both sides” fallacy, that is, saying, well, both sides are behaving badly.]

My stipulation is important however: I do not consider the mere existence of queer people, feminist people, or Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as "attacks" and have more than once seen people responding as if our existence is one of the major causes of overturning "Western Civilization" (a term that is racialist and colonialist in its origin and usage but which people often use as if it's a neutral or objective descriptor).

So, here are my examples: I consider the following events as examples of self-identified traditional and conservative (but not all alt-right--except that in some cases, the alt-right groups got involved) fans behaving badly: Gamergate, ComicsGate, and the Sad/Rapid Puppies. The leader of the Rapid Puppies, Vox Day, is affiliated with the alt-right. I think the alt-right (which I devoutly hope is a numerical minority population) has a history of exploiting people's fears and unconscious biases.

A counter example: I participated in one event that I consider to be an instance in which white liberals (fans, and some professional writers and editors) attacked fans of color who criticized racist stereotypes and tropes in sf: Racefail '09. That's not quite the same thing as you're talking about (although I don't assume that all people of color are liberal or progressive, i.e. see Clarence Thomas.) But it is a case where liberals went way beyond disagreement into personal attacks and harassment (as a Tolkien fan, I was discouraged to see people calling Black women fans "hordes of Orcs"). There's debate about whether or not Tolkien's Orcs reflect racist attitudes, but using the term against POC is a racist rhetorical move.

I don't know how much you know about any of those events, or how much you want to know, but I've attached a page of links rather than putting so many in the email!

And I won't go into detail here, but there have also been some major problems in academia when BIPOC spoke out about systemic racisms and sexisms in the field and white academics reacted badly (and in fact, drove out some of the BIPOC), especially in medieval studies and in fan and popular culture studies.

I have a question about what you mean when you say [quote about "woke" people coming into fandoms and attacking fans who do not agree with them redacted].

I'm confused by your phrasing here: you seem to be implying that the "woke" fans are some sort of outside infiltrating force as opposed to being real fans and, historically, part of fandom all along. If you look at the history of sf fandom, the conflict between liberal and conservative fans was baked in from the start—as shown by Futurians being evicted from what is considered the first WorldCon (in America anyway—Britain begs to differ) in 1939: the ones evicted were known for their radical politics, although some of them admitted it was more a personality conflict. And I've read fanzines from the 1970s where the Vietnam War and environmentalism were being hotly debated (often in the context of books like Dune by Frank Herbert and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman). In fact, as someone who was in fandom in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember participating in those debates!

I mean, I'm one of the "radical SJWs" of fandom--and I was in fandom before the internet (1976-91, in different groups, first in Outpost 13, a Star Trek fan club; then in APA-5, an Amateur Press Association). I GAFIATED from fandom when I started writing my dissertation (for one thing, I was doing a feminist topic, and spouting off, and apparently irritating the mostly male membership when I started talking about how "masculinity" was constructed). I came back into online LiveJournal fandom in 2003 (because of the Jackson films which I love--I saw Fellowship 45 times before it left the theatres) and was active until 2009 when I left my major LJ communities because of Racefail '09.

So I was in fandom since I got out of the small town where I was born (Moscow, Idaho) where there was no fan activity. And the history of WisCon (the feminist sf con) shows that there were feminists in fandom from the 1960s (and some of the history on women in sff fandom of the 1930s-40s-50s is fascinating to read). So we've always been here and while I'd agree we have changed fandom, I don't see all those changes as negative (or accurate: for instance, for years WisCon was accused of not allowing men in despite the fact that they never limited membership and men served on the committees that ran the con!).

What are these interlopers trying to change in "your" fandom?

I had a friend who had to leave a large Tolkien group when she tried to support another member who was trans* and wanted to talk about why they loved Tolkien: the other admins of the group (she was one of the admins) forbid any discussion of sex, race, gender, etc., which they called "woke" topics. The group numbered in the thousands--and my friend and the trans* fan left (my friend started a progressive Tolkien group where we can talk all we want about the progressive stuff. So, I'm not really seeing that the large Tolkien group was destroyed or changed.

That's been typical of my experience in online fandom - back in the day, fans would leave groups to start new ones if there were strong enough political or personal conflicts.

What is the "it" in "if you don't like it" refer to?

Yes, some people in fandom consider other people to be racist, misogynistic, homophobic. I think some people in fandom are all of those things and more although I'll note that my definition of 'racism' is from sociology that distinguishes between types of racisms: Jim Crow racism vs. systemic/aversive/unconscious racism.

A lot of people participating in Racefail '09 refused to accept that there was any validity to the second definition and claimed that "racism" no longer existed in America because Obama! I always wondered what those people thought about the white supremacist uprising under Trump.

And as a 66 year old queer woman, I've run into sexist and misogynistic behaviors (speech and acts) in fandom spaces and in professional spaces all my life. And not all of those acts were done by men either! I will never forget that over 50% of white women voted for Trump. As far as I'm concerned, I was born into and raised in a racist, sexist, homophobic national culture (Idaho, where I was raised, is on the heavy-duty side of those systems of oppression compared to some other parts of the country—but it's a question of different manifestations rather than a "racist/not racist" binary.) So, yes, that's my worldview.

Because of my worldview, I know I am racist in that systemic/aversive way: I didn't realize until very late that all the "women's books" I was reading after I became a feminist (I started a five-year program of reading nothing but women writers after I read Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women’s Writing) were all by white women. Octavia Butler and Alice Walker were revelations. As a result, I started working on dismantling the racist attitudes I'd grown up with (well before the Aryan Nation discovered Idaho!). When I went back to get my doctorate in the early 1990s, I discovered bell hooks and many other feminists who were BIPOC rather than the white feminists whose works I'd been reading since the early 1980s.

I didn't become a feminist until my early 30s and was very much an anti-feminist until then—so I could be pretty sexist back in the day ("I'm not like those other girls who are all stupid and interested in nothing but boys.")

[quote about fans "fighting back" redacted]

I don't think there is a single "Tolkien fandom" especially today—there are thousands of different groups (online and offline, many of whom participate in both spaces) in many languages and many countries and for many different reasons. Most of the time, when we say "Tolkien fandom," we are referring to that part of Tolkien fandom we are in. So where is your "Tolkien fandom" that you see these "woke" invaders trying to change things? What are the actions you define as "fighting back"? Who are you fighting? Where does this conflict take place? Why does it have to be a war?

[quote about problem of "woke" people's bad behaviors pushing fans into the alt-right redacted]

I've heard some variant of this claim since I became a feminist (which is over thirty years ago [EEP: just realized it’s more like forty years ago!), i.e., "I would have supported you but you were so mean, and now I'm not." There's also "I support [insert progressive movement here] but you people are going too far.”

There's scholarship on how the alt-right recruits, and it's not relying on "woke" people being mean to the nice people. You can google "how alt-right recruits" (spoiler, memes on the internet!).

But I'm pretty damn sure that if generic-you decide you're going to stomp off to join the group who wants to deny equal rights [not special rights, not some sort of shiny individual rights nobody else gets—but that's a topic for the next email] to groups who have historically been denied them, then you were ALWAYS going to join them because you don't want to give up your privilege.

That said, I don't spend any time going to fan spaces to try to 'convert' anybody—I'm too old and grumpy for that, and plan to focus on working with people who want to create change in fandom and in the larger culture because they are the future (for whatever future we have, given climate catastrophe). I dropped out of academia because of the sexism (I never noticed the racism in my nice all-white departments), but when I came back (long story!), it was with the intention of subverting from within, and I'm still sort of continuing that in academic spaces.

You said about Tolkien Society 2021 Seminar: [quote about need for "decorum" when criticizing titles of "Tolkien and Diversity" presentations redacted]

If you read any of the articles from the alt-right websites I sent to you, you can judge for yourself if they were "questioning or offering criticism" with "decorum." Having read them all, several times, my sense is the majority of the articles and comments were attacks intermixed with errors of fact. For instance, somehow, some people had the idea that the Tolkien Society was part of the Tolkien Estate and had authorized the Amazon adaptation and were thus responsible for all that was going wrong with it (based, of course, on minimal information about the actual product).

And I find a lot of what I read by the alt-right critics troubling (and some of it downright terrifying—see the [name redacted] blog]) but I read it as well as material from conservatives (a matter of terms—I don't consider the "alt right" conservatives—they're fascists) to learn more about different perspectives. The presentations from the Diversity Seminar are free online—except for one which couldn't be recorded due to copyright issues—why not listen to what some of us actually said?

[quote about website mentioned earlier being the CFP for PCA redacted]

Wow, of all the webpages I was remembering posting CFPs or talking about my work, the PCA Area page never came to mind! I do run the Tolkien Studies Area which is one of the divisions, so to speak, of the Popular Culture Association, an organization no doubt some consider "woke" (although there are many conservative members!) because those darned cultural Marxist academics looking at stuff that isn't "Great Literature."

But we've been around a while: if you're interested, here's an overview of the origins and history of the organization. Here is a list of all the areas (the job of each area is to put together paper sessions for the annual conference): that shows you the scope of "popular culture."

And if you're interested, here is a list of all the presentations that have been given in my area since I founded it almost ten years ago: Tolkien Studies: the Tenth Anniversary

My goal as area chair is to provide a space for scholarship in Tolkien studies (broadly defined on my CFP page notes) on any topic, from any theoretical and methodological perspective, and I think the titles indicate that. I have never turned down a proposal for a paper for the Tolkien Studies Area, FYI. [Some sentences about my confusion that was a misreading on their point redacted.]

Could you tell me where you saw that I was working on the alt-right paper and what on the CFP PCA page led you to the interpretation that I saw anyone who had different ideas about Tolkien or the Amazon series was right-wing?