While Lackey’s twitter feed has never been terribly active, Dixon for his part is understandably furious and has been laying bare the mental and emotional strain the recent attacks have had on her in a long thread on Twitter:
“All people see is a target for absolutist rage right now. The mob shows up, the mob savages, the mob leaves certain they’ve done the right thing… after killing someone who only ever helped them. Someone, using @SFWA, managed a devastating attack on her.”
This isn’t even the first time SFWA has rushed in to condemn the woman for past transgressions.
When Lackey was named back in November, a twenty-year old Q&A and a 2017 Quora post surfaced, in which she apparently held some intolerable opinion about the use of ‘they’ in the singular in regards to pronouns; for failing to sufficiently microparse this nu-speak blather, she was subsequently ‘asked to clarify’ her position, which of course required a wholly needless and public display of self-flagellation. Not even someone as thoroughly on the side of trans individuals as Lackey, whose reputation on the matter had been virtually unassailable for over thirty years, could escape the crime of retroactive wrongthink. The Committee of Public Safety had demanded that a display had to be made.
Meanwhile, SFWA wanted to tell everyone:
This cannot possibly be a reference to comfort girls? The sex slaves used by the Japanese army during WWII, right? They’d never say something that obviously insensitive. Right?
Collateral Damage
Should this absurd non-controversy gain traction, it’s not at a stretch to imagine that the recently optioned TV rights to her Valdemar series could be put in jeopardy. It was announced by Deadline Hollywood back in March of 2021 that Radar Pictures, the studio behind the recent Jumanji reboot had acquired the small screen rights and was assembling a who’s who to cast, write and produce it. Lackey was quoted as being “nearly breathless with excitement” about the prospect of seeing her life’s work adapted by a major studio.
But shows have been cancelled over far less, and there are few individuals less daring and creative than studio executives. Could this derail prospects for the show as well? Time will tell. This year will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. It will be notorious as a year in which shameful conduct was on display that marred the organization’s biggest event.
But that shame belongs entirely on the head of SFWA.
